The money is supposed to be needed to pay off tool licensing fees and whatnot alongside folks for V/O work and such as they've ran low on money from their prior titles as a small indie outfit. If they tried releasing the game without keeping their fees on the up and up somehow or another——bad things would happen and I suspect they'd get wiped out in suits.

So while it is something almost like a pre-order, I don't think it counts when such a thing would be self-destructive without the funding raised.