Ouya is cute. I think I'd have loved it (I never had a console), except they decided to charge +40% of the price for a second color while having collected enough money to complete the project ten times over in ten different colors complete with r&d, parts, infrastructure, delivery and whatnot. That's pretty much the definition of bad faith, and I backed out immediately.

It's completely bait and switch they get funding on the basis of having a completely open platform where all the games have a free version and then they change it drastically after the fact.

Whether or not it was realistic is beside the point, that was their basis for asking people for money. And at the time they didn't even have a controller or game store prototype ready.

Sorry, you just don't understand what bait and switch means. It's a reference to tricking customers (usually by way of advertisements) into visiting a store to buy an item at a discount ("the bait") and then when they arrive, they are pressured into buying a different item at a more expensive price ("the switch"). It has a particular legal meaning. That isn't what happened here.

What you are actually referring to is misrepresentations as to future conduct which is fine (as its generally accepted the the future is uncertain). In some jurisdictions it is a requirement that there be a reasonable basis for making that representation, which would not be difficult to prove here.

Edit: Apologies if the above sounds snarky. People misusing legal or quasi legal terms is a pet hate of mine.

Pet peeve and tthat's the term that folks use. What you're arguing there is purely semantics. They advertised a product and then they changed to product after the fact in such a way as to eliminate major benefits from buying the product. Bait and switch doesn't just apply to price, although that's the most common situation. The reason for that has more to do with the fact that it's traditionally rare to sell things that haven't yet been produced.

I sure some people use the term "pet peeve" others use "pet hate"

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/pet-hate

It's not a purely semantic argument, quite the opposite. It is important to define what the issue is because different causes of action have completely different elements that need to be proven, completely different defences that can be legitimately raised and completely different remedies. That said, I am more than happy for you to argue that what has happened is "bait and switch", it's pretty funny actually :)

Removed the stupid share button thing. Sorry it was an issue. I just added it yesterday and didn't properly test it. Creator of Kickscammed here...

I do not add anything to the Knowledge Base of the site without properly investigating. Only projects that have completely failed to deliver get added to the "official" database. Everything else is submitted by users in the projects section.

I don't understand your attitude towards consumer entitlement. That's an actual thing. Kickstarter guarantees that all their projects MUST deliver rewards. It's not an investment platform, there is (supposed to be) ZERO risk in backing a project. When I give $250 to someone and they promise me a reward guaranteed to be fulfilled by Kickstarter's terms, I expect said reward. It's not about being angsty, it's about standing up for your rights as a consumer and not letting people take advantage of a platform that was meant for good.

Man that made me laugh.

This is why people hate lawyers.

Yes, this is a completely semantic argument to make. They took money for something that was a more desirable offer than they could provide. Hence the use of the term bait and switch. From some digging into it, you're fixated on only one form of bait and switch where others are more closely related to the example.

I'm so glad now that I never backed the OUYA kickstarter. I was a bit miffed at the time that I didn't have the spare cash to back it, but that must've been fate protecting me from making a terrible mistake - LOL!

But there have been many other examples of kickstarter disasters, or people who used it for fraud in other categories. A couple of ones that I know about are Defiance Games who launched a kickstarter for a new range of miniatures:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/defiancegames/28mm-power-armor-hardsuits-defiance-games

What those pledging didn't realise was that it was Tony Reidy that was in charge of it, and he has something of a bad rep in that industry for not delivering on goods or promises, blaming others and keeping all the money. So much so that people now call him Tony "the bobble-headed Jesus" Reidy because he's something of a joke that can't be trusted. Sadly, those that pledged on his KS didn't know about that and so got stung by him.

Another example is of John Campbell, who had the following KS:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/73258510/sad-pictures-for-children

He pretty much pissed on everyone who pledged for his project. He failed to deliver most of his pledge rewards, used all manner of excuses like faking depression for sympathy, and then, as a middle finger to his pledgers, showed a video of him burning all the books he should have sent out. To cap all of that, he then suggested that people should be glad to pay his living expenses!

So you have to careful what projects you back on kickstarter, because there really are some tools around.

That's good advice for everything you spend monies on, not only kickstarter.

No? It's pretty simple. I've acknowledged that there are a few good pieces of information on the site. But go to the Projects page right now, 7pm eastern time, and after the first project in the list, the next three are all "I didn't like what I got, so it's a scam" or "even though there have been updates often and recently it's all very late and so it's a scam" when the terms of use for Kickstarter are really quite plain that neither of those things counts. My problem is not with your knowledge base. It's with what most everyone else is posting.

Kickstarter is a platform where you give someone money so they can invest in infrastructure and produce something - a good, a service, whatever. That's literally investment capital, and if you want to argue that there's such a thing as a risk-free investment, we're not seeing eye-to-eye on what investment is. Kickstarter requires a best-effort to get things completed on time, and requires that failed projects offer refunds; but there's no timeline restriction for refunds being offered, which should clue in most anyone who bothers to actually read the terms of the contract into which they're entering. I have no data for this bet, but I'd wager that a lot of people - maybe even a majority - go in on projects without reading the terms of use. These are the people who then complain about how they didn't get what they wanted and it's no fair. Ignorance is no excuse.

Using your - probably accurate - number of $1.5million, successful projects that fail to deliver represent a little over a tenth of one percent of funds collected by kickstarter. That's about a 99.9% success rate, which is probably better than most of us do climbing stairs *sober*. So what's my attitude about consumer entitlement? It's that there's a pretty clear concept involved here - if you want something risk-free, buy it from a store that stocks it and offload that risk onto whatever carrier you're using. But if you want to get in early on a new thing, get a discount on it, whatever, then you have to realize that there are risks inherent in things that haven't happened yet, and it's not a scam to sometimes lose your bet.

Hahahaha, still not bait and switch and still ignoring the way the law actually responds to these kind of issues. Not looks like you are getting a *little* closer though!

In my opinion, the biggest problem with lawyers is that they have to work with the law, which is flawed. People on the internet, however, can just shout "bait and switch" and ignore the law :)

Well I think that's where we agree to disagree. Kickstarter is not an investment platform. Funding does not equal investment. I'm not "investing" anything to them, i.e. there's no loss to me. When a company asks for investment in the non-crowdfunding arena they cannot guarantee return on investment.

Creators agree in a legal contract with KS to fulfill all rewards. Now those terms are cleverly crafted without dates and without consequences, but that's kind of the point of my site. I wanted to point out to KS that people are taking advantage of their lack of specificity and at some point it's going to come around and bit them in ass.

Outside of that, I wanted to create a really bad SEO precedent for any of the scam creators in case they try to start a new business or scam someone else.

Source criticality, please.

I noted a lot of Amazon.co.uk adds meanwhile, on this site.

Failure is possible, but, I think the more interesting question is how passionate financing could transcend fan-boy-girl franchise into subordinated loan scheme.

I think for computer games, a lot of us passionate fans are rather fine with the rewards relating to getting the game out and developed, maybe some physical or electronic reward.

But what about un-reputable (unknown) developers with good ideas, or maybe movie type of projects?

I think KcikStarter (that has rather a high cost of financing) or a bank should kick it up a notch, and think how to come up with a syndicated subordinate loan or bond type of offering, i.e. proper debt instrument that has lower or higher priority amongst debtors or even equity, yet also has either a maturity or a clearly defined claim to assets upon dissolution.

Iron Sky the movie I think was not very nice to crowd funders.