just checked hanfree thingy... whats wrong with a stick and some duct-tape?

While i don't totally agree with everything written here, why was this post down rated? As for the 440 backers, what are there legal rights on getting there money back?

Bad planning.
Im not sure why people even suggest getting their money back since in reality its a 'donation' not an investment. People realise when donating there is a chance the project may never complete for any reason. Geez

Kickstarter is ridiculous anyway, as it asks consumers to bear investment risk, without investment reward.

I'm personally not bothered about the downrating. I said my piece about what I think of Kickstarter as a concept and that's it. If Kickstarter fanboys wish to be immature about it and downrate, that's fine by me. My life isn't going to take a turn for the worse because my GOG rep dropped a couple of points.

As for the legal rights, that's a tricky one. When Kickstarter started, it was a purely non-binding thing, which meant that backers had absolutely no rights. Since that time, they've issued a statement disavowed any responsibility for failures to deliver, but at the same time have required project developers to agree to a statement declaring that they may face legal action for failing to deliver.

What's got me is the fact that all of the backers have received notifications of the backruptcy proceedings, so Quest obviously did the right thing and provided these names and addresses to the bankruptcy administrator. A lot of it depends on the honesty of the project manager; there is no automatic right. If you get a less honest project manager who just takes the money and runs, you can forget ever claiming the money back. And if, like the vast majority of people, you contribute $40, $50, $60, you will likely find that trying to claim the money back is going to cost you more than you contributed in the first place.

I never really saw the point of kickstarters, and now I see it even less. It is like a risky investment where you have only the risks, not actual rewards (anymore than those who just buy the damn product if and when it finally gets to the market, without any risk).

A bit like preordering a game, without even knowing if you'll ever get the game. I knew there was a reason why this kind of activity is illegal here.

If I make a risky investment to some product that is still in the planning stage, I expect to be able to get profit from it, if it is successful. But to each his own, of course.

Back to watching Dragon's Den...

I'm really disturbed by the fact your post got downrepped, but I really think you're missing the point there. Orcish said it best right here – it's not a pre-purchase, it's not an investment, it's good old patronage. A concept that has worked for centuries and which has produced some of the best works of art ever created. An artist doesn't have money, but I do, and I wish to see what the artist could do with it. I scratch his back and he scratches mine. End of story.

The fact that Kickstarter became a big fashionable bubble and that a lot of people use it in an entirely wrong way, well, that's not really Kickstarter's fault, is it? The concept is still perfectly sound.

I wouldn't dream of backing anything proposed by a random guy off the street, but the likes of Tim Schafer, Jane Jensen and Chris Avellone? Any time.

Yes, except to say $1 million (in my experience) is usually indicated as $1,000,000 rather than $1.000.000. Which to me comes across looking like 1 dollar, rather than 1 million dollars. I wasn't really talking about decimal points so much as ,s being used to break up large sums. From where I grew up decimal points were only used in terms of if change exists, such as $9,999.99. Now there it could be (and sounds like it is) taught differently. I am just speaking from how I learned it in economics dealing with dollars in Canadian and in American currencies.

As for Ultima IX; I do realize the politics behind why it became such a colossal piece of garbage, however, that doesn't negate the fact it resulted in being a colossal piece of garbage. I'm with you on that, I would have loved to have seen U9 be released as it was ORIGINALLY designed. I guess that's EAs gift of (almost) everything they touch turning to shit.
Well, I think it's more of a pre-purchase rather than a pre-order. I actually have pre-purchased/pre-ordered things a bout a year in advance. Though in those cases they were hand made items. Either way, I retained the receipt/confirmation order in case I need it. I admit the device is not some peoples cup of tea, but for what it costs I figured I'd give it a chance. It wouldn't be the worst investment I've made with my money.

I don't give a frell one way or another about this particular project, nor whether or not these schmucks have experience..

However, if you're gonna tell someone their google fu is weak and they need better fact checking, you aught to bring in some evidence to support that.

Fair play - if it's a renowned developer with a reputation to lose, then yes, it's certainly more trustworthy than the majority of the mass of no-name Kickstarters. But these high-visibility ones are a minority. There are literally hundreds of Kickstarters there, some with absolutely no work finished, others with convincing looking concept art and videos of alpha builds, and yet there is no way to tell if these people are genuine, or whether this has all been put together just to get the money and run.

I do agree with Orcish in that patronage in general is a worthy concept, but at the same time, I still maintain that the problem with Kickstarter is that it makes it far too easy to look serious while not actually being serious, and I can't agree that the concept of online patronage is sound. It's a concept that screams "abuse me".

If Kickstarter is to become a serious concept, then it needs to move away from the trust model and actually establish formal contracts between the backers and creators, or it'll become nothing more than a magnet for scammers and con-artists.

I don't see how anyone could see this as $1. There's no numerical representation in which 1.000.000 would represent 1. I never even noticed it was dots rather than commas.

Many countries use '.' as the numerical separator. See this Wikipedia page.

Yes, I absolutely see your point there. But I'm not entirely sure if regulating it somehow is the right way. There will always be con artists abusing anything they even remotely can. They're a creative bunch.

It's probably tied to a much deeper issue, which is educating the general public on trustworthiness and quality of information found on the internet. And, well, that's a huge problem we're currently facing, and it's only getting bigger.

I like trust-based models. But yeah, they tend to not work once you open the floodgates to the world.

How are these better models? Certainly they're useless in many fields outside software, and you do realise that shareware requires the developer to field the entire cost of the project. It's merely a method of selling products, not funding them, and is pretty useless these days for games since they have so many sale venues. That's why you don't see shareware games.

Well, gas has decimal place for points of a cent, so that is how it came across to me when I initially looked at it. And as I stated I've never seen it done as such, I wasn't saying he was wrong, which is why I used "in my experience". If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, it's not really a big deal. I put "which to me comes across looking like 1 dollar..." Keep in mind also where I am is rather late/early and I haven't slept yet so I'm a little on the over tired side. But, as I said, If i'm wrong then I'm wrong and no big deal.