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Have there been any notable scams on Kickstarter yet? I'm curious what sort of impact a massive scandal through these crowd funding sites would have on future d

Have there been any notable scams on Kickstarter yet? I'm curious what sort of impact a massive scandal through these crowd funding sites would have on future donations

papsosouid 14y ago
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/posts/239764 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/post... I don't think anyone is sure if this was a scam, or if he or she is genuinely crazy. But, people funded a board game, and now the sun says no.
- ajross 14y ago
  It does seem like scamming $8k for a board game points more to "crazy". Though I guess if you were serious about this you could come up with an assembly line for plausible-sounding small ticket projects, invent personas for each, and come up with some just-interesting-enough sample content to get it funded. I still vote crazy.
- danso 14y ago
  Wow. That was an amazing post. However, to be fair to the board-game-maker, it appears that, as of just this week, she is producing something: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/posts http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/post...
michaelbuckbee 14y ago
Kickstarter (the company) does a decent job of filtering out obviously scammy projects. At this point I think a human being still looks at each and every project as just a sanity check (I know they also offer suggestions on how best to structure your project, etc.). The much larger gray area has been in cases where it's: "Hey contribute $100 and get this awesome gadget in a month!" that have failed to deliver anything. Most of those cases have at least seemed to be good intentioned failures where the project owners didn't anticipate just how difficult it is to manufacture and ship products or they were just wildly naive in their estimates, but again it is impossible to tell. To date, these haven't seemed to have made an appreciable dent in the amount of crowd sourced funding happening.
jere 14y ago
Yes (depending on your definition of notable). >MYTHIC: The Story Of Gods and Men, has just been busted by forum users at Reddit, SomethingAwful and Rock, Paper, Shotgun... Turns out the art was cribbed, the text for backer rewards was copied and pasted from another Kickstarter project, and even the office photos were from another game studio, Burton Design Group. http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-looks-like/ http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-... When you're essentially trading money for concept art, there's a lot of potential to get scammed.
spwmoni 14y ago
Well, this guy convinced people to give him $540 to build a steam-powered prosthetic arm. He hasn't been heard from since. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1997636553/steampunk-steampowered-arm http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1997636553/steampunk-ste...

Have there been any notable scams on Kickstarter yet? I'm curious what sort of impact a massive scandal through these crowd funding sites would have on future donations

papsosouid 14y ago

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/posts/239764 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/post... I don't think anyone is sure if this was a scam, or if he or she is genuinely crazy. But, people funded a board game, and now the sun says no.

ajross 14y ago
It does seem like scamming $8k for a board game points more to "crazy". Though I guess if you were serious about this you could come up with an assembly line for plausible-sounding small ticket projects, invent personas for each, and come up with some just-interesting-enough sample content to get it funded. I still vote crazy.
danso 14y ago
Wow. That was an amazing post. However, to be fair to the board-game-maker, it appears that, as of just this week, she is producing something: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/posts http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/post...

michaelbuckbee 14y ago

Kickstarter (the company) does a decent job of filtering out obviously scammy projects. At this point I think a human being still looks at each and every project as just a sanity check (I know they also offer suggestions on how best to structure your project, etc.). The much larger gray area has been in cases where it's: "Hey contribute $100 and get this awesome gadget in a month!" that have failed to deliver anything. Most of those cases have at least seemed to be good intentioned failures where the project owners didn't anticipate just how difficult it is to manufacture and ship products or they were just wildly naive in their estimates, but again it is impossible to tell. To date, these haven't seemed to have made an appreciable dent in the amount of crowd sourced funding happening.

jere 14y ago

Yes (depending on your definition of notable). >MYTHIC: The Story Of Gods and Men, has just been busted by forum users at Reddit, SomethingAwful and Rock, Paper, Shotgun... Turns out the art was cribbed, the text for backer rewards was copied and pasted from another Kickstarter project, and even the office photos were from another game studio, Burton Design Group. http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-looks-like/ http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-... When you're essentially trading money for concept art, there's a lot of potential to get scammed.

spwmoni 14y ago

Well, this guy convinced people to give him $540 to build a steam-powered prosthetic arm. He hasn't been heard from since. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1997636553/steampunk-steampowered-arm http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1997636553/steampunk-ste...