At Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2014, David B. Hoppe from Gamma Law spoke about crowdfunding as an investment opportunity for games.
The sector has been an exciting way for game developers to try and raise money. For example, on Kickstarter, there have been more 10,000 campaigns of which around 36 percent have successfully raised their goal within the set time limit.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the vast majority of game campaigns have been small. Only 28 percent of game campaigns have raised over $10,000.
Yet the very high profile successful games have been very successful, with half of all the Kickstarter campaigns in any sector that raised over $1 million being games.
From t-shirts to shares
These campaigns are all described as 'reward crowdfunding'. More speculative at present are 'equity crowdfunding' schemes in which backers own shares in the companies they back
There is some uncertainly about whether equity crowdfunding will ever take off, particularly in the US, given its legal issues.
Equally, it could be a case of "Unsophisticated companies and unsophisticated investors. What could go wrong?" as one commentator puts it.
You can see all the talks from Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2014 here.
Pocket Gamer Connects is the biggest mobile games show in Europe, which brings together the best speakers and delegates from across the industry and from all over the world.
To-date, Pocket Gamer Connects has been held in London and Helsinki, and the show will be heading back to the UK from 13-14 January 2015.
To find out more about the latest show, head on over to www.pgconnects.com.