The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign offers backers a plethora of exclusive rewards for contributing, from physical copies of the game in unique cases to specially engraved plaques. None of these gifts, however, will be available to those who donated via PayPal, according to the campaign's latest update.

Developer Ys Net, headed by series creator Yu Suzuki, put the decision up to a vote. Over the New Year's holiday weekend, Kickstarter backers were given a say on whether rewards would also be granted to those who came on-board during the campaign's second wind, when it opened up the option to donate by PayPal.

Those "slacker backers," as they were called when the PayPal option opened in September, were denied access to the exclusive rewards based on the answers of just over 15,000 respondents. 4,009 people voted against offering the bonuses to PayPal contributors, 4,670 said they were okay with it and 6,432 expressed no preference.

Yet Ys Net interpreted that minority to be a "strong response" in favor of barring PayPal constituents from accessing the campaign incentives.

Shenmue 3 is still taking money from willing crowdfunders over PayPal, but those "slackers" should be aware that many of the higher-tier rewards will not be available to them. The PlayStation 4 and Windows PC game is eyeing a late 2017 launch, and is the highest-funded gaming Kickstarter project in history.

Check out the game's E3 2015 teaser trailer below.

Update: Although the announcement of the poll results clearly reads that PayPal backers would not be receiving the exclusive rewards "as originally promised," an earlier post indicated that the noted Kickstarter-only items would only be available to Kickstarter backers from the get-go. We've removed reference to this contradiction above.

We reached out to Ys Net for clarification on this and the nature of the reward offerings following the poll results. Their statement reads as follows: