Developer Ghosts with over $30,000 Raised on Kickstarter

These things will keep happening until people know better. Which isn't going to happen.

Once bitten......

I'm going to kickstart a game that has you giving money to Nigerian princes. Wonder if there will be any confusion when I don't deliver.

Snake oil

Someone should make a "ostensibly confirmed" gif along the same lines of the "Vinny confirmed" gif.

Vinny got that pen! I think..

You'd think Kickstarter would absolutely require a team to disclose at least one person as representative of a team in a situation like this, and keep their (verified) contact information on record to serve up in the event that a game goes more than a few months without update.

Altogether though, I think it's really interesting that we don't see more situations like this. There've been dozens, if not hundreds of Kickstarters that have followed through to differing degrees of success, but these kinds of scandals are limited to just a handful.

Sometimes I think people just like to throw their money away when they give it to a bunch of nobodies without proven history, only ever back the creators you know and can trust which should be common sense.

Well, this is as mentioned a 'buyer beware' situation. I suggest to any friends that want to give via such sites as Kickstarter that they need to think of it as throwing money away. There is zero chance of being made whole if someone decides to bugger off with the money, or fails to deliver what you thought they would.

On the other hand I do also think that Kickstarter has a responsibility to it's members and should at least provide whatever contact details they can to injured parties. In the end I agree with Austin, this new public benefit status raises questions about the future of Kickstarter.

I don't understand anyone who backs something on Kickstarter without fully knowing nothing may come of it. If you put money into a KS and don't just think "well it will be cool if this happens, but if not, it was worth the risk", then please never use a crowd-funding service.

I've backed 76 projects on KS, and only one of them failed to deliver or at least keep people up to date with what's going on. But with every single one of those, I may hope they come true, but I know there's a chance they won't.

I am very surprised an industry for class action litigation has failed to start up with so many instances of Kickstarter (and other crowd funding sites) being in motion right now. You'd think enterprising lawyer types would be all over this considering the proliferation of patent trolls.

Same thing happened with a kickstarter game called Lioness. Sad that this stuff happens.

The attitude that this is somehow the backer's fault in the first few comments here is a bit disheartening.

Yes, you should be careful with your money. Yes, you should always be backing these things without any real expectations. Those things are true. That said, it's still totally shitty that people are able to either scam people or disappear like this so easily with absolutely no repercussions. It would be nice if there was a little bit more to be confident about when it comes to using services like Kickstarter. The fact that maybe those people walked into a scam/doomed project doesn't make the situation any less shitty for them.

ostensibly

Thank you Patrick.

This is where I always take offense at people saying "it's not an investment". Maybe not, but you should treat it like one. Do due diligence. Pay attention to what they're asking, and how they're asking for it.

As an example, I'll use the unsung story kickstarter, which is also having issues. I didn't back it because their video felt wrong. They talked up how they had gotten all these japanese devs from the original FFT team, but only showed photos of them. Never once any video of them doing ANYTHING, even saying in japanese, "I'm excited to be part of this project". Just a bunch of white people who I've never head of talking. They state that it's going to be android base, and that will port to pc. They're starting with a multiplayer base, and working the game out from there. All of these things told me I shouldn't kick in on this. Same with the tie-fighter revival kickstarter. Dug into the video, and they say it's multiplayer only focused. Didn't kick in.

Gameplay samples are king. If they have alpha footage of what they want to do, that's a good sign.

Make sure they have full contact information on their kickstarter page too. If they don't, that's suspect as well.

I've had a pretty good success rate so far with kickstarters, and it feels like it's a skill, not random chance. It takes work, and effort, but we shouldn't throw small infants out with their cleansing liquids here.

I'll be honest, I have backed 11 things on Kickstarter, and I only pay attention to one of those.

All of them I would like to see finished. It's not like I changed my mind or anything like that. I would like to play The Flame in the Flood. I'm interested in seeing what they do with Outerlanders. But I just don't check up on them all the time and I don't read every email I get.

The only exception is for Night in the Woods. This was the first Kickstarter I backed, the one I'm most interested in seeing, and by the far the best in terms of updates. Every month they send an update which details exactly what they are doing, from conventions to enhancing the engine, to work on the story, art, animation. Everything, except for the story. So there are some posts which says "We're working on this thing. What is it, exactly? Uh, we can't really tell you, since you don't know about it." Whatever the update is they are always clear about how things are going and talk about as much as they can. Other updates from other projects feel like they only say something like, "Hey, we're going to PAX" and I just shrug and go "Ok, cool".

With the other projects, I'm less interested in hearing about all of those details or they are not the as interesting to hear about. I just want the thing. So it is kind of easy for things to slip. Like I don't know when Aplitude is coming out, although there's probably an update somewhere that says "2015" or "2016" in my inbox. I just looked over all of my projects and it looks like none have gone MIA. In fact, 2 out of the 11 have finished. One was for a game Elegy for a Dead World, which you can go ahead and buy on Steam and the other was for...um...potato salad....

Nearing 50 projects on Kickstarter backed and only 1 didn't deliver like I would have wanted (Serpent's Tongue).

I didn't consider "ghosts" a verb at first and was really confused by the title.

Yep me too. I definitely think this is newsworthy, but I get kinda frustrated cuz it feels like the press focuses a lot more on failures then successes.

Until Kickstarter reforms its policies to actually hold people accountable for this kind of thing, I don't see myself throwing money out the window like this very often. I've only ever backed one game and it's still on-track as far as I know. The other things I've backed have had mixed results.

@koolaid: Well I guess it's because Kickstarter's novelty has worn off as far as news topics go. Sites can only cover a game raising so much money or this old developer announcing a new game but scandals always make for a good read.

This is where the FTC is supposed to step in right? They've done it before with Kickstarter, can't they do it again and set some clear rules?

@generic_username: I was going to write pretty much this very thing. I think there's a difference between throwing your money away when an "Angolan prince" asks for it and a legitimate honey pot trap. So many Kickstarters are like this - small team, simple game design, little developer info - and turn out just fine that it'd be ridiculous to expect people to tell the difference. That said, I don't think it's insulting to at least tell people to be more cautious of Starters that have such limited info on the devs, but the fact that Kickstarter itself does little/nothing to assist in that means that will be difficult.

I like the last part that Austin mentions, that hopefully after Kickstarter has switched to a Public Benefits corp. it will need to curate developer information better - or even HELP after an incident like this (God forbid).

While there are always risks in Kickstarter projects, one would think that Kickstarter would at least have actual contact information for people to go forth with said legal actions if they feel it necessary. It sounds ridiculous that anyone could lie about their contact information on their KS page or even not provide any, and Kickstarter didn't care about it. It's like Fraud Prevention 101, "make sure it's not laughably easy to scam your users because it may damage your reliability in the long run."

I mean... I'd love it if there were a better way to protect consumers from predatory products and scams, but they're everywhere. We can't get rid of them in the health industry, and stuff like this seems to pale in comparison. It's not so much that it's the customer's fault when they fall prey to this stuff, but that Kickstarter is built in such a way that contributing to a project on it is very similar to giving a stranger a sack of unmarked bills because they said they might make a cool videogame. That doesn't mean it's not useful - Kickstarter has generated some great stuff - but the flaws in the platform are inherent.

I can't imagine Kickstarter getting more involved in vetting their users. The more they claim to have an eye on that stuff, the more they're liable if they miss a scammer, and people are perfectly happy to use their website without those protections, so...

Sure I get that. But there are definitely some people who seem ANGRY about kickstarter like it's some kinda scam. This can happen and people should be aware of that and is good news etc... but I feel that the vast majority of kickstarters go pretty well and the perception is that KS is this huge risk/scam.

... how hard is it for Kickstarter to require people who start a crowdfunding project to provide up to date, accurate, and VERIFIED contact and identification info to keep on file?

Never backed a Kickstarter personally but played a lot of fantastic games that have come through the program. It's a bummer to hear these stories because sometimes a few people can ruin it for everyone, and I would like to continue to see good products come out of it.

@justinaquarius: It makes little difference if people do know better. Scammers play enough of a numbers game that they'll eventually catch the know-betters off-guard on a bad day - and catch them all over again with the next subtle permutation of the con.

This is why I have yet to support anything on Kickstarter. No real accountability.

I am very surprised this does not happen more often.

"Let me snag 30 G's real quick, an' get Patrick Swayze on 'em." - Michael Wong

That's fucked up.

Never back a Kickstarter project with money you aren't willing to lose.

Not saying that's how it should be, but that's how it is.

@koolaid: Kickstarter gets the brunt of it but this attitude goes for almost all types of crowdfunding a lot of people just don't like the idea of paying for a product that isn't finished and will choose to focus on the failures and debacles rather than all of the good products that come out of these systems. It can be frustrating but can see where the mentality comes from, if you don't throw in your support you can't get scammed.

This article kinda feels like gross confirmation bias...

"We, the press, in all our infinite wisdom, have for years now asked the hard question; "What happens when someone disappears with Kickstarter money?"

Now, it has finally happened, and despite thousands upon thousands of Kickstarters succeeding and following through to various degrees, let's make one of our ultra rare Kickstarter articles about something equally as rare."

I know negativity sells, and this is sort of an article BECAUSE of the lack of similar situations, but you'd think that would also be a focus here -- this happened, but it's totally amazing that it's newsworthy because you expected to hear a story like this every day once KS blew up (and the concept of contributor protection), but it seems most projects are in the up and up, which is incredible to me.

Sucks what happened, of course, but there is a bit of confirmation bias surrounding the subject. Of course only the catastrophic failures and scams get reported on, because there's no reason to write a news article about the Kicstarters that succeed as planned. Therefore, the public perception becomes skewed towards thinking Kickstarter is unreliable. Sort of like those people who are afraid to fly because of the plane crashes they read about, even though those are definitely not the norm.

Austin, I wonder if some of these people could file a complaint with the Texas Secretary of State over these business practices. The SoS usually handles scams and the like.

@cyberpocalypse said:

It's pretty remarkable that these Developer Ghosts were able to raise 30k US dollars. Figured it would be some sort of an ectoplasm-based Ghost Currency

@rothbart: @xbob42: Well there is no real reason to report about Kickstarter projects succeeding (Outside of the first few forerunners like Tim Schaffer's game and the like) because that's what is expected of them the reason for articles like these is because it's not the norm for Kickstarter. Not to mention this is a question that's been asked since the service was announced and video games were getting big money from it now it's finally happened and I'm sure a lot of people are actually interested to see how this whole thing is handled.

Backing stuff on crowdfunding sites is like gambling. I don't do ether.

Apparently we're all using the words confirmation bias in our posts now.

Anyway, I liked the article. I think it's an important highlight of Kickstarter and the world of public funding. Apparently it would have been a better article if you had talked about the successes of Kickstarter? Personally, I think people are seeing what they want to see. I would not be surprised to hear that the people saying these things are active Kickstarter contributors.

So...ghost is a verb now?

Don't donate money you aren't willing to part with. The end.

I consider myself to be a purchaser or an investor. I am not a donor. The Kickstarter model won't appeal to me until I am confident that there will be accountability from the project starters if the project is not completed.

Also, don't use 'ghosts' as a verb. 'Disappears' is a fine verb to use.

I've backed 259 projects and only a few have gone bad. The ones that piss me off aren't the couple that disappeared but those that complete some but not all of the rewards, like Unwinnable weekly and couple of game projects.

I had no issue with their policy of the contract being between the backer and project, until they became a smug Public benefits Company. If Kickstarter wants to prattle on about how amazing and great they are for the public good, then they can definitely put in some kind of backup system for the people putting up the money.

This reminds me of another scam project, Confederate Express: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/829559023/confederate-express/description

These two guys raised nearly $40K and disappeared off the face of the earth. Another fun fact about them: They also apparently were able to get renter's rights by staying at an Airbnb for over a month, and then they continued to squat there for months because the owner was unable to evict them.

Unless Kickstarter drastically changes it's TOS, I think we're going to continue to see relatively small-scale project scams like these. All you need is an interesting-looking mock-up and loose morals, and it isn't particularly hard to steal large sums of money from unsuspecting backers. If these scams continue, I'd expect people to stop supporting any Kickstarter that doesn't have a known developer or studio behind it, which kind of goes against the spirit of Kickstarter.

As a side note, Confederate Express looks pretty fun. I'd play that shit.

To throw my hat into the hot debate... I like the use of "ghosts" as a verb in the headline. It did confuse me for the briefest moment, but upon reflection I highly approve.

I think crowdfund websites need some sort of middle man in which the money goes to a trusted third party first as a fail safe if the devs do something scummy like this. Kind of like how there's a third party with steam trading.

congrats Ghosts on your $30 000 kickstarter success story!