USD! USD! A Kickstarter Request

Posted by on Feb 10, 2015 in Dev, Karmaka, Kickstarter | 12 Comments

We plan on running a Kickstarter campaign soon for a game in development. We also live in Canada. That means our pledge prices will all be listed in CAD (Canadian Dollars) rather than USD. Creators in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand are similarly bound to their country’s currencies.

Let’s face it: the majority of backers for tabletop games, video games*, and most other categories live in the USA. I also believe Americans experience a psychological barrier to backing a project in a foreign currency. (Jamey Stegmaier discusses this in his post on running a non-US-based Kickstarter campaign.) How big a factor is this? It’s hard to tell. But I believe it’s significant.

But why be bound? Perhaps Kickstarter could add the option to list your project in whatever currency you choose. I don’t mind receiving the funds at the end of the campaign in USD or my local currency – whatever works for Kickstarter; but since they’re doing currency conversions under the hood anyways, why not give us the option? In this age of digital distribution and projects with physical goods that ship directly from a manufacturer, does the currency of the creator’s country of origin really matter?

I wrote to Kickstarter support a few months ago, requesting the feature. I got a nice response.

“While this isn’t an available feature at the moment, we are always looking for ways to improve the backer experience. Your suggestions and feedback are really helpful as we move forward and make enhancements. I’ll pass along your suggestions to the team!”

Cool, but no news since then, so I tried writing again a few days ago and got this response.

It is still not possible to choose in which currency your project’s funding goal will be displayed. Although there is no set timeline for this feature, keep an eye on our blog for any future changes.

Encouraging, but no commitment or timeline.

I got to wondering, how many non-US creators would like to see Kickstarter add this feature? Perhaps we can work together and request Kickstarter to make this change. If we all wrote to Kickstarter support, I’m pretty sure they’d take the request more seriously. (I know that when we hear a common request from our players, it moves up our priority list and is a lot more likely to get implemented soon.)

So, if you’d like to see Kickstarter implement this, mail them at support@kickstarter.com, asking them to do so. Feel free to independently describe the feature you’d like to see, or link back to this post – whatever you prefer.

Thanks! And please comment below if you do write to Kickstarter. It’d be great to know how many people have made the request!

*I couldn’t find a concrete statistic to back this up, but I’d be shocked if it wasn’t true.

12 Comments

  1. eddybox
    February 10, 2015

    btw, I know a number of people who have emailed KIckStarter even though they haven’t commented here. Don’t let this barren comment-wasteland discourage you from mailing KS. ;-)

  2. Peter
    February 11, 2015

    As someone who is imminently about to launch a Kickstarter in the next few days, we’re totally behind this!

  3. Abigail
    February 11, 2015

    This would even be great for non-US backers of non-US projects. Most of the other stuff we buy online is in USD anyway, so it’s confusing to see a Kickstarter in Canadian dollars or whatever.

  4. kim
    February 11, 2015

    I totally support this and will take it to our large Australian tabletop game designers facebook group. Perhaps anyone who is part of other regional design groups should do the same?

  5. Aaron Isaksen
    February 12, 2015

    I wrote to Kickstarter about this — I’ll let you know if I hear anything back that is unique from what was already posted.

  6. KTD
    February 13, 2015

    Kickstarter charges the card at the end of the project (when the deadline is due and goal is reached). That means that this creates quite a bit of a window for currency price fluctuations. If the exchange rate at the time of backing is used, then USD money received by the project might not cover the cost of the good. If at the end, backer doesn’t know how much he’s paying (current situation really, just hidden by cards currency exchange).
    IMO this is a good idea for projects which costs are expressed in different currencies than dollar.

    • Alistair
      February 23, 2015

      I had that happen to me. It was three months before my cc was charged and by that point the aud had dropped. It took the wind out of my support for the project even if it was not 100% their fault. It certainly stopped me from buying add ons.

  7. Christian Knudsen
    March 17, 2015

    Yup! I’m in the same boat, since I live in Denmark and plan to run a kickstarter campaign in the near future, but having prices listed in DKK instead of USD will be a huge deterrent to potentiel backers. I’ll be shooting Kickstarter an email as well. Hopefully more international campaign creators will make their voices heard as well. I’m sure Kickstarter is also cheating themselves out of money, since international campaigns aren’t nearly as successful as they could be if they weren’t forced to use their local curreny.

  8. Mike Wen
    May 16, 2015

    Super important. I am writing an email now.

    If they still do not have this option soon, I may go to indiegogo

  9. Marcin Maciejewski
    August 5, 2015

    This is exactly the right point! We still need to convert USD to EURO and GBP so we keep the margin for the exchange fee. In my opinion that would definitely helped with the conversion of any backers if they see the right price in their currency.

  10. Jey
    September 15, 2015

    I’ve been complaining to KS for over a year now, and they don’t care. They don’t understand that our clients are in the USA, we ship from the USA and the material/production we hire people to do are in USD. It’s crippling and confusing to potential backers.

    I strongly believe I’m getting nowhere in my current campaign because of this non-sense. We can collect USD funds, let us!

  11. eddybox
    September 15, 2015

    Thanks for the feedback, Jey (and everyone)! What I’m really hoping is to get the ear of someone on the “inside” – a developer or product manager. Asking KS support to pass on the request feels like talking with a bouncer at a bar. That said, keep poking your KS contacts. Hopefully we can show them this is in high demand and worth doing.