Skeleton Crew Studio and Jiro Ishii, the mind behind 428: Shibuya Scramble, have announced that their forthcoming game Shibuya Scramble Stories will kick off a second crowdfunding drive, set to commence on June 28. The news came during a live Shibuya Scramble Stories crowdfunding public meeting, which was streamed on YouTube. According to Denfaminicogamer, the crowdfunding platform and additional details remain undisclosed for now, with further updates expected shortly.
The follow-up crowdfunding initiative was initially scheduled to launch on April 28, spurred by strong demand for sold-out reward tiers from the first campaign. Ishii explained that the original plan was to use Ubgoe, the platform that hosted the initial crowdfunding effort. However, due to significant complications, the developers had to seek an alternative platform, leading to the delay of the second campaign by two months (Source: 4Gamer).
Regarding the nature of these issues, despite the first campaign exceeding its goal in just an hour and ultimately raising over 55 million yen (approximately $340k USD), the developers only received less than half of the funds. After missing the payment deadline, Ubgoe stated that the funds were “mistakenly wired to a different client,” and that it could not immediately provide the full amount.
The situation became even more challenging when, amid the legal dispute between Skeleton Crew Studio and Ubgoe, the platform’s servers unexpectedly went offline on April 15, and remain inaccessible as of this writing.
Even with the unresolved issues, Ishii and his team confirmed last month that the development of Shibuya Scramble Stories would continue uninterrupted. The project has secured backing from Tokyu Land Corporation amid the financial setback, and recent updates along with the BitSummit exhibition suggest that development is progressing steadily.
Ishii noted that the team has taken great care in selecting the partner for the upcoming crowdfunding campaign. They have engaged in multiple discussions to ensure that backers’ contributions will be directly delivered to the project creators.
That said, the second campaign will feature many of the popular rewards from the previous one, including the opportunity for backers to play as an extra in the game and have their writing included in the “tips section.”
Shibuya Scramble Stories is currently in development.