Icey Sequel Crowdfunding Passes 30 Million Yuan
The sequel to Icey raised more than 30 million yuan on a Chinese crowdfunding platform in under ten days, thousands of times its original 10,000 yuan goal, with over 200,000 backers taking part. Producer Xiao Zhuohong went live to kneel and ask players to stop treating him as a savior, saying he will never crowdfund again. The money is far more than his six-person team can spend on a 48 yuan indie game, and he fears the community backlash once expectations collide with realit
Source: GameLook
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A 10,000 yuan Goal That Turned Into 30 Million
On October 1, the sequel to Icey（艾希）opened a crowdfunding campaign on a Chinese platform with a target of just 10,000 yuan. By the end of the first day it had passed 5 million yuan, crossed 20 million within three days, and by the time GameLook published its report on October 9 it had exceeded 30 million yuan from more than 200,000 backers.
Producer Xiao Zhuohong, known in the community as Lao Ma, did not celebrate. He went live to kneel and ask players not to make him a god, and said he would never crowdfund again in his life.
Why This Campaign Broke the Pattern
Chinese indie crowdfunding has a trust problem. Several domestic developers have walked away from projects after raising money, and players now treat the combination of domestic, indie and crowdfunding as a warning sign. Icey: Sequel（艾希：续）cut through that suspicion because the original Icey（艾希）, released in 2016, is a landmark Chinese indie title. Publisher X.D. Inc. reported in its 2019 financials that Icey had sold over 3 million copies worldwide across all platforms, and many backers say they are finally paying for a game they pirated as students.
Lao Ma left the original studio, Phantom Blade, in 2020 and formed a new six-person team. He confirmed work on the sequel around 2023. Development is nearly finished, with a planned release on May 1 next year. He said the campaign was meant to raise a few hundred thousand yuan to cover salaries during the months Steam takes to pay out, not to fund a project from scratch.
The Expectation Trap
The problem is arithmetic. A six-person team selling a 48 yuan indie game cannot absorb 30 million yuan, and Lao Ma has said the existing framework cannot be rebuilt with less than a year of production time left. He can only add plug-in content such as CG, music and META elements, and he has admitted he does not know how to spend the money.
He also refused to close the campaign early. Backers in the player group voted against it, since many want merchandise or their names in the credits and story of a META game. Shutting it down now would trigger accusations that he took what he needed and ran.
What to Watch Next
The immediate test is whether the team can deliver on physical rewards, backer ID confirmations and credit lists with only six people, even with outsourced manufacturing. The larger test is May 1, when a 48 yuan game arrives carrying expectations built by a 30 million yuan headline. Some fans are already making memes to cool the community down, and the most realistic hope voiced by core supporters is that the money funds later DLC or a new project rather than inflating this one.