Holy shit! I've never seen a Kickstarter with its own "Terms and Conditions", especially one that basically says "If you don't confirm your pledge within 8 weeks of us emailing you, you have effectively forfeited your reward. We MAY ship to you if you miss the date or we MAY refund you, but it is just as likely we'll tell you to go screw."
They KNOW your basic order. They KNOW what you pledged for. They most certainly can fulfill that, but they have just stated they may choose not to. Because.
Customer service seems to be a foreign concept with these people. If this was a brick and mortar store would you buy anything from them with this warm and engaging attitude that they have towards their customers?
Yep, the Rifts® Board Game Kickstarter. The gift that keeps on giving...
Thanks to Impact Miniatures for pointing this out with a comment to the prior post.
PS - I still need to look at todays comments on the KS...
The Palladium group of backers are very vocal. I can see why Carmen is taking this action. Any small change will result of fingers being pointed, and names being called. Hell he's already attempted suicide over the comments that were made on the last Palladium Kickstarter, and this isn't even a Palladium kickstarter.
ReplyDeleteI've met Carmen, he's a decent guy. This game looks pretty awesome if it pans out. I'm just not going to back it because I don't like to tie up money for that long without anything to show for it. Backing board games is a lot different than RPGs where they can actually get you something like a PDF to get you by until the final product comes out. Hell, the Fate Core Kickstarter is still paying out, years later.
There are a lot of trolls on this Kickstarter, and I think the chances of "them" derailing it is more of a possibility.
Actually I've seen the requirement to confirm within a certain time frame in at least one other miniatures-based Kickstarter (but unfortunately I've forgotten which one). It's actually sensible boiler plate in a way if you use BackerKit or a similar mechanism to collect post-KS funds. If you don't pay the fees in the BackerKit, you might not get your reward for supporting the project.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the Kickstarter central office folk think of all this? (The RRT angry mob has been very vocal with their intent to report anything any everything dubious about this one to Kickstarter, so they can't not know.)
ReplyDeleteSome aspects of this read like a sneaky-sneaky attempt to try and work around Kickstarter's Terms of Service. For instance, the ToS very clearly says that you either deliver what was promised, or you give a refund, but the "no reward or refund if you're late getting back to us, unless we decide otherwise" seems to subvert that.
For that matter, the first paragraph seems incredibly broad. If the "look, materials, and content of the reward" can change, what *isn't* covered by that? More or less everything. They could post someone a hex-and-chit wargame drawn on scrap paper, or e-mail them a file with a PDF of the rules and print-out paper minis, or whatever and still claim that they've delivered on the Kickstarter. Hell, they could even part ways from KS and Palladium and drop the entire RIFTS theme and still claim that they can still deliver.
I would send this off to Luke over at Kickstarter and see if he even knows about this. Luke Crane is the head of games at Kickstarter. He may have an answer
ReplyDeleteDon't Look at the Comments Ray!
ReplyDeleteThis is just a way to get out of another fiasco if things go South again. Kevin, err Carmen, thinks they can damage control a bad outcome with some BS "I told you so in the terms and conditions".
ReplyDelete"If"?
DeleteYou know, I would have accepted this term rather than the one for Massive Darkness, the KS I backed with Cool Mini Or Not. They blamed late pledges for making them be late. As a result, they pushed things back by two months. If they had hit their targets, I should have had the game by last month, and I'm just hoping that with shipping and everything I get it next month. Having idiots who don't respond to the surveys is kind of sensitive to me right now.
ReplyDeleteThis one has more red flags than the Kremlin in 1980. Don't come crying if you pledge for this and get taken.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this has anything to do with Carmen. This is Kevin slapping legal of this to cover himself. He is a pro at this. Especially after their last kickstarter hes gonna make sure hes cover six ways to sunday. Internet/legal wise Kevin is a draconian, well dick. As a person and a creative entity, he is a good person. The legal gets in the way outside of personal interaction.
ReplyDeleteThat's certainly plausible. Based on the latest update it certainly sounds to me like Carmen would look to Kevin for advice on the legal side at the very least, and would probably play along if Kevin said "hey, you need to put this in the Kickstarter to cover your ass".
DeleteEven assuming Rogue Heroes were totally independent of Palladium beyond Carmen and Kevin being buds, it doesn't sound like Carmen has nearly as much experience dealing with this side of things as Kevin, so it'd be completely natural for him to take Kevin's advice on this sort of thing.
One thing I've been meaning to ask as I don't know the mechanics of the Rifts Board Game... the d20s pictured are the "health counter" variety used in games like MtG where all the numbers are adjacent to the previous and next numbers, which is contrary to what most RPG d20s are. Is that intended to serve the same function as it does in MtG, or is it used for action resolution like in RPGs?
ReplyDeleteIf a die is properly made the placement of the numbers has absolutely no effect on the outcome when you roll it.
DeleteSome people will claim that a "spin down" d20 is easier to manipulate when rolled but I challenge every person who claims this to do so and haven't yet met a person who could.