Crowdfunding is a very easy way of getting your product into the hands of consumers, but by opting to go this route you also run the risk of pissing off a lot of people along the way. That is the predicament that Pirate3D Inc now find themselves in, as their “affordable 3D printer” that achieved an incredible $1.5 million in pledges now looks set to leave the majority of its backers without the product they backed.
The company promised that the 3D printer, named The Bucaneer, would be a low-budget way of bringing the technology into consumers’ homes, but since its Kickstarter campaign came to an end in June 29, 2013, raising $1.438 million and breaking records on the site at the time, 60% of its backers have not received the 3D printer that they were promised with Pirate3D Inc releasing an update informing them that the company has run out of funds to develop the product.
The update, which is only available to view for backers of the product but was outlined by TechCrunch, reportedly sees the company claiming that they are seeking additional funds in order to produce the remaining printers, though the likelihood of them delivering the printers to the 60% of backers who have been left empty-handed is quite obviously slim no matter how the company dresses the situation up.
Additionally, a further update seems to suggest that the company is now scrapping their original idea in order to develop a new product, which they insist will somehow be better than the 3D printer they had initially planned. The update reads:
“We are not shedding our obligations to you. What we are doing is stopping building too many of the current machine, go back into serious hardware mode, and build a machine that we can fulfill backers within cost and also to build a healthy foundation for the company.
“In short, this is us letting you know that we have been working with technology whose foundation was laid 2 years ago (which has its limitations though good in some ways), we are going to throw it out the window, go back to basics and build something even better.”
Due to The Bucaneer’s Kickstarter campaign having been posted before Kickstarter made its terms of service update in October 2014, PirateInc 3D are legally entitled to either provide backers with the product they pledged to, or issue them a full refund. If this doesn’t happen, its backers are within their rights to sue the company, which is likely the reasoning behind the updates being vague in regards to the facts surrounding the project’s failure. Kickstarter’s current policy allows companies to cancel a funded project without having to refund backers, with the caveat being that they must provide documentation detailing where the money put into the project was used.
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If by some miracle Pirate3D Inc are able to get the funds necessary to complete the 60% of orders they have still not fulfilled, which seems an unlikely development considering they couldn’t do this with $1.5 million in the bank, then the majority of its backers will have still been waiting for their product a considerable while after the date they were first promised that it would make it to them, with Pirate3D Inc initially stating that shipping would begin way back in February 2014.
However, it seems unlikely that the company will be able to rectify this situation now, and it seems that they’re stalling until they’re forced to face the inevitability that a whole bunch of people want them to fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars that they don’t appear to have.
