The creators of the Penny Arcade web comic have launched a Kickstarter … to remove the ads on their site.
"What I'm saying is that we want to sell out, and we would love to sell out to you," they wrote.
The cartoonists have raised more than $200K in two days — that's 80% of their funding goal. Either people truly believe in their anti-advertising stance or they like what the creators plan to do with the extra site space.
"What we're talking about would be new projects, in settings you already like, that run ALONGSIDE the week's comics, not in their place," they wrote in an update. So far they've teased Automata: Silverside (image right) and Lookouts: The Tithe.
"Penny Arcade Sells Out" is an odd Kickstarter. They're not pitching a fresh idea or offering a new product — they're asking fans to return to the old days of independent donations, the way they ran the site before.
According to the Kickstarter's FAQ, the money will go toward "rent, wages, health insurance, utilities, all the normal stuff that you pay for when you have fourteen souls working together. That money keeps the lights on while we do the things people expect from us: thrice weekly content drops, two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play, etc."
Despite the outpouring of support from fans, it's possible that Penny Arcade's campaign breaks the rules of Kickstarter, which state that it "is not a place for soliciting donations to causes, charity projects, or general business expenses."
“We spoke to Kickstarter ahead of time to make sure,” Penny Arcade business manager Robert Khoo told Kotaku. “What it came down to was to pretend that no Penny Arcade existed, and what [backers] were doing was paying for a new comic strip for one year. The only difference is that we were coming from the flip side of that coin. Projects like this are already on the service, so we really didn’t see this deviating from that.”
The campaign does have "a clear beginning and end," a requirement of Kickstarter — when funded, Penny Arcade will go ad-free for a year. They then plan to "run the fundraiser again, around this time next year."
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