Shenmue 3 - Rewards Won't Go to PayPal Backers

The developers of Shenmue 3 have tried to explain why their Kickstarter rewards won't go to those who backed with PayPal.

Shenmue 3 developer Ys Net ruffled some feathers recently when it decided not to extended backer rewards that had previously been offered as “Kickstarter exclusives” to PayPal supporters. It was a strange move on the face of it, because the studio claimed there was a “strong response” from people who wanted to maintain exclusivity, but the results of two polls it conducted in December indicated the opposite: There were more people who wanted to open up the rewards than there were who wanted to keep them exclusive. But the majority of respondents said they didn't care one way or the other, and that's where things got tricky.

“Since the launch of the Paypal campaign we have received numerous requests to remove exclusivity from certain Kickstarter rewards and make them available for the Slacker Backer campaign as well,” a representative explained in an email. “We held the poll as a method to gain more accurate insight on backer opinions concerning this matter since we could not be sure that the requests we received represented the opinion of the vast majority of the backers.”

Ys Net's “foremost consideration” was upholding the promise it made during the original campaign, he said, and so it would only be willing to change that position if the majority of its backers supported doing so. That wasn't the case.

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