Sounds to me that’s it is a scam. Could be wrong though.

So do people get their money back or is this just a scam?

The kickstarter funds being portrayed as enough to fund the game is the scammy part. It is now revealed that it was in fact seed money to convince investors.

It should have been obvious from the start as 100K or 300K is nowhere near “making a high-profile videogame money”.

It was 340K for creating a demo to hunt investors, but they already had funding from other sources.

What is a tad gray is the fact that most backers thought they were backing a full game, not a demo, which is not cool.

No. And you shouln’t expect a refund when giving money via kickstarter. This is not platform to buy products/games. People are basically donating money to a project, sometimes with the promise to get a copy if the project succeeds, or nothing if the project fails.

Built-in deniability.

This is why I can’t stand Kickstarter and why I won’t ever use it again. It’s no risk to the people asking for handouts and it’s the people giving their money away that take on all the risks.

You pay for something, but you may never actually see it. The product fails and you get nothing. The product succeeds and you get the product you were hoping for, but it may not be 100% what you expected. Also, it’s not like you would get anything more than that, you are not an investor.

If I’m an investor, I take a risk and I could possibly lose all my money that I put into it, but at the tail end of that, if it’s successful, I will get my money back, plus more. Same risk, but better outcome.

Not using Kickstarter is perfectly fine. Definitely avoid Kickstarter if you want a guarantee of delivery.