Over 1,000 backers were confirmed robbed on Kickstarter after waiting for over a year for the release of a video game they were promised, which never materialized. We are going to lay out why backers should have been more cautious.
Back in 2013, a company called Golgom Games launched a Kickstarter campaign for a game called Mansion Lord.
The game is all about running your own murder mystery mansion (a mystery, yes, how ominous). It was not the best-looking game in terms of gameplay and the overall experience, but the campaign had 1,104 backers who pledged to $30,788.
We're guessing the draw here was the fact that the game was one of those many 16 bit titles. The nostalgia may have been too much to resist for these supporters to the point where they didn't even realize Golgom Games didn't have a single contact information.
Fast forward to 2015 and Mansion Lord is nowhere to be found. The same can be said for the developers. They got up and ran away with over $30,000, and no one knows what went down.
The only lead found was the name of the owner of the website, Michael Wong.
The backers chose to donate their money to a suspicious company on Kickstarter—plain and simple.
No one should give money to any company unless there are solid benefits outside of free gifts and possibly having dinner with the CEO.
Before the days of these crowdfunding websites, when a person poured his or her money into a company or its projects, the person was deemed an investor who was bound to get a return should the company find success.
These days, however, when people give money to companies to help fund the next big thing, it is seen merely as a donation, and millions are eating it up.
How can a person believe it is a good idea to give money to a company, then sit back and watch the guys and girls behind it make loads of cash due to donations or selling out?
For these "donors," the only incentive they will get is version 1.0 of the product and probably a badly made T-shirt.
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