Origins TCG raises $1 million on Kickstarter to launch a digital trading card game on Steam

Koin Games set up a Kickstarter to fund the sealed Alpha Edition of Origins, a free-to-play digital card game out of Tampa. The original goal was for $100,000. Long story short. They blew way past that. By Nov. 10 it had $1,025,142 from 2,988 backers, about $343 a backer, with the campaign open until Dec. 2. It passed $500,000 in its first two hours.

Every player gets the game's base cards free in the Steam Early Access build that opened Oct. 27, where 88% of its 869 reviews are positive. Koin sells it on the same hits collectors rip paper packs for: error cards, god packs, hand-drawn variants, and digitally graded cards it says "you really own." Koin dropped its plan to put the cards on-chain in May and now trades them through Steam's marketplace instead. Backer packs can be sold on Steam once they're delivered.

Trading opened on Steam's market with Early Access on Oct. 27. A fan site called Origins Vault tracks the market daily. It has logged one or two Origins listings a day since Oct. 29. Since Nov. 1 the only card listed has been a Dracula that Koin gave the players who finished ninth through 16th in its Crimson Cup tournament. Its lowest ask was $1,725 through Nov. 8 and $1,800 on Nov. 9 and 10.

Koin calls its digital grading "very much a first pass" and aims to leave Early Access around March 17, 2027.

But a million dollars in under two weeks is real demand. Koin estimates February 2027 delivery on every Kickstarter tier. Koin says the Alpha cards from this Kickstarter will never be available again anywhere else.

Kickstarter has funded digital card games before. Hex: Shards of Fate raised $2,278,255 in 2013, more than twice what Origins has so far. It shut down on Dec. 31, 2020. SolForge, a free-to-play digital game, raised $429,715 in 2012. Its servers closed on Jan. 31, 2017, after its studio said it "bit off more than we could chew." Duelyst, free-to-play on Steam like Origins, raised $137,708 in 2014 and shut its servers for good on Feb. 27, 2020. Fans funded a sequel, Duelyst II, on Kickstarter in 2022. It's still running.

On the physical side, Sorcery: Contested Realm raised NZ$5,784,804 in 2022 and launches a new deck set worldwide on Nov. 14. Elestrals raised $1,470,356 that same year and is still putting out sets, with Divine Champions: Snowshade this fall. Grand Archive raised $947,401 and put a new set in stores in April. Altered raised €6,213,305 in 2024. Its publisher, Equinox, ended the game in March after a follow-up campaign raised about €420,000 of the €2 million it said it needed. MetaZoo raised $18,249 in 2020 and was sold in bankruptcy court for $2 million in 2024. GameQbator Labs has since relaunched it under license from the buyer.