KuroganeHomura

Zenophilious: Kickstarter may not originally have been intended to be used this way, but SP are hardly the first or the most high-profile ones to use it this way. If you'd preferred Kickstarter to stay limited to usage for its original intent, well, that ship has sailed. Doesn't mean you've got to throw any money at their campaigns, of course - I pretty much never do, either, though that's because I'm just not interested in them to begin with. But I don't think it matters at this point whether SP continues using Kickstarter this way. It's not like there's some sort of finite pool of Kickstarter money that would go to other projects if SP stopped using it.
Moreover, Kickstarter is very well suited for the VN market since it allows the company to offer the main product combined with additional stuff at a much higher price than they could get from a sale on Steam. There's a decent amount of people in the community who, if given the opportunity, are willing to spend well over 100$ for a VN that by itself would cost at most maybe 40$, which makes VNs viable that otherwise might not be able to recoup the costs of localization. So it's not just a matter of pushing the risk onto the customers. Amusingly enough, that clashes a bit with the idea that the traditional eroge fanbase aren't their target audience. I'm pretty sure most people willing to spend a large amount of money on a single VN would be part of that audience. Well, maybe not 4chan in particular, no idea about them.
 
Personally, the main problem I have with SP is that they don't outright say "yes, we'll publish an 18+ version of every VN we license that has one, as long as the developer will let us", which irks me, no matter the reason they don't. But in the end that just means they get no money from me unless and until they do publish the 18+ version. I guess I'd actually be pissed if they got their hands on something I really cared about and proceeded to release only an all-ages version, but that fortunately hasn't happened so far.

Zenophilious: Kickstarter may not originally have been intended to be used this way, but SP are hardly the first or the most high-profile ones to use it this way. If you'd preferred Kickstarter to stay limited to usage for its original intent, well, that ship has sailed. Doesn't mean you've got to throw any money at their campaigns, of course - I pretty much never do, either, though that's because I'm just not interested in them to begin with. But I don't think it matters at this point whether SP continues using Kickstarter this way. It's not like there's some sort of finite pool of Kickstarter money that would go to other projects if SP stopped using it.
Moreover, Kickstarter is very well suited for the VN market since it allows the company to offer the main product combined with additional stuff at a much higher price than they could get from a sale on Steam. There's a decent amount of people in the community who, if given the opportunity, are willing to spend well over 100$ for a VN that by itself would cost at most maybe 40$, which makes VNs viable that otherwise might not be able to recoup the costs of localization. So it's not just a matter of pushing the risk onto the customers. Amusingly enough, that clashes a bit with the idea that the traditional eroge fanbase aren't their target audience. I'm pretty sure most people willing to spend a large amount of money on a single VN would be part of that audience. Well, maybe not 4chan in particular, no idea about them.
 
Personally, the main problem I have with SP is that they don't outright say "yes, we'll publish an 18+ version of every VN we license that has one, as long as the developer will let us", which irks me, no matter the reason they don't. But in the end that just means they get no money from me unless and until they do publish the 18+ version. I guess I'd actually be pissed if they got their hands on something I really cared about and proceeded to release only an all-ages version, but that fortunately hasn't happened so far.

Zenophilious: Kickstarter may not originally have been intended to be used this way, but SP are hardly the first or the most high-profile ones to use it this way. If you'd preferred Kickstarter to stay limited to usage for its original intent, well, that ship has sailed. Doesn't mean you've got to throw any money at their campaigns, of course - I pretty much never do, either, though that's because I'm just not interested in them to begin with. But I don't think it matters at this point whether SP continues using Kickstarter this way. It's not like there's some sort of finite pool of Kickstarter money that would go to other projects if SP stopped using it.
Moreover, Kickstarter is very well suited for the VN market since it allows the company to offer the main product combined with additional stuff at a much higher price than they could get from a sale on Steam. There's a decent amount of people in the community who, if given the opportunity, are willing to spend well over 100$ for a VN that by itself would cost at most maybe 40$, which makes VNs viable that otherwise might not be able to recoup the costs of localization. So it's not just a matter of pushing the risk onto the customers. Amusingly enough, that clashes a bit with the idea that the traditional eroge fanbase aren't their target audience. I'm pretty sure most people willing to spend a large amount of money on a single VN would be part of that audience. Well, maybe not 4chan in particular, no idea about them.
 
Personally, the main problem I have with SP is that they don't outright say "yes, we'll publish an 18+ version of every VN we license that has one, as long as the developer will let us", which irks me, no matter the reason they don't. But in the end that just means they get no money from me unless and until they do publish the 18+ version. I guess I'd actually be pissed if they got their hands on something I really cared about and proceeded to release only an all-ages version, but that fortunately hasn't happened so far.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/377670/discussions/0/490124466479176329/
Would have been a good idea to post that sooner. If they needed to confirm whether they were allowed to say that, it would have been a good idea to talk to the devs beforehand. Making an official statement before there was any outrage would have prevented a lot of the outrage, or at least directed it away from SP.