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Someone suggested to me that CMON uses Kickstarter in an "Unethical" way. I've also heard people talking about Games Workshop's relentless price increases as "Unethical."

While GW's price inflation and CMON's extreme use of exclusives both bother me, I'm not sure that I can see why either of those are unethical or immoral.

I took philosophy courses in college, so I'm not exactly an expert, but I'd really love to see if anyone has an argument as to why X business practices on Kickstarter are unethical.

Unethical always seemed to be a word that gets thrown around a lot but is generally not understood by most of the people who use it. Most of the time the word seems to be conflated with "immoral" i.e., "I don't like that cause it's wrong" but morality and ethics aren't the same thing.

I do not think I have seen unethical thrown around for that kind of thing, but I guess some people would think that way.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s the people who do both think of it as a want or desire and more of a need. Having to pay more than what they perceive or understand to be its value.

I myself happen to think GW charge too much for some things, but that is mostly directed towards books products and the fact the game is just poor quality for its high price.
Something has worry me more in the TCG market is how little players value the product, but the moment anything of value pops up these same people rush to flood the market.
Or how any product that gets made that is even slightly good for new players, good luck finding it as one for the first few weeks as people buy breakup and try to sell the contents :(

Because "inconvenient for me" does not allow as much smugness about taking the moral high ground.

I think it depends on whether or not you think CMON's campaigns are set up to prey on people who can't control their Fear Of Missing Out, and whether or not that's ethical.

 infinite_array wrote:
I think it depends on whether or not you think CMON's campaigns are set up to prey on people who can't control their Fear Of Missing Out, and whether or not that's ethical.

How could it not be ethical? Are other limited edition products unethical? Is GW unethically preying on people who are compelled to buy cool space marines?

Actually I think the ethics of CMON on kickstarter is that its a multi million dollar business working on a platform that is meant to be for new businesses to get that start on the ladder or for riskier products which might not seem to have a definite market to get produced. It's highly unlikely that Zombicide Green Horde wouldn't have gone into production. Its kickstarter as pure marketing rather than as a hippy funding platform.
I backed Bloodborne though

 Llamahead wrote:
Actually I think the ethics of CMON on kickstarter is that its a multi million dollar business working on a platform that is meant to be for new businesses to get that start on the ladder or for riskier products which might not seem to have a definite market to get produced. It's highly unlikely that Zombicide Green Horde wouldn't have gone into production. Its kickstarter as pure marketing rather than as a hippy funding platform.
I backed Bloodborne though

It's also a way to mitigate risk.

By Kickstarting a project, they can gauge consumer feedback and market demand before committing to production. If the KS flops, then they know before spending the money that the project would've flopped.

I think the issue many people have with a multi-billion (not sure on exact number, but it's semantical) company like CMoN launching new projects on KS is that it challenges the conventional expectation of how established businesses should run. That is, business develops product (bearing the brunt of all those costs), puts product to market, and then the market will either accept or reject the product. Essentially the company makes a negative return until the product takes off (who knows how long it would take), if it even does at all.

Using something like KS essentially mitigates a lot of that risk; they go less in the red and are able to determine much earlier in the development cycle if a product has legs at all, before actual production. There's less risk and the company can run stronger projections on their return on investment.

I don't think CMON's use of KS is unethical, but I do think it's definitely against the spirit of what that platform was supposed to be for.

An unethical use of Kickstarter would be something that was done just to take people's money and had no intention of ever delivering anything. Examples might be IP infringement to make a game/movie/whatever for which the creators had no rights and knew they never could, but took in backer money anyway (and yes, this has happened). Basically, if there's some kind of intent do deceive (whether that's no intention to deliver or grossly misrepresenting what would eventually be delivered knowingly), then that'd be unethical.

As for GW or other companies raising prices, etc., no that's not unethical. It's standard business practice. Just because you don't like it or agree with it doesn't mean it's unethical.

 Valander wrote:
I don't think CMON's use of KS is unethical, but I do think it's definitely against the spirit of what that platform was supposed to be for.

Is it, though?

Kickstarter's Charter states:

The goal of Kickstarter is to enable the implementation of creative projects.

It doesn't mention whether the creative force needs to be an individual or a business. It's just not the norm for established businesses to crowd-source their development and production costs.

 DV8 wrote:

 Valander wrote:
I don't think CMON's use of KS is unethical, but I do think it's definitely against the spirit of what that platform was supposed to be for.

Is it, though?

Kickstarter's Charter states:

The goal of Kickstarter is to enable the implementation of creative projects.

It doesn't mention whether the creative force needs to be an individual or a business. It's just not the norm for established businesses to crowd-source their development and production costs.

Yeah, maybe not as much now, but does still "feel" like it wasn't the original purpose. I mean, clearly, Kickstarter themselves have no issue with it, or they wouldn't allow it. (Of course, the cut they get from the multi-million dollar projects doesn't hurt...).

I have no issue with established (or successful) businesses launching a project on KS. If they market it in a way that compels people to spend more than they might like to in an effort to 'get that other KS exclusive' then that is just good marketing - make the offer so inviting that anyone remotely interested will say, "What the heck" and jump in.

I agree the issue of ethics comes into play when something becomes questionable from a stand point of right and wrong. I have my insurance license and I must do ethics training every two years to educate me on practices that should not be done in the best interest of the consumer - twisting, defamation, fair trade practices, etc. I really do not see this being done by CMON; however, TBH I do not think I have ever backed one of their KS's.

- I sometimes think that Games Workshop's business practices are foolish. There have been times when GW has been on the decline because their practices, and I've always been happy when they turn it around.

- I think that Mark Wells' time in GW's leadership might have been unethical, since he inflated the company price in unsustainable ways and left other people to clean up the mess.

This is a fairly standard business practice (and there has been quite a bit of proposed legislation to fix it) but I feel like justifying that act as unethical is not that hard:

It is dishonest (it makes the company look better than it is and sets stakeholders up for big losses) and the victims are clear (stake holders and everyone who relies on the company are set up to over invest and take a loss).



- CMON's practices seem like they might be foolish, because they'll definitely see fewer sales at retail. But it seems like they're making enough sales up front that it doesn't matter.

- Is FOMO a disease? Like, do we think that CMON's exclusivity is preying on mental illness?

If that's the case, then the 'victims' are the people who happily go all in for CMON games on Kickstarter. That doesn't sound right to me.



- I'd like to hear more about why their use of Kickstarter, even though they're now a large company is unethical.

 odinsgrandson wrote:


- Is FOMO a disease? Like, do we think that CMON's exclusivity is preying on mental illness?

Such things have been linked to addictive tendencies in people, and some argue that building business models around it is taking advantage of what the business should be aware is unhealthy behavior. This is contentious though, because 1) entire industries are based on taking advantage of addictive tendencies already (tobacco, liquor, gambling, tabletop card games XD) and 2) it opens a really big door to declare that unethical since there is a really unclear line between providing your customer with what they want and "taking advantage" of their personal flaws (that they themselves might not see as a flaw at all).

I don't know enough about the company in question to have an opinion on them specifically, but I do feel at times that similar behaviors in the video game industry and tabletop card games have been pushed to the point of taking advantage and while maybe not unethical it certainly felt sleazy. But what business isn't sleazy somewhere?

 Peregrine wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:
I think it depends on whether or not you think CMON's campaigns are set up to prey on people who can't control their Fear Of Missing Out, and whether or not that's ethical.

How could it not be ethical? Are other limited edition products unethical? Is GW unethically preying on people who are compelled to buy cool space marines?

GW isn't funding their products on a crowdfunding website that puts their production at arms length. When I buy something like a Middle Earth made-to-order miniature, it might take some time (from April 20th to May 21st) but I'm not taking a bet like someone is with Kickstarter. CMON likes to treat it as though it's a pre-order store, but it's not. There's always the chance of delays or defective product and doing it through Kickstarter puts an intermediary between them and their customers.

Of course, this is subject to Kickstarter's evolution from a place for smaller manufacturers to get semi-investments from backers, which there still are plenty of, to a pre-order store for larger companies that lets them collect money a year or more out from actual production. Or can let companies do things like run kickstarters to fund previous projects that have costs exceeding the backing amount.

 Llamahead wrote:
Actually I think the ethics of CMON on kickstarter is that its a multi million dollar business working on a platform that is meant to be for new businesses to get that start on the ladder or for riskier products which might not seem to have a definite market to get produced. It's highly unlikely that Zombicide Green Horde wouldn't have gone into production. Its kickstarter as pure marketing rather than as a hippy funding platform.
I backed Bloodborne though

I'm not sure where the perception that Kickstarter is meant for newer businesses comes from, possibly the name. It's really not accurate, at least from the expectation of financing things.

If you're running a Kickstarter ideally you should be asking for that last 10% of cost covered to get your product over the finish line. The other 90% should be marketing and sales. I calculated that while I needed $30,000USD to fund 1,000 copies of my product, I would have needed an additional $80,000USD to cover the cost of promoting it enough (cover my current salary, going to conventions, renting booths, printing and distributing demo and review copies) on top of the fixed costs incurred developing the product.

CMON is actually really well-positioned to use it as a platform because they are a relatively big company that can keep pushing out these kinds of games, and gauging them for production. It's hard to begrudge them their success, especially when they're well-positioned to capitalise on it.

 Llamahead wrote:
Actually I think the ethics of CMON on kickstarter is that its a multi million dollar business working on a platform that is meant to be for new businesses to get that start on the ladder or for riskier products which might not seem to have a definite market to get produced. It's highly unlikely that Zombicide Green Horde wouldn't have gone into production. Its kickstarter as pure marketing rather than as a hippy funding platform.
I backed Bloodborne though

I missed the part where Kickstarter is supposed to be only for small businesses.

Crowdfunding is just a newer way to reach small scale investors.

- If a company starts up a project that they likely will not be able to fulfill, that is unethical. I believe that this has happened in a few cases on Kickstarter (whether through deliberately misleading or through willful ignorance mislabeled as optimism).

I don't think CMON is guilty of this, but there have definitely been some companies that did this on Kickstarter, and I feel that it is pretty easy to justify calling this unethical.


- But taking 'pre-orders' through Kickstarter doesn't seem like that's an issue- so long as the customers aren't misled about how Kickstarter is different from pre-orders.

I don't really see how using Kickstarter as an intermediary between them and the customer might be unethical- since Kickstarter bumps all responsibility to the creator anyway. I mean, I don't see how it could be more unethical than any shop taking pre-orders (and Game Stop will take pre-orders for games WAY ahead of time). I imagine that when Mediaplay went out of business, there were a number of pre-orders that weren't honored (I know there were gift cards that weren't honored).


- CMON do use Kickstarter as a marketing platform. Does this damage smaller projects?

 infinite_array wrote:
I think it depends on whether or not you think CMON's campaigns are set up to prey on people who can't control their Fear Of Missing Out, and whether or not that's ethical.

While it isn't really something I connect with CMoN, I do think we as a society need to examine how far we are willing to let companies go with marketing research using known methods of psychological manipulation, especially when modern data mining techniques can allow companies to tailor their approaches to the psychologies of their customers. I have no doubt most companies would instill compulsive behavior or addiction regarding their products into their customers if hey could.


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 Peregrine wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:
I think it depends on whether or not you think CMON's campaigns are set up to prey on people who can't control their Fear Of Missing Out, and whether or not that's ethical.

How could it not be ethical? Are other limited edition products unethical? Is GW unethically preying on people who are compelled to buy cool space marines?

Is marketing your casino to gambling addicts unethical? Using known weaknesses in human psychology against your customers seems like a questionable practice to me.

The philosophical crux is to what degree can a capitalist economic system free a person or corporation from the impact of their action?

In an idealized system capitalism is mutual exploitation to mutual benefit. In practice capitalism effectively asserts if you accept or by omission of action continue to accept a price that isn't advantageous to you, you've chosen varying degrees of acceptable exploitation; that because you chose it the entity selling it to you is free of the ethical implications of that exploitation since the exploitation was close enough to "equal".

Business strategy in broad strokes comes down to mitigating the choices or making the exchange as acceptably unequal as possible.

If a person's acceptance is the only criteria for being free of the ethical implications then indentured servitude would be ethically acceptable. If a person's acceptance is the only criteria, then selling snake oil should be ethically acceptable.It isn't.

Ethics then comes down to degrees and methods used by a business to mitigate the choices or making the exchange as acceptably unequal as possible.

First CMON, in general I don't think they're unethical... but I by being a regular business on kickstarter and using it as vehicle for pre-orders, that potentially crosses lines. Kickstarter's policy is that you aren't suppose to use for something that's already made. A pre-order generally implies the manufacturing capability exists and is in place and its simply about producing volume... strictly speaking if a company is taking pre-orders the product exists, maybe not in the quantity that's ultimately needed, but it exists, making it advance buying instead of alternative financing. Even if we all know it, even if there is a nod and a wink from Kickstarter... this grey space exists... a potential misrepresentation of the situation.

As far as "preying" on those who fear "missing out"... I would want to know what actions beyond just using the Kickstarter platform is CMON taking to "prey" on people in some way?

GW I think is unethical in a number of ways. In general they've misrepresented IP laws to such a degree that many believe a variety of legally accepted activities is stealing their IP.

Next, whether explicitly stated or not GW sells their product for "use"; the recreation of the hobby that comes with their product and the ability to play with it in their game system. The fundamental value it has and retains to the person buying the product is set and maintained by GW. When they undermine the present value by diminishing a product's continued use, they are able to retroactively alter the terms of what you were agreeing to. This isn't I bought a boat and now its drought; this is I bought a boat from the owner of a lake, who sold it on being able to use it in that lake, only to have them drain the lake to fill a different lake that they want to charge you for access. While some people will see an absolute disconnect between the product and the system a big selling point is the symbiotic nature of the product that GW then uses parasitically. This sold enjoinment places a higher ethical responsibility on GW to maintain the value present when they sold the product.

I think GW's exploitative pricing is so detached from their cost to produce their product that I think there is something deceptive in representing a wider "value" to what exists.

It's mostly just an end result of the usual internate critiques by people incapable of creating an actual argument and supporting it, instead reverting to what they "feel" as some form of substantive evidence.

Again, plenty of people "feel" Kickstarter and similar platforms were started for small business or entrepreneurs. It's not stated anywhere on Kickstarter, and never has been. The only people/companies willing to trust and try Kickstarter were originally normal people...because a massive corporation wasn't going to jump into a relatively new marketing style/business practice. If you "feel" Kickstarter shouldn't be used by large companies, that's on you - and has no factual bearing on anything.

Likewise with companies using marketing gimmicks and limited editon this/that. You may "feel" that's wrong, but that is likewise irrelevant. However, this is the internet and people intentionally blur the line between their opinion and actual facts (often presenting one as the other). Marketing is marketing. Business practices are business practices. Unless there is genuine crime occuring, it's up to the consumer what they do with their dollarbucks.

It's completely fine to critique a company with an opinion...as long as you state it as such. I critique GW frequently but I support their right to do whatever it is in their best interest. I have no "right" to cheaper miniatures and better rules, etc. They're doing what is in their best interest to make profit for their investors and produce financial reward for the company. It's not unethical, it's just business. I don't support them with my dollarydoos, so that's that.

Just because you don't like something, doesn't make it illegal or unethical. That's an obnoxiously slippery slope a culture will not come back from.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
- If a company starts up a project that they likely will not be able to fulfill, that is unethical. I believe that this has happened in a few cases on Kickstarter (whether through deliberately misleading or through willful ignorance mislabeled as optimism).

I don't think it becomes unethical until the project creator runs a project thinking they won't be able to fulfil it (even if in reality the chances are vanishingly small), not to say it's not rubbish for the backers who get stung

Edit: or when they do realise it's all gone wrong they don't return whatever money is left

I think what comes closest to an unethical part of CMON's business practices is the deliberate undercutting of retailers and forcing them out of access to their product through Kickstarter. It's very rare nowadays to see CMON products outside of the very largest distributors worldwide, because anything smaller doesn't have the volume of sales to compete with the dirt cheap backer prices and tend to just not bother. Anyone who is in the market for CMON products nowadays, primarily Zombicide, will just go through the Kickstarter process anyway so a store makes 0 money off them. CMON's notorious "pump and dump" outside of Zombicide is something to consider as well, because when almost all of their games get 1-2 releases and then nothing for years, why would a retailer (or consumer) stick with it? Kickstarter is directly to blame here, as CMON as a business have already made more than their share of money off the product, so then move onto the next new shiny and drop their older products. We saw it with Wrath of Kings and Dark Age, it makes me sceptical how much of ASOIAF we will actually see.

I feel like Kickstarter ethics comes into play with things like Soda Pop/Ninja Division, where they were running continual Kickstarter projects even while they couldn't fulfil the earlier ones, hoping to use funds gained to fulfil their previous obligations. We can see now that it ruined the company, but it was clearly something that shouldn't have been done in the first place, because they're in a very deep hole now financially.

 Rygnan wrote:
I think what comes closest to an unethical part of CMON's business practices is the deliberate undercutting of retailers and forcing them out of access to their product through Kickstarter. It's very rare nowadays to see CMON products outside of the very largest distributors worldwide, because anything smaller doesn't have the volume of sales to compete with the dirt cheap backer prices and tend to just not bother. Anyone who is in the market for CMON products nowadays, primarily Zombicide, will just go through the Kickstarter process anyway so a store makes 0 money off them. CMON's notorious "pump and dump" outside of Zombicide is something to consider as well, because when almost all of their games get 1-2 releases and then nothing for years, why would a retailer (or consumer) stick with it? Kickstarter is directly to blame here, as CMON as a business have already made more than their share of money off the product, so then move onto the next new shiny and drop their older products. We saw it with Wrath of Kings and Dark Age, it makes me sceptical how much of ASOIAF we will actually see.

How exactly is that unethical? CMON does not have any obligation to support retail stores and adjust their business model so that those stores can make a profit selling CMON products. Selling directly to the customer is a perfectly valid business model.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is marketing your casino to gambling addicts unethical? Using known weaknesses in human psychology against your customers seems like a questionable practice to me.

It might be a questionable practice, but it's also a universal practice. It makes little sense to say that CMON is being unethical when they're being exactly as ethical as any other business.

First of all, I was talking in general and specifically stated that I wasn't talking about CMON.

Second, "exactly as ethical" as almost all other businesses is pretty darn unethical. I would love to see more universal customer protections, especially against the more insidious and subtle methods of customer manipulation out there.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
First of all, I was talking in general and specifically stated that I wasn't talking about CMON.

Second, "exactly as ethical" as almost all other businesses is pretty darn unethical. I would love to see more universal customer protections, especially against the more insidious and subtle methods of customer manipulation out there.

How would that even work, in practical terms?

My personal feeling if the cost of the model on kickstarter or not is to high for my budget, I either don't buy it or find a way to cover the price.

As for standard retail verses kick starter, it is just different methods of attracting customers. CMON doesn't have the same presence in
FLGS as GW does, so they make the "limited" availability to try to boost sales. That doesn't mean GW don't do the same .. "I'm looking at you Terminator Chaplin"

So if a kick starter is a good deal with a ton of nice models, there is no reason not to support it because that might be the only way the company can make the capital
needed for producing the game. Good or Bad.

What is bad ethics on kick starter is companies like Palladium books, Lied to their backers for years, then acted like they were the victim when the truth came out..
Never finishing the project or refunding money. I'm not surprised they haven't filed for bankruptcy yet.

My issue with established business using Kickstarter is that it moves the burden of risk from the producer to the consumer.

if GW plan to release Warcry and then are let down by a supplier, or the ship sinks, or the lead writer just runs away or whatever, then GW get to suck up the loss, and if they're being run competently they should be in a position to absorb it, or have sufficient resources to attempt to mitigate it (by claiming on insurance, taking legal action, etc). If they've done it on Kickstarter, I'm £100 out of pocket and it's harder for me to try to claim it back (I can't claim on an insurance policy because I'm not the beneficiary, I have neither the time or income to start a legal claim, etc). It's like the thin end of the wedge of which things like the 2008 financial crisis are the thick end.

Also, I'm disappointed by the trends of offering products as Kickstarter exclusives; I'd like to buy a product when I want to/can afford it, not during the narrow timeframe that the creator deigns to allow me the privilege of ordering it. It also smacks of a product being released before it can be reviewed, so that the audience can be suckered into buying a load of crap sight unseen.

The original idea of Kickstarter as I understand it was to provide funding to those who couldn't get it through traditional means (e.g. a bank loan or simply having cash on hand). Some projects such as Dropfleet Commander push the edge of that; the DFC rules and models could have been developed without Kickstarter, but the models would have been in resin, not plastic, and the range on launch would have been smaller. the campaigns that are basically just pre-orders don't seem appropriate, but apparently Kickstarter have let their scope widen (like Ebay); if they're OK with it, then I don't think it's unethical or wrong, just something I disagree with.

I think Kickstarter have muddied the waters a bit, though; "Kickstarter is not a store" should mean that you as a backer are investing in a project with all the risks that entails, not buying a product. That message is getting watered down, to the detriment of backers who don't realise they're not necessarily as protected as they thought.

This podcast talks about ethics in board gaming-http://acrosstheboard.libsyn.com/episode-15-dan-the-abandoner-ethics-and-integrity-a-discussion-real-talk-with-isaac-childres-and-efka-of-no-pun-included

Just my opinion is that kick starter is for artists and creative people to fund their ideas and give people lacking other means the ability to produce things.

There is no rule against pulling your limo over and grabbing lunch at the Salvation Army soup kitchen. It just is not really meant for millionaires to use.

Large corporations often benefit from government subsidies. Is this OK? Maybe?

It is not unethical I guess, it just seems kind of odd to see multinational companies with revenues in the millions gobbling up all the attention on kick starter.

Ultimately, though, that's up to Kickstarter to enforce by refusing projects, or for the community to enforce by boycotting campaigns.