Kickstarter Is "Not a Store," Introduces New Rules

[Timothy Chang]

Kickstarter Is "Not a Store," Introduces New Rules

The crowdfunding website implements restrictions on projects to ensure backers understand the risks.


Given the sheer amount of projects being advertised on Kickstarter this year, it's easy to forget that most of these games and products, well, don't actually exist yet. Kickstarter must be concerned that their crowdfunding site is being viewed as an online shopping mall; as a result, it has introduced a number of submission requirements designed to remind backers that giving money to a project won't necessarily guarantee a finished product.

All Kickstarter projects from now on must answer the following question: "What are the risks and challenges this project faces, and what qualifies you to overcome them?" Answers will be displayed in a new section on the project's page to help users determine if a project's creator has seriously considered all the potential issues they face in finalizing their product. It also serves as a reminder to users that products are still works in progress, so they should think twice before handing over cash to a project that promises the world.

Hardware projects are also being subject to a number of restrictions. "Product simulations", such as media that shows what a product might do once it's completed (as opposed to functional prototypes), are no longer allowed. This includes the use of product renderings, presumably so that backers won't interpret these images as the real deal. Kickstarter also introduced a ban on offering multiple quantities of a product as a reward, since it "can imply that products are shrink-wrapped and ready to ship".

It's worth noting that the restrictions on hardware projects do not apply to videogames, but it will be relevant to items such as game controllers and game consoles.

"Products should be presented as they are. Over-promising leads to higher expectations for backers," Kickstarter advises. "The best rule of thumb: under-promise and over-deliver."


Source: Kickstarter [http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store]

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[FEichinger]

It's actually saddening that these new rules are needed in the first place. Just shows how blatantly stupid some people are.
It is however true that the mass of projects with the actual product as part of the rewards opens a legal can of worms ... After all Kickstarter does require project creators to refund rewards they can't fulfill ...

I would have preferred a ban on those rewards (or at least requiring them to be properly worded ("if successful" -> product) but restricting the use of preview material goes a tad bit too far, imho.

 

[Xanthious]

One of these days someone a little less scrupulous is going to make a cubic shit ton (aka: millions) off of one of these crowd sourcing sites with nothing but a cool sounding idea and maybe a pretty picture or two and leave a lot of pissed off people out in the cold. Hell, it may have already happened and I simply haven't heard about it.

Honestly, all you'd really need is an idea that seems plausible enough, a little bit of exposure from the media, someone with a little credibility in the appropriate field wouldn't go amiss, and a bit of momentum. You have all those and you could walk away a millionaire with plenty of time (maybe a year or longer) to drop off the radar before anyone even has the first clue they're getting screwed.

That being said, these new rules are probably for the best.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

It's actually saddening that these new rules are needed in the first place. Just shows how blatantly stupid some people are.
It is however true that the mass of projects with the actual product as part of the rewards opens a legal can of worms ... After all Kickstarter does require project creators to refund rewards they can't fulfill ...

I would have preferred a ban on those rewards (or at least requiring them to be properly worded ("if successful" -> product) but restricting the use of preview material goes a tad bit too far, imho.

I think that banning products as rewards would be a lot worse than benning renders of products. The Ouya wouldn't have been funded if lots of people hadn't paid for a console, but bought posters or T-shirts instead. In a way I can't see how Kickstarter would work if you didn't offer the product in return as if you were interested in a cool pen then you'd have to contribute $30 to get it made, and then another $30 for the item when it's built. That makes little sense.

 

[Entitled]

I can't really argue with the new rules, they make sense, (except maybe the last one, banning the promise of multiple copies of something as a reward) but generally, I don't think that they are really needed.

First of all, Kickstarter is not really popular, in the "mainstream crowd" sense. It's not attracting millions of uninformed visitors from facebook and twitter, pretty much anyone who ever backed something on it, is already a hardcore enthusiast of that given issue. In terms of gaming, the kind of gamers who backed Planetary Annihilation, or Project Eternity, are typically PC veterans who spent the last decades on gaming related websites, and are already sick to death of disclaimers and cynicism about how Kickstarter will rip off all of us.

The biggest projects are usually the ones that were supported by big names behind them. Obsisian, Dounle Fine, Neal Stephenson, or Brian Fargo are about as likely to vanish with our pile of money in a county that we don't have an extradition treaty with, as they were until now to vanish with a publisher's pile of money.

And even running out of money and failing is unlikely, they know that would piss off enough people to bring a class acttion lawsuit on them, so they would rather try to finish it from their own pocket, or by dealing with publishers.

The kind of projects that are likely to be scams or failures, are so small and irrelevant that they won't affect the bigger picture anyways.

 

[Legion]

I thought this was the most obvious thing in the world. Kickstarter is to gather funds to develop a game. Not to publish one.

Please remember that cups of tea and coffee and Mcdonalds require wording on the cup stating that it contains hot water.

The reason for this is because somebody spilt some on themselves and decided to sue the company for not providing such a warning at the time.

I guess what I am getting at is: Never underestimate the limits of human stupidity.

 

[FEichinger]

I think that banning products as rewards would be a lot worse than benning renders of products. The Ouya wouldn't have been funded if lots of people hadn't paid for a console, but bought posters or T-shirts instead. In a way I can't see how Kickstarter would work if you didn't offer the product in return as if you were interested in a cool pen then you'd have to contribute $30 to get it made, and then another $30 for the item when it's built. That makes little sense.

That's why I said either ban it entirely, or require it to be worded in a way that doesn't imply a pre-order.

Currently I believe it's legally possible to sue the project creator for a refund, if the project fails and the product was included in the rewards. I doubt that's intended - from a project creator's PoV.

Captcha: slippery slope
Indeed, it is.

 

[BrotherRool]

This is a very smart move on the part of Kickstarter, they're dealing with problems before they happen

It's actually saddening that these new rules are needed in the first place. Just shows how blatantly stupid some people are.

I don't think it's really that much about stupidity, or if it is it's a universal stupidity that almost every human is susceptible too. Remember the part of your brain that you live and operate in for almost every moment of your life is basically designed to spare processing power as much as possible and make you guess on situations rather than rationalise. For example if you don't initiate the 'think slow' part of your brain, the part of your brain you use for most everyday life is the part that believes if a bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents and the bat costs a dollar more than the ball then the ball costs 10 cents.

It's not about being smart
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html
it's just how your brain works. In fact the research they're talking about in that article shows that the smarter you are the more likely you are to make irrational purchasing decisions in places like this

Which is why we believe that things which cost £1.99 are much cheaper than things that cost £2.00. Its not smarts, almost every single being on earth would point out they're basically the same price. It's just our brains are imperfect rationalisers

And Kickstarter is pretty much the same thing. Everyone knows that there's no guarantee a product will be completed, that it could easily not turn out the way you think it is, that you've got to be able to trust the people doing the selling. But all the same, the way the site presents it to you, you're brain will be tricked into treating it as if it were an actual product.

In fact I believe it's an old sales/con technique to get people to consider options on a hypothetical which subconsciously reinforces the idea that the hypothetical actually exists. So when people say 'if our stretch goals reach here we'll add in two new quests, or we hope to be able to do such and such' they don't mean it, but they're tricking your brain into believing the product exists because to deal with the 'what if we add this' question, you have to accept the hypothetical situation that the base product exists.


So Kickstarter are just sticking a great big label on to tell people that these products cost £2.00 not £1.99. It'll keep the question of 'will this come to light' on top of the bran whilst looking at everything else and it will help people make more rational decisions. Not because they're stupid and need help, but because they're people


EDIT: Actually I need to highlight a phrase in that article, because you're probably thinking something along the lines of 'yeah but you and I are smart and are aware of the problem, and so we can deal with it, if other people can't it's because they aren't thinking about the problem'

Research shows

?people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.?

So you and me knowing what the mistakes are, doesn't actually help improve our purchasing decisions, as much as we think it does

 

[Mahorfeus]

[redacted]

Yeah, that was a fail on my part.

 

[Entitled]

Please remember that cups of tea and coffee and Mcdonalds require wording on the cup stating that it contains hot water.

The reason for this is because somebody spilt some on themselves and decided to sue the company for not providing such a warning at the time.

I guess what I am getting at is: Never underestimate the limits of human stupidity.

Actually, she didn't sue the company because "the coffe was hot", but because she suffered third degree burns (the worst kind of burns), that it required skin grafts, due to the McDonald's operations manual ordering their coffee to be made dangerously hot, and she won because there were already 700 other compaints of similar injury before her that McDonalds ignored, and because McDonald?s quality assurance manager testified that "McDonald?s coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into Styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat."

http://www.caoc.org/index.cfm?pg=facts

Then after the lawsuit, McDonalds continued to keep it's dangerous (but pactically cheap) coffee production system, while downplaying it with a technically accurate "coffee is hot, duh!" disclaimer to avoid further lawsuits.

I guess what I am getting at is: Never underestimate corporate evil.

 

[Mahorfeus]

I remember Valve mentioning that they were working on integrating some kind of sign language into the game somehow.

So, you know. Half-Life 3 will be a Kinect exclusive, featuring everybody's favorite mute theoretical physicist!

Eh?

That, my friend, would be my first ever post fail on this site.

Nothing to see here folks. :/

 

[snekadid]

I remember Valve mentioning that they were working on integrating some kind of sign language into the game somehow.

So, you know. Half-Life 3 will be a Kinect exclusive, featuring everybody's favorite mute theoretical physicist!

Eh?

That, my friend, would be my first ever post fail on this site.

Nothing to see here folks. :/

I liked it, people today lack reading comprehension skills.

 

[Something Amyss]

Today's Headline: Kickstarter does something it should have done in the first place, users bashed as stupid.

 

[Something Amyss]

Whoo, thanks for that. I was starting to regain hope for humanity for a second there.

Well, if it helps, the truth of the matter had more to do with a beverage being served at near-boiling temperatures, not simply "hot."

I don't know about you, but I don't consume my food or drinks at near-boiling temperatures. I also don't expect even my "hot" food and beverages to be served to me at those temperatures. Other food and drink is safe to consumer at the time of purchase. It was not so much about it being hot, as it being excessively hot, to the point that it caused severe third degree burns. Do you consumer food which causes severe, third degree burns? No? Then this isn't really an issue of a woman being stupid.

Mcdonalds tried to play it up as "lol stupid woman" because it was in their interest. It's no surprise the company with deep pockets and PR guys on call would be the side that people cited, because "lol ignorant people."

 

[Albino Boo]

I think that banning products as rewards would be a lot worse than benning renders of products. The Ouya wouldn't have been funded if lots of people hadn't paid for a console, but bought posters or T-shirts instead. In a way I can't see how Kickstarter would work if you didn't offer the product in return as if you were interested in a cool pen then you'd have to contribute $30 to get it made, and then another $30 for the item when it's built. That makes little sense.

That's why I said either ban it entirely, or require it to be worded in a way that doesn't imply a pre-order.

Currently I believe it's legally possible to sue the project creator for a refund, if the project fails and the product was included in the rewards. I doubt that's intended - from a project creator's PoV.

Captcha: slippery slope
Indeed, it is.

You are not a consumer but an investor so standard consumer rights don't apply. The terms an conditions of Kickstarter only require any remaining money to be refunded. So if a major project fails and they have spent all the money then there is no way of getting it back, unless you can prove deliberate misinformation or fraud. Thats the whole point of the change is to make clear you are taking the risk with your money as an investor. Just like any other investor not all things that you put your money into will pay off, but unlike all other investors you get none of the profits.