Kickstarter Reviews 1,256

They are biggest scammers. Do not invest in them. We paid money to them for a new project Sheggell bird feeder and have never heard back from both the parties. Never invest in kickstarter

Same experience as everyone else, it's just a platform for scammers to make money off backers and Kickstarter to get their chunk of commission for siding with the scammers when you want a refund.

Since using Kickstarter, I’ve been contacted multiple times a day by third parties — all from random Gmail accounts — claiming they can “push my campaign to incredible levels” or “guarantee massive success.”

These messages are completely unsolicited and feel like spam. It’s clear that my project or personal details have been accessed or scraped from Kickstarter in some way, which makes me seriously question how well user information is being protected.

The frequency of these contacts is excessive and intrusive, and it reflects very poorly on Kickstarter’s ability to safeguard creators from exploitation. I joined the platform to share genuine creative work, not to be bombarded with shady offers from people trying to profit off my efforts.

Kickstarter needs to take this issue seriously and start protecting its community from repeated unwanted contact and data misuse.

It will never be finished. All the money raised on Kickstarter has long been spent, and the creator seems to have lost interest in the project. You will never see a final release.

I was one of the people who worked on ArtWarz, creating a series of illustrations for the project. Some of these works are still being used without my consent. At the time, I was just a student, and Mark Diaz involved me in the collaboration with many promises that later turned out to be empty.

The campaign raised around $24,000, but over time everyone who had been hired eventually left, including me. The reason was simple - a lack of professionalism, proper conditions, and work ethics. Mark often paid artists very differently, saying things like “if you’re from a poor country, you should be paid less.”

He also struggled to give proper directions. Most of the instructions were given verbally through chaotic Zoom calls with no real structure or clarity, which made it very hard to work effectively.

By 2024, Mark himself admitted that the project no longer interested him and that ArtWarz was unprofitable and too complicated to continue. Despite that, he kept bringing in students and junior artists, asking for high-quality work for very little pay or even for free. There were no contracts.

I don’t recommend investing in ArtWarz if you expect to see results. The project has been dead for years. Maybe it once had good intentions, but now it just looks abandoned.

My experience: 2022–2025.

I recently backed the Mouse Ring project on Kickstarter. When the scam occurred, Kickstarter had no effective policy in place to protect backers’ rights. As a result, I still haven’t received the promised reward, and Kickstarter has taken no real action to address the aftermath of the scam. I’m also beginning to question whether Kickstarter actually verifies the credibility of creators before allowing a campaign to launch.

As per most of the reviews, Kickstarter has significantly increased its support of scam projects, they wont hold projects accountable to deliver or even communicate, and when you report, the stock standard email is less than useful - they admit they wont act outside of banning the scammers from trying again - which is hilarious as the developers simply make a new account.

The project I backed has been telling backers for months they have delivered the product, they have is available online for sale, and none of the thousands of backers ever received anything.

And Kickstarter's standard cut and paste response? your comments has been sent to our 'trust and safety' team. With nothing ever happening.

While there is of course always an element of risk, Kickstarter does NOTHING at all to prevent scams and protect people losing money.

I backed a project for an egpu which was fully funded. It was not a cheap pledge, however shortly after collecting the money they reached out with an upgrade offer and to pay for postage. Having secured additional funds the project team went silent and have not produced the promised product. Kickstarter support offer no help and do not even try to assist with obvious fraud.

An earlier project I backed delivered the product but it did not work as described. Same lack of support from the project team and Kickstarter were zero help.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Kickstarter is a total scam. I have supported a bunch of campaigns. At least 4 have been corrupt! Most recently the campaigned raised over 1000x their goal and what happened? Crickets. Messages to the campaign went unanswered. Requests for refunds, nothing. Complaints to kickstarter and NO response! Avoid and block their deceptive emails!

Sadly, whilst the idea/concept of Kickstarter (which is mainly to enable people/companies with potential new products to raise money to produce them) is a good one, the implementation of the process and the 'policing' of these projects, is extremely poor and, as many others here have already posted, many of these projects either do not 'materialise' or get delayed (I have projects/items that I backed and paid for at the beginning of the year that I still haven't received.

In addition, it has become apparent (sadly not before I had backed several projects) that some people are taking advantage of the lack of scrutiny/security employed by Kickstarter to scam people and, as far as I can tell (communication (or the complete lack of it!) from project creators and Kickstarter is yet another reason people are so unhappy about the experience), at least 2 or 3 of the projects that I backed and paid for are likely to be scams (with the final complaint being that the money I/people have paid just seems to have vanished with no recourse or intention to refund it).

In short... if you're lucky enough to find a decent/honest project on Kickstarter (and, in fairness, some of the ones that I have backed have been fine) then, good for you but, if not, well... Do you REALLY want to take that risk?

Kickstarter being US based has no interest in worthwhile projects in other countries such as Australia. If you are not US based your project will not be seriously assesed or considered by Kickstarter and you will waste an awful lot of time and money preparing your submission with no chance of being considered.

They allow scams on their site. They don't care if projects never deliver as long as they get their cuy.

They take any project without doing any due diligence. I reported a couple of projects that were obvious scams: no company information, clearly fake ''founders'' stolen from somewhere else, copy/pasted text from another project... absolutely ridiculous company that does nothing at all to prevent fraud but actually encourages it !

Do not put any money in any of the projects there.

Do not trust this so called business KICKBOOSTER. There is no address, no UK phone number and no email address. If you raise a concerns via the website they wil not answer or address the issued raised. In short they are a scam only interested in the oney they can take from those who need investments from the public

Stay away, it’s a scam.
My order never arrived and the only conversation you can have is with a bot.
Crooks

This is little more than a scam business. The biggest red flag, there is not contact address or phone number. E-mails go unanswered. E-mails that are answered are filled with lies.

STAY AWAY!!

I could bore you with my story or you could consider a 1 star rating is enough to know its just not worth it. I REALLY wish I had.

Will never back another Kickstarter project again. They leave the Late Pledge button for Stellaris Infinite Legacy active even though the project is a scam with no rulebook and it's been 6 years since the Kickstarter finished. Stay away...

Not only do they ignore when the Creators break Kickstarters rules, Kickstarter even help them doing it,
kickstarter even breaks their own rules.
they didn't even bother to read the report about the
about the creator, the came with a copy paste answer that answered none of the issues i pointed out in the report

they also don't care if a company breaks EU laws on their platform, because Kickstarter only cares about the creators.

stay far away from kickstarter,

I applied to Kickstarter with a project called cherry, a startup charity app we're developing (cherry.org.uk) designed to let people buy and sell second-hand clothing, with sellers having the option to donate their proceeds to charities. It’s a tech build, very much like Depop or Vinted, except with a social purpose.

Kickstarter rejected the project twice, claiming it was “charity fundraising,” even though the funds requested were solely for product development; not for donations, not for running a charity, but for building a creative, innovative platform for good causes to thrive in the digital space.

Despite clarifying this, Kickstarter refused to reconsider and told me I could no longer resubmit, providing ZERO context.

This feels short-sighted and unfair to say the least.

Their rigid interpretation of their rules means that any project with a social good component is excluded, even if it’s clearly a creative tech product, as stated on multiple occasions.

Ironically, Kickstarter will happily host projects that churn out sweatshop clothing, cheaply made gimmicks and so on, but refuses to support platforms that aim to create lasting, genuine impact.

If you’re a founder working on social-impact tech, be aware: Kickstarter may block your project not on merit, but on a narrow technicality.

DO NOT USE THIS PLATFORM!!!! I wish I would have read reviews before I backed a project. Only after realizing that the project I backed was a scam, did I research to discover that KICKSTATER does not offer any protections of your investment. I assumed the basic level of protection exists. I was VERY wrong. I can paraphrase the extent of their ability to support you should a scam occur. They advise you to take legal action against the responsible parties. That's it. They don't even offer to refund you the portion of the money that they make off your investment. Be sure you know your credit cards policies and be ready to use them, should you be daft enough as I was and contribute any money to any projects.