Take a look at the Kickstarter rules and there’s a link to a list of additional prohibited things, such as “Contests, coupons, gambling, raffles, and lifetime memberships.”

Well, Jamey Stegmaier says how running contests seems to be allowed as long as it is not done on Kickstarter itself. For example, it is common for Board Game Geek to have contests for various Kickstarter projects. Go here for more information.

I decided to ask Kickstarter if the Board Game Geek contests are allowed, and they said, “So long as you’re not running a contest on your project or in your updates, it should be fine.”

I then asked, “I noticed that many Kickstarter campaigns are promoted with Board Game Geek promotions. Is that allowed? If so, am I allowed to mention such a thing in the project updates? ”

They responded, “Contests are prohibited while the project is live—no matter where they take place. If your project is reported to our moderation team, it can result in your project being suspended.”

That is confusing. They just seemed to give two answers that are basically the opposite answers.

I was told that contests off of Kickstarter should be fine. Then I was asked by a store owner if people could win a prototype of my game at a demo I will be doing who will host the demo. I said I could do that based on what I was told by Kickstarter. I made fliers for the demo to make sure people know about it and it was mentioned that you could win a deck. I also ordered more prototype copies of the game from the Game Crafter because I decided I could do the same thing at other stores when having a demo for the game.  Then all of a sudden I was told that I couldn’t have any contests off of Kickstarter. So, that meant I had to throw out the fliers and make new fliers again to make sure that winning a prototype of the game isn’t mentioned and that I didn’t need those prototype copies of the game (which are somewhat expensive).  This is frustrating and costly. I asked some more questions and await their response (which was about a day and a half ago).