It initially started when the hobby was niche enough that groupbuys were pretty much the only way to get the factory time to do enough items to make it economical.

Nowadays it keeps happening because a) its a win for the designer/company, they get immediate payment with no risk of not selling their product if they just did it in stock b) there are still smaller designers who wouldn't be able to get their designs made without the GB model

I am hopeful that with GMK leadtimes being consistently insane, and now with KAT being blown up due to factory covid issues, that people will start to wisen up? But the FOMO in this hobby is real and its a fucking shame

The perfect waffle maker...

Three guesses what the contents of this thread are. Let's guess...

"Why don't they just make more"

"Group buys are ridiculous... why don't they make them first and then sell them in stock?" Whoever 'they' are.

"It's all a scam... they could make loads of them, but they do this to artificially raise the price"

"gatekeeping"

Amma right?

There are loads of really nice in stock sets if you don't want to wait for a group buy.

Not defending it, but part of the reason is back in the day GMK never did group buys, and the idea of it happening seemed so out of reach. People on GeekHack forked out $$$ just to buy tooling to imitate GMK's Cherry font, a 'rare' now common red GMK escape key once sold for hundreds of dollars, finding GMK keycaps on Classifieds was rare.

Ah yes, another Maxfit67 enjoyer

Exactly my thoughts on this. Literally any other hobby and it just would not work.

I feel like it’s due to the fact that enough people try to justify their (respectfully) dumbass purchases, that (is also in part due to the the normalcy of this practice from companies) takes YEARS to receive.

But you know…Clickity clack. And those THOCK key caps.

All possible characters existing. With their bold, italic, underlined, bold-italic, bold-underlined, italic-underlined and bold-italic-underlined versions.

So sick!

Yup. Works both ways.

I love it it’s so cute 😭

Fuck gmk i’d rather buy 3 sets for the price of gmk. Fuck the sound and feel if it’s as much as a keyboard itself

Hey hey. I just looked it up and that does look remarkably similar. Thanks!

Well.. I guess I know what I'm doing with all those blank caps now.

Not OP but I recently made a cable using that connector with a white LED. They are really neat looking too!

these keycaps look great!

For that nice clicks crunch

Ah, okay. That makes sense! I've been using standard for so long, I've never considered that.

I was referring to gaming, where not having the numpad makes it more comfortable for long gaming sessions and more runway for the mouse before having to lift up and readjust.

Makes my teeth feel clicky

I'd like to say they're 'worth the wait' but no keycaps are worth waiting for years.

Having said that, fantastic keycaps.

How the actual fuck does it take 3-6 months to print a keycap set and look at it to figure out if it's the right colour or not? That shit should take maybe 10 minutes after printing which itself should only take a couple hours depending on the method used.

This hobby is really strange about this stuff. In pretty much any other niche hobby (I'm a longboarder for example), paying upfront and then waiting 2 years for fulfilment would get you boycotted and most of your orders cancelled (or just run out of business because no one ordered in the first place). You actually need to have a physical product to show people and not just a render.

Groupbuy? Yeah pay it and forget it!

Using it, but when I wake up they still screaming.