We have thought about how best to respond to Kickstarter’s action. The most powerful action we could take would be to pull all future projects from Kickstarter. However, the employees involved in forming the union, even the fired ones, don’t want to do that, asking instead on Twitter to stay the course:
(1/2) All of us organizing with KSRU are committed to the mission of Kickstarter, and will continue to support creators currently on the platform and in our alumni network. We are not calling on creators who rely on Kickstarter to abandon live or planned projects.
— Kickstarter United (@ksr_united) September 13, 2019
(2/2) That said, we deeply appreciate the support from our community. The work we are doing is not only in service of employees, but the artists, makers, and backers throughout the Kickstarter ecosystem. We’re all in this together.
— Kickstarter United (@ksr_united) September 13, 2019
We understand and appreciate that. There are many good people working at Kickstarter, and there are people inside (and now outside) the company that are trying to make things better, and they’ve engendered a lot of goodwill with us. We’ve had nothing but good experiences working with Margot Atwell and Camilla Zhang. So we’re watching the company to see how they work things out.
But we want to make it perfectly clear to Kickstarter PBC that we aren’t going to wait for long. And neither will a lot of people. There are other options. I’m sure Indiegogo is licking their lips at the prospect of picking up a lot of extra projects, and there are enough campaign creators here to make a massive migration possible… or to create a new crowdfunding site entirely that lives up to the principles Kickstarter espouses in its corporate mission of being a public benefits company and applies their outward values inward.
Some people aren’t waiting. There’s a petition signed by other creators who have raised over six millions of dollars on Kickstarter, getting off until this is resolved. And a spiral of people leaving may be irreversible… just ask what’s left of MySpace, Geocities, AOL, Yahoo, and so on. Kickstarter has to realize that this controversy threatens to do significant damage to its platform, and to the creators who rely on it— at least, the ones who are left.
In a way, ComicMix is lucky— because we don’t have any projects on Kickstarter right now, we don’t have to explain to our backers why we’re still here. We can wait a bit. And we hope that we’ll be able to continue to do business here.
But we can’t hold our breath forever. Nor will we.