Japanese indie game developer ENDLESS SUMMER Studio (Neon Light LLC) made a new update regarding the development of their upcoming sci-fi visual novel game Purgatory: Blue on May 14. According to project lead and musician cittan* (Fumihisa Tanaka), while the ongoing legal dispute between ENDLESS SUMMER Studio and crowdfunding platform Ubgoe hasn’t been resolved yet, production of the game has not been halted.
Due to the company still not receiving the promised funds from the platform, much of the work outsourced to external creators has been temporarily suspended. On the other hand, development is proceeding as planned internally, with the main route scenario nearing completion.
To provide some background, the Purgatory: Blue crowdfunding project was launched on Ubugoe in July 2025, amassing over 10.93 million yen (about $68.4 thousand USD) and reaching 156% of its original goal. But despite the payment date being scheduled for November 2025, Ubgoe had been delaying the deadline on multiple occasions until February 2026, and still failed to deliver the funds to the developers. In response, ENDLESS SUMMER Studio filed a criminal complaint with the Shibuya Police Station, alleging that Ubgoe CEO Kazuo Okada had committed embezzlement. Depending on future development of the case, the company stated that it will decide whether to file a full-blown civil lawsuit against Ubgoe and Okada.
While Ubgoe launched in January 2021 as a crowdfunding service with the “first ever” zero fees system for project creators, boasting a number of successful projects, the platform has recently been facing difficulties, with numerous similar cases of withheld funds being reported across the industry. Last month, acclaimed game creator Jiro Ishii announced that Ubgoe had withheld over half of the funds raised for his upcoming project Shibuya Scramble Stories. What’s more, the site itself became inaccessible on the night of April 15. While Ubgoe issued a brief statement saying it was working on restoring servers, the site has been down for over a month at the time of this writing.
In the recent video update, cittan* addressed his fans and backers, doubling down on the situation and explaining that he would definitely deliver the rewards promised through crowdfunding. According to Ubgoe’s terms and conditions, with every pledge, contracts are formed directly between the backer and the project owner, which means that ENDLESS SUMMER Studio is responsible to fulfill all obligations regardless of whether it has actually received the money. This means that, until the situation is resolved, the company will likely have to cover all the reward expenses out of its own pocket.
Apparently, cittan* has already depleted all of his savings on producing the game, and was planning to recoup some of that amount through the crowdfunding campaign. As a result, the project is being kept afloat thanks to music revenue and support from the subscription platform FANBOX. While the developers had to make some compromises, like completely turning down outsourcing work for the time being, it seems like they still haven’t lost hope and are currently working towards stabilizing their finances with cooperation from various external parties. However, it is yet to be seen how the ongoing legal dispute with Ubgoe will progress and whether they will be able to retrieve the promised funds.
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