I don't know how they'd handle that, but my guess is 'no'. And I actually would agree with that. If you want the extra goodie(s), you should pledge ahead of time to help with the development funding. That's what the extra incentives are there for: to entice people into funding the project.

Maybe in the case of GOG, they could bundle the soundtrack and other extras with Project Eternity, and then give the option to people who pick up the GOG copy at the higher kickstarter tiers to have a number of credits to spend on other games in the GOG catalog, or to include the Witcher series. This would allow GOG to maintain their complete-game ethos, but also assist in promoting their service by making buyers more invested.

Nah, there's no rush. Besides, if you claim people run to pledge right the instant an announcement is made, how do you explain the spike in last minute pledges?
You can literally draw no conclusion on the matter, other than a very, very rough guess.

According to Kicktraq, there's been an extra ~$11,000 of pledges so far today compared to yesterday.

Just came here to mention that. Every day since the Kickstarter started made less money than the day before ... until they announced the DRM-free version; I doubt that's a coincidence. On the other hand, of course, compared to the $1.69 million they'd already earned, $11,000 ain't much.

The bigger question is how many people would pick the GOG version over that of Steam's if given a choice? I wonder if Obsidian could include questions in their order form to help assess what people are going to do?

The choice is already there. If you've made a pledge which qualifies you for a digital copy, you'll be asked in a questionnaire after the drive ends if you want a GOG copy or a Steam copy. If you've pledged for more than one digital copy, you get to pick the mix of Steam and GOG copies you receive.

If they add any more distributors, I imagine it'll work in exactly the same fashion.

It is gonna be pretty hard to decide, to be honest.
In other things, such as Grimrock, when bought from the devs, one gets both a drm-free installer and the steam key, which is neat because offering both is useful, but if I have to decide which one that is pretty hard haha.
On Witcher 2 I ended up choosing gog, but honestly I will have to wait more to see what happens with this one. If in the end the extras on the 35 bucks tier are limited in time for downloads from obsidian directly, there is no question that I would choose gog for that since that would be kind of a dick move.

In my view:

1. But for the announcement of DRM-free release, the pledges today would have been lower than yesterday.
2. Historically, in the absence of any announcements or significant exposure, pledges tend halve each subsequent day until they hit some kind of steady level.
3. We won't know what that level will be in this kickstarter for a while - I suspect it will be around $20k per day.
4. There has been an increase today in pledges as a result of the announcement of a DRM free version.
5. That increase has not been particularly significant - maybe around $50k, which compared to the $1.6 mill already pledged is not huge.
6. There may be other people in the future who will pledge later because the game is DRM free but we will have no way of knowing this for sure.
7. Given the kicktraq figures I would not be surprised at some point in the future for someone to release a steam only game on the basis that there just isn't enough financial incentive to release a DRM free option - sure people want it, but they are willing to buy the game anyway.

That's just my thoughts

GoG, no question. I'm glad they ironed things out so fast.

You are right. Figures that I would miss the obvious...

Interestingly (or not), if you look at the number of new backers who signed up today, it's less than the number of new backers who signed up yesterday--even though they made more money today than yesterday. So whatever it's doing, providing the DRM-free option doesn't seem to be attracting a whole bunch of new people; but either the new people it does attract are willing to pay more, or it's causing a bunch of previous backers to increase their amount.

I think it's the latter, mostly.

One possibility is that Obsidian fulfills a niche among RPG gamers, so people would be willing to buy, despite the presence of Steam. That is why it is important to see from which distributor that people download their games from, because we can't tell from sales alone. It is the downloads, not the sales.

I just heard about this project today, so, naturally, I had a holy-mackeral-take-my-moniez-nao response and pledged almost automatically.

I think the fact that a company has good name recognition goes a long way on Kickstarter campaigns.


-Khalaq