Pick on it because its a poor game, not because of how it is written. It shouldn't matter to the backers if the guy was learning to program (how many experienced programmers would be happy with $10k-expenses for 2 months work?), or what tools he used to get the job done, as long as it does what it says on the proverbial tin.
Actually, don't even pick on it because it's a poor game (and granted, it looks like one whopper of a poor game and I'm as shocked as anyone that this got funded). The magic of crowd funding is that decisions as to quality belong to the backers. They felt it was worthwhile, it's their money, so it's none of our business.
If it's fraud, then sure: Kickstarter would be on the hook for abetting it. If he promised something he didn't deliver, there's a problem. But this doesn't qualify. It's just a dud project. Projects fail regularly, that's why they can't easily raise money from investors.
>If it's fraud, then sure: Kickstarter would be on the hook for abetting it.
I'm not even sure that's the case, is it? They provide a platform, and take a cut, but I'd be a little surprised if that's enough to make them legally liable.
Surely they'd have some level of liability. Safe harbor rules from laws like the DCMA certainly wouldn't cover deliberate fraud. There would be enough to file a case, anyway. And if it was filed and not tossed out, they'd probably settle rather than risk all the bad press.
I don't know if they'd be liable, but they could take action that would reduce the possibility of this kind of thing happening.
One very helpful tool would be setting a community expectation of weekly updates from funding time to shipping time. They can't really enforce a rule like that since they have no leverage over the project people once the money is released, but they can certainly set the expectation that frequent updates are the rule, not the exception.
There are some cases where frequent updates may not make sense, but for the vast majority of projects, there's got to be some sort of news to share on a weekly basis. It's surely not too much to ask of project people that they spend a few minutes every week updating those who made their project possible.
If there's literally not any news to share, then maybe that project is in trouble, and that too would be communicated if the standard was for weekly updates and the project wasn't following that guideline.
Setting a standard along those lines is certainly better than the current state of affairs.
