Man, you nailed it.
As a developer of a VTT (Battlegrounds) who had to "rough it" before Kickstarter was a thing, who had to compete with dozens of both commercial apps and free apps, gambling everything on whether my risky commercial venture would succeed or fail, I have to admit I'm jealous of the VTTs that got Kickstarted. Especially the free ones. I mean, that's freaking BRILLIANT! Getting boatloads of money UP FRONT and then being able to claim FREE in your marketing, that's so rich. And it galls me when they put relatively basic features (e.g. hex grid support, drawing tools, support for playing cards, etc.) as Stretch Goals, and people shower them with money to unlock those things, when my software has had those features for years, developed at my expense.
PS: Sorry for the thread necromancy, I just stumbled across it now.