Kickstarter announced several updates late Friday to its terms of use and policies for crowdfunded projects, according to a blog post at the company's site. The terms of use are not changing much about the spirit of the platform, but the update provides more detailed guidelines for setting expectations, both between Kickstarter and users, and project creators and their backers.

Kickstarter has iterated on its policies several times since it launched in 2009, with the most recent wave of revisions surrounding the site's transition from only posting projects cleared by the staff to clearing all projects that meet a basic set of criteria. Even still, some projects lack clear goals, encounter setbacks, or fail to deliver, like the myIDkey project that has burned through $3.5 million without yet distributing a finished product. The most recent terms revision is timely: on Thursday, science fiction author Neal Stephenson announced that a game he Kickstarted in 2012 with $526,000 in funding was officially canceled.

Section 4 of the new terms of service goes to lengths to help project creators set themselves up for success and/or not frustrate their backers. If the creators can't deliver, Kickstarter explains how to try and make good when the creators do not fulfill their goals or backer rewards.

In that event, creators are expected to explain what is happening and how the money was used, giving refunds to any backers who request them. Kickstarter also writes that, in lieu of giving refunds, backers can "explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form," which still provides a loophole for a creator to keep a project in eternal development hell.

But for the backers that may be jilted by a project gone bad, section 5 has some reminders: estimated completion dates are, in fact, estimates, and Kickstarter is not responsible for issuing refunds. However, backers can cancel their pledges at any time during funding. Afterward, refunds can still be processed, but the interaction must be between the backer and the creators themselves.