[lotharbot]

kickstarter is neither "investment" not "pre-sales".

It's patronage [0], as explained on a KS blog post the day before the site went live [1]. This means backers are funding a good-faith effort by the team to deliver the described result. They don't have any recourse if the team's good-faith effort fails (meaning, genuine attempts are protected from litigation), but they do have recourse if that effort is not made.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/defining-patronage

[meddlepal]

I think the fact nobody understands this means their objective has failed and they are by default relegated to being investment or pre-sales regardless of whether they claim to be or not.

[Guvante]

No effort was made in this case (from the stories) so it seems to line up well with their original goal.

[rue]

The language around ‘good faith’ and ‘best effort’ seems really dicey. Leaves a lot of room for legal trouble if someone wants to cause it.

[lotharbot]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/1-201#Goodfaith

The term appears about 3000 times in the US Code overall.