My understanding is that legally he's supposed to return the money if he can't provide the promised benefits, but that Kickstarter don't encourage people to hav

My understanding is that legally he's supposed to return the money if he can't provide the promised benefits, but that Kickstarter don't encourage people to have that understanding because it would damage the intention and culture of the site. There have been a lot of kickstarter projects that failed or delivered late, and I don't it's common at all for any of them to pay money back, despite the legal situation. I doubt that in reality he is bearing any of the risk of failure, except as regards to his reputation.