Hi my dear hentai lovers!

An update to celebrate the success of the first step of our offbeatr campaign to support KoPC project!
(yeaaah !!)
Thx to everyone for the quick voting to this project, it was sure appreciated a lot!
Cheesecake for everyone, wouhouuu!!

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That said, going to the next level is kind of… worrying me, about how it’s done.
First : you don’t have any built-in “buttons” or interface, automatic or not, to go from “vote stage” to “pledge stage”.
I was a little surprised, as I already had to fill in tons of forms and personnal & financial infos just to get there and publish my project idea, in the first place.
So, I try to search for infos about that in the FAQ, in developer’s interface and all, but no message nowhere about it.

Finally, I wrote to them directly.
And now they send me back another form, a contract, where I got to fill-in again all my personnal infos and bank account infos.
Along with authorizations to directly take money on my bank account, for several situations and under no clear conditions.
I mean, it’s all about locking-in the creators in case they don’t fullfill the goal or rewards they promised.
It’s all detailled about how creators will be prosecuted and able to get sued by any pledgers if they fail to deliver, and how they will be forced to pay by automatic withdrawal on their bank account for every legal action taken against them, etc…

Don’t get me wrong : I can totally understand the principle, but how it’s put into action begins to worry me and scare me.
I mean, obvious way would be to have things (projects & rewards) transiting through their site, as a double-check before allowing money to come and go. Or just to built on some kind of “commercial trust”, like big services sites like ebay or paypal do, where they just make sure you don’t get robbed, but don’t interfere into how products end up.
And in 99% of case it works perfectly fine.

But there, it’s all about collecting everyone’s bank account infos, along with authorization to withdraw money from it without your future consent.
It’s very invading and risky. In case anyone from offbeatr want to withdraw your money, they would have the legal right to do so, in fact, and you to just shut up.
In case anyone breaks in their database (as past internet history proved even the biggest companies can have that kind of problem), we would all be in deep shit, with all our financial infos and authorizations right there, waiting to be used. (because I think pledgers don’t “magically” get funds on their account and have to give infos too)

Also, fees are about 30%, on everything, everywhere, and I would also have to pay BEFORE being authorized to gather “pledges”. (which is not real money : creators gain nothing until the very end, and only if the campaign is a success, and after offbeatr took its 30% comission. If anything fails, no refunds for fees previously engaged by creators)

It’s a detail, but added to the global picture…. yeah, I am getting some kind of cold feet, about all that.
I gave it a try because it was definitely worth it, but how it goes along, I discover it’s not as straight-forward and easy to handle as it seems.
Interface could be really worked out (very uneasy to access my creator panel), links appears changed (if you put your facebook page, for example, the links will show facebook itself instead of your page… guh ??), project stages are neither automatised nor informed when reached, and all those infos to give away and fees to pay….
I don’t know, guys…

At this point, no one has paid nothing.
So maybe it’s an opportunity to take just a little time to think about all this.
What do you think ?
Do you think we would be better off with our paypal donations system ?
Do you feel like pledging a lot to make this work, and feel it’s worth going through all that ?
Do you think I’m making a mistake ?
You tell me!