Obsidian CEO: Publishers Are Trying to Sneak Into Kickstarter

[CardinalPiggles]

This reminds me of when EA were trying to be more 'Indie'. It's pretty funny how ignorant Publishers can be.

 

[shintakie10]

Kickstarter carries as much financial risk to the consumer as pre-ordering a game from the store. Let's take a look at the Terms of Use for the site, shall we?

From the Terms of Use:

Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill.

I don't know about you, but that looks an awful lot like I will get a refund if the project goes belly-up.

Not quite. Now, in case you don't know, the 'Project Creators' give the 'backers' rewards, depending on ow much the Backer gives. Things like a name in the credits, or maybe a t-shirt, a poster, that kind of thing. What the T&C says, at least to me, is that if the Project Creator is unable, for what ever reason, to supply the Backer with the reward they promised the Backer, then the Backer is entitled to a refund.
At no point does it make a reference to refunds if the project goes belly-up.

Most tiers of donation include at least the game (for instance, with the obsidian one, there is only one tier that does not include the game, and that is the $5 dollar one. All others do). If the project goes belly-up, the game does not get released. Ergo, they cannot fulfill a reward, ergo you get your money back.

The funny thing about that is, if the person that owns the kickstarter account takes certain steps they can completely get around givin out refunds to people.

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarter

Since the only deadline they have to set is a "estimated delivery date" which can be fudged however they like and is not a concrete number a creator only has to prove that they're workin on the project in order to not be obligated to give refunds.

However, lets go into a hypothetical. Say Obsidian blows way past whatever the estimated delivery date is for their game. They're still workin on the game and tryin to get extra fundin and all that jazz. You go to them and ask for a refund due to these horrible delays and say that you deserve it due to them not fulfillin their end of the...contract? Yeah, contract works. Obsidian can deny this request for whatever reason. Maybe they really really need that 20 dollars. Your only recourse at that point is legal action, either through tryin to somehow force Amazon to give you a refund, or to sue for a breach of contract to get your 20 dollars back in which case you have to prove to a court that you are entitled to your refund and pay any such court fees that go along with it.

The basic short answer to whether you can get a refund or not is this. Is the creator willin to give you a refund. If yes, then you get your refund. If no, then the trouble you would have to go through to get your money back wouldn't be worth it.

 

[Arren Kae]

The only thing I can think of that the publisher is bringing to the table here is marketing and retail. Not exactly a fair trade for a brand new IP.

Marketing and retail are plenty.

Does a developer have a relationship with big chains like Gamestop or Walmart through which millions of sales are made? No.

Are kids going to ask their parents for a game they've never heard of for Christmas? No.

If publishers provided no service to developers they wouldn't be relied upon. Further, they've relationships with M$, Sony, and Nintendo. These companies will be pickier about CERT requirements for an independent developer. For a publisher they've a good relationship with they'll require fewer re-submissions.

Translated
Obsidian: Its ok for us to dump all the risk onto the consumer and keep the profits and make the millionaire CEO Feargus Urquhart even richer but when a publisher wants to pass on the risk thats evil.

He's right. Even "angel" investors get a cut of a company's profits, ownership, and exclusivity of contract to prevent their capital from earning profit for other people. Kickstarter's akin to a trust-fund financial arrangement except the masses its' reached expect no ownership and therefore don't conceive they should have ongoing returns from the venture in which they place stake.

However, conceived of another way, such Kickstarter projects are effectively pre-ordering a good or service. Although I doubt the donater benefits promised constitute an enforceable form of contract...

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes. The distinction of course being that one of the primary things publishers bring to the table is *funding*, and all the shit they pull on the other end is doable entirely because they get such a large piece of the ownership of the product.

Read: The distinction is "it's okay when people I like take advantage of the system because ponies."

 

[Schadrach]

Yes. The distinction of course being that one of the primary things publishers bring to the table is *funding*, and all the shit they pull on the other end is doable entirely because they get such a large piece of the ownership of the product.

Read: The distinction is "it's okay when people I like take advantage of the system because ponies."

Look, the traditional publisher developer relationship works like this:

The developers get involved with a publisher primarily because they need money. The publisher supplies funding and retail distribution, and in exchange they get ownership of the IP, some control over what is produced, and a healthy chunk of the profits.

In the typical Kickstarter scenario, there is no publisher in the traditional sense. The developers make what they want, and are funded by, in essence, preorders. If a publisher gets involved, it's usually in the same sense as EA was involved with The Secret World -- being contracted for distribution only. This is more or less a total reversal of the usual publisher/developer power dynamic, in that the publisher has no risk, but also no ownership or control.

In this case, it's a publisher wanting all the upsides of both the traditional model and the Kickstarter model with none of the downsides. When the bulk of what you do in the industry is provide funding, you really don't belong on Kickstarter, because in that case you're an unnecessary middleman, looking to suck profits away from the people actually doing the work, without really bringing anything to the table yourself.

 

[Dandark]

The main reason I see to use kickstarter is to avoid publishers, them getting involved with it at all would instantly destroy any interest I have in ever using it.