I think what we’re seeing here is that well-funded projects get a “most favoured nation” pass to flout the already weak oversight that Kickstarter exercises. A

I think what we’re seeing here is that well-funded projects get a “most favoured nation” pass to flout the already weak oversight that Kickstarter exercises. A true indie shop running a crowd-funding campaign has very little money to buy marketing and PR, so they’re essentially consuming Kickstarter’s brand and traffic. Whereas, some of these new-breed well-heeled campaigns spend more money on marketing than the campaign is designed to raise. These campaigns are not consuming Kickstarter’s traffic and brand, they’re contributing to it. And whatever we might think of using words like “hologram” for this magic pixie-dust product, the odds are reasonable that something will ship to the backers, so Kickstarter’s reputation is less likely to be tarnished by a VC-backed campaign than by a truly independent project where they don’t have the budget to hire an experienced team. So from Kickstarter’s perspective, well-funded “crowd-funding” campaigns that are actually marketing stunts is very good business, and I predict they are going to shift more and more of their emphasis this way, just as consumer-facing companies often gradually shift to becoming enterprise-facing companies. As a prospective backer, this is far less attractive to me, so I am not advocating for this shift. But I do believe it is happening, and I believe that this explains why Kickstarter seem to have done little more than send an email saying, “Hey, bro, cut out the CGI, this gadfly is turning into an embarrassment for both of us. And good job, please bring us more campaigns, we love doing business with you.” p.s. I’m curious as hell about their pricing model. I wonder if VCs can secretly negotiate lower fees than indies.