The interview isn’t the only recent piece of media ridiculing North Korea for getting into trouble. Monkey Horse Games developers have announced that they have a Kickstarter funding project for Glorious leader– a 16-bit run-and-gun game starring North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – following an alleged hack during the holiday season.
Moneyhorse launched a Kickstarter on December 17 seeking $55,000 to fund the game, and the title received a bit of mainstream press because of the Sony Pictures hack. Moneyhorse’s own website and work computers were then hacked just before Christmas, the company said. At the time, the developers wrote that they are “confident that this is a hoax perpetrated by amateurs. We have NO reason to believe that this was done by the [Sony Pictures hackers Guardians of Peace] or anyone with ties to North Korea. It appears to be an opportunistic copycat as we have been the target of hacking attempts in the past.”
Regardless of responsibility, Moneyhorse now says the attack was bad enough to derail the entire project.
“The hackers destroyed data related to Glorious leader! and other projects we had in development and shut ourselves off from our own computers and website,” the developers wrote in a recent update on Kickstarter. .. In between the hacking and other threats, we think it’s time to reevaluate our commitment to Glorious leader! We thank our fans and supporters, and are sorry to disappoint you.”
However, the alleged hack wasn’t the only problem the game faced. As of Jan. 7, the Kickstarter project had only reached about $17,000 of its $55,000 goal and would have needed a belated increase in funding to meet the goal. Moneyhorse’s developers cited “mistakes in our commitment levels and rewards” and acknowledged that the lack of funding also played a role in the cancellation, so it’s unclear if the game would have been released in any case.