The 'easiest' way to deal with stuff like this is just for people not to give their money away or at the very least give money like a donation and expect nothing in return (since that's what ends up happening in a lot of these cases). But we all know that will never happen.
Assuming Xsolla either settles or loses the court case, they have clauses in their contracts that allow them to take Caspian to court for damages suffered. Basically, he's dodged our punch just to walk into an oncoming bullet as the legal team with Xsolla is unlikely to go easy on him.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I was reading about these articles, about the corruption of companies to get crowdfunding from well-meaning people, and I have a question.
Crowdfunding Supporters paid for the development of an MMO “Chronicles of Elyria” and development was stalled for 4 years, meaning the MMO would no longer be developed.
After these 4 years, the company returned with the same MMO, but with a different name “Kingdoms of Elyria” and even then the company did not return to development.
The question…
If Crowdfunding Supporters paid for the development of the MMO “Chronicles of Elyria” and didn't receive that MMO that is already paid for, then wouldn't Crowdfunding Supporters be the True Owners of that MMO?
After, Crowdfunding Supporters paid for a Development Service that did not meet the goals promised by the MMO company “Chronicles of Elyria”, causing development to stall, causing a loss to Crowdfunding Supporters.
If I'm correct in that reasoning…
So it's just the Supporters of Crowdfunding to redeem this MMO in court and put it up for auction to get the money back, after, the funding money belongs to the Supporters, the company only participated with the Development Service.
Note: I'm not referring to the MMO “Kingdoms of Elyria”, because by changing the name, it already becomes another MMO, with another record.
Well… if I'm wrong, forgive me.
Thanks for your attention
lykosfx
Good to see you posting again, I doubt a court would hold that up, even if it decided the funders were investors it is still a stretch to claim ownership. The best they can hope for is their money back which would be fair all round to my eyes. But maybe someone with more legal know-how can comment?
Assuming Xsolla either settles or loses the court case, they have clauses in their contracts that allow them to take Caspian to court for damages suffered. Basically, he's dodged our punch just to walk into an oncoming bullet as the legal team with Xsolla is unlikely to go easy on him.
Except that....you can't really get blood from a stone, yes?
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I already posted in the lawsuit dismissed thread, but I'll post here too because I know Jeromy "Caspian" Walsh reads the forums. Jeromy... You are a fraud. You scammed myself and thousands of others out of their money and it was completely unjustified. We would've let it go if you had admitted you tried and couldn't make it work. But, you kept saying you were still going. You got a PPP loan after firing ALL your employees and didn't even pay them for the last bit of work they did. You did all of that right after releasing a sh*tty $1,000 Unreal Engine demo that you had re-skinned, and you released that RIGHT before shutting down the studio,
Why would you do this? Simple - legal reasons. You wanted to have an actual 'product' that you delivered to backers so they couldn't just say you took the money and had no intention of doing anything with it, which we still think is the case. Every big 'reveal' you did was just a cheap re-skinned Unreal Engine tech demo that anyone can buy off the UE store.
Your game was constantly piling on more and more complex systems when you weren't even capable of releasing a dinky little strategy town management game. You lied about your skills, you paid yourself hefty salaries so you could live an extravagent lifestyle while doing nothing with it for the good of the game. And, we know people you previously worked with were already suspicious of you after other projects you had done. You were and always will be, a scam artist.
The reason you would never admit you failed is because you want to continue this lifestyle as long as possible. The longer you say, "Don't worry! We're still working on it.," the longer you can keep that pool of money you blew through so quickly after squandering all of it, from being paid back via our lawsuits that are rightful in claiming fraud. There hasn't been a case like this before. It falls in line with other typical crowdfunding scams. You publish your product, get all the money, lie and lie that you're working on the product and then just come up with more and more excuses to delay the inevitable admittance of failure and/or lawsuits to recover money back from a project that NEVER was going to come out because it was only being used to squeeze out money from hardworking people.
And this, people, is why you should never crowdfund a MMO. Ashes of Creation could be next. Jeromy Walsh did a great job at lying and saying how great things were going and how he was funding it himself. But we all know how that turned out...
I would disagree about all crowdfunding. I do some kickstarter and would say that most of the time, the products are good, but I deal mostly in material objects. Some tech and a lot of geek stuff like board games (boy they aren't what I grew up with).
However, I would never crowdfund a software project. I've worked in software development (manger type not coder or one of the smart ones) and I've seen the best coders, the best analysts, people with the best intent... miss deadlines, not be able to accomplish what they thought they could and so on and so forth. All these game developers probably aren't trying to fleece anyone, but are out of their depth. It doesn't change the fact that they have taken money and not produced as expected. I personally won't change my idea of not crowdfunding software.
I would disagree about all crowdfunding. I do some kickstarter and would say that most of the time, the products are good, but I deal mostly in material objects. Some tech and a lot of geek stuff like board games (boy they aren't what I grew up with).
However, I would never crowdfund a software project. I've worked in software development (manger type not coder or one of the smart ones) and I've seen the best coders, the best analysts, people with the best intent... miss deadlines, not be able to accomplish what they thought they could and so on and so forth. All these game developers probably aren't trying to fleece anyone, but are out of their depth. It doesn't change the fact that they have taken money and not produced as expected. I personally won't change my idea of not crowdfunding software.
There are successful crowdfunded computer games, just not so much the MMORPG variety. Their much larger scope seems to be problematic, quite possibly due to hopeful developers being out of their depth as you suggest.
If those open to crowdfunding confined themselves to the more modest projects they would likely get better results from their participation.
Assuming Xsolla either settles or loses the court case, they have clauses in their contracts that allow them to take Caspian to court for damages suffered. Basically, he's dodged our punch just to walk into an oncoming bullet as the legal team with Xsolla is unlikely to go easy on him.
Except that....you can't really get blood from a stone, yes?
My understanding is that Xsolla are run behind the scenes by people you don’t want to cross. If I remember correctly it was a call from a certain person related to Xsolla that got the studio unshuttered.
These are not the kind of people you want to be in debt to.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Assuming Xsolla either settles or loses the court case, they have clauses in their contracts that allow them to take Caspian to court for damages suffered. Basically, he's dodged our punch just to walk into an oncoming bullet as the legal team with Xsolla is unlikely to go easy on him.
Except that....you can't really get blood from a stone, yes?
My understanding is that Xsolla are run behind the scenes by people you don’t want to cross. If I remember correctly it was a call from a certain person related to Xsolla that got the studio unshuttered.
These are not the kind of people you want to be in debt to.
That sounds rather ominous. I'm getting Sopranos vibes. is Xsolla based in Joisy?
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
We need more of these opinion pieces so we can connect with the writers here on a more real level. Kudos on publishing this.
So tired of all the garbage "just the facts, mam," milquetoast news bits about very questionable gaming projects we're otherwise inundated with here.
I may be misremembering but I think this is the first time since Tim teed off on COE a few years back that you've had an article treating them the way they should be treated.
Scammers deserve no respect, not even giving them the benefit of the doubt. It's precisely that benefit of the doubt that allows them to get away with it.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I would disagree about all crowdfunding. I do some kickstarter and would say that most of the time, the products are good, but I deal mostly in material objects. Some tech and a lot of geek stuff like board games (boy they aren't what I grew up with).
However, I would never crowdfund a software project. I've worked in software development (manger type not coder or one of the smart ones) and I've seen the best coders, the best analysts, people with the best intent... miss deadlines, not be able to accomplish what they thought they could and so on and so forth. All these game developers probably aren't trying to fleece anyone, but are out of their depth. It doesn't change the fact that they have taken money and not produced as expected. I personally won't change my idea of not crowdfunding software.
I would consider crowdfunding a game, just not an MMO.
I would disagree about all crowdfunding. I do some kickstarter and would say that most of the time, the products are good, but I deal mostly in material objects. Some tech and a lot of geek stuff like board games (boy they aren't what I grew up with).
However, I would never crowdfund a software project. I've worked in software development (manger type not coder or one of the smart ones) and I've seen the best coders, the best analysts, people with the best intent... miss deadlines, not be able to accomplish what they thought they could and so on and so forth. All these game developers probably aren't trying to fleece anyone, but are out of their depth. It doesn't change the fact that they have taken money and not produced as expected. I personally won't change my idea of not crowdfunding software.
I would consider crowdfunding a game, just not an MMO.
I wouldn't. Early access of a game that's fun to play even in that rough state I would do but that's my limit.
I actually find the whole crowdfunding schtick of "you're one of us and we listen to you. We love you!" dishonest and kind of creepy.
I want to keep my relationship with games just as a customer who buys a product I consider worth my money. I neither want nor need anything beyond that.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
We need more of these opinion pieces so we can connect with the writers here on a more real level. Kudos on publishing this.
So tired of all the garbage "just the facts, mam," milquetoast news bits about very questionable gaming projects we're otherwise inundated with here.
I may be misremembering but I think this is the first time since Tim teed off on COE a few years back that you've had an article treating them the way they should be treated.
Scammers deserve no respect, not even giving them the benefit of the doubt. It's precisely that benefit of the doubt that allows them to get away with it.
There have been at least a couple of proper articles that put a question mark over CoE, not just the regular info-burb ones. We have also had a very questioning article about crypto, but they are far and few between. I cannot remember which of these were called opinion pieces. We should have more of them, but the site needs to retain impartiality in "official" pieces, or whatever you want to call them.
The danger of too many opinion pieces is the site risks being swayed by every new gaming news item, much like Twitter is. The truth is lost when you constantly take a stance for or against everything without the time to collect evidence or even process what is going on. With the CoE issue the game has been in development for several years, shut down misspoke and restarted, lawsuits are being made, a new game was being developed using the first which has not materialled. High time for an opinion piece.
Xsolla is an international payment services company, providing game developers and publishers with payment, billing, distribution, and marketing tools. Headquartered in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California.
I was joking about the east coast mob connection but...
It's actually a Russian company founded in 2005 that relocated to Sherman Oaks in 2010 although apparently, they liquidated the Russian part of the business 4 months ago.
It's not publicly traded and is owned by one guy, Aleksandr Agapitov
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Xsolla is an international payment services company, providing game developers and publishers with payment, billing, distribution, and marketing tools. Headquartered in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California.
I was joking about the east coast mob connection but...
It's actually a Russian company founded in 2005 that relocated to Sherman Oaks in 2010 although apparently, they liquidated the Russian part of the business 4 months ago.
It's not publicly traded and is owned by one guy, Aleksandr Agapitov
<snip to Walsh's comment>
I'm always disappointed, but unfortunately, less and less surprised when I read articles like this - about any studio. Articles like this containing biased, unsubstantiated information are not beneficial to our industry. They're misleading at best, and outright damaging at worst. The sheer amount of misinformation in this article is nauseating. <snip>
Honestly, Walsh is good at pretending his 'industry' is anything close to the gaming industry this site is supposed to follow. I'm convinced that his 'industry' is more aligned with fundraising under false pretenses. He may think he has some kind of IP on 'misinformation'; he's simply taking the current political stance here -- calling everything said in opposition to him 'misinformation'.
Keep pressing against these scurrilous scams, MMORPG.com. Too many people are being hurt by these PiedPiper-esque development efforts.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I dont really have a huge amount of sympathy for people who gave this scammer their money, even a cursory google search would have shown Walsh as a incompetent who lacked the capacity to deliver.
Thing that makes me continually laugh about CoE is the fact I had a guy in my Star Citizen corp/guild/whatever that left in a huge forum diatribe about how SC is just a big scam and lead by a bunch of incompetents. The game he was leaving for? CoE. He shared some screenshots and showed how much further CoE was in much less time. The irony of the whole thing makes me laugh. Yes, I recognize the infinite scope creep situation of SC. Somehow that makes it all the better because he wasn't exactly wrong to leave, he just managed to hitch his cart to the one game that was actually WORSE than SC in the scam/vaporware category of crowdfunded games.
Anyway, any time a CoE article pops up, I remember that moment and chuckle. I'd like to track that guy down and ask how CoE worked out for him.
I would disagree about all crowdfunding. I do some kickstarter and would say that most of the time, the products are good, but I deal mostly in material objects. Some tech and a lot of geek stuff like board games (boy they aren't what I grew up with).
However, I would never crowdfund a software project. I've worked in software development (manger type not coder or one of the smart ones) and I've seen the best coders, the best analysts, people with the best intent... miss deadlines, not be able to accomplish what they thought they could and so on and so forth. All these game developers probably aren't trying to fleece anyone, but are out of their depth. It doesn't change the fact that they have taken money and not produced as expected. I personally won't change my idea of not crowdfunding software.
I would consider crowdfunding a game, just not an MMO.
I wouldn't. Early access of a game that's fun to play even in that rough state I would do but that's my limit.
I actually find the whole crowdfunding schtick of "you're one of us and we listen to you. We love you!" dishonest and kind of creepy.
I want to keep my relationship with games just as a customer who buys a product I consider worth my money. I neither want nor need anything beyond that.
It would have to be of limited scope and there would need to be a really good reason why it's being crowdfunded. But yeah it would have to be a very special case.
Comments
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Why would you do this? Simple - legal reasons. You wanted to have an actual 'product' that you delivered to backers so they couldn't just say you took the money and had no intention of doing anything with it, which we still think is the case. Every big 'reveal' you did was just a cheap re-skinned Unreal Engine tech demo that anyone can buy off the UE store.
Your game was constantly piling on more and more complex systems when you weren't even capable of releasing a dinky little strategy town management game. You lied about your skills, you paid yourself hefty salaries so you could live an extravagent lifestyle while doing nothing with it for the good of the game. And, we know people you previously worked with were already suspicious of you after other projects you had done. You were and always will be, a scam artist.
The reason you would never admit you failed is because you want to continue this lifestyle as long as possible. The longer you say, "Don't worry! We're still working on it.," the longer you can keep that pool of money you blew through so quickly after squandering all of it, from being paid back via our lawsuits that are rightful in claiming fraud. There hasn't been a case like this before. It falls in line with other typical crowdfunding scams. You publish your product, get all the money, lie and lie that you're working on the product and then just come up with more and more excuses to delay the inevitable admittance of failure and/or lawsuits to recover money back from a project that NEVER was going to come out because it was only being used to squeeze out money from hardworking people.
And this, people, is why you should never crowdfund a MMO. Ashes of Creation could be next. Jeromy Walsh did a great job at lying and saying how great things were going and how he was funding it himself. But we all know how that turned out...
However, I would never crowdfund a software project. I've worked in software development (manger type not coder or one of the smart ones) and I've seen the best coders, the best analysts, people with the best intent... miss deadlines, not be able to accomplish what they thought they could and so on and so forth. All these game developers probably aren't trying to fleece anyone, but are out of their depth. It doesn't change the fact that they have taken money and not produced as expected. I personally won't change my idea of not crowdfunding software.
There are successful crowdfunded computer games, just not so much the MMORPG variety. Their much larger scope seems to be problematic, quite possibly due to hopeful developers being out of their depth as you suggest.
If those open to crowdfunding confined themselves to the more modest projects they would likely get better results from their participation.
These are not the kind of people you want to be in debt to.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
So tired of all the garbage "just the facts, mam," milquetoast news bits about very questionable gaming projects we're otherwise inundated with here.
I may be misremembering but I think this is the first time since Tim teed off on COE a few years back that you've had an article treating them the way they should be treated.
Scammers deserve no respect, not even giving them the benefit of the doubt. It's precisely that benefit of the doubt that allows them to get away with it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I actually find the whole crowdfunding schtick of "you're one of us and we listen to you. We love you!" dishonest and kind of creepy.
I want to keep my relationship with games just as a customer who buys a product I consider worth my money. I neither want nor need anything beyond that.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The danger of too many opinion pieces is the site risks being swayed by every new gaming news item, much like Twitter is. The truth is lost when you constantly take a stance for or against everything without the time to collect evidence or even process what is going on. With the CoE issue the game has been in development for several years, shut down misspoke and restarted, lawsuits are being made, a new game was being developed using the first which has not materialled. High time for an opinion piece.
It's actually a Russian company founded in 2005 that relocated to Sherman Oaks in 2010 although apparently, they liquidated the Russian part of the business 4 months ago.
It's not publicly traded and is owned by one guy, Aleksandr Agapitov
https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/02/02/xsolla-appoints-new-ceo-six-months-after-mass-layoffs-controversy
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
mmorpg junkie since 1999
No matter what paper is shuffled around, the people pulling the strings there are not ones you want to owe a debt to.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Anyway, any time a CoE article pops up, I remember that moment and chuckle. I'd like to track that guy down and ask how CoE worked out for him.
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light