Chronicles of Elyria Class Action Dismissed, Walsh Does Victory Lap Over Backers In Latest Update |

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Chronicles of Elyria Class Action Dismissed, Walsh Does Victory Lap Over Backers In Latest Update | MMORPG.com

For those who have been wondering the status of the ongoing class action lawsuit against Chronicles of Elyria developer Soulbound Studios, it looks as though that lawsuit has been dismissed in court. As such, Elyria founder Jeromy Walsh took to the quarterly update to do a victory lap of sorts over the news.

Read the full story here

Slapshot1188

From the lawsuit website:

Yep, main counterpoints right now are;
- This is just one lawsuit, the one against Xsolla is still going.
- We're still in the appeal period.
- The case was only dismissed on Federal level, there are still plenty of other options.
- Until he actually releases CoE, not KoE (which also hasn't released) we still haven't received the product we paid for.

Ridrith

I never figured this lawsuit was going to go anywhere, but when you back a project on Kickstarter you better be prepared to face the music if it doesn't happen. Responsibility has to fall on the shoulders of those who choose to invest in a project. I still think Walsh is a bit of scumlord though. His game sucks and so does he.

Slapshot1188

Ridrith said:

I never figured this lawsuit was going to go anywhere, but when you back a project on Kickstarter you better be prepared to face the music if it doesn't happen. Responsibility has to fall on the shoulders of those who choose to invest in a project.

I still think Walsh is a bit of scumlord though. His game sucks and so does he.

I believe it's shared. You should have some level of responsibility if you take someone money telling them they will get product A at time B and the project needs C money to complete and then take 3x, 4x, more time, 7 times the initial ask in money, and have no product that reasonably resembles the product A that was advertised.

I'd say you should actually have the lion's share of that responsibility but there is a difference between moral and legal. And it seems like in this case he may weasel out of legal responsibility. From a financial standpoint though, Xsolla was always the bigger target and I believe the stronger case because they literally promised refunds...

We shall see.

2 best notes that came out of this update IMHO:
Caspien has not worked on the games engineering in the last 4ish months (surprise)
Caspien has apparently gotten a real job outside the gaming industry (Hurrah!)

Ridrith

Slapshot1188 said:

Ridrith said:

I never figured this lawsuit was going to go anywhere, but when you back a project on Kickstarter you better be prepared to face the music if it doesn't happen. Responsibility has to fall on the shoulders of those who choose to invest in a project.



I still think Walsh is a bit of scumlord though. His game sucks and so does he.

I believe it's shared. You should have some level of responsibility if you take someone money telling them they will get product A at time B and the project needs C money to complete and then take 3x, 4x, more time, 7 times the initial ask in money, and have no product that reasonably resembles the product A that was advertised.



I'd say you should actually have the lion's share of that responsibility but there is a difference between moral and legal. And it seems like in this case he may weasel out of legal responsibility. From a financial standpoint though, Xsolla was always the bigger target and I believe the stronger case because they literally promised refunds...



We shall see.



2 best notes that came out of this update IMHO:

Caspien has not worked on the games engineering in the last 4ish months (surprise)

Caspien has apparently gotten a real job outside the gaming industry (Hurrah!)

Maybe his father-in-law will finally approve of him. Probably not though. I mean I agree with you for the most part though, I think in an ideal world... If you were giving money to a Kickstarter, you would have some protection. That said, I do see it kind of like a gamble. That's more or less what it is. I never gamble more on Kickstarter than I'd be willing to lose.

giantessfan

I think its crazy they tried.

Kickstarter tells you point blank they are not a store and you may not receive a freaking thing.

Slapshot1188

giantessfan said:

I think its crazy they tried.



Kickstarter tells you point blank they are not a store and you may not receive a freaking thing.

Kickstarter does not annul Fraud. And I believe that was the allegation. That the backers were given fraudulent info. Maybe I'm wrong but that's what I recall.

Also, only a sliver of the money came from Kickstarter. Far more came direct.

giantessfan

Slapshot1188 said:

giantessfan said:

I think its crazy they tried.



Kickstarter tells you point blank they are not a store and you may not receive a freaking thing.

Kickstarter does not annul Fraud. And I believe that was the allegation. That the backers were given fraudulent info. Maybe I'm wrong but that's what I recall.

Also, only a sliver of the money came from Kickstarter. Far more came direct.

This is true they did allow people to buy on there own website with pledges for a beta access

Vrika

giantessfan said:

I think its crazy they tried.

Kickstarter tells you point blank they are not a store and you may not receive a freaking thing.

Actually Kickstarter has list of 5 things that backers receive if the project fails:
 1. Explanation of what has been done, how funds were used, and what prevents the project from finishing
 2. Project creator(s) work diligently and in good faith to bring the project to best possible conclusion in a timeframe that's communicated to backers
 3. Creators demonstrate that they've used funds appropriately
 4. Creators have been honest and have made no material misrepresentations in their communication to backers
 5. Creators refund remaining funds or else explain how these funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form

If CoE were to fail, its Kickstarter backers could sue for breach of contract should they fail to fulfill any of these 5 obligations.

But to me it looks like these lawsuits against CoE are from people who backed through CoE's website under their terms, not about people who backed through Kickstarter.

Tiller

Crowd funding needs better regulation.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Mendel

DarkZorvanReturns said:

People need better regulation. Stop giving people money for promises.

In the very old days, my grandfather *may* have given some money to a snake oil peddler.  At least, he got a bottle of snake oil.

Kyleran

Ruling went pretty much as I expected, Soulbounds TOS clearly stated in multiple places there were no refunds outside of the initial two week period, and the court totally agreed.

While there was a one line clause about paying refunds if a 3rd party offered such , the court said it could not be linked to Xsolla since the company was never actually referenced by name.

Plaintiff's lawyers weren't too sharp (you get what you pay for, right?,) In filing their protest against the ruling they tried to dispute SBS's TOS which was in direct opposition to their use of the TOS to support their arguments. 

Judicial estoppel is some sort of basic legal "foul" which I assume only a lesser skilled or desperate lawyer would attempt when they had no leg to stand on.

Jeremy was never the real target, Xsolla screwed the pooch by leaving their refund policy unaltered so theoretically they are on the hook for any money spent on their site.

OldKingLog

Walsh is certainly a lying a-hole but its the backers who fell for impossible pie in the sky promises that are truly at fault here. This guy had zero track record of creating anything, let alone the totes amazeballs game he promised, yet some of you fools gave him thousands of dollars for nothing more than some empty promises. If you really want to get vengeance on who actually lost you money I'd advise you go take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror and then slap yourselves in the face as hard as you bloody can.

Ungood

I feel bad for all the people that lost money to this asshole.

Not much more I can say behind that, it sucks getting taken advantage of.

viney123

I backed CoE day 1 of the Kickstarter and upped it a tiny bit before it ended. It is something I highly regret, and I was one of the likely hundreds of people that at least put my basic info in the ring for the classic action suit because what Walsh did wasn't just starting a crowdfunded project and failing. It was much worse.

He deliberately squandered all the money that was funded. He showed us countless fake concept videos of gameplay that you could buy off the Unreal Asset store for at most like $1,000, and he lightly re-skinned it a tiny bit. The day before he announced the closure of the studio and laid off everyone but himself and 1 other person (WITHOUT BACKPAY), he released that fake tech demo so he could have something in court to say was a proof of concept and that he had no intention of actually defrauding the backers.

Then, we found out about the many other 'gameplay' videos from him, like his jousting demo, etc. All of it was just Unreal Engine assets he bought likely last minute and re-skinned. The game itself never really got made beyond some very basic demos that also completely changed every time we saw them, from one concept to something completely different and even using a different engine - waste of money after waste of money.

Lastly, months after his closure and telling everyone they won't be getting CoE any time soon (and most of us had felt since that point that there was no way we'd ever get it since he was basically a 1 man show now), he started putting all his time into KoE (Kingdoms of Elyria) which was a very basic (likely heavily Unreal asset-filled) strategy land management game that basically had no features or real scope. On top of that, it is NOT what any of the backers put money into the project.

It's one thing to focus on a single project and it just fails and you give up. It's another to just completely pull the rug out from everyone and give them something completely different because you are literally incompetent and incapable of producing a working product. This is what Jeromy Walsh did. The entire pitch of Chronicles of Elyria was built on countless lies because he never once had anything more than a few tech demos, even after YEARS of work and a full team supposedly working on it.

All this win does for him is validate his crazy vision that he can get away with anything. Rumor has it that he did it before and several professionals in the gaming industry had seen Walsh do something like this before and didn't want to work with him. He has all the power in the world now to do it again - with no real intention of actually releasing a product. Hopefully people in the industry recognize what kind of reputation he has and never do business with him again.

This is a warning - to all people that want to crowdfund MMOs. Star Citizen... Even Ashes of Creation. You're going into it with sky high expectations. So far, we've only had really 2 notable crowdfunded MMOs get launched, and they both FAILED. Shroud of the Avatar (from the maker of Ultima online) and Crowfall.

Several other crowdfunded MMOS have been in development for years, most of them for nearly a DECADE. You won't get anything close to what they say they will deliver. You also won't see it any time soon. Star Citizen is probably never going out of crowdfunding/alpha because they make far too much money from people bracing for a future that never will happen. Ashes could end up in the same fate - you can see it already with how heavily they are pushing their cosmetics and other upgrades for the game.

Good luck out there, folks. Don't make the same mistakes I did. It's probably best to NEVER crowdfund a MMO because they have literally zero incentive to deliver anything close to what they say they will. All they want is for you to keep the money coming in.

Neoyoshi

The drama continues i guess....?

kitarad

Is the case against Xsolla going on? 

KnightFalz

Not surprising in the least.

Scot

I don't think crowd funding needs regulation, it needs people to understand what it is. This is not buying a product in a store; it is buying a dream and dreams do not all become realities. That said the onus is on the company that if they can refund players they should, but if they can't you have to live and learn.

What would be useful for the consumer is some statistics on how many CF fail to deliver and what areas are worst. For example, CF table-top roleplaying games seem to have a good reputation for coming out with a final product. How amazing the games are varies of course, but if I did CF at all I would see that as a far safer bet than video games.

Vrika

Tiller said:

Crowd funding needs better regulation.

I agree.

Regulation can't fix everything, but we'd need some basic rules to make sure the business stays honest. For example:
 -Occasional mandatory audits to make sure that money is spend on the project
 -Occasional mandatory project reports to ensure that the company doesn't go dark
 -Occasional mandatory reports on who is CEO of the company and who are its owners, as well as info on how much those people, their family members, and companies owned by them have been paid

Also every crowdfunding should have a separate agreement on what actions will be taken if the project fails, so that people would better understand there's a chance of failure and what happens to their money in that case.

Also if the project fails to deliver the mandatory reports or audits, or if it takes more than 4 times its original ETA to deliver all agreed-upon rewards, then any of its backers should get the right to decide that it has failed. At that point the project creator would be obligated to either carry out the failure agreement or alternatively give refund to that individual backer. This would be done so that projects can't deliberately give unrealistic ETAs without consequences, or enter a phase where they prevent failure by dragging their heels infinitely.



EDIT: Of course the number of mandatory audits, reports and stuff would have to depend on how much crowdfunding was obtained. A project that collected $5.000 can't finance any audits, whereas a project that collected $10.000.000 won't have any trouble.

Slapshot1188

kitarad said:

Is the case against Xsolla going on? 

Yes

Iselin

Scammer weasels out of responsibility aided by the legal system... again.

As to the scammed, leaving aside the fact that they should have known better, I could have sympathy for them if they hadn't been so aggressively defensive calling us haters and trolls when we told you what was what, so I'll just leave it at "we told you so."

Slapshot1188

Iselin said:

Scammer weasels out of responsibility aided by the legal system... again.

As to the scammed, leaving aside the fact that they should have known better, I could have sympathy for them if they hadn't been so aggressively defensive calling us haters and trolls when we told you what was what, so I'll just leave it at "we told you so."

This is how I feel.  Exactly.

kitarad

Slapshot1188 said:

kitarad said:

Is the case against Xsolla going on? 

Yes

Well as long as this case goes on there is still hope for them to recover some funds.

One thing is for sure if this asshole tries this again people will hopefully be made aware of his history on Reddit and other places when he tries to promote his new scam.

Aeander

Ridrith said:

I never figured this lawsuit was going to go anywhere, but when you back a project on Kickstarter you better be prepared to face the music if it doesn't happen. Responsibility has to fall on the shoulders of those who choose to invest in a project. I still think Walsh is a bit of scumlord though. His game sucks and so does he.

I agree. However, if we treat all of these scumbag kickstarters as buyer beware, the legitimate companies are going to eventually find a lack of buyers who care.