jgsugden
Legend
Look at the example again. It is actually a pretty common scenario where there isn't fraud. Basically, you just need to have an organizer that feels entitled to the money as it rolls in and an organizer that underestimated the challenges they'd face. The ven diagram between people that place a high value on themselves and the people with the confidence to run a KS has a lot of overlap. The ven diagram between people that are willing to organize a KS and the people that can reasonably predict the challenges is not so high on the overlap.That's a pretty extreme scenario involving serious pre-planned fraud; I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that Kickstarter has a fraud problem any greater than the rest of the world does. Generally, I believe things going wrong is almost always the most likely explanation.
I've backed about 100 KS and have seen shaded of this several times. Some asked for more funds. Some didn't fully deliver. A few are in limbo now. Almost 10% of the ~100 things I've backed over the last decade failed to fully deliver and each blamed it on underestimating their challenges.
Blacklist Games. They had horrible track records for the people involved, did not exposre / hid those track records and gathered a lot of support for many campaigns - all of which are in jeopardy of not being delivered (and one of which is being rescued only through additional funding and efforts by QML). There are a lot of 'first time' Kickstarters that promise a lot, look good - and generate a lot of money, especially in RPG and board game worlds.There's one major thing that stops this. Such an LLC enters the space as a complete unknown. There can be no names anyone recognizes involved, and no history of success. Which means the project is unlikely to garner significant funding.
Diemension Games ran their first KS in 2016. It raised $1.4 million from 9500 backers (an average of ~$150 per backer). It had 160+ minis (or more). They facd a lot of delays on top of a very slow promised delivery, but they're another example of places with no track records that get a lot of money.
Not every KS gets the $ - but if you put together a pretty enough picture, you can - even if the picture is more illusion than substance.