I think some chill breezes are about to start being felt in Kickstarter's cosy little virtual world.
-40hz
I think two issues are being conflated here.
The first is the responsibility for delivery and the suit. These are totally in the way that things should be done, and I think it's telling that kickstarter itself as a platform is not a defendant in the suit. If you collect money, even on a speculative venture like this, you open yourself up to a responsibility to deliver.
But I think that has little to nothing to do with the platform in and of itself.Kickstarter gives a platform for the offering, and for that platform, charges a fee, and dispenses funds. To expect that they would have control over each individual offering is pretty ludicrous. Even the payment platforms, i.e. MasterCard, Visa, Amazon, have limits to the claims on such.
The first paragraph of the quote follows my beliefs, i.e.:
I've backed a few dozen Kickstarter projects over the years, and there have always been questions about possible fraudulent projects. While I've personally found that nearly every project delivers late (often very, very late), I don't think any of the projects I've backed has completely failed to deliver (there are a couple I'm still waiting on, though...). Still, the risk of such a "default" is always a possibility, and that's always been the case. Backing a product at an early stage always comes with the risk that it may never deliver. Kickstarter itself has tried to do a better job in making people aware of this upfront with its "Kickstarter is not a store" claims.
A few hundred in my case... and a few have packed up shop, but that's how I determine what to back and how much, and as such, the 3-5% failure rate is acceptable to me. But if it weren't, I'd be within my rights to sue the project creator over non-delivery.
TL;DR - the suit is unfortunate and the situation for those backers. They are well within their rights to have pursued action. But to claim that Kickstarter has an obligation or any power over the backend situation is a pretty specious claim IMO.