Japanese crowdfunding platform that allegedly ran off with more than half of Jiro Ishii’s $340k game budget suddenly becomes inaccessible 

The website of Japanese crowdfunding platform Ubgoe has been inaccessible since the evening of April 15, causing widespread concern among both project organizers and backers, as reported by ITmedia.  

During the past month, Ubgoe has been under fire in Japan due to allegations made by game creator Jiro Ishii and Skeleton Crew Studio, who had used the platform to crowdfund the visual novel game Shibuya Scramble Stories (a spiritual successor to 428: Shibuya Scramble). A few months after the campaign successfully ended, raising about $340 thousand USD, Ishii reported that his side would be taking legal action against Ubgoe as it had failed to transfer over half of the raised money, missing multiple deadlines under the pretense of a “mistaken bank transfer to another client.”  

While Ubgoe still appeared to be running as usual amidst these reports, as of yesterday, the site has become inaccessible. Since then, numerous project owners who used the platform (like voice synth developers Kotoe Tange and Hoshikage Lapis and VTuber Hanayono Menora) have issued emergency announcements to their backers, but from the looks of it, they don’t seem to have received any information about what’s happening to the site either, simply apologizing for the trouble and promising to deliver on promised rewards regardless of Ubgoe’s state. 

Ubgoe was launched back in February 2021, boasting the perk of zero listing fees. By having backers pay a service fee instead, the platform was completely free to use for project creators. While it has hosted numerous successful projects to date, Ubgoe seems to have run into some management issues as of late, at the expense of creators. While Ishii Jiro’s case is the most prominent one, other project owners have also made statements regarding unpaid or delayed transfers from the platform.  

Moreover, according to Ishii’s lawyer, Ubgoe’s terms and conditions state that with every pledge, contracts are formed directly between the backer and the project owner, which means that project owners are responsible to fulfill all obligations regardless of whether they have actually received the money or not. This could possibly leave some creators in a difficult position. 

At the time of writing, Ubgoe remains unavailable, while the platform’s latest social media update dates to December last year.