Funding Options for a "Start-Up"?

So, I’ve been hacking away at my game series for a few years now. I started off on my own, made a mod for Half-Life 1. It wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it was a decent start. It was a partial conversion, single-player FPS with an original story and characters. To my surprise, a lot of people really enjoyed it - PC Gamer even covered it, and to this day, people are making “Let’s Play” videos and uploading them to YouTube. Not bad, so then I decided to take all of my experience, get a team together, and really dig in - I planned it out, wrote up a GDD, wrote the story/screenplay/script, handled sound design/music, texture art, level design, concept art, scripting, and even had to take over 3D modeling.

This title was a continuation of the previous with all the favorite characters, and tons of new ones, and was total conversion this time 'round. Fast forward a bit - the open beta was featured in Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s “Top Mods of 2016” list, and it ended up getting Greenlit. Here we are nearing the release time on Halloween, I have a “legacy department”, handling the polishing of the final release version with my oversight, while I simultaneously have the “Project MOPAT” team I put together, developing the front end for what will be our first commercial title in the series on The Unreal Engine.

Since 2014, we’ve/I’ve been going strong, and the new members are doing very well. We’ve got quite a bit done so far, but we’re a long ways off before we have a working prototype, and we’re still very understaffed. We operate on a volunteer basis for the most part, but I have been saving bits of money from my factory day job, and giving out little bonuses when I can. Obviously, this is not enough. What can I do to get a little jingle in the coffers? I don’t like the idea of crowd-sourcing, though I have tried it without much success, despite having a ready-made player-base.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Investors or publishers, but they’re going to ask more from you than what you would have to do with kickstarter. They would likely want a cut of the profits and maybe even ownership of the IP.

An investor wanting a cut of the profits? Quite natural! Ownership of the Intellectual Property? They’d have to physically fight me.

I wouldn’t expect an investor to do that, but most of the indie games that get a publisher are owned by that publisher, but I think that’s a case where the publisher is funding most of the development, if you only need a little help and you’ve got most of it taken care of then you can negotiate something less.

Could always try get some of the Unreal Dev Grant money, but that is probably the longest shot chance at some financial support.

Thank you, guys!