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 Talizvar wrote:

jaymz wrote:
They need to come clean that they cannot finish and refund whatever is owed. Period. Full stop.

That is all I am claiming against them.
To constantly say "we are working on it" to back up their "no refunds" policy is what is the issue.
If they have no means on fulfilling, they are lying to the consumer and I think a case can be argued for being contrary to law.

What few details have been released about this "informant" however would make them easily identifiable to PB so the efforts made to keep anonymity is rather confusing.

It is nice to see an attempt at keeping us informed however it may be motivated: thanks!

There are number of people that work closely with Kevin on a "volunteer" basis. I know and communicate with at least a few of them regularly. Thus why I said plausible deniability.

jaymz wrote:
There are number of people that work closely with Kevin on a "volunteer" basis. I know and communicate with at least a few of them regularly. Thus why I said plausible deniability.

People willing to work on their spare time with that fellow does raise some concerns.
Looking for, and expecting volunteers to support the business just blows my mind: handouts are a business model for them.
Then there are allegations that all kinds of contributing work goes in and they slap their name on it with little or no acknowledgment of where it actually came from.
I just do not understand if there is an army of masochists supporting PB or shouldn't the well run dry after enough people get burned?

So lately we are questioning also if PB could use the kickstarter money for retail stock?
I was pretty sure it is to cover development and production of the product to provide for the backers.
Then with the process in place, they are free to produce as they see fit... on their dime (or if any KS money remains!).
The silliness of this is obvious: say you kickstart for making 4 products, you make the first one and have a gazillion retail made and it does not sell = dead kickstarter.
This is a fine reason for never backing a kickstarter for physical product.

Well, if you hear anything further that it is interesting, keep us in mind.
The faint hope of getting the "better" robotech models in wave 2 is the only thing causing hesitation of slamming PB hard on all fronts.
If what is said is true, it is merely a matter of seeking getting our money back or voicing our dissatisfaction effectively enough to reduce their revenue.
If the AG or FTC decide to check them out, all the better.

Thank you for the latest revelations Jaymz.

The retail stock issue has come up before.

While I'm not involved in minis production, it's my understanding that a big part of this kind of thing is seeing benefits from economy of scale; that is, you could get 100 units for X dollars, or you could get 10,000 units for, like, 5X dollars (purely hypothetical numbers to make an example).

Making the molds (in this case) is where a lot of the costs are accrued; the pellets melted down for materials are comparatively pennies, so punching out that first sprue is effectively Mold Costs (HUUUUGE) plus Materials/Labour/etc (not frigging much), so after you've punched out tens or hundreds of thousands of sprues, that mold's cost has been shared across all that product, with the materials themselves (plus associated costs).

At least, in a basic and lay person sense. As always, I'm really not interested in arguing the finer points of production minutia. Hopefully this is close enough in general.

So if they were told "it'll cost you 200,000 to get the first 5,000 boxes, and the next 5,000 would cost you 25,000", it'd not only be sensible it'd be expected to take them up on that. Even as a backer, that kind of improved rates (again, purely a hypothetical example) would make it a no-brainer to partake in.

Now, to be clear, no, NO, I am not saying that it is acceptable for them to have rung up such massive bills in excess stock that it justifies jeopardizing future production possibilities.

But I can't demonize the very act of taking advantage of the production process opportunities presented. I mean, that's why people do Plastic figures in the first place, isn't it? Sure, quality of results, preferred materials, whatever others are in there too, but making the molds for "$Macross" and then punching out a billion sprues for pocket change has been cited as an appealing factor by several companies that work in those materials.

So, yeah, if they dropped half a million on excess stock and have literally $0 left, fine, to the pitchforks and torches.

But part of bringing a product line to the public is more than just backers. Think of it this way; if this hadn't been a clusterfeth (IF, stay with me here people), wouldn't we have wanted them to have extras? For people to buy at stores, to have a wider public to play with. ~5,000 players across the globe isn't exactly a high density to start with, if they were going to deliver to us and then put in another order for a round of boxes at a much worse price and likely not as efficient shipping on top of that.

I'm not defending their business practices, but unless they somehow managed to pay a worse amount per unit (like, they got 10,000 boxes and the 'breakpoint' for savings was at 15,000 or something), this one I can't really follow people on without more information.

Again again, I'm happy to give them plenty of gak for things they have done or haven't done, as appropriate. Even accepting that they may have over-bought retail stock (which is more of an 'in hindsight' kind of problem), it takes more than excess pallets to make it flat out incompetence, at least in my eyes.

My thoughts are that the "bringing the product to the market" function of the kickstarter is fulfilled by giving them a ready to go product that they can then cast, assemble, and ship to their warehouse ON THEIR OWN DIME. They can piggy back that into the initial wave 1 delivery as long as the accounting for each portion (manufacture, assembly, and shipping) is separate and comes from separate funds. KS backer money shouldn't be used for that unless there is extra left over AFTER fulfilling every single reward. Spending the wave 2 funds on wave 1 retail stock on the risky expectation of selling it in time and recouping that money is the KS equivalent of a pyramid scheme IMO if that is what happened.

Sure. But it doesn't matter if they have $0 left or $200,000 left. If it's not enough to actually produce what they owe, it's the same outcome for the backers.

Merijeek wrote:
Sure. But it doesn't matter if they have $0 left or $200,000 left. If it's not enough to actually produce what they owe, it's the same outcome for the backers.

I completely disagree. If they have $0 left because they bought extra retail copies NOT intended for backers with backer money, they can only refund $0..nothing. If they have $200,000 because they kept that money for wave 2 as they were supposed to, they have $200,000 they can refund backers; it's still a fraction of what we're deserved but it is better than nothing. Neither is a good situation for them to be in but one is definitely worse for us.

Oh, I agree Warboss. I'm just trying to point out that they could've totally done that and ended up in the same place.

If what Jaymz says is true and they legit/full out overspent *backer* funds on retail stock that's collecting dust, then release the hounds/Kraken/whatever and let's do this thing.

The icing on the cake would be if they didn't separate out KS funds from general finances and it was just a big pool that slowly trickled downwards. :-D

Wouldn't be the first time someone got a big pile of cash and then made that mistake.

The thing I always find a little grating is the 'oh they want to sell convention exclusives and whatnot to finance wave two' argument that some level, when from watching them do sale after sale and offer after offer, it seems to me (as an outsider, and a layman, and someone without access to their books) that if anything they're just treading water/drowning slowly. Not that this is an uncommon suggestion, but it's less a sense of 'omg they're bleeding out from a thousand cuts', but an ongoing feeling that it's far more than even charitable to think that they could rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars with $22 "Consclusives" and $42 grab bags.

Oh well, more general chatter and overwhelming negativity, guess we'll find out tonight/this weekend what the word is when The Big PB Newsletter Of 2016 we presumably drop some knowledge bombs. :-P

 warboss wrote:

Merijeek wrote:
Sure. But it doesn't matter if they have $0 left or $200,000 left. If it's not enough to actually produce what they owe, it's the same outcome for the backers.

I completely disagree. If they have $0 left because they bought extra retail copies NOT intended for backers with backer money, they can only refund $0..nothing. If they have $200,000 because they kept that money for wave 2 as they were supposed to, they have $200,000 they can refund backers; it's still a fraction of what we're deserved but it is better than nothing. Neither is a good situation for them to be in but one is definitely worse for us.

Nobody will get a penny of a refund. Period. They could have $1.43M in the bank, and I guaran-goddamn-tee you will never see a penny.

Simbieda will burn before that happens.

And they way they're liquidating everything they can (apart from brown-tonguers like Wayne) shows that they don't have money.

If they're out of money they get bankrupted. It's that simple. Whatever cash is raised by liquidation is used in debts owed, and this includes the refunds to backers.
If it is found by the accountants doing the liquidation that negligent practices were followed (such as paying for a huge amount of wave 1 stock rather than using the money to fund the fulfilling of extant contracts (all backer rewards) then the directors responsible for those decisions can feasibly be held personally liable. Which would be bad news indeed for Kevin, as it seems to me like that's where the buck stops.

The term to look up is 'compulsory dissolution'. It's a fun read.

People willing to work on their spare time with that fellow does raise some concerns.
Looking for, and expecting volunteers to support the business just blows my mind: handouts are a business model for them.

@Talivzar - I agree. It is a business model for them. Always has been.

My thoughts are that the "bringing the product to the market" function of the kickstarter is fulfilled by giving them a ready to go product that they can then cast, assemble, and ship to their warehouse ON THEIR OWN DIME.

@warboss - those maybe your thoughts but it isn't the reality. The point of the project is to get it to market/retail as well as to reward the people that helped fund it. For them to not have money to produce retail after the rewards defeats the point of getting it to market/retail. If your thoughts were the case and reality then Kickstarter would then be a store as you are not pledging money to project but for a specific product nothing more. None of pledged just for product that is the problem and it has been well established that kickstarts are not a "store"

Again I am all for holding Palladium's fee to the fire but the more we blast rhetoric as opposed to focusing on actual things (like breach of contract due to incompetent use of funds) the less likely anything can be taken care of.

jaymz wrote:

@warboss - those maybe your thoughts but it isn't the reality. The point of the project is to get it to market/retail as well as to reward the people that helped fund it. For them to not have money to produce retail after the rewards defeats the point of getting it to market/retail. If your thoughts were the case and reality then Kickstarter would then be a store as you are not pledging money to project but for a specific product nothing more. None of pledged just for product that is the problem and it has been well established that kickstarts are not a "store"

Again I am all for holding Palladium's fee to the fire but the more we blast rhetoric as opposed to focusing on actual things (like breach of contract due to incompetent use of funds) the less likely anything can be taken care of.

I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree because I don't think your opinion on this particular aspect of the mess is based in reality. In no way, shape, or form was the idea included in the the contract that I agreed to that kickstarter backers would be paying for the retail print run of the physical game products in addition to the cost of development and production of rewards at the expense of the latter.

It was expected that they would produce retail stock as part of the kickstarter. What was also expected is that they wouldn't produce so much retail stock that they couldn't fulfill the rewards. What was also expected is that they wouldn't bet the funds on being refilled through sales of retail. They gambled away the funds.

There would be no wave 2 if they hadn't made the "Gencon suicide pact" and felt compelled to have product in hand when they said they would even if they weren't able to fulfill their obligations to us. Two rounds of shipping is ludicrously expensive.

 n815e wrote:
It was expected that they would produce retail stock as part of the kickstarter. What was also expected is that they wouldn't produce so much retail stock that they couldn't fulfill the rewards. What was also expected is that they wouldn't bet the funds on being refilled through sales of retail. They gambled away the funds.

I wasn't clear in my last post but I did say previously that extra funds over and above what is needed to fulfill ALL backer rewards can be used however Palladium sees fit to advance and promote the game. Even if they had the idea of using KS funds as slush money to fund retail products, that idea should have been thrown out the window once they decided to do split wave development and shipping instead of recklessly gambling on a pyramid sales scheme as Jaymz is claiming.

There would be no wave 2 if they hadn't made the "Gencon suicide pact" and felt compelled to have product in hand when they said they would even if they weren't able to fulfill their obligations to us. Two rounds of shipping is ludicrously expensive.

I'm not sure what you mean above in relation to the gencon suicide pact as a result of the triple negatives in the sentence. I don't mean that as an insult but rather to request clarification instead of assuming.

Is anyone else picturing Kevin reading Jaymz' post and spending endless hours trying to figure out who the traitor is?

I fully expect an internal war on teachery in the PB office now. And probably some missing collectible heist stories.

 Conrad Turner wrote:
Also, if they'd told the truth that all I would see in over 2 years for my $140 would be an expensive $5 decal sheet, I wouldn't have invested. They lied and benefitted financially, also fraud.

Exactly. I put in $80, but no way I'd have done that if it was going to be $25 worth after 3 years with no end in sight.

Maybe to Kevin, $55 isn't a big deal. And if it isn't, then he should simply refund it. If it is a big deal, then he should deliver.

 Swabby wrote:
Is anyone else picturing Kevin reading Jaymz' post and spending endless hours trying to figure out who the traitor is?

I fully expect an internal war on teachery in the PB office now. And probably some missing collectible heist stories.

Nah. I suspect some of the details and clarifications are added later to muddy the waters. I appreciate the second hand info nonetheless and have only two "supects" in mind.

I'd argue that the moment Palladium was informed the money they raised was insufficient to supply all rewards owed they should have announced it and refunded all pledges. Not doing so was deliberate fraud.

 n815e wrote:
It was expected that they would produce retail stock as part of the kickstarter.

Not by me it wasn't! That was never outlined in the Kickstarter project page, and if it had been they would not have gotten a penny from me. I'm paying money to fund their production of product that's going to be sold to someone else before I get the rewards I was promised for my pledge? Feth no! As stated previously; producing the minis for backers using Kickstarter funds and then adding their own funds to produce product for retail.

I assumed they would produce retail stock; however, that stock needed to be paid for out of Palladium funds, not backer funds. Backer funds should have been held for Wave 2 fulfillment, not Wave 1 retail. To commingle the funds and use them for other purposes is again, fraud.

 warboss wrote:

 n815e wrote:
It was expected that they would produce retail stock as part of the kickstarter. What was also expected is that they wouldn't produce so much retail stock that they couldn't fulfill the rewards. What was also expected is that they wouldn't bet the funds on being refilled through sales of retail. They gambled away the funds.

I wasn't clear in my last post but I did say previously that extra funds over and above what is needed to fulfill ALL backer rewards can be used however Palladium sees fit to advance and promote the game. Even if they had the idea of using KS funds as slush money to fund retail products, that idea should have been thrown out the window once they decided to do split wave development and shipping instead of recklessly gambling on a pyramid sales scheme as Jaymz is claiming..

The thing people might be missing, is noone is saying PB couldn't capitalize on economy of scale. People are just arguing about how it's used.

For example, let's say the cost to make a mold for a set of sprues costs $50K to make. And a print run of 1000 sets is $10K, and each additional 1000 is $5K. And backers are owed 5000 copies. The cost to do the first 5000 is $50K + $10K + 4*$5K, or $80K. Noone is arguing that PB can't spend $25K to literally double that order, and make use of the cheaper rate that they're able to get as a result of including that in the initial print run. That's the reason to do so. But some (I include myself there) believe it's not acceptable for PB to spend Kickstarter funds to do so. The advantage of doing it as a Kickstarter is to use the economy of scale, and the initial outlay of infrastructure, to make their own purchases significantly cheaper (ie, in the example above, a little over 1/4 of what they'd initially have had to pay). And, in the event of completing the project under budget, pocketing any surplus.

But to have spent Kickstarter money on commercial product, before the project was concluded? Yeah, that's at best sketchy. And at worst, because of what seems to have been the result, fraudulent.

 warboss wrote:

There would be no wave 2 if they hadn't made the "Gencon suicide pact" and felt compelled to have product in hand when they said they would even if they weren't able to fulfill their obligations to us. Two rounds of shipping is ludicrously expensive.

I'm not sure what you mean above in relation to the gencon suicide pact as a result of the triple negatives in the sentence. I don't mean that as an insult but rather to request clarification instead of assuming.

The GenCon suicide pact is a term used to indicate their shift in policy. Initially, they were supposed to get Wave 1 months before GenCon, and ship it out to all backers before GenCon happened. Then, as the production dates delayed, and shipping became an issue, it became a big thing that they had to sell at GenCon. That caused all sorts of crap, so they put it to the controversial vote, that it was needed for "the sake of the game", that they backtrack on "backers first", something they had repeatedly assured wouldn't happen. Anyways, after the huge backtrack, they still ended up missing GenCon as the container got held up in Customs. Then, afterwards, it became clear that that was always the intent, as the first container was stocked only with retail product (so they couldn't have delivered to most backers anyway). All in all, it was a clusterfeth, I laughed quite heartily throughout.

What would be an acceptable closure to this ordeal if the money is indeed gone?

I can't think of anything that isn't going to chisel a little bit more off my trust in humanity block. This poor franchise (and related anime) have been so overly absused over the decades.

 Swabby wrote:
What would be an acceptable closure to this ordeal if the money is indeed gone?

For me, PERSONALLY, because I can only speak for myself, and to save SOME PEOPLE (they know who they are) from telling me/us how it'd be a Slap In The Face they wouldn't stand for, I could potentially see an exchange of product they do have. It would require them still being able to scrounge up shipping (not likely), and having enough boxes around to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars in stuff they still need to send out.

It's not ideal, I'm not saying they should, I'm not saying everyone (or even many people) would want even more of this stuff.

However.

SOME people might see it as a way to buff up their collection (the Battle Cry only folks; getting an extra core box or two and/or some expansion kits might round out the numbers they lacked), SOME might see it as a way to hook up friends with the extra to build a community in the area even if they had to do it by brute force. SOME might see it as an option for resale to try to recoup *anything* from this debacle, even accepting that flooding the market in cores and kits would depress what minimal value they already seem to have, though frankly even getting $20 per core box might be more back than we're looking at now.

Again, AGAIN, I couch this in the hypothetical, something they could TRY to make good if they lacked other options. I'm aware that some here (and many backers in general) would raise hell and declare NO, NOT ACCEPTABLE, and it would probably unleash at least a few of the currently restrained litigation attack dogs. I am NOT saying this would be an all encompassing fix.

But we know they have a fethload of boxes laying around unsold, and they owe us a fethload of stuff (and man, even nonplussed as I am, I'd rather have Super VT's I don't intend to play with anytime soon than another core or ten of Battlepods and VT's), so that seems like a reasonable outcome. Not ideal, not desired, not even scratching the surface of the bullgak they've put the backer community through to date (and for months and years to come, I'm sure), but in Thinking Outside The Box, that seems like one of the more realistic options. To me. The only person I speak for.

So we're clear.

I would only want what I had ordered extra in the backer kit refunded as credit.
Then order a few of those GHQ items.
Then I would be done with them and merrily move-on.
I would possibly hack-up some parts and mold a few things... but that is my business.

I'm not sure what you mean above in relation to the gencon suicide pact as a result of the triple negatives in the sentence. I don't mean that as an insult but rather to request clarification instead of assuming.

After the initial delays in their repeatedly moving release dates, they announced to the world that they would definitely have stock at Gencon.
It meant that no matter what, they were going to be beholden to something. They got so desperate to get anything for Gencon that they decided to split into two waves so that they would have something to sell. That split resulted in over double the needed shipping costs as they were going to have to ship in two waves.

n815e wrote:
It was expected that they would produce retail stock as part of the kickstarter.

Not by me it wasn't!

It's okay that you selectively snipped my quote so that you could respond to an argument I didn't actually write.

What would be an acceptable closure to this ordeal if the money is indeed gone?

For me there are many options.

They secure a source of funding that is beyond their own diminishing income stream to fulfill their obligation.
They issue refunds (to take up all their future profits if necessary to fulfill their obligation).
They go out of business.
Someone takes them to court and the court discovers that they spent all the money but did not do anything fishy (the only way I will consider forgiveness of debt).

I don't want any more RRT as to me it is incomplete without Wave 2. I don't want any of their other products because I am not a rpg-er and to me that is equivalent of them sending me their recycling and saying it pays off their debt to me.

 Forar wrote:
But we know they have a fethload of boxes laying around unsold, and they owe us a fethload of stuff (and man, even nonplussed as I am, I'd rather have Super VT's I don't intend to play with anytime soon than another core or ten of Battlepods and VT's), so that seems like a reasonable outcome. Not ideal, not desired, not even scratching the surface of the bullgak they've put the backer community through to date (and for months and years to come, I'm sure), but in Thinking Outside The Box, that seems like one of the more realistic options. To me. The only person I speak for.

So we're clear.

I believe I've suggest something similar here in that I myself would like to "cash out" of the project for an equal value amount in stock merchandise OF MY CHOICE at 2013 KS prices for kickstarted items. I would not accept pricing some things at current robotech prices in their favor when doling out value but counting the initial value at 2013 pricing (for instance a core box would be $80 value because that is what it cost in 2013, not the $100 they charge now). Unfortunately, the only thing I'd have wanted from them instead of my wave 2 rewards would have been the Robotech Battlefoam bag and they said they sold out month ago in a weekly newsletter. I wouldn't accept some grab bag where they throw in a bunch of gak I already own or that they have no chance in hell of selling like old rifters and art prints or that has been artificially inflated in price like a "collectors edition gold" version of something I wouldn't ever buy. I have zero faith in Palladium even making this token effort without screwing it up by trying to cram in one or more of the above into the "deal".

As jaymz sort of says, there's beliefs and then there's actual law. It might seem incredibly fishy to use backer funds on retail stock rather than PB's own funds, but it'd be hard to argue that it rises to the level of fraudulent or illegal given that you would have to produce where the contract says they could NOT do that. Absent such language existing, it could very easily be seen by a neutral, disinterested party that this was a "good-faith" error wherein PB honestly believed they would be able to sell the stock and replace the funds and the proceeds would fund the increased shipping costs which allowed quicker delivery to the backers.

It'd be doubly difficult to convince those third-parties of any wrong-doing if PB was able to point at other KickStarter projects that "floated" funds, which for all we know could be a very common practice. I believe it's been confirmed that Prodos did such a thing with one KickStarter's funds mainly going to finish another, and one of the points about the Dust/BF kerfuffle was the use of KS funds to pay a factoring bank for extant debts owed. Not apples-to-apples as the principals in those situations are overseas and governed by different laws/agencies, but it does introduce holes to the idea that KS funds are to be viewed as inviolate by the recipient.

What is much harder to view as being in a grey area is that the backers have not had their contract for delivery of rewards fulfilled. So yes, I concur that if the situation is as jaymz has laid out (which I'm inclined to believe as it aligns with my own interpretations of the situation, natch), then the strongest path forward is to pursue the quite clear breach of contract which may then uncover fraud versus trying for the more severe reach and losing on ambiguity and plausible deniability.

All of that presumes enough people get sufficiently agitated to do something though, and if PB has been able to putter about for nearly a year after already being as late as they were...well, that doesn't seem too likely at the moment. As time goes on that will probably change, but it's hard to say if there will ever be that critical-mass to get things rolling as some people just stop caring and move onto the next shiny as new people take up the torches of annoyance.

 Krinsath wrote:
All of that presumes enough people get sufficiently agitated to do something though,

If I were still in Michigan, I'd be marching over with pitchfork and torch in hand!!! Rabble, rabble, rabble!

I've been sorta lurking for a few weeks myself, haven't been follow it too much though.

The last big thing they did was get permission from HG to get the GHQ stuff developed. Did they burn off the last of the funds on that perhaps? They had a lot more made then what was ordered but probably not the 19461+ queadluun-rau, 19461+ nousjaduel-gers, and 12974+ super VF-1 guardians they still owe the backers.

I started running off the numbers of game pieces that they still need to make based on the backer counts for each level. and there is no way I can see them being able to do it. They need to make 175492 game pieces just to fulfill the base rewards, who knows what was also ordered in the backerkit on top of that.

I need to calculate out how much extra money was raised beyond the base reward levels.
ok I did that.

so 5231 backers put up a total of $1,442,312.00 before additional backerkit funding. $905,610.00 covers the base pledged and $536,702.00 was pledged towards additional "purchase addons" and shipping costs. (edit: added shipping cost notation, Thanks Forar for the clarification) I feel really bad for those 3 busting point backers. I haven't looked at that number but that is really scary that half a million was spent on product that they are going to be forced to refund.

Stuart Johnson got a reply from the AG and PB said they sent him over $700.00+ of product compared to his pledge $520.00. I asked him to ask the AG to get the values of everything from PB. So using my game piece spreadsheet, I started working on a document to detail out what all the kickstarter reward levels included, price point for them in the kickstarter, price points if available at MSRP. so people who are filing can have a common base to show what they pre-ordered.

for the bonus figures in battle cry reward level, we have received 24 sprues, and are still due 27 more game pieces. not sure how many sprues that is for wave 2. So you are probably only looking at $30 from that. $80 for the core box, $60 for the bonus bag.

This kickstarter has failed because manufacturing was not lined up before hand with complete costs. stretch goals were not set to proper monetary levels to accommodate that massive amounts of increased product needed to make everything for everyone. I do believe that deceit was committed when they broke the game into 2 waves. I think they realized then that it was not possible to make everything. So they made wave 1 and wave 2, and hoped that wave 1 would sell to fund wave 2. Wave 1 contained all the game pieces the battletech players wanted as well.

Has anyone look into contacting Catalyst Games about suing PB. PB has statements that their gamed are not to be converted into other game system. However, it seems there was a major factor to produce this game in the same scale as battletech to sell it to battletech players for use as the "unseens" in battletech.

firesped wrote:
I need to calculate out how much extra money was raised beyond the base reward levels.
ok I did that.

so 5231 backers put up a total of $1,442,312.00 before additional backerkit funding. $905,610.00 covers the base pledged and $536,702.00 was pledged towards additional "purchase addons."

*sigh*

I apologize up front, but I'm going to be that guy for a second, and would like to note that international backer contributions towards shipping were included in that "purchase add ons" number.

Not to correct, merely to clarify. If you've accounted for this, awesome, kudos, cheers, and whatnot.

But of the ~$1,400 my friends and I contributed for 8 Battle Cry boxes (double Reckless, that is) and another $200+ in add ons, $100 was spent on shipping.

Not that I expect us to be representative, nor that my single data point comes to anything conclusive, merely noting that some portion of that half million'ish was for International backer shipping, however many that may be. Back when you could find Backer listings, I snagged the one for RRT. Something like 20% were from 'places other than the US', plus another large chunk (20% or so?) did not identify where they were backing from, but I think it worked out to around 1/4 to 1/3 being international. Enough to skew the numbers, not enough to add up to truly catastrophic amounts.

PB seem to have caused the catastrophes all on their own.