Social Gaming developer in spat with Kickstarter site

The online casino social game Chumba World has been unceremoniously removed from crowd-fundraising site Kickstarter without explanation.

A spokesman for Chumba developer Virtual Gaming World told GamesBeat this week that the venture was booted off the site without explanation after only four days-worth of exposure.

VGW is nonplussed, pointing out that its Kickstarter campaign was submitted and reviewed by Kickstarter management on three occasions, and was found acceptable.

Kickstarter did itself no favours by refusing to clarify the situation when contacted by GamesBeat, hiding behind ‘privacy’ and ‘legal’ rationales.

In a public statement VGW commented: “We are extremely disappointed at Kickstarter’s inconsistent and opaque approach to our project. In our view, the community of backers should decide whether a project succeeds or fails. Kickstarter should not be able to make arbitrary decisions with no explanation and no recourse.”

Kickstarter’s FAQ has a slew of general conditions under which it can ‘suspend’ developers, prefacing these with a policy comment that it does not disclose specific reasons for a project’s cancellation to either creators or backers.

Apparently a project can be suspended if it “…violates or acts inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the site’s guidelines or Terms of Use; materially changes the stated use of funds; makes unverifiable claims; or exhibits actions that are more closely associated with fraudulent or high-risk activity.”

VGW will now seek alternative channels for its drive to raise $50,000 in funding.