Kickstarter craze slows down in 2014

ICO Partners have published some numbers pointing to a rather severe slowdown in backer money towards video game Kickstarter projects. In 2013, a total almost $58 million were pledged towards 440 projects, but during the first half of 2014 only $13.5 million were pledged towards 175 funded projects. This means we're looking at perhaps only half of last year's total in 2014.

ICO Partners point to developers opting for Steam Early Access instead of crowdfunding in many cases:

"The vast majority of the Kickstarter video game projects are PC-based and when you consider the amount of work required to get a project funded on Kickstarter, compare it to the relative ease to go to Early Access in comparison, and add to that the fact that on Early Access the funding doesn't stop after one month, I suspect a lot of Early Access successes skipped the crowd funding phase to go directly to alpha funding."

So what do you think, is the golden age of Kickstarter behind us?