Triopalite wrote: ↑Wed May 12, 2021 5:50 am
The truth is he probably thought he could make a game and fast realised he didn't have the skills to complete it. He collected a large amount of money and produced nothing.
If a real life bricks and mortar business were to do that, there would be lots of questions, lots of investigation and at least a full explanation from the guy where the money went, what it was spent on etc.
Goodbye folks.
Just wanted to point out that a brick and mortar could easily pull off this same gig and get away with it. The difference is that the type of people who invest in brick and mortar stores aren't idiots and actually play an active role in their investment's development. They give money for shares in the product, not because they hope the product will eventually get built and consider the developer to be smarter than they are so are blindly throwing money at someone who makes outstanding claims.
Kickstarter is really the worst thing to ever happen, because the types of people who kickstart something don't understand the first thing about investment, and when their investment goes wrong they start screaming about how illegal it all is and how rather than the investor being a complete idiot for blindly giving money to an open hand. In the real world, initial estimates are rarely correct and investors know this... in the kickstarter world if your initial estimate is "more realistic" then you're just trying to steal money, better to set the bar too low and try making due with too little.
Even more so, a good investor has contacts, so if your investment is struggling, the investor would say "these guys are familiar with this industry and could help you out here." A kickstart investor just throws money at a problem (money that isn't even backed by contract, that is.)
Kickstarter investors are always whining about something, yet they choose a platform which specifically puts all the power in the dev's hands, not their own... and often complain about things that happen in real world investing.
I mean, there is nothing illegal about standing on a corner requesting people give you money so you can build a stairway to heaven, not even making promises that you can complete it in a few years. So long as a reasonable effort is made to actually build a stairway, and the funds were used to finance said stairway's construction (which includes paying for yourself, and you can set your own wage).
Consider, Jimbo Wales sets his own wage... every time he spews about how Wikipedia needs donations to survive, he and his staff are taking a good part of that cut. There are some legal limitations (the non-profit status has some too I believe) but you literally are paying his salary when you donate to Wikipedia, how much of it actually goes to server upkeep isn't disclosed, but it doesn't need to be... people still donate regardless of knowing where their investment is going.