Crowdfunding huge funds were transferred to the wrong account! The developer helplessly announces they have no money to develop the game.

According to gamesradar, Japanese game developer Skeleton Crew Studio launched a project on its homegrown crowdfunding platform Ubgoe last year to raise funds for the visual novel Shibuya Scramble Stories.

The title is led by veteran game director Jiro Ishii. The initial funding goal wasn’t high, but it ultimately raised about 55 million yen (around $340k), more than ten times the target—an impressive result. However, subsequent developments took a sharp turn for the worse.

In interviews with the media, Jiro Ishii and his legal counsel detailed the sequence of events. Per the agreement, the platform was supposed to pay the crowdfunding proceeds to the developers on September 1, 2025, but it failed to do so on time. The next day, after Jiro Ishii followed up, Ubgoe CEO Yoshiki Okada responded that the funds had been “mistakenly transferred to another customer,” so they could not be paid immediately.

After that, the Ishii side asked the other party to sign a memorandum, promising to make up the full amount by September 16. But by that deadline, the team had only received 6 million yen. Yoshiki Okada explained that because the mistakenly transferred funds had not yet been recovered, they were unable to pay the remaining balance.

Even more questionable was what happened when the lawyers requested proof of the transfer—Okada’s side repeatedly refused to produce the relevant documents. The attorneys therefore suspected that the so-called “mistaken transfer to someone else” might not exist at all, because if it were a real mistake, it would usually be recoverable through normal banking processes.

In addition, according to Ubgoe’s platform terms, even if the crowdfunding money had not actually been released yet, the responsibility for project backer rewards still rested entirely with the developer. Jiro Ishii admitted he had previously not anticipated this at all.

Although the funding issue has not been fully resolved, Skeleton Crew Studio said development of the project is still ongoing. Jiro Ishii emphasized that they will work to recover every last cent, because these are “valuable funds the players entrusted to us.”

So, do you think the platform terms stating that “even if they don’t receive the money, developers still have to take on the responsibility for delivering backer rewards” are protecting users—or shifting the risk elsewhere?