Penny Arcade Kickstarter needs to be kicked out.

I’m going to preface this entire post by saying that I have been frequenting the Penny Arcade website for years as well as going to PAX prime whenever possible. However, I think the Penny Arcade’s Kickstarter is dubious at best. While clearly thousands of people are going to disagree with me here, there is no good reason for PA to be using Kickstarter to pay their bills.

So the crux of my complaint here is that nothing is really being started. All of the money is intended to be used to cover the things that their ad revenue currently covers. Nothing new is actually being funded unless you count the hypothetical projects that may happen.  For a quarter of a million dollars, they will remove one banner ad from the homepage of their website for a year. For a full million, they’ll remove them all from the site. In a year, they’ll try and tap their fans’ wallets again. I’m not even exaggerating – they say as much in their own post: “This is for a period of 1 year. From January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013. We will run the fundraiser again, around this time next year.” Does that mean “kickstarting” themselves all over again? I’m not even going to touch what I think of the rewards inherent in this debacle. The rewards are not what a Kickstarter project should be about, so if people like them and find them rewarding then good for them. Still, it’s day 2 of this farce and they’re at 2,407 backers for $170,405 at the time of this writing. I feel sorry for smaller companies who actually need money to produce something awesome that would be justified in throwing their hands up in frustration at all of this. They just don’t have the built-in audience of a media giant to point them at the “back this” button.

I’m also a little confused about how not having ads on their page gives them more free time. Not being someone that runs what is probably the largest webcomic site on the net, I’m not familiar with the logistics involved. I just didn’t think that Mike and Jerry were actively involved in the advertising side of the business. If someone has some insight, I would be interested in hearing it.

All of that said, if this was a fund drive being done through their own website, I wouldn’t object. I wouldn’t fund, but I wouldn’t complain if they wanted to try getting their readers to pay them directly. They get my money when I go to PAX or buy some merch. In my opinion it’s just not a project (if you can call it a project) that belongs on kickstarter. They’re not funding a new product, they just want their fans to pay their salaries and rent for a year. This isn’t even charitable. Just give to Child’s Play if you feel like you have too much money that you need to get rid of and at least help some people that need it.