Buy Shroud of the Avatar through SeedInvest (equity crowdfunding)

blorpykins

Richard Garriott just announced that people can now buy pieces of his game dev company through the crowdfunding platform, SeedInvest.

https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b


Not feeling it myself... but maybe someone else out there might enjoy giving Lord British more money through SeedInvest.  If I was even going to consider doing something like this, I'd want to know about his last couple investment opportunities: Tabula Rasa and Ultimate Collector.

Tabula Rasa went live October 2007, became free to play on January 2009, and closed on February 2009.

I can't remember if Ultimate Collector ever launched or not, it closed down in April 2013.  (Lots of people feel like Shroud of the Avatar could have been called Ultimate Collector 2.)

Vrika

Tabula Rasa was owned by NCSoft, so you can't really place all the blame on Lord British for that.

But Shroud of the Avatar has already been judged as failure by most of its fans, who'd want to invest into it now? I think they desperately need more money, and are trying this because they're running out of options.

blorpykins

He made the announcement during his fundraiser telethon.  He's actually looking a bit tipsy - kept talking about the SEC and how he can't talk about the investment opportunity and just gave everyone a link.  Very hush-hush.

I've never used SeedInvest for anything before, but I have used Indiegogo for equity crowdfunding and got burned, not by Indiegogo but by the company I was throwing money at... so I'll probably pass here.

Rawyn

Does this mean they're seriously spent almost all the 11mil they raised already? On this game? Rofl, where? This game doesn't even look like a couple mil was put into it. I guess high salaries to the top peeps? ROFL I love it, they've failed, wasted all their money and did a begathon last night now begging for more money. This game is a failure already they need to just give up and stop wasting peoples time and money. This trainwreck keeps getting worse and worse. 

From the seedinvest link you have linked.

What is the current cash position?

As of May 17th our current cash position is $528k, and we have one of our periodic telethons coming up which commonly net us in excess of $100k additional funds.

kitarad

May be he needs money for another space trip.

Kyleran

Rawyn said:

Does this mean they're seriously spent almost all the 14 mil they raised already? On this game? Rofl, where? This game doesn't even look like a couple mil was put into it. I guess high salaries to the top peeps? ROFL I love it, they've failed, wasted all their money and did a begathon last night now begging for more money. This game is a failure already they need to just give up and stop wasting peoples time and money. This trainwreck keeps getting worse and worse. 

From the seedinvest link you have linked.

What is the current cash position?

As of May 17th our current cash position is $528k, and we have one of our periodic telethons coming up which commonly net us in excess of $100k additional funds.

I think there are local convenience stores with better cash positions.

Slapshot1188

A few interesting points (with caveats that I'm not a licensed broker and these are just my rakes after reading the offering)

• Looking to raise a minimum of $500k
• Value the company at $25,000,000
• This is actually 25% higher than when they last went to the market in 2012
• They seem to state they will ditch Early Access this July
• They are still planning to start Episode 2 with a target release date of 18 months from when they claim Episode 1 is fully launched.
• They require $230k per month to sustain operations.

blorpykins

Reading the Form C and the financials, wondering if this is a last ditch effort to inject funds into the company prior to a liquidation event.  Not saying that's what is happening but numbers:  https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b/filing

Rawyn

Rofl, OMG it's more sad and pathetic Everytime I read this. Stuff like this...

'Portalarium is a leading creator of immersive virtual worlds with a history of, and devotion to, taking players on imaginative journeys.'

Rofl since when???? Leading...really? Name one successful or hell released game they've done. 0   Before this abomination they call Sota they  failed to even make an app game they could release. OMG its just so sad and funny to watch. Way more entertaining than their demo game lol. Oh the desperation. I know they'll go f2p soon too to try grab some more people to play this crap hoping to snag some dollars from em.

Also what game are they describing cause it sure isn't that piece of crap Sota they've patched together with cheap and free assets.

So they're going broke now I wonder how they will be able to afford all the stuff they need and shipping to mail out all those collectors edition boxes people paid for? Bankrupt coming soon maybe? They seem to have just squandered the money on paying the higher ups big checks. Peeps been saying for years now they needed someone to really manage the money and hire an economist for their game. No one has managed this game well at all. They deserve this failure, it will follow them all forever, no one's gonna want to buy anything these guys are involved with again. Can't wait to see their smug faces and egos crushed when this shuts down.

Lheiah

So glad I sold my account!

Kyleran

Slapshot1188 said:

A few interesting points (with caveats that I'm not a licensed broker and these are just my rakes after reading the offering)

• Looking to raise a minimum of $500k
• Value the company at $25,000,000
• This is actually 25% higher than when they last went to the market in 2012
• They seem to state they will ditch Early Access this July
• They are still planning to start Episode 2 with a target release date of 18 months from when they claim Episode 1 is fully launched.
• They require $230k per month to sustain operations.

What its saying is without a cash infusion they cant meet their bills in about 3 months.

Would love to understand how they came up with that $25M valuation.

Vrika

Kyleran said:

Slapshot1188 said:

A few interesting points (with caveats that I'm not a licensed broker and these are just my rakes after reading the offering)

• Looking to raise a minimum of $500k
• Value the company at $25,000,000
• This is actually 25% higher than when they last went to the market in 2012
• They seem to state they will ditch Early Access this July
• They are still planning to start Episode 2 with a target release date of 18 months from when they claim Episode 1 is fully launched.
• They require $230k per month to sustain operations.

What its saying is without a cash infusion they cant meet their bills in about 3 months.

Would love to understand how they came up with that $25M valuation.

They've got the right to ask as much as they want. There doesn't need to be any basic to the valuation, just enough stupid people to pay that price.

blorpykins

The financial statement is an independent accountant's review.  Note 3 makes me wonder about that 25 million dollar valuation as well.

NOTE 3:  GOING CONCERN
 
The accompanying financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis, which contemplates the realization of assets and the satisfaction of liabilities in the normal course of business.  The Company is a business that has not generated profits in recent years, has sustained net losses of $3,068,579 and $3,048,110 during the years ended December 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively, and has an accumulated deficit of $18,089,082 and $15,020,503 as of December 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively.
 
The Company’s ability to continue as a going concern in the next twelve months following the date the financial statements were available to be issued is dependent upon its ability to produce revenues and/or obtain financing sufficient to meet current and future obligations and deploy such to produce profitable operating results.  Management has evaluated these conditions and plans to generate revenues and raise capital as needed to satisfy its capital needs.  No assurance can be given that the Company will be successful in these efforts.  
 
These factors, among others, raise substantial doubt about the ability of the Company to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time.  The financial statements do not include any adjustments relating to the recoverability and classification of recorded asset amounts or the amounts and classification of liabilities that might be necessary should the Company be unable to continue as a going concern. 
 
https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b/file/77937/download

laserit

Rawyn

Lol good vid. As usual they locked the post about this topic on their forums lolol.

laserit

Slapshot1188 said:

A few interesting points (with caveats that I'm not a licensed broker and these are just my rakes after reading the offering)

• Looking to raise a minimum of $500k
• Value the company at $25,000,000
• This is actually 25% higher than when they last went to the market in 2012
• They seem to state they will ditch Early Access this July
• They are still planning to start Episode 2 with a target release date of 18 months from when they claim Episode 1 is fully launched.
• They require $230k per month to sustain operations.

Maybe RG should take it to the Sharks on Shark Tank. I wonder how they'd feel about his evaluation

CrazKanuk

Kyleran said:

Slapshot1188 said:

A few interesting points (with caveats that I'm not a licensed broker and these are just my rakes after reading the offering)

• Looking to raise a minimum of $500k
• Value the company at $25,000,000
• This is actually 25% higher than when they last went to the market in 2012
• They seem to state they will ditch Early Access this July
• They are still planning to start Episode 2 with a target release date of 18 months from when they claim Episode 1 is fully launched.
• They require $230k per month to sustain operations.

What its saying is without a cash infusion they cant meet their bills in about 3 months.

Would love to understand how they came up with that $25M valuation.

Well..... their initial valuation was $20 million and they secured $7 million in that round, so they can't go BELOW $20 million because that would devalue existing stock. Also, existing investors would probably take issue with them doing another round with a $20 million valuation since it, again, devalues their interest. 

Here's an interesting notion, though. So you can already buy SotA. It's been on Steam for some time. NOW! When we see crowdfunded games RELEASE to Steam, they see a huge spike in sales, like 5-10 times that of their KS Campaign. HOWEVER, if something is already released on Steam, does "releasing" the game even matter? Like do we believe that if Ark releases, it will magically see a 5-10x spike in purchases? 7DTD? So it could be reasonable to believe that there is no cash infusion coming with a release? Does Steam do anything to promote these EA titles as being "relesaed" now? 

blorpykins

If they can make to the end of July without going bankrupt all they really have to look forward to is being anally raped by gamer news reviews, streamers, players, basically everyone with an interest in gaming.  They're calling themselves pre-alpha even today and haven't even had the courage to come out and announce to their current backers that they're launching in July... people are having to read about in the documents on the SeedInvest site.

So, either Portalarium is lying to existing backers, or they're lying to potential investors (that aren't already backers).  This kind of drama needs more singing and dancing... Shroud of the Avatar : The Musical

Rawyn

I guess layoffs will be coming next. Those peeps working for portalarium should start looking for new jobs. 

So on that seed link I see they say beta was July 2016 even though they have said pre alpha past 4 years.


Why is monthly influx of cash in your cash flow so high in July and August 2016?

Prior to July & August 2016, we erased players in our database approximately every quarter as the game data structures changed. In July 2016, we did our final player data wipe, which allowed played to claim goods and real estate permanently. While players still retained deeds they paid for previous to the final wipe, the specific property claims were all erased and everyone had to find new lots. This really motivated beta players to go online and claim properties that became newly available to the public. We will have a similar purge of storyline game state in Summer 2017 at the start of SoTA official story release launch to incentivize new players from our 200K registrations and others in the network, such as Ultima players, into SoTA.

Nice to see the Project Gorgon logo on this site. Now those peeps have got it together. They're already leaps and bounds better than Sota and with a tiny budget. Makes me wonder what they could do with even a fraction of the money port wasted on Sota.

Rawyn

Just thought of something funny. These guys started a Kickstarter because they were 2 months from running out of funds and having to close their company and now 4 years later they're like 2 months from having no funds again to keep going.

They put in bare minimum effort using cheap and free asset and goofed around with stupid ideas for years, listening to whales, and failed miserably. They spent more time on selling add-ons  and player owned towns than making a game.

I mean these guys catered to whales so much Starr had to call a whale up on the phone cause he was upset,, Starr hugged it out with him over the phone . A grown ass man needed to call another grown ass man and comfort him over a video game just cause he spent 10s of thousands on a game and wasn't getting his way about something...

Rofl. Talk about a group that are cueless, lazy, and incompetent. Funny how 2 months of funds left follows this group. Proves that this team are just awful and don't know how to run a company or make anything successful. 

IF YOU'VE GOT DEV + ACCESS on their forums stroll on over to the search and search     we hugged it out     page 13 and 14 you can see Starr telling a whale he's sending him his phone # on 13 and 14 they hugged it out. Title of thread is Draft: Player Owned Town & Lot Selection Sequence Update.

Sold my account years ago so don't have access to it anymore or I'd post screenshots of it ...so maybe someone who does can post the screenshots.

blorpykins

Portalarium is throwing in the towel and admitting they misled backers with their SeedInvest post and now they're asking for people to let them try to fix it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shroudoftheavatar/comments/6etwmh/portalarium_should_remove_their_seedinvest_offer/did2lw9/


Getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar... classic!

ste2000

Judging by comments on Reddit and the Official Forums even the most loyal supporters seems fed up with Garriot and Co.
This is not going to end well, watch this space.

Rawyn

Who would even bother to buy this game now knowing the financial state of this company, let alone invest money into a sinking ship? Who would trust them knowing they started this Kickstarter game cause they only had two months of funds left and no one else could be suckered into giving them a loan, then 4 years later in that same position?

I'm just wondering what comes first the game goes free to play as a last ditch effort or the company closes. Either way this company and game is an example of how to mismanage a game and fail hard while doin it. This whole fiasco of bad development and mismanagement was far more entertaining than their game is. 

kitarad

In my opinion Tabula Rasa only got completed in spite of of him and as we can see when he is in charge it is a disaster or perhaps a scam. Beware the developer that thinks so highly of himself that he thinks his fans are so gullible and can be used merely as a cash source.

This time he has no one to sue to squeeze money out of or has he already made off with the money.

Rawyn

They are putting on a brave face to keep the few hundred peeps they got left playing the shitty game. I guess there's still a few suckers with deep pockets left.

So now on their forums RG says this crowdfunding  seedinvest because they are transitioning from just developers to publishers too  ROFL. It's getting funnier and more pathetic everyday as this disaster comes to a closed down company/game, but this is the trainwreck that keeps on giving, u can't look away. 

Nilden

$10+ million and four years on this embarrassment of a game. I don't understand why anyone would give them money.