Well of course you lose the money, why wouldn't you? It's a risk.

Who says that it's a risk. When i am surfing trough diffrent projects, non of them include any warning messages from risk of losing your pledge.

Common sense?

Well i think that there should be warning message. This leaves a possibility of lawsuits made by disappointed backers.

You're financing a project that has not even started... i'ts a risky proposition by definition, you don't need a disclaimer for that.

Even real-life project with hefty sum of money and big investor occasionally never reach completion (bridges, dams, you name it...), and those on kickstart are no different

I'd imagine that the nature of Kickstarter is covered well enough in their own FAQ and TOS for them to not need to worry about including warnings on every page. If you don't know the score then you didn't read the TOS.

Where's the warning message when you put money into a company on the stock market? Don't think there was a warning message from banks to not invest in certain Lehman Brothers assets....

Kickstarter is investment, not a store where you buy the final product - yes, common sense should be sufficient.

Yes it's not a store but they promise to give something back in many pledge levels. So many think that they are buying something. But you are are right people should use common sense, but i am afraid that with projects that end being train wrecks people are going to be very angry.

Kickstarter isn't even an investment. I can give $1 to Doublefine Adventure and don't get anything back (since they start giving you something at...$15, I think?). That, and giving $10000 and getting a game, some swag, plus a dinner with a game developer as a 'return' is objectively a bad financial investment.

Well, it actually depends. If the money is lost due to badwill, being spend on something else than developing a product it could be treated as tort, and the company could be liable.

The agreement is: you give them your money, and they will do their best to deliver you a product.

Except that with "real" investors you usually have some contract and legal binding and investors usually get their money back if the project is successfull, here it's closer to charity; you give money and you expect it will be well used.

Yeah, obviously real investors are expecting a real return. Not just their money back either. But a few times over.

Here, if all goes well, you get your chosen reward by the end of it. The more expensive tiers, where the reward doesn't come close to equalling the financial investment, you're looking at something closer to a charitable donation, yes. But then it's hardly unprecedented for people to financially support something they love. in fact, when you think about it, it's commonplace.

And you could give $10000 without selecting a reward, if that suits your fancy.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but from reading the angry comments it seems like the owner of ZionEyez simply disappeared after he received the money. He stopped posting updates and refused to answer e-mails and phone calls (unless people pretended to be potential investors, in which case he would reply to them).

More likely it would be treated by criminal fraud. There would also be civil fraud as well, but even if the money is recovered the amount would be pennies on the dollar and the party defrauding people would probably not have enough to cover recovery costs and pay everything back.