Kickstarter reaches $1 billion in pledges -- Games are the biggest category overall

Kickstarter today recorded its one billionth dollar pledged, nearly four years after the crowdfunding site went live in April 2009. The company launched a special One Billion Dollars page today to celebrate the milestone, which features loads of details about the achievement.

First, and perhaps most notably, though people have pledged $1 billion to date, Kickstarter only counts $859 million in successful dollars. Unlike Indiegogo, Kickstarter is all-or-nothing, so if a project comes up short, backers will get refunds. A total of 5.7 million individuals contributed to the $1 billion milestone.

The Games category on Kickstarter is the biggest overall in terms of dollars pledged. Since launch, people have pledged $215.75 million to gaming-related Kickstarters, with $189.84 million of those dollars going to successful campaigns. Gaming projects on Kickstarter have a success rate of 35.15 percent, the fourth-worst overall, only behind Technology (34.79 percent), Publishing (32.29 percent), and Fashion (29.3 percent).

The first chapter in Brutal Legend developer Double Fine's Broken Age, the game considered to be the one that began the Kickstarter revolution for gaming, is available today.

Below are some of the most interesting data points from Kickstarter's $1 billion milestone.

• More than half of the $1 billion was pledged in the past 12 months.
• Backers come from 224 countries and territories, and all seven continents.
• US backers gave the most with $663,316,496 in total contributions to date.
• 1,689,979 people have backed more than one project.
• 15,932 people have backed more than 50 projects.
• March 13, 2013 was Kickstarter's biggest day on record when 54,187 people pledged $4,029,585.45 to 1,985 projects.
• On the day Kickstarter launched (April 28, 2009), 40 people pledged $1,084 to seven projects.