I would say the fault is on the both sides. Defcon being so big knew that someone will pick up their unrealistic budget. But it’s still the contractor’s fault if they took a project with full knowledge of its scope and agreed on the price, and then did not deliver.
The whole point of being the vendor is that you're the party with the expertise to know what is and isn't a realistic budget for a project. Clients ask for unrealistic stuff all the time; part of your job is saying "no".
> After going overbudget by more than 60%, several bad-faith charges, and with a product still in preproduction, DEF CON issued a stop work order.
My reaction was "only 60% over budget"? This is a low volume custom computer. The way Defcon pushes promotion and recognition, I do not think they paid full commercial price.
We all don't know how the contract was structured.
EE claims, they stayed in Budget while also claiming they did not receive the agreed upon payment.
DC claims, EE went 60% over budget
A run with 30k badges is not that small and eight months is not that short of a timeframe.
Somewhere I read about a $20 target price all in which I find realistic for PCB parts and assembly, but not if the cost include injection molding ($10k / mold and $1/pcs I guess) and especially not if it contains hardware and software development cost
