Crowdfunding Indie Games in Vietnam?

Hi everyone 🫡 If you make indie games, you've probably thought about crowdfunding at some point. Legion Team is no exception. This week I came across "Crowdfunding is fundamentally a marketing and a community exercise", an article by journalist Alex Calvin on GamesIndustry.biz, which interviews people who have run campaigns themselves or advise studios on them.

The original piece focuses on Kickstarter, but after reading it I felt most of the lessons apply to crowdfunding in general, whether that's Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Gamefound, Patreon, Ko-fi, or simply a support page on your team's website. So Legion Team wanted to sum up the key points, along with a few thoughts of our own from the perspective of game devs in Vietnam.

A small note: the numbers and quotes in this post all come from the original GamesIndustry.biz article. I'm just summarizing and interpreting them the way I understood them. If you want the full picture, check out the original via the link above.

1. No longer booming, but steady

According to research by Thomas Bidaux (ICO Partners), who tracks game crowdfunding data closely:

• In 2025, game projects raised around $26 million on Kickstarter, on par with 2024 and one of the best years since the 2015 boom.
• 443 game projects were successfully funded, only 4% fewer than in 2024.
• 55 projects passed $100,000 and 11 projects passed $500,000. Bidaux notes the last time there were that many half-million-dollar projects was 2015.
• Early signs suggest 2026 is following a similar pattern.

Overall, crowdfunding can't carry the whole games industry, but it's still a real channel with real money, for projects willing to prepare properly.

2. The new rules: an almost-finished game and an existing community

This is the part that got Legion Team thinking the most. Back in 2012, Frontier's Elite: Dangerous raised over £1.5 million while the game was still very much a work in progress. Things are very different now:

"You need to have the game in a state where you can capture release-quality footage, and it is even better if you can offer a demo. Alongside that, you need to be quite advanced in your marketing effort. You need an audience already engaged and interested in the game. The campaign will help reach more people, but you need a starting base to make it work." — Thomas Bidaux

And my favorite line, which is also the title of the original article:

"Crowdfunding is fundamentally a marketing and a community exercise."

Put simply: don't treat crowdfunding as a lifeline. If your game has nothing to show yet and nobody knows your team, the campaign will struggle.

David Harper of Skyhook Games, who recently crowdfunded Lawn Mowing Simulator 2, adds some context about the current landscape: players are suffering from "choice paralysis", every marketing channel is overcrowded, platforms don't curate content very carefully, and the economy both inside and outside the games industry is tough.

3. A risk few people talk about: "fake" pledges

This actually happened to the Skyhook team. Twice, they received very large, very promising pledges, only for the backer to withdraw them later. The second time happened in the final 24 hours, dragging a campaign that had been "funded" for more than three weeks back below the line. Luckily, Kickstarter extended the campaign by a week, and the community rallied with extra pledges, so it still made it. But Harper admits there was nothing they could do when it happened.

The only fix Harper could think of is capping the price of the highest reward tiers, so a single withdrawn pledge can't sink the whole campaign. The trade-off is that you also lose out on big pledges from people who genuinely want to give a lot. Each team has to weigh that risk against the benefit for themselves.

4. So, should you crowdfund at all?

What I like about the article is that it doesn't only show the good side. Daniel Milo of Timeless Toucan, the studio behind Azoove, gives studios some practical advice:

• Success almost always requires a game that's nearly finished and an existing audience.
• If you release on Steam and hand out keys through the campaign, you get "penalized": reviews from keys activated outside Steam don't count toward the review score. That means your most loyal fans are the ones whose reviews don't count.
• A failed campaign can leave a bad impression and make finding a publisher harder later on.
• The "funded in 35 seconds" culture combined with the all-or-nothing model pushes many studios to set goals far below what they actually need, leaving them with a "funded" game but not enough money to finish it.

Milo suggests two alternatives:

1. The traditional route: publishers, angel investors, investment funds. I find his argument pretty convincing: if your game is good enough and your team is capable of running a successful marketing campaign, then your team is also capable of proving its quality to investors.
2. Work now, share later: team members take low or no pay at first, in exchange for a share of profits or equity in the company. The upside is that you don't depend on crowdfunding money, and the project scope is set from the start based on what everyone can realistically do.

5. If you still decide to crowdfund, build your community first, as early as possible

There's one point almost everyone interviewed agrees on: build your community before launching the campaign.

On timing and numbers:

• Hrvoje Horvatek of Ironward recommends setting up a pre-launch page first, and not launching until you have at least 500 followers. In his view, that's the only way to get a decent start, even if all your other marketing efforts don't work out as hoped.
• Thomas Bidaux recommends spending at least 3 months on marketing before opening the "Coming Soon" page and running the campaign. Another expert even suggests 6 months.

On follower quality:

Harper raises a point I think is really worth noting: you can pay an agency to boost your follower count, but it's very easy to end up with fake accounts or bots. Skyhook didn't use such services. Another campaign that launched around the same time had more followers than them, but almost none of them turned into real backers once the campaign went live.

That's also why Legion Team has never considered buying followers. That said, even though our Patreon has a decent number of followers, we still haven't reached the number of patrons we'd hoped for.

On the campaign page:

Don't underestimate how much work this is. You'll need concept art, screenshots, gameplay videos, a logo, GIFs, banners, eye-catching graphic design, and carefully written copy.

Anna Hollinrake of Electric Saint, whose game Crescent County raised nearly £95,000 in 2025 (double its goal), shares a few tips:

• GIFs, GIFs, and more GIFs. Fill the page with gameplay GIFs, put your art front and center, and make the visuals really pop.
• Show people how the game is made. Share rough sketches and early ideas too, because people love seeing them, "especially in the age of AI". Be honest and open about why you do things; backers really appreciate authenticity. I couldn't agree more, and it's something Legion Team always tries to do when sharing our own development process.
• Know what you can edit after the campaign goes live. Anna's team forgot to add images to each reward tier and couldn't go back to fix it, because a tier gets locked as soon as someone picks it. You can still add new tiers later, though.

6. The details that make or break a campaign

• Don't just copy successful campaigns. Bidaux stresses that you need to understand why they succeeded. Some mistakes are very costly even when a campaign hits its goal. For example, careless reward design has caused plenty of headaches for projects that raised a lot of money.
• Talk to the platform. Kickstarter has an entire Games team dedicated to helping developers succeed, yet this advice is often overlooked. I think it applies to any platform with a creator support team.
• Set your funding goal carefully. What's the minimum time you need for each development role, and how much can you pay? What's a fair wage, not a high one, and how much will it take to bring everything you've built together into a complete experience?

Even though there aren't many headline-grabbing million-dollar stories anymore, both Bidaux and Harper are fairly optimistic. Bidaux believes that as game marketing gets harder, a crowdfunding campaign is "a great additional beat" for a project that can already stand on its own, creating a strong ripple effect in the community. Harper also says that if they found themselves in a similar situation, his team wouldn't hesitate to crowdfund again.

7. What does this mean for indie devs in Vietnam?

This part is my own addition, not from the original article. I split crowdfunding into two types:

• Campaign-based crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Gamefound...): a goal, a deadline, usually all-or-nothing. Best for projects that are nearly done and need a final push, plus a moment to do marketing around.
• Ongoing support (Patreon, Ko-fi, a support page on your website, direct bank transfers...): no "finish line", small but steady amounts, kept alive by staying in touch with your community. Best for small teams working on games long-term who enjoy sharing their process.

Whichever you choose, the core is the same: people only put money in once they trust you, and that trust has to be built beforehand.

Check the platform's eligibility first. As far as I know, some major platforms restrict which countries can create campaigns, and Vietnam usually isn't on the list. Many teams end up setting up a legal entity abroad or partnering with someone overseas. Make sure to read the current terms carefully before pouring effort into marketing for a crowdfunding campaign.

Factor in cash flow and taxes. Crowdfunded money has to go through several layers of fees and tax obligations before it reaches your account, just like Steam revenue. If you're not sure how that works, you can check out two of our earlier posts: Money Flow from Steam to Vietnam and Tax Issues for Vietnamese Indie Game Devs.

Be careful with giving out keys. As Milo points out, keys distributed through a campaign won't count toward your Steam review score. If you plan to release on Steam, consider rewards other than keys, or accept the trade-off but be clear about what you're giving up.

8. Is crowdfunding viable in Vietnam?

This is Legion Team's subjective take, based on what we've observed rather than research data, so please treat it as one perspective for reference.

• Large campaigns on international platforms are still possible, but only if your game targets a global audience, your campaign page is polished and in English, and your team already has a community abroad. For most Vietnamese indie teams, this is the hardest path.
• Campaigns aimed only at domestic players will struggle to reach big numbers. It's more realistic to treat them as a pre-order channel or as a way to validate whether your idea resonates.
• Ongoing support (support pages, bank transfers, QR code payments) is the easiest place for Vietnamese indie devs to start right now: no pressure of a deadline, familiar payment methods, and it grows with your community. The amounts aren't large, but they're enough for motivation and serve as a foundation for a bigger campaign later.

If we had to give it a score, Legion Team would rate the chance of crowdfunding success in Vietnam as low to moderate for large campaigns, but fairly good for small, ongoing support.

Thanks for reading!