What Happens When A Kickstarter Game Is Canceled?

Kickstarter has become a boon to indie developers, who can appeal directly to gamers for the money needed to make risky or innovative projects. However, there's a problem with funding games on faith: What happens when they don't get made?

[konnerbllb]

Nice of him to continue on with the project. Also, even though the Kickstarter money has been spent he still offers to refund people out of his own pocket if they can't wait a bit longer for the game. Classy

[RoseSapphire]

This is troubling. I've used Kickstarter a number of times now and I had no idea that if a project was canceled that we, the backers, would not be refunded.

As I see it, they people proposing these projects should be setting a funding goal that is the expected cost of the entire project as a whole and that they should be obligated to refund the backers for a failed project.

I don't see myself as an investor on Kickstarter. I see myself as a person willing to preorder far in advance.

[OneAboveAll]

Sorry, but you are donating to these developers. You aren't entitled to get your money back and they don't have to give it back to you if they don't want too.

That's like donating money to a cancer victim and asking for a refund if he isn't cured.

[Kurylo3d]

Kickstarter is for finding investors. Investors assume the risk. Its not a preorder if theres no product. In fact no where in the rules does kickstarter say you have to provide the people funding with a copy of your game. They could just as well provide them with a tshirt... or nothing at all. Most promise a copy because its more likely for people to invest.

Kickstarter (for gaming) is for finding people who are willing to invest in order to build a game that you would like to play in the future.

[hkgamer]

i think once the bigger kickstarter projects fail then it would be quite serious and kickstarter will probably lose alot of contributors.
i mean contributors probably will understand and forgive smaller indies because anything could happen to small businesses.
but for bigger projects i think they will have no excuses.

tbh contributors should not complain because they no the risk, plus a big bunch of contributors are mainly the ones that contribute to the projects going viral because they want to be included in something big. basically jumping in the bandwagon

@branwheatkillah
kickstarter campaigns are not looking for money for the whole project but just part of the project. it would look stupid if they are expecting people to fund the whole project because no one would ever help someone like that. i think mainly they use kickstarter to basically advertise and create buzz for the game for free (for the bigger projects anyway)

[modesign]

kickstarter is a "donation" website, do you demand your money back from cancer research, so why should you expect the same from kickstarter.

[Blacktric]

Comparing donations made for cancer research to game development and other crap that mostly turns into being scam. Stay classy.