879 backers were not enough. With only three days left in the Kickstart campaign, Stompy Gear Productions made the following statement:

“Thank you for your dedicated support. We appreciate and highly value everyone’s opinions here which is why we have decided to cancel this KS campaign and continue crowd funding on heavygear.com”

As of June 26, 2013, Stompy Bot Productions has yet further comment.

A successful Kickstarter for Heavy Gear was unlikely to happen, even if it were not cancelled. With only three days to go, the campaign only received $44,981 of an $800,000 goal.

But despite the cancellation, the development of Heavy Gear will continue. Fans are still able to make donations on Heavy Gear’s official website, where a link with the words “PLEDGE NOW” directs you a form asking for $15 to $10,000 dollars. Results of donations through the official page have been mildly successful. $130,000 out of a $900,000 goal has been donated. The main difference between donating through the Heavy Gear site is donors are doing so without the option of receiving their money back if the project doesn’t get funded.

Heavy Gear assault is a “mech” (i.e., giant robot) based game that uses the Unreal 4 engine. Stompy Gear is developing the game for PC, Mac, and Linux. Additionally, mobile apps for iOS and Android devices would let users become spectators and sponsors of the game’s matches. If the spectator’s sponsored player is victorious, the endorser would receive a return on their investment.

A majority of the responses from fans of Heavy Gear say that Stompy Bot was being too optimistic with an $800,000 goal:

“$800,000 still seems like an unbelievable total”

“$800,000 is overly ambitious really,,”

“…I would be totally into a new Heavy Gear, but 800K is just…ridiculous”

were just a few of what commenters had to say on PC Gamer’s coverage of this story.

What do you think? Was Stompy Bot too ambitious? Would they have gotten funding if the goal was lower? Or was it a matter of content (i.e., were certain features lacking that caused the lack of enthusiasm)?

Let us know in the comments.