Battalion 1944’s developers are refunding all Kickstarter backers

Bulkhead Interactive, the creators of the competitive shooter Battalion 1994, is now offering full refunds to all original backers seven years after the game's successful Kickstarter campaign.

The details:

• Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer confirmed in a new announcement that anyone who backed the game's original Kickstarter is eligible for a full refund, regardless of which tier or platform was originally paid for. A survey for backers is available via the original Kickstarter page and will be open for the next 30 days for those who would like their money back. After receiving the responses, the studio will begin sending refunds via PayPal (as advised by Kickstarter), which is expected to take three months. The campaign was able to raise £317,281 against a £100,000 goal in just three days.
• Splash Damage, Bulkhead's parent company, is said to be the reason refunds are even a possibility. "When we told them we were still trying to save money to refund our Kickstarter backers, they said, 'We'll help you solve that,'" said creative director Mark Pinney in the new video. "They understood how important the relationship was between players and developers.” Brammer also provided a similar explanation in response to a fan's question about why the studio had decided to refund backers. "What’s important to us is how public we made our commitment to our players and being gamers ourselves," said the CEO. "This is how we would want to be treated, it was much later than anticipated and the physical rewards were not delivered. It’s not about money it’s about ethos for us.”
• The World War II shooter was designed to be a throwback to classic multiplayer games like early Call of Duty titles and the Medal of Honor series, and it received mostly positive feedback after its early access release in February 2018. Despite the promising start, communication from Bulkhead slowed to a halt, with no word on when the promised console versions of the game would be available, leaving many backers dissatisfied and even referring to the Kickstarter as a "scam." With no further updates, the game's player count began to decline on PC, resulting in the official cancellation of the console ports in 2022, as the game was re-released as the free-to-play Battalion: Legacy.

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