Star Citizen: A cautionary tale of Kickstarter and crowdfunding

Kickstarter – at its core – is a brilliant idea (and I wish I’d thought of it first). Creating a funding platform to literally allow anyone to bring an idea to fruition by asking for – essentially – seed capital and investors en masse via crowdfunding is truly appealing in every sense of the word. Originally a stronghold of new inventions, gadgets, and apparel, it quickly spread into the entertainment industry as well, with hobbyist game developers, auteur filmmakers, and first time writers given the chance to use crowdfunding to breathe life into their creations.

Star Citizen first appeared on the Kickstarter platform way back in 2012 and was hailed as the next great space simulation game. The campaign was started by Chris Roberts – one of the grand masters of the genre – who created the legendary Wing Commander series while working at Origin Systems. While these might be unfamiliar to non-gamers, anyone who played computer and console games in the 80s and 90s would recognize each name as a juggernaut of the industry.

Without going into specifics, this is the equivalent of Steven Spielberg asking for money to make Montana Miles, a new franchise centered around an ace paleontologist and all around tough guy roughneck adventurer who maybe had a run in or two with certain historical societies while pursuing artifacts from an ancient and forgotten world.

Ol’ Steve is definitely gonna get backers. To really set this up, imagine he asked for money in the late 80s. That’s the kind of perfect storm situation we’d have here.

Star Citizen managed to bring in over $2.1 million from nearly 35,000 backers at its inception, and the fervor and excitement was high. This was due to the pedigree of those involved in the project and the fact that a massive space sim had not seen release in several years (the video game industry – like many others – goes through cycles, with certain properties and genres fading into and out of popularity). Fans eagerly donated, and it reached its original $500K goal quickly, with 9 people contributing $10,000 each and another 19 pledging $5,000.

Since then, additional crowdfunding was conducted by giving fans the option to buy ships and other digital goods to be used in-game, bringing the total to $339 million in the past 10 years (accounting for pre-production and other planning that was done prior to the Kickstarter campaign).

Backing up for a second, consider that I just said 10 years. Which doesn’t sound too bad until you consider that the game is still not out and has no projected release date. If you go to their website, you can be directed to their Pledge Store to purchase ships and other items for a game that isn’t even done, and last released new public material way back in 2015. A side project meant to appease and entice backers – Squadron 42 – just announced its own delay.

And the developers have more or less given no reassurance or updated timelines. The prevailing theory is that this is the result of feature creep, but even this has sparked a number of heated discussions and angry denial from the developers.

Understandably, gamers are angry, and are (perhaps justifiably) lashing out (I won’t link to Reddit or any other forums, but it’s easy to sniff these out). There’s even a (hilarious) Imgur repository of broken promises and failed deliverables against a backdrop of developer feel-good rhetoric. At least one lawsuit has been filed.

Let me take a moment here to say that the gaming industry is no stranger to delays, and has also seen games be released in broken states. The biggest recent example is Sony pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from its digital storefront and offering refunds. Cyberpunk 2077 is the biggest and most anticipated game at the moment, but has been delayed countless times, suffered numerous glitches, crashes, is otherwise unplayable on console platforms (both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One), and been called a disaster.

Let’s not even go into talking about the legacy of delayed games, which stretches from Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever, No Man’s Sky (though it should be noted that Hello Games has worked tirelessly to rectify the game’s original dismal state against its many, many promises)… The list goes on.

But we’re getting a little off course here by looking at traditionally funded games (even if there are dozens of problems there too). In terms of pure Kickstarter-funded debacles? There’s lots of examples, including DoubleFine’s Broken Age (famous for being the first major game to be crowdfunded and a story in and of itself), SpaceVenture (now over seven years late), and whatever it was that Yogscast game was trying to do (relevant because this was one of the biggest Youtube groups at the time). What about when backers paid for the Oculus Rift, only to have it purchased
outright by Facebook before it was even released to backers?

There’s too many fascinating and infuriating rabbit holes to go through.

So let’s talk about Kickstarter directly for a bit, because if we’re going to play the blame game (hah!), then we certainly need to consider their participation. As it stands, Kickstarter continues to operate with almost no oversight, and has remained a silent and invisible actor throughout these failures. In effect, they are a neutral third party.

Even worse, Kickstarter themselves say that a creator is under zero obligation to complete their project, and relies heavily on the fact that each and every crowdfunding campaign functions in a benefit of the doubt construct. If a creator reaches funding and is never heard from again, Kickstarter maintains that not only will they not pursue any kind of legal action, but doubles down on blaming the investing audience by stating that they knew the risks upfront. Put bluntly: Kickstarter has a very convenient excuse that “art works by different rules.”

In almost all instances, this has resulted in incomplete and abandoned projects, often fueled by lies, deception, and fraud. And yet, Kickstarter has dodged any and all liability, and it’s unlikely that backers can easily exercise any kind of legal action. A similar situation would be taking a contractor to court over an unfinished job, but having no way to actually enforce restitution even under a favorable judgement.

This doesn’t even take into account that there’s a chance of a rogue backer voicing so much dissatisfaction that they sue a company into bankruptcy. Sure, this sounds like reasonable punishment, is entirely legal, and conceivably is well within the rights of that person. But even so, does the blame lie with an inexperienced creator, impossibly high standards set by a (debatably unreasonable) customer, or with Kickstarter being an enabler?

The lofty goals of Kickstarter set against this backdrop of numerous pitfalls suddenly tarnishes its efficacy and integrity, exacerbated by a laundry list of what ifs and potentialities. There’s simply too many legal issues to navigate when it comes to crowdfunding.

I’m not even going to start going into more examples of failed Kickstarter projects, outright scams, and other clear cut bits of fraud and swindling.

Real quick, I want to mention a few other things – similar crowdfunding platforms such as Indiegogo have the same issues, GoFundMe is not without its own controversies, and Valve’s digital marketplace Steam gives developers the same loophole via its Early Access program by allowing them to keep a game in a forever-limbo state.

So I guess the lesson here is that all of these crowdfunding platforms should be treated with a similar attitude you might have when playing the lottery. At the least, try to vet the creator beforehand, as there are certainly viable companies that have run successful campaigns in the past. I encourage you to read user comments on a campaign’s page, research the company in question (have they put out successful products previously?), and be financially ready to lose the money you might put into a shiny new hypothetical.