No? Kickstarter isn't a place to go to get donations. It's a place to go to get funding. Again the difference can be subtle, but it's there. And it's the whole reason the site exists. The FTL kickstarter was two guys saying "give us money to make this specific game, we need 10,000" and then people said "take 200,500 to make this game, it's a cool concept!" If they then pocketed the difference that's pretty shady.
Semantic BS. You're not supposed to ASK for donations. What people who fund your project consider your funding isn't the issue. "Give me money so I can eat" is wrong, "give me money to improve my game" is right. But the backer's motivation in giving you the money isn't none of their business.
The gifts you get for funding in kickstarter are basically a marketing ploy. "give us money to make our game" becomes a lot more appealing if it's "give us money to make our game, get a copy of our game as thanks!" At the lowest funding level of $10 it's a fair trade, the next level os $25 and you get beta access. $15 for beta access is a pretty terrible deal unless you're spending that money with the implicit agreement that it will go to improving the game and "making it as good as can be."
But these gifts most often have real costs (not all of them). And for the backers, they have real value (otherwise, WHO would be paying to get beta access? People just like getting ripped off?) You could say that $10,000 for lunch is also a lousy deal. Too bad? It's not mandatory... Yes, basically at $10 is a pre-order even if "KickStarter is not a store". It's not a store BECAUSE the project may fail, and you won't get your money back. That doesn't mean they didn't spend the money and lose it. That's why they're called "startups".
And kickstarter should make it harder for things to be funded, and should penalise projects that are badly mismanaged or not well thought out with hard caps on their funding goals. At the moment there's nothing to stop someone putting up a project, raking in a million or two and then absconding to Mexico.
There are anti-fraud laws that have nothing to do with KickStarter. Use those. Don't expect the "payment" company to become anti-fraud police. If it's illegal, it's illegal, no matter what some company policy says. Get a warrant, make KS disclose the project creator's data (KS being a third party, should not be liable). Then go after those who actually broke the law.
Like Akhier said, the backers are pretty much saying "shut up and take my money". For some reason, they seem fairly ok about their individual contribution to the project, and are satisfied by the end result. It's always someone looking "hey, the company got X dollars total, that can't be right!" who seem to get angry.
1000 backers or a million backers.
They still paid the same amount of money regardless of the total. Why MUST the game be better because more people wanted to contribute (and get their copy/t-shirt/beta/whatever)? Do games improve the more people buy them? (
not a store... not a store...)
That's not how it works. If they get 20 times the cash they asked for, then, barring stretch goals, they aren't obligated to make a game that's 20 times as better. If they say "we're making a game for 10k$" then a 10k$ game is what you get. That there's been so much demand for the game doesn't justify that the individual funder feels entitled for more than they bargained for.
Why? Aside from your personal opinion of course? I'm basing my logic on the explicit goals and core concept of what kickstarter is as an organisation.
If someone says "give me money, and i'll use it to make this game better" and people give them 200% of what they ask for, are they not then obligated to make the game 200% better than they originally would have? Because that's what happened here. If the FTL kickstarter page said "we need 10,000. Any more than that we will gladly accept but will not be used to improve this game in anyway" then I highly doubt they would've got as much as they did.
Backers aren't children and you shouldn't treat them like children. They can see if the project is already overfunded before backing it. They continued to back it anyway. They could have waited and paid the same amount of money for a copy of the game later. Thinking that a game is going to be 2000% more awesome because moar money would be pretty silly. They gave their money to a $10k project and got a $10k project and afaik They Are Satisfied With That.
They're also (probably) not going to buy the game again. So ALL you're getting is money in advance that you won't get during sale. What's the big deal?
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Topic: FTL - Faster than light - spaceship crew management and roguelike. (Read 373939 times)