Indie Studio "Devastated" After Fake Pledge Derails Kickstarter Campaign
- Thread starter StewShearerOld
- Start date
Prank phonecalls can lead to people killing themselves [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20710644]. Trolling still is the online equivalent of prank phonecalls, and sometimes that can mean big consequences. The good old days were not as good as you think.Windknight said:
"Gawd, it's just trolling; it's not like the troll raised a group's hopes of making a dream a reality as high as they could before dashing it down for no reason besides the lulz. Besides, it'll probably get funded now that people know about it and the asshole that tried to ruin it, lighten up."
Some people have a hard time with the turing test.
Some people have a hard time with the turing test.
When Kickstarter was still in it's infancy, I had a lengthy discussion with a friend of mine about the pros and cons of the system. I brought up the possibility of someone watching an underfunded Kickstarter page until it's just about to close, and dropping a large fake pledge that would bring them just a hair under the pledge, just to troll them with false hope. We agreed that this would never happen, for a lot of reasons.
That ended up turning into a discussion about large fake pledges, and whether or not it would be easy to screw a project over that way. We remained cautiously optimistic that such a thing wouldn't be a huge issue based on the nature of Kickstarter's community, but seeing the reality of the situation right here in my face makes me wonder if this has happened before on a smaller project. It's pretty screwed up, to say the least.
That ended up turning into a discussion about large fake pledges, and whether or not it would be easy to screw a project over that way. We remained cautiously optimistic that such a thing wouldn't be a huge issue based on the nature of Kickstarter's community, but seeing the reality of the situation right here in my face makes me wonder if this has happened before on a smaller project. It's pretty screwed up, to say the least.
Can't tell if some of the comments here derive from a lack of empathy or an overdose of cynicism.
Shouldn't Kickstarter have some sort of... I don't know, measure for preventing this? Like, shouldn't pledging $7000 actually require you to fork over $7000 up front? Rather than merely pinky-promising that you will later. That seems like common sense to me.
To preempt responses about people being able to get their money back if they don't like the decisions of a Kickstarter campaign. Make it so that if the Kickstarter creators alter their plan in some way, people already pledging get a single chance to opt out with a full refund.
There, I just came up with the solution to make your billion dollar business more functional in 2 minutes.
To preempt responses about people being able to get their money back if they don't like the decisions of a Kickstarter campaign. Make it so that if the Kickstarter creators alter their plan in some way, people already pledging get a single chance to opt out with a full refund.
There, I just came up with the solution to make your billion dollar business more functional in 2 minutes.
Kinda makes you wish that Kickstarter could pursue them and hold them legally responsible for the contribution that they promised to make.
It seems like there's been a rash of this behavior lately, particularly in indie game Kickstarters. Two projects that I've backed -- Elsinore and Herald -- have experienced the same thing: some jackass fraudulently pledging at the highest tier possible and Kickstarter having to yank the funds.
Speaking as a "troll" myself (please have mercy) I agree, I only do the stupid silly tricks, this isn't trolling, this is just straight up douche-baggeryWindknight said:
That's a very good point. I could easily imagine someone planning to pledge 70.00 euros and pledging 7000 instead. I did something somewhat like that on eBay once.Piorn said: