…if one suspects that a Kickstarter total is being manipulated at the last minute in order to get it to fund? I mean, I want the final product, and I have no proof that there are shenanigans going on. Still, other people may not be as utilitarian about the results as I am.
Moe Lane
PS: I’m not saying which one, and I’m not going to confirm and/or deny any guesses, either.
Do? Absent strong suspicion of criminal fraud in the offing, nothing at all. (If you suspect epic incompetence, of course, withdrawing your pledge is the thing to do.)
“Last-minute angels,” some of them corporately affiliated with the Kickstarter organizer and some unaffiliated (except possibly by friendship, blood, etc) are so common as to be nearly routine. As long as the project funds and delivers (within, say, a year or two), nobody from Kickstarter HQ on down to Joe Tchotchke-Buyer cares who put it over the top.
Yeah, it’s not unusual to see late surges. Especially if it’s already close to the goal. I’ve even bumped my pledge up to help the push.
Yeah, you guys are probably right.
It would be harder to guess which one you were referring to, if you hadn’t posted about it a couple of days ago. 😉
I’m surprised that one made it, too. I looked at it with a few hours to go, and thought that there was no way it was going to clear the threshold.
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In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
That was a pretty major undertaking for the company, involving significant up-front costs. If the Kickstarter failed, they’d have to eat those. But if they had some financing lined up, they could cover the shortfall in crowdfunded VC without taking on a metric buttload of debt. If they had a sense of humor about it, they could even name the shell donor OPM*.
I think this is commonly done as long as the KS got reasonably close to the goal. [shrug] I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.
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But yeah, as long as you get what you wanted, at the price you agreed to pay, who cares? (Which doesn’t help those that donated to Clang!, granted. Caveat Emptor.)
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*Classical Reference.