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[Neonivek]

No it just doesn't have spell check.

And yes I do mean Encourages Embezzlement. There is nothing that stops people from taking huge amounts of money from this and pocketing large amounts of it. Since the "Rewards" outright encourages the developers to do so... and often doing so.

So it is one of the ways Kickstarter goes wrong.

[Draco18s]

And yes I do mean Encourages Embezzlement. There is nothing that stops people from taking huge amounts of money from this and pocketing large amounts of it.

"Allows" is not the same as "Encourages."

Encourages means that Kickstarter advertises itself as a money laundering service.  I.e. "Hey developers: you don't have to do shit, and if you pay someone else to funnel money into your project, you CAN legally donate to your own project."

Not OK: Nappster ("pirate music!  Get paid for it!")
OK: IsoHunt ("Search for stuff!")

[Aklyon]

Isohunt got the law thrown at it anyway though. A better non-google example for 'Search for stuff' would be DuckDuckGo.

[Draco18s]

Isohunt got the law thrown at it anyway though.

And are still operating.
i.e. "they won" unlike Nappster.

(DuckDuckGo doesn't qualify, as it's litterally a google search stripped of all tracking information)

[MorleyDev]

A lot of kickstarters do not use their donations on the game. A lot of them are really "Pay me for an extended vacation so I can work on this game more".

...sorry, what do you think a Job is? It's when you're paid to do something. If someone is using the funding from Kickstarter to work full time a project without starving to death, then that's using the money as expected, is it not?

[Criptfeind]

Game devs are technically of the plant kingdom though and in reality only require soil, water and sunlight. Not only that but all games are made directly from binary upwards without the use of anything like a engine or other technology and they are streamed directly from the devs heads to steam. So really, kickstarter like armed robbery.

[Servant Corps]

It could well be the first fully funded Kickstarter to completely fall through (did those Zionist sunglasses actually get made in the end?  I forget).

An update on ZionEyez: it appears that they cannot give out any refunds as they have already spent all that money on production. They blame unexpected production cost increases as the reason why they were unable to complete the project successfully. They supposedly got some new investors lined up, but they have to wait for the due diligence process to be completed. So it appears that no Zionist sunglasses will ever be made.

But all is not lost. The co-founder of ZionEyez (Joe Taylor) landed a sweet job working for Microsoft as Senior Mechanical Engineer, and ZionEyez managed to successfully gain a patent on their nonexistent sunglasses (possibly so that ZionEyez would be able to reinvent themselves as a patent troll company).

But as for the people who "donated" money for this project? They appear to be out of luck.

Kickstarter claims that it is not legally responsible for the actions of people soliciting money, and it serves merely as a platform. The only recourse then would be to sue ZionEyez.
===
EDIT: But just because Kickstarter claims no legal liability doesn't mean that people have to believe them. "Kickstarter is being sued for crowd-funding a 3D printer that may infringe on another company's patents."

[Neonivek]

A lot of kickstarters do not use their donations on the game. A lot of them are really "Pay me for an extended vacation so I can work on this game more".

...sorry, what do you think a Job is? It's when you're paid to do something. If someone is using the funding from Kickstarter to work full time a project without starving to death, then that's using the money as expected, is it not?

Sure, of course! But then there are games that get over funded.

[Draco18s]

Sure, of course! But then there are games that get over funded.

My game got over-funded.  Over 40 grand pleged.

After expenses cut per person: $300.

There's a reason I didn't quit my day job.

[Neonivek]

Yes but lets say you got 500,000 thousand

The ONLY way to use those pledges would be to take a vacation. Maybe get in a few massage chairs.

It is really the only time I have an issue with Kickstarter is that this is about funding a project and while funding your own salary for a game makes perfect sense... there is a point where this becomes less "We are funding the game" and more "We are giving you money to make a game you will make to make money".

also what are you doing cutting every person in on the deal?

[Draco18s]

Yes but lets say you got 500,000 thousand

If we got not 10 times what we asked but 100?

Why, I'd have gotten maybe a $3000 cut.  Still not enough to quit my day job. 95% of our funds went directly to providing rewards.

[Neonivek]

Yes but lets say you got 500,000 thousand

If we got not 10 times what we asked but 100?

Why, I'd have gotten maybe a $3000 cut.  Still not enough to quit my day job. 95% of our funds went directly to providing rewards.

Yikes what did you do wrong?

One of the goals is to make sure that the kickstarter rewards pay off.

I know that there have been kickstarters who had lost all their funding from their rewards (because they forgot how much postage costs... even worse when you consider the rewards that forget how much plane tickets and hotels cost) but that is really their own fault.

Unless the rewards was the entire point of the kickstarter (as it is for some, where they are just "preorders in disguise" except when they are not)

[Draco18s]

Yikes what did you do wrong?

Nothing, actually.  We priced things out almost perfectly.  We knew we needed to cover flat costs of about $4000 before we could even consider offering physical rewards.  That $4000 went to Jenn for the art and Daniel Solis for design, a little for a lawyer, and then we had some other expenses that we took out from the total sum (things like "attending a con to pimp the game" and "business cards").  But every unit we'll be shipping will cost almost as much to produce and ship as we charged for it.

I don't have numbers at my finger tips, but it worked out with a very narrow margin.  It might end up being larger later, we haven't actually sent anything to the printer yet, but based off some estimates we received, there wasn't much left over after printing a thousand copies (of which 730 go as rewards).

And you know what?

We're cool with that.  Our goal was not to take a vacation, it was to make something cool.

[Neonivek]

I see, it was a preorder funding.

[nenjin]

It really seems like physical rewards are the death of profit for many Kickstarters. With digital projects, doing something like putting a backer's name or likeness in the game somewhere, that's easy and only costs the development time it takes to do it. Or a digital download of the soundtrack, whatever. But when you're promising 4k t-shirts or baubles, that stuff eats up profit at an absurd rate. I mean, suppliers got to make a profit too right?

Which is why I'm starting to become leery of Kickstarters that offer a lot of physical rewards. It seems like the more rewards they offer, the farther away from their actual project they're getting.

That and 3rd party support for things like music and art, people who sell their expertise for a flat fee instead of being part of the team that take whatever is left over as their profit....they can quickly destroy the team's profit as well.