Kickstarter has become the go-to place to get funds for iOS game developers. But it’s important to realize that crowd-sourcing funds can be as much of a hassle as a blessing in some situations. Let’s take recently successful Kickstarter project Star Command as an example.

Developer War Balloon set a goal of $20,000 for their Kickstarter project for upcoming game Star Command. The project actually raised almost double in funding for the game at about $37,000. In a recent post on their Kickstarter page, War Balloon described where that money actually went and how the team is actually $50,000 in debt.

$2000 immediately didn’t happen because of transactions that didn’t go through, Kickstarter and Amazon Payments took about a $3000 cut, and $10,000 was spent on prize fulfillment for the pledgers. With the remaining $22,000 that was left after that, the team spent $6000 on music, $4000 on attorney fees, $2000 on poster art, $1000 on iPads, and $3000 for PAX East. Only about $6000 ended up as income for the team.

Some tips from War Balloon, “Keep the attorneys out of it.” They felt like the operating agreements were a waste of time and “a nice piece of napkin paper probably would have done just as well.”

Kickstarter was definitely a positive force for their development. But it isn’t always the the swimming pool of money that it seems to be for even the successful projects.

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