That's not the kind of failure that's going to put a dent in crowd funding. Low funding level, sincere founder trying to make it right, etc. What's going to hurt is when someone just disappears with more money.
Trying to make it right by both a) forgoing future proceeds to whatever publisher will release the game and b) offering out-of-pocket refunds. Software projects fail, there isn't anything more we could ask of a person..
- The vibe of all the comments from backers seems to be "well I knew what I was getting into, I'll stick around."
- There are people interested in contributing to the game gratis.
- There seems to be a publisher interested in picking it up and doing the final round of polish and debugging necessary to finish it.
All of these people who invested money in the game are now, well, invested in it. And are talking about it. Some are offering to help. I'm not going to make any predictions, but it looks like this one still has a fighting chance of delivering.
Kickstarter is really starting to ramp up in the money projects raise. Below is the story of woe of one of the early Kickstarter darlings that raised $87k. Two years ago it was second only to Diaspora (another eventual failure) in the amount of money raised
I have backed a dozen projects over the past year for a total of almost $1000 and have received exactly 2 deliveries for a total of $70 of value. My enthusiasm will wain if more of these projects don't pan out.
Kickstarter makes some 5% on these projects. Their site hosting costs can't be very much...
I'd really like them to be, to some degree, consultants to project creators, and hire people that have business expertise in various types of projects.
There is a lesson here in not using an obscure programming language like GO on such a small project if you aren't yourself a programmer willing to finish the project if need be.
