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General discussionWashington state court the first court in the United States to have failed kickstarters pay back backers their money.(83 posts)(83 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 17, 2015
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mystral: Anyway my original point was that if we start suing people simply because they broke their promises, our justice system will become completely paralyzed.
Thing is, when money is involved, breaking a promise is called a breach of contract. And yeah, justice tends to be involved when it happens.
I'm all for being lenient (I got burned a few times, and I never even asked for a refund), but if we want the law to apply to the real frauds, then it has to apply to everyone. And yeah, that can mean that honest but incompetent (or pathologically uncommunicative) people may have to defend themselves before a court. That's part of doing business
Post edited September 17, 2015 by Kardwill
Posted September 17, 2015
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mystral: ...If you back a game on KS, you do so knowing that you might not get anything out of it, because there are no guarantees when it comes to creating games (or books, or paintings or anything where actual creativity is involved). Just look at how often publishers cancel games.

The developers might find that what they wanted to know is impossible, life might get in the way, in short many things could happen that would cause their game not to be delivered on time or at all.
If the state can fine them for it, what next? Are G.R.R. Martin fans going to sue him for taking so long to write books too?
I oppose this view. I don't feel like a consumer but I also don't see myself as a patron either. It's a middleground and it's important.

Not expecting anything at all is like opening the door wide to misuse. Even as it is, it will be hard to prove a misuse. But for example creating and sending a physical card set like in this case here is not impossible and no, life doesn't get in the way for a lot of other endeavours in life too. Just tell this line to your boss next time and see how well it is received.

If anything backers have a moral right to a good faith attempt to give something in return and to an honest explanation what went wrong in case something goes wrong.

In this case here the court decided that the creators made no attempt at all at fullfilling their end of the bargain and didn't even have the will to. I find it only fair that they have to do compensation and pay back the money. This is justice. If some creative minds who are not so determined to really work for the money are discouraged by this decision I would actually welcome it.

All they would have needed to do is creating some shitty cards and send them in order to partly fullfill their obligations. But they didn't. It might be an examplary case of refusal.

The GRRM example is badly chosen because he didn't got any money from anyone regarding future books. He is probably living well from the sales of his previous books. So this does not apply at all here. Of course his numerous fans really eagerly await the continuation and he probably knows that too. To every men this should be pressure enough.
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hedwards: ... The issue I haver with her KS is that she promised something that shouldn't have been produced and people gave her money to do it. ...
But wouldn't this also be kind of a problem with the people who gave her the money and less only with here? Maybe they wanted exactly what they got? And then, on what grounds would you forbid something like this. For example if I found enough people to support my video series about how to live on diet coke and mayonaise for a year (just an example) - why shouldn't people be able to support even the strangest or dumbest of ideas as long as they are within the laws?

It would be interesting to know what the backers of Women vs. Tropes now think about their backing.
Post edited September 17, 2015 by Trilarion
Posted September 17, 2015
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Trilarion: I oppose this view. I don't feel like a consumer but I also don't see myself as a patron either. It's a middleground and it's important.

Not expecting anything at all is like opening the door wide to misuse. Even as it is, it will be hard to prove a misuse. But for example creating and sending a physical card set like in this case here is not impossible and no, life doesn't get in the way for a lot of other endeavours in life too. Just tell this line to your boss next time and see how well it is received.
Well I don't have a boss, but I'm pretty sure if you get sick and can't complete a project he gave you to do on time, your boss can't fire you or sue you for it. At least in Europe.
By "life gets in the way" I didn't mean you simply decide to do something else for whatever reason, but rather something major preventing you from working.
With small teams, 1 person getting sick or needing to be replaced can prove a major roadblock to the completion of a project. That doesn't mean they should be sued.

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Trilarion: If anything backers have a moral right to a good faith attempt to give something in return and to an honest explanation what went wrong in case something goes wrong.
Moral right to it, sure. Legal right, not so much imo. Which is the whole issue.

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Trilarion: In this case here the court decided that the creators made no attempt at all at fullfilling their end of the bargain and didn't even have the will to. I find it only fair that they have to do compensation and pay back the money. This is justice. If some creative minds who are not so determined to really work for the money are discouraged by this decision I would actually welcome it.

All they would have needed to do is creating some shitty cards and send them in order to partly fullfill their obligations. But they didn't. It might be an examplary case of refusal.
I'm not saying that the people in this case didn't deserve to get punished, I'm just saying it creates a bad precedent, and since the US justice system relies on precedent, it could lead to a slippery slope imo.

I mean, the first few medical malpractice cases were probably very much justified. And now in the US some people sue their doctors for the slightest mistake, which costs doctors a lot of money they could probably put to better use.

I'm just saying if this kind of ruling becomes commonplace, it could put a huge barrier of entry to Kickstarter, where only people who are certain they can deliver (i.e. the bigger devs like Larian or Obsidian) will be able to use it safely.

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Trilarion: The GRRM example is badly chosen because he didn't got any money from anyone regarding future books. He is probably living well from the sales of his previous books. So this does not apply at all here. Of course his numerous fans really eagerly await the continuation and he probably knows that too. To every men this should be pressure enough.
Actually I'm pretty sure he gets an advance from his publisher for his books, and I know 1 person who pre-ordered his last book early and had to wait years for it. Of course in those cases, refunds are not an issue since there are actual contracts between the person providing the money and the one getting it, unlike kickstarter.
I bet there are some of his fans who wish they could sue him to force him to write faster though...

Anyway, this example wasn't meant to be taken seriously, I just used the first well-known artist fans are angry with that came to mind.
Posted September 17, 2015
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mystral: Of course in those cases, refunds are not an issue since there are actual contracts between the person providing the money and the one getting it, unlike kickstarter.
A sale, or any kind of monetary reward in exchange of a good or a service, IS a contract, even if no paperwork was involved. When I give 1 Euro to my baker, I enter an implicit contract with him, and he cannot decide to keep the money and not give me the bread. In the eye of the law , the contract does exist, and is legally binding. It's just more complicated to prove it if there was no paperworks.
Posted September 17, 2015
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mystral: Of course in those cases, refunds are not an issue since there are actual contracts between the person providing the money and the one getting it, unlike kickstarter.
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Kardwill: A sale, or any kind of monetary reward in exchange of a good or a service, IS a contract, even if no paperwork was involved. When I give 1 Euro to my baker, I enter an implicit contract with him, and he cannot decide to keep the money and not give me the bread. In the eye of the law , the contract does exist, and is legally binding. It's just more complicated to prove it if there was no paperworks.
In the case of Kickstarter though, there's an explicit disclaimer in the terms of use (that nobody reads as usual) that results are not guaranteed and that while creators should "make every reasonable effort" to complete their project, "there's a chance something could happen that prevents the creator from being able to finish the project as promised".

I'm not sure how legally binding that is, but backing something on KS is obviously not a sale or a pre-order. It's totally not the same thing as buying bread at your baker, so I'm not sure why you keep bringing up that analogy.
Posted September 17, 2015
In that post, the baker example was only to illustrate the fact that if you recieve money in payment for something, then a contract does exist, even if you didn't sign or write anything. It was just a response to your argument that there is no contract on KS. No real analogy, simply an extreme example, sorry if I was unclear.

For the disclaimer : Sure, it is there, but the thing is a disclaimer doesn't trump the law. Otherwise, we would see them all day long. And nowadays, the law tend to see crowdfunding as a hidden sale.
Posted September 17, 2015
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mystral: ... Moral right to it, sure. Legal right, not so much imo. Which is the whole issue. ...
Hmm, I'm not sure there. At least when I last backed a project on KS some years ago I had the impression after reading the terms of service how they were then that there is a legal obligation to fullfill the goals by the creators. Also this court case now seems to indicate that even now there is some kind of legal binding, otherwise how could the project owners ever have lost the case? From where do you take the certainty that there are no legal rights existing actually?

Anyway, if KS backing is without any legal rights I rather don't want to do it. I'm sorry for all the honest guys but I need a little bit of security too in this game. I want to be prevented of obvious misuse, otherwise I won't do it.

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Kardwill: ...the law tend to see crowdfunding as a hidden sale.
One could just create a project on KS and promise exactly ... nothing. Just say that you might create a game maybe or maybe not and ask for money explicitly stating that all the money could be lost in case something happens (basically whenever you lose interest or you fall in love or going fishing was more interesting or ...). That way if you still get the money you can be sure that law isn't going to hurt you.

If the backers are indeed fine with randomly failing projects there should be no problem to create a system within KS where people can throw money at backers without the law tackling them. Just skip the goals sections and exclusively talk about what could be if .... If you still get the money everything is fine.
Post edited September 17, 2015 by Trilarion
Posted September 17, 2015
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hedwards: ... The issue I haver with her KS is that she promised something that shouldn't have been produced and people gave her money to do it. ...
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Trilarion: But wouldn't this also be kind of a problem with the people who gave her the money and less only with here? Maybe they wanted exactly what they got? And then, on what grounds would you forbid something like this. For example if I found enough people to support my video series about how to live on diet coke and mayonaise for a year (just an example) - why shouldn't people be able to support even the strangest or dumbest of ideas as long as they are within the laws?

It would be interesting to know what the backers of Women vs. Tropes now think about their backing.
No argument there. I expected this kind of crap out of her so I didn't give her any money. The question about what the backers think is indeed an interesting question.

I'm guessing that a considerable portion of the backers are OK with it as this is basically exactly what she promised. I doubt very much that most of them regret giving the woman money.
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussionWashington state court the first court in the United States to have failed kickstarters pay back backers their money.(83 posts)(83 posts)
(83 posts)