Set a standard. Say once a month for a minimum. If you don't have something to say to your backers once a month I have to wonder if you are placing the proper priority on the project.
If projects don't meet that standard, turn their page amber or something similar. A big visual sign that the project is not meeting the standard. If it goes 3 months with no update turn it red. Make it stand out. Make people feel some pressure to communicate.
In the end, it's best for Kickstarter to push projects to better relationships with the backers.
This can be built into the cost of the Kickstarter project, and for projects $100K and above, believe it to be completely reasonable.
But yes, they are basically trying to present it as a marketplace they have no control over, to avoid liability and getting themselves regulated by the SEC/others.
Whether this is going to be effective, I actually tend to agree with you and think it won't, but it's almost certainly why they are doing it.
"Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?
Yes. Kickstarter's Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. We crafted these terms to create a legal requirement for creators to follow through on their projects, and to give backers a recourse if they don't. We hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill."
It also cites this image: https://ksr-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/creator-responsibility.p... which I think describes this situation pretty well.
_BUT_… It's clear from this same situation playing out every week or so, that at least some project owners and certainly Kickstarter themselves are not doing nearly enough to make that clear up front. There are clearly _many_ people who, in spite of words like "Pledge" and "project" and "funding" and "reward", still have expectations that the transaction is a sale - and they then post using language like " I 'paid' for my 'order' and my 'product' hasnt arrived!"
I love the idea of "crowdfunding", but I think it needs to be much better understood as closer to a "donation" or "speculative investment" than a "sale".
The problem is with project creators who offer rewards that they aren't able to provide when the project funds, usually because they are promising rewards that include the output of the project when they are funding development rather than production.
Given KS's terms of service, creators risk substantial liability to backers when they do that; the better model would either be to offer rewards that don't depend on project success for development, or use Kickstarter to fund up-front production costs after development is complete and offer rewards that include the project output; there's no reason the same project couldn't do both, using two different Kickstarters, starting with one for development and followed -- once development is complete -- with one for production.
1) legality with respect to sales tax law: If Kickstarter actually requires that a good is shipped when money is given (the statement I was responding to with this comment), then this difference is barely even academic: it is just a way to do an end run around sales tax law, and I don't think it is one that most places would tolerate well (although enforcement on that sort of thing is slow and spotty).
2) terms of service on credit cards regarding pre-ordering: No, if you are giving Gamestop $60 to hold on to until a product is shipped, and you do this with a credit card, this is in violation of their agreements with companies like Visa. These requirements (obviously) flow through if you use third-party payment networks that, themselves, are based on the usage of credit cards by the end customer.
In fact, this is sufficiently true, that your example is actually wrong to begin with... Gamestop doesn't even do that, because (as I said) if they did they would be in violation. They have a page in the help section of their website where they go over this topic in specific.
http://www.gamestop.com/gs/help/Pre-orders.aspx
"""Your credit card will be charged only when your order is processed. In some cases, we will process your order and authorize your credit card up to 10 days before the release of the product. This allows us to get the product to you faster."""
In essence, they are taking your credit card number ahead of time, but they are not actually billing you; it is only when the product is actually pretty much available that they do the authorization on the card. Even then, I bet they are doing only an "authorization", and performing the "capture" when they ship: they do the authorization ahead of time to make certain there is time to deal with delays, mistakes, or simply a long queue, and then can do the capture quickly when they go to ship.
Then these agreements are utterly meaningless. Preordering via credit card is hardly a new concept.
As another cool example: if you were lucky enough to go to Google I/O this year, they were taking "per-orders" of Google Glass; however, as they are not allowed to take money via credit cards in advance of shipment (and as you can't delay a capture for more than a month or something after the authorization), they were forced to just take name and email addresses down at the event.
This cost me $60 about 3 months ago.
I've got the statement open, literally, right in front of me, and it shows a $60 charge from that store. I had to walk in and cough up the sales tax on launch day. I've got that charge right in front of me too.
The issue is that you cannot always issue a refund after $period, where $period ranges anywhere from 60-180+ days depending on dozens of different factors (three or four different banks, your payment gateway, various data retention policies, card expiration, and more).
Unlike raising a seed round, for example, it's rather impractical to give (remaining?) money back if you realize the project is not going anywhere after six months or a year.
Suffice to say, there's a reason that Kickstarter has started to clamp down on projects with a higher likelihood of failures and is outright blocking certain categories.
That question in the FAQ is new. It wasn't present when this project was funded [4].
Does any of this make a difference? Legally?
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter%20basics#IsA...
[2] http://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use
[3] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/guidelines?utf8=%E2%9C%9...
[4] http://web.archive.org/web/20110522104147/http://www.kicksta...
The communication issue is, agreed, his own worst enemy.
Yeah sure, I'm definitely believing that in two months (just for an example) you are going to address every problem that has arisen.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/28/the-kickstarter-s...
People really want to support Alex and this endeavor. They're willing to make sacrifices. They just want clarity, and I don't think that's asking too much.
Kickstarter is not a rewards preordering system. You're not giving money expecting to see your reward show up on your doorstep "soon".
I'm not a backer, just sympathetic to the situation on both sides, but an obligation is just that.
In the faq you linked, here's a choice quote:
>It's not uncommon for things to take longer than expected. Sometimes the execution of the project proves more difficult than the creator had anticipated. If a creator is making a good faith effort to complete their project and is transparent about it, backers should do their best to be patient and understanding while demanding continued accountability from the creator.
So backers should be patient and not threaten lawsuits because the project is taking too long.
While I agree with that completely, there's two different sorts of deliverables promised as rewards - the actual project output, which as you point out may only be delayed and not cancelled, but also the "trinkets". If he's really run out of money without having already paid for the tshirts and usb keys (and if it were me, probably also the "special packaging" promised for some rewards), then I think he's done something _very_ foolish.
Disclaimer: I work for Teespring, and pretty much all we do is automate this sort of thing (so I may be biased).