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CMON announced that they signed a deal with Gamefound and will be doing all of their crowdfunding over there.

I was pretty surprised at that, given how CMON have done so well on Kickstarter until now.

What does everyone else think of the move?

Kickstarter taking too high of fee's?

Probably so they can run more projects at one time. Kickstarter had a limit to those.

It's 100% over the fees. Both Gamefound and Backerkit have been making deals to make them the exclusive place for well known crowdfunders to bring more attention to their platforms. There might even be money being exchanged over to CMoN from Gamefound in addition to the lower fees.

I don't know why it should be any different to us consumers if they crowdfund on Gamefound over Kickstarter. But I don't know that it quite feels the same either.

Good. The more attention alternative platforms get the less the industry relies on Kickstarter and the less they can feth it up with dumb moves like the recent blockchain idiocy.

In other words, the less the gaming industry as a whole relies solely on kickstarter, the less of a stranglehold the platform has over the hobby and the less likely a poor decision or draconian policy change will have a damaging affect on it.

Probably a good thing. Kickstarter has gotten lazy and expensive. Game found provides better user experience in my opinion.

From a creator perspective, there are additional useful features on gamefound too, like being able to do a fully integrated pre-marketing campaign with things like:

"Follow the campaign to get a free rulebook download + exclusive scenario".

"Follow the campaign to get an exclusive free bonus mini when you back".

These kinda things are really helpful for converting interest into backers.

The only downside is having to bring your own marketing punch, kickstarter still absolutely dominates when it comes to pushing projects to people already using their platform, they may charge a little more, but for the smaller creators at least, they earn every penny. It'll be something like 50-75% of a project total coming from kickstarter's promotion alone.

Different platforms are going to work for different creators and FOMO preorders aren't really what KS was built for to start with.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
It's 100% over the fees. Both Gamefound and Backerkit have been making deals to make them the exclusive place for well known crowdfunders to bring more attention to their platforms. There might even be money being exchanged over to CMoN from Gamefound in addition to the lower fees.

Yeah- I imagine that they see CMON as bringing in more traffic, so they're probably waiving most of the fees just to get CMON's fans onto their site

Heck almost all creators doing a larger project use Backerkit to do the after-campaign management. It's a huge area that KS has allowed to flourish into a competing series of services and I'm always surprised that KS left that potential money on the table.

Not having anything to do with that probably makes their 'we are not a store' stance much stronger

scarletsquig wrote:
From a creator perspective, there are additional useful features on gamefound too, like being able to do a fully integrated pre-marketing campaign with things like:

"Follow the campaign to get a free rulebook download + exclusive scenario".

"Follow the campaign to get an exclusive free bonus mini when you back".

These kinda things are really helpful for converting interest into backers.

The only downside is having to bring your own marketing punch, kickstarter still absolutely dominates when it comes to pushing projects to people already using their platform, they may charge a little more, but for the smaller creators at least, they earn every penny. It'll be something like 50-75% of a project total coming from kickstarter's promotion alone.

Different platforms are going to work for different creators and FOMO preorders aren't really what KS was built for to start with.

They also have a built in pledge manager, which is frankly amazes me that Kickstarter doesn't have after years of being the primary crowdfunding website. The amount of money they've left behind with that oversight is amazing.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Not having anything to do with that probably makes their 'we are not a store' stance much stronger

Perhaps, but even so almost every campaign that has complex orders requires some after-campaign manger in order to sort out who gets what from multiple choice pledge options. Furthermore many require postage and packaging and even tax to be calculated via the pledge manager. These are core functions that KS really should have and its shocking that they leave all that out to 3rd parties to sort out.

Also as noted, with people who pledge more after the campaign there's some serious money left on the table by KS in not providing an after campaign manager support. A LOT of people (esp since KS have shifted to 2 week windows instead of 1 month for many campaigns) don't have the budget they want to spend during the funding period. Many larger KS will have one month to more in the after-campaign phase. So that's a huge amount of time to get a lot lot more sales from backers. Plus all the "pledged for £1 to think about it" people.


It's just money on the table for a function that should be part of the KS system. I guess KS itself must make a fortune for those running that they never felt the need to invest into after campaign support. However it also means that services like Backerkit that DO offer the function could leach and steal the market from KS. If every big campaign is already using Backerkit for after campaign support; why not just use them for the front end too. A lot of regular KS users will have a Backerkit account anyway!

It’s likely less labour intensive as well.
Not having to import and transfer money pledged, emails and other data from one platform to another is likely a huge cost savings in labour and time. It likely also reduces mistakes and missing orders since they eliminate one step.

 Overread wrote:
Heck almost all creators doing a larger project use Backerkit to do the after-campaign management. It's a huge area that KS has allowed to flourish into a competing series of services and I'm always surprised that KS left that potential money on the table.

Yeah. For a while a lot of us expected Kickstarter to make their own pledge manager, but all the game projects kept using Gamefound or Backerkit instead.

Now Backerkit and Gamefound are running their own crowdfunding projects.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Not having anything to do with that probably makes their 'we are not a store' stance much stronger

Perhaps, but even so almost every campaign that has complex orders requires some after-campaign manger in order to sort out who gets what from multiple choice pledge options. Furthermore many require postage and packaging and even tax to be calculated via the pledge manager. These are core functions that KS really should have and its shocking that they leave all that out to 3rd parties to sort out.

To be fair, Kickstarter started being capable of those things. They can now calculate shipping and you can choose add ons when you pledge.

Most game campaigns choose not to use this function for shipping, and still have backers confirm their add ons.



Maybe Kickstarter's reluctance to make pledge management software is tied to their reluctance to admit their place in the market. The biggest sections of Kickstarter are games and tech, but Kickstarter wants to portray itself as the place for struggling artists to get funding for their play or installation piece.

 Overread wrote:
Heck almost all creators doing a larger project use Backerkit to do the after-campaign management. It's a huge area that KS has allowed to flourish into a competing series of services and I'm always surprised that KS left that potential money on the table.

KS has been lagging for years now and taking a cut that has been pretty crippling. This was pretty inevitable.

With the rising costs of everything, including KS campaigns, Gamefound offering StretchPay is a good way for CMON to get more money out of consumers also.

And CMON got a lot of pushback on how much their shipping prices changed from the estimates on the last few campaigns. Gamefound allow creators to sign up to a "stable pledge programme" where you can get a refund if prices change beyond 10% or something. They may see signing up for that a good way to restore consumer confidence.

Yeah refunds have always been a huge hurdle for KS. Even when a campaign is doing well and not off the rails running out of cash; there are still customers who's situation changes and they need a refund.

deano2099 wrote:
With the rising costs of everything, including KS campaigns, Gamefound offering StretchPay is a good way for CMON to get more money out of consumers also.

And CMON got a lot of pushback on how much their shipping prices changed from the estimates on the last few campaigns. Gamefound allow creators to sign up to a "stable pledge programme" where you can get a refund if prices change beyond 10% or something. They may see signing up for that a good way to restore consumer confidence.

Is CMON a part of that program?