According to ICO Partners analyst Thomas Bidaux, game-related Kickstarter campaigns are set to generate half as much money in 2014 as they did in 2013. Last year video game-related campaigns generated an impressive $58 million in pledged funding. But in the first half of 2014 only $13.5 million has been pledged. Bidaux expects about $27 million will be pledged by the time 2014 is over.

In his latest note to the Star Citizen community, Cloud Imperium Games founder Chris Roberts reveals that public funding for the space simulation game has reached a staggering $55 million.

In the wake of the Yogscast-backed and Kickstarter-funded game Yogventures giving up the ghost and being canceled by developer Winterkewl Games, another Yogscast -backed developer was put forward to provide gamers who backed that other project some recompense. While the company still plans to do that, it looks like it is going through some short-term problems with funding that will in turn force it to lay off half of its staff.

Backers of the failed Yogventures Kickstarter - a game strongly associated with the popular YouTube channel Yogscast - have received free copies of EverQuest Next Landmark. This is in addition to the free game codes backers already received for TUG, another Yogscast-backed game. Yogventures was canceled earlier this year when it ran out of money - even after its developers raised $567,665 from 13,647 backers via a highly successful Kickstarter campaign.

BuzzFeed will use some of the $50 million it secured last month to develop games. According to this TechCrunch report, BuzzFeed will use that investment to develop casual games - just one measure the company is working on to expand its audience.

BuzzFeed vice president of product Chris Johanesen tells TechCrunch that games are just one more part of an overall strategy to get visitors to do more than consume its content. In other words, it's a move towards more engagement.

Nexon and Wargaming, two juggernauts in the MMO gaming space, and Zynga CEO Don Mattrick have teamed up with UK-based investment fund London Venture Partners to create an early-stage seed fund.

Six or so of the missing 38 Studios investor letters have surfaced, according to the Providence Journal. The documents provide new information about all of the different companies and organizations that backed the bonds that funded the $75 million loan to 38 Studios.

Virtuix has completed a $3 million round of seed investment that it says it will use to complete its Omni VR treadmill. You may remember the virtual reality treadmill from last year when its Kickstarter crowd funding campaign sought to raise $150,000 but ended up raising a whopping $1,109,351. The technology works with VR headsets to let players move around inside virtual environments. At present Virtuix has more than 3,000 preorders for the $500 Omni treadmills.

As of this writing there are around 80 minutes left until the crowd-funding campaign for Unwinnable Weekly ends. The campaign to fund a digital weekly edition of Unwinnable hit its initial goal of $35,000 yesterday and hit another milestone of $38,545 in the last couple of hours.

GoldFire Studios' successfully crowd-funded RPS-infused gambling game, CasinoRPG, has finally launched after a year of beta testing. The game was successfully funded on Feb 5, 2013, raising well over the $20,000 it was initially asking the community for. CasinoRPG is an open world that combines massively multiplayer role-playing games with tycoon and city-building elements, and casino games like poker, slots, blackjack and roulette. The game was built using HTML5 and has been in beta since last year.

Organizers of GaymerX say that this year's event in San Francisco, GaymerX2 will very like be the last event they organize. Speaking to Polygon, GaymerConnect's Matt Conn told Polygon that the cost of securing the venue and other things related to the event were just too high and the successfully funded Kickstarter campaign did not generate enough money.

Most parents of young children will tell you that it is hard to get your children to brush their teeth regularly and properly without some prodding, nagging and constant reminders. Luckily, there's an app for that.

Hot on the heels of a new round of layoffs, YouTube entertainment channel Machinima has managed to secure new funding to the tune of $18 million in a funding round led by Warner Bros.

Developer Spicy Horse recently updated its Kickstarter page for the action/RPG Akaneiro: Demon Hunters explaining that updates will be coming to the game a lot slower because they have been forced to lay off all but two developers on the game's development team. Why would they do that, you ask? Apparently the game costs $2 million to make and only a tiny portion of it was funded by the community.

Another day, another ridiculous amount of money raised for Star Citizen, the epic space-based game from Privateer and Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts and his team at Cloud Imperium Games. Over the weekend the game hit the $35 million crowd-funding mark - raised from a combination of crowd-funding from the company's official site and a very successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year.

Oculus VR has raised $75 million to help complete the consumer version of the Rift virtual reality gaming headset. Venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz helped find most of the Series B funding money, which comes from Spark Capital, Matrix Partners and Formation|8. This injection of cash follows $16 million in Series A funding the company received in June of this year, $2.4 million in crowdfunding generated from its highly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012, and direct sales of more than 30,000 development kits.

With only three more days to go, MidBoss Games' Read Only Memories is $10,000 from reaching its funding goal. As of this writing, the cyberpunk-themed point-and-click adventure game has managed to raise $52,074 of its $62,064 goal from 1,139 backers with just three more days to go before its funding goal deadline on Kickstarter comes to a close.

G3 Studios wants to get out in front of an upcoming crowd-funding campaign to bankroll its upcoming PC role-playing game, Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore. Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore is described as a first-person, party-based role-playing game with a heavy emphasis on story and character development. A prototype of the game is already in development by G3 Studios (using the Unity engine), and veteran role-playing game designer/producer Guido Henkel is leading the project.

UK-based video games retailer Green Man Gaming and Moshi Monsters development studio Mind Candy could be fast-tracked to the London Stock Exchange under a new government scheme called The Future Fifty.

First unveiled by UK chancellor George Osborne in April, the program connects "high-growth tech companies" with specialized support to lay the foundations of an initial public offering or sale. Two UK video games companies were chosen from an initial list of 25 businesses in the technology, digital, consumer goods and financial services markets.

2D point-and-click adventure game sequel The Ballads of Reemus 2 managed to raise $15,170 CAD via its Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, putting the project $170 CAD above its funding goal of $15,000 CAD. As of this writing, the crowd-funding campaign has just over two days to go before its Kickstarter campaign comes to a close.

Softbank and GungHo Online are making a substantial investment in Finnish free-to-play and mobile gaming juggernaut Supercell. The company is selling a 51 percent stake for $1.53 billion to Japan’s SoftBank and game developer GungHo Online Entertainment. The strategic investment will make Supercell a subsidiary of Softbank, with the funds being used to fuel Supercell’s global expansion.

Chris Robert's PC-based space simulation game Star Citizen has surpassed the $20 million crowd-funding mark, with more than 260,000 supporters backing the game being developed by the Wing Commander and Privateer developer and his team at Cloud Imperium Games. Roberts and company managed to raise the funds in less than a year through crowd-funding efforts on Kickstarter and on the game's web site. Around $10 million of that figure was raised in the last four and a half months, according to the game's developers.

Kickstarter-funded sword fighting game Clang has run out of cash and is looking - with little success - for additional funding. In an update to the Kickstarter page for the game, Neal Stephenson from Subutai Studio told backers that the $526,000 pledged by Kickstarter donors in July 2012 is all gone and raising funding from other sources has proven difficult because publishers and investors interested in the sector are "risk-averse."

Android-based home console maker Ouya announced this week that it is making important changes to the way its Free the Games Fund works after it acknowledged that the program contained "too many loopholes" that could be manipulated by those who want to take advantage of the matching funds program. The $1 million promotion had offered to match the donations made to Kickstarter games that raised at least $50,000 in exchange for six month exclusivity to the system.

Worcester, Massachusetts-based Becker College and the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) have been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) to help build the MassDiGI New Ventures Center (NVC). Becker College also announced that it will match the EDA grant, making a total of $2.8 million available to build the state-of-the-art facility.

The Entertaintment Software Association (ESA) issued a press release this week praising the Texas Film Commission for expanding its economic incentives to include "digital interactive media productions."

Ouya founder and CEO Julie Uhrman attempted to address the controversy surrounding its 'Free The Games' funding program in a blog post last night, but her statement has further exacerbated the situation and caused at least one developer to pull her game from the platform. Developers have criticized that platform holder for failing to address concerns related to its funding program. Uhrman's statement did little to quell that criticism, as developers took to the blog post to loudly complain about the tin-eared response.

Update: A spokesperson for PayPal has informed us that the situation has been resolved. The company's statement can be found below:

StarCraft professional player Sean "Day9" Plott has joined a video game development studio. He has joined Artillery as its new "Head of Games," along with  co-founder Eric Burkhart who will serve as "Head of Growth." Plott and Burkhart join Artillery’s lineup of  developers who previously worked at such companies as Google and Facebook. The goal of the studio is to "transform the browser into a gaming console" using HTML5.

It looks like former Red Sox pitcher and 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling - along with associates of the company - could face legal problems on another front. Last week the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. approved a request by the federal bankruptcy court trustee to use up to $150,000 in assets recovered from the company to further investigate its former officers, directors, and other parties. If this investigation turns up any further information, it could lead to additional legal actions against 38 Studios.