Gordon Walton has published a lengthy post on the Crowfall website in which he addresses the question of how ArtCraft Entertainment will be able to pull off making a wildly inventive MMORPG for less than $10 million:

Typically even a small MMO is going to take over $10 million to build (and probably closer to $20 million). If the fully-loaded cost of an employee (once you add in the cost of office space, insurance, taxes, etc.) averages about $100k/year, which means a $10m project will buy you 100 man-years of work! We’re doing a much smaller than normal MMO by choosing to be PvP-focused, doing algorithmic world generation, tight (but effective!) constraints on character customization and heavily reliance on off-the-shelf technologies. Our cost for the core game will be in the $6 million range. The full vision we are working toward will cost more, of course, as launch is never the “end game” when you make an MMO. It’s only the beginning. Once we’re up and running, and the game is generating revenue, we’ll continue to expand it and grow it as long as our customers will support us!

He also lists some of the funding that Crowfall has already received, over and above what was raised during the Kickstarter campaign. And he outlines some additional funding options that ArtCraft could pursue, should the need arise.

But it would seem to be the case that, as much as possible, he and the rest of the team would prefer to finance what work remains on Crowfall via the game’s website, and their ongoing crowdfunding efforts there.