Buyer Beware: Bezier Games’ Kickstarters Here is a PSA for the benefit of everyone here. So Bezier Games, publisher of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Suburbia, and Castles of Mad King Ludwig has been involved in some pretty scummy practices of late. In spring 2021, they launched a kickstarter for a collector’s edition of Castles of Mad King Ludwig, and fulfillment of the game was delayed by over half a year, which I guess is understandable given the circumstances. However, what isn’t forgivable is that before some people had even received their copies of the game, Bezier Games launched a kickstarter for an expansion to the game called “Renovations.” A lot of people were incensed because they had assumed that a “collector’s edition” was going to be a complete version of the game, and yet an expansion was being kickstarted before they had even received their copy of the game. In the kickstarter of the Renovations expansion, most of the stretch goals were actually in the promotional pictures of the game from the beginning, and it was very obvious that the stretch goals weren’t actually stretch goals at all - they had always been planned to be a part of the complete project regardless of how much funding they got. They also refused to give shipping estimates, citing the price fluctuations in shipping last year. Many people skipped the kickstarter because they were very unhappy about what had transgressed and because the expansion was supposed to come to retail anyways and Bezier Games had stated multiple times that there were no KS exclusives. Well today, the pledge manager just dropped, and the shipping prices are close to or in some countries more than the price of the expansion itself, which is $30. People were furious, and many people started getting refunds. In an effort to stop the exodus, Bezier made an announcement about how the stand-alone expansion is not actually going to retail after all, and it does actually contain KS exclusives. And if you want to late pledge now, knowing that there are in fact KS exclusives, it is now 33% more expensive to do so. To me, this is the ultimate form of using FOMO to manipulate people, and it’s extremely disappointing to me that a company I previously considered to be above board would resort to such dishonest tactics. It’s obvious that Bezier Games plans to use kickstarter as their main sales model going forward, but I would think twice before backing their projects in the future.