Kickstarter campaign

Firmament ' s Kickstarter campaign launched on 26 March 2019 at 1:00 PM UTC with a goal of raising at least $1,285,000 for Firmament ' s development and release. This goal was reached on 25 April 2019 at 6:10 PM UTC. The campaign will run through 26 April 2019 at 10:00 PM UTC, when the pledged funds will be collected.

= Before the Campaign = Several weeks before the Kickstarter campaign launched, Ryan Warzecha, a producer at Cyan, drew attention to the Firmament channel on the Cyan Chat Discord by posting a single "Beep." on 23 February 2019. Ryan posted a second "Beep" on 28 February 2019, and speculation began about the nature of the posts. On 1 March 2019, Ryan confirmed they were part of a "puzzle". He then revealed on 5 March 2019 that more details would be provided soon and drew attention to firmamentgame.com, the official website of Firmament. Speculation that a Kickstarter campaign was forthcoming began as early as 7 March 2019, though their was some confusion because of Cyan's initial admission in March 2018 that they would not be using Kickstarter as a funding source for the game's development.

Speculation continued for a couple more weeks until 20 March 2019 when Ryan tweeted that the upcoming week would be a "whirlwind" while using "#firmament". On the morning of 22 March 2019, fans noticed that the Firmament website had been updated sometime within the prior 72 hours. The normal teaser trailer and images were replaced with a single phrase: "Venit Firmamentum" (Latin for "Firmament is coming"). By that evening, the original website appeared to have been restored. Several hours later, however, fans noticed that the original game overview had been replaced with a more detailed synopsis. This was followed by, "Kickstarter and more information coming very soon."

On 21 March 2019 a mysterious user called "Spyder" made a cryptic post in the General Chatter channel on the Cyan Chat Discord: "no ones here on a late Friday nite...." Previously, "Spyder" had been an alias of one or more Cyan employees to reveal information about upcoming games as well as Easter eggs in existing games. Spyder returned the next day to say, "no ones here on a late Friday nite         ." On 23 March 2019 fans found a webpage at https://firmamentgame.com/spyder. It contained a single image of a spiderweb, but nothing else.

Cyan never officially revealed the start time or date of the Kickstarter campaign, but a Reddit user hinted that it would happen on 26 March 2019. They later added that it would start at 1:00 PM GMT. Their source was not revealed.