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Comment by kikki | Hacker News Reader

> Star Citizen asked for $2 million but got 6. If they had said they keep everything the same, the schedule would stay sane but everyone would call it a money grab because they take $6 million to develop a $2 million game.

What? That's not how crowdfunding works. If you crowdfund a bag for $200k and you get $1 mil, you don't turn that into a jetpack - you just ship the bag that you promised.

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That's exactly how (many) crowfunding campaigns work in practice.

Most kickstarters define "stretch goals" that are promised at different targets, if funding surpasses the base goal.

These goals may be release for different platforms, additional content, celebrity voice acting, etc...

http://www.hexus.net/gaming/news/industry/57541-major-kickst...

https://www.engadget.com/2014/07/06/mighty-no-9-gets-additio...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-t...

A $2 million game will cost (more or less) the same to develop whether it goes on to sell 1, 100, 10000 or 10 million copies. The cost of producing a handbag depends a whole lot on how many you need to produce.

So assuming that shipping more copies is very cheap once the game is developed, what do you do when you get $6 million in funding for a $2 million game?

You profit? That's what every other company that sells software does.

That's not how crowdfunding works though. You aren't selling a product, you're asking for money to cover the production expenses for a product.

That often includes a salary for the creators, but it's hard to justify a multi-million dollar profit (from the crowdfunding itself).

I think the point he was trying to make is that they had no obligation to make crowdfunding work like people expected it to. They were perfectly within their rights to just ship on time and bag the rest as profit.

I agree that it is well within their rights to do that. But I also feel that this is a reason why large software products are not inherently a great fit for the Kickstarter model. I think Steam's "early-access" model is a much more intuitive fit for both the developers and the consumers of these games.

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