Until some actual explanation is given, I'm not giving my money to either party.
Did Mech27 and Supervan both RND their own molds, independently, and finish around the same time? Did they collaborate and have a falling out? Did one of them invest all the money and the other poach?
And yeah, neither party owes me or the community anything in the way of an explanation. It's just my personal objection that I want to know who the scumbag is before I spend.
SuperVan had his own replica moulds funded and made with Bsun. 27 collaborated with Massdrop (for months, since like March), who obviously have the funds, the manpower and the communicative skills/know how to work with the factory directly and have the old, unusable Panda moulds fixed/recouped - something 27 and Zisb/Invyr did not which is why a future run was deemed infeasible until just now (or until 27 was approached by MD back when the project started).
I see.
So what's the issue with Supervan's price gouging? It is Supervan that took the gamble, investing in the project. If the payout doesn't come then it's Supervan who is out the money. Why does anyone else care?
I've noticed people get really upset about vendors making a high ROI within the mech keys community. There's an expectation that every vendor should be in it for the community and not to make money, because a lot of GB runners minimize their ROI in order to meet MOQs.
For example, there are a ton of people who refuse to buy Zeal's switches because regular Gaterons are something like half the cost of what he charges. Despite him claiming that he had to get custom molds made and uses different materials than regular Gaterons, he gets regularly accused of price gouging.
In this particular example, this same GB runner has (supposedly?) previously sold this exact switch at $0.60 each. Meaning that his minimum ROI for this GB is +67%, assuming that the previous GB was run at +0% ROI. People were previously okay with this because there were no alternatives and a lot of people bought Halo switches last time Massdrop made a batch of them. Now that there is an alternative, especially a significantly cheaper alternative, people are no longer okay with the inflated price. So the people who already have Halo switches are saying they'll stick with this GB if Supervan undercuts MD's prices.
(Edited because I accidentally called Halos "Holys")
