Steam Deals and Digital Sales

If its not a charity drive for for profit companies, what else is it?

I've heard the argument its an investment scheme. If so, what possible fiduciary remuneration is going towards the backers? The idea that they'll get...the same product they would have gotten otherwise doesn't sound like much return on investment. If you're giving money willingly, knowing it won't ever be returned to you, and expecting nothing or very little in return, then I'd call that a charity, personally.

Its certainly not a marketplace or meant to be a marketplace.

This is why Kickstarter is starting to turn into this whole entity from which it was never intended and with which many fools will be divided from their dollars, which is fine, however, this is also why we should be against these games coming to Steam until they are in final, release builds, at normal, rational market prices.

In my opinion.

If the mods want to make a new thread and merge these posts into it I would be fine with that.

I really doubt that that's true, to be honest, or rather, that it would be impossible for people like Doublefine, or in this case these people who apparently have 20 years plus history in the gaming industry and have successfully funded past projects such as a competitive shooter whose name escapes me that was on Xbox and Steam (and didn't do all that well in either format I might add) to find the funding they required if the totally obligation free handouts from Kickstarter did not exist.

Kickstarter is basically just a big draw because you get your initial funding with zero obligations for profit sharing.

I've played several good games that came out of Kickstarter, none of them required 90 dollar buy ins for their alphas, hell Conquistadores only needed 70k total to be made. Everything about this stinks of using kickstarter as a way to funnel free profits in the form of donations, insulating the game developers from personal risk in the case of a company failing to meet expectations in the process.

Regardless, Steam is not Kickstarter, so why are we discussing the merits of Kickstarter prices in regards to Steam prices again?

Oh that's right, because really smart people have figured out they can pretend Steam is kickstarter, and charge the same prices they did for kickstarter donation levels, all without having any of those pesky restrictions through Kickstarter like promises to deliver on a product, oh and in the US, they even get protected from having to worry about someone wanting a refund for an unfinished project sold through Steam.

Double win for everyone except...the end consumer.

That's my argument.

In the European Union you can get refunds for Steam sales.

You can't in the US, if the game hasn't been "released" yet, and I"m going to go ahead and assume that being on Early Access counts for a "release" for this purposes on Steam.