Fan funding

See also: crowd funding

Unlike normal pre-orders, these are done long before the end product is available, usually with no chance of refunding and no guarantee of the game being finally released (in case the funding runs dry).

Occasionally these allow the donations to be any size or otherwise larger than required for the actual pre-order, may allow placing it repeatedly.

Some may include people's names who donated significant amount to credits section in the final product or even give them some form of influence of the development (usually minor yet noticable).

In some cases these also allow immediate access to current builds of the games, regardless how playable they are.