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Nuvendil on 05 July 2017
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Lawlight said:
Nuvendil said:

It's not a binding act with KS, it is between Creators and Backers, as explained in Kickstarter's terms of service.  Kickstarter is not a party to the agreement but a backer or backers can hold a creator accountable in a court of law if they fraudulently enticed backers to support them.  Obviously the offended party in an agreement has to initiate the process, the law - either penal or civil - is not administered by all seeing gods.

Which is no different than if a company lies to secure an investment from a venture capitalist.  It's illegal, but the process of bringing the offending parties to justice still has to be initiated by an offended member or an observer.

So no, you are incorrect, the project creators are liable and are bound by law to fulfill their obligations to the satisfaction of the backers.

No, you're incorrect. A donation to a party does not make them liable. That is why so many crowdfunded projects just end with the backers having no recourse. Has Molyneux been sued for never releasing the Linux version of Godus? Comcept for the Mighty No 9 rewards? I don't think so.

And now you are even more incorrect.  First off, it is illegal to entice people to give you money for the sole purpose of pursuing any activity and then refuse to do that.  That is illegal.  Now if it's purely a spoken agreement, it's very hard to prove.  But then - second thing you missed - this isn't a spoken agreement, it is a public written one, one that is identified as legally binding between project and backer in the terms of service of KS.  Thirdly, the backers have a recourse, it's called a lawsuit.  Civil law puts the onus on the offended party to pursue the matter.  Many law firms would take up the cases you mentioned but if the backers don't make the effort of course nothing will happen.  It's on THE BACKERS to file the suit.  Suits don't just happen without a plaintiff. 

SegataSanshiro said:
jason1637 said:

Why does it have to be low budget? If a game is made by an independent studio it's an indie game as long as they own the IP imo. A game for rocket league has blown up and made lots of money which is now being used to develop new content for the game instead of making a sequel. So it has a large budget now but it's still an indepedent  studios game and IP. By you're definition it won't be an indie anymore.

You know CD Red is publicy traded right? if a public company is indie then Nintendo and EA are indie.

Nintendo and EA have shareholders who hold common shares outside the company and the dev teams, who have control over the board of directors who can also come from outside the company.  And of course, these companies are not dev team controlled in any sense.  Dice is a developer.  Nintendo EAD, Monolith Soft, and Retro are developers.  Nintendo and EA are not.  They are publishers who make heavy use of their brand.

CD Projekt Red I don't know enough about, but being publicly traded doesn't mean they have all of that.  Common stock can be distributed internally, you can even have one guy hold 51% and thus have all the voting power, leaving only preferred stock to be bought publicly, which is purely an means of garnering investment.  You don't have to have a Board of Directors either.  How you structure your company is entirely up to you, within reason.

All that matters to the indie concept is this: who calls the shots on development?  Devs, or some overseeing group be it a Board of Directors, a publisher, an investment group etc?  If the Devs are in control, then they are indie for all meaningful purposes.  If not, they are not.