Penny Arcade and the Abuse of Kickstarter

The idea behind Kickstarter is a beautiful one – it’s about the democratization of investment, about allowing the man in the basement with the dream to create an everlasting toothbrush to put his theory to the test. It’s not an iTunes preorder page.
-PSLS

[doctorstrange]

I want to do a Kickstarter campaign where the goal is to raise $100,000. Every time you donate, you help me make it a reality.

[knifefight]

The irony, haha.

[TrendyGamers]

Maybe Kickstarter will change their rules soon to prevent this in the future?

[doctorstrange]

They get a cut on every 'investment'

[D3stinySm4sher]

Hard to put my finger on it, since they're technically not doing anything wrong, but I have to say that something about the whole situation leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth regarding PA.

I guess it's that I can't help but feel like they're milking their own popularity.

[matgrowcott]

I've felt that way about PA since they hired Kuchera.

They were making all this big song and dance about how "games journalism is broken, we're going to do it differently."

Give any games journalist of any skill level the amount of hits that Penny Arcade gets and they'd be in a position to do things differently as well. The need to fight for those hits/sales/market share is what leads to the downsides of ALL journalism and taking away that need doesn't make you a better journalist.

But the fact that they harped on about it felt so disingenuous to me that this podcast thing didn't surprise me at all.

[coolasj]

Spending money on one Kickstarter Project that may not need it doesn't take away money from other Projects. It's still very much the consumer deciding what they want. So, everyone, just chill out.

[Hydralysk]

The problem is more that this project should not be on Kickstarter in the first place.

Kickstarter is for people who need help to get enough funds to make their goal a reality. PA straight out says in the campaign that they don't need the money and were planning to do this anyways. They're asking for money to make a podcast they were going to do all along.

Even if people backing this don't ignore another project due to limited funds, even if the attention it gets doesn't overshadow other projects who actually need the exposure, what they're doing is still a complete bastardization of what Kickstarter's supposed to be used for.

[zugdar]

Don't like it, don't give. Simple as that.

[doctorstrange]

If only it was

[Wedge19]

If only I was into using the same dirty tricks as the rest of the internet. I'd kickstart a fund so that I could simply eat lunch every day.