Court Rules Lawsuit Against Soulbound Studios Must Conclude Before Taking the Fight to Xsolla | MMOR

System · September 2021

Court Rules Lawsuit Against Soulbound Studios Must Conclude Before Taking the Fight to Xsolla | MMORPG.com

In the latest update from the Class Action for Chronicles of Elyria Discord, the court has ruled that in order to get to Xsolla, the payment processor that took payments outside of the Kickstarter Campaign, and refused to provide refunds, the Soulbound Studios class action lawsuit must first conclude.

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znushu · September 2021

at this rate it seems like the lawsuit is just going to end up with the courts ruling in favor of the company and not the users. Hopefully i'm wrong though.

BrotherMaynard · September 2021

"I want to flood Xsolla with hundreds of demands to arbitrate"

Lol, I see they opted for exactly the approach described in our earlier CoE lawsuit discussion.

Seems like weaponising arbitration this way against bad-faith actors who force arbitration to scare off individual clients and avoid potentially very damaging court decisions is indeed an effective and novel way of consumer protection.

Crowdfund the crap out of these forced arbitrations and watch Soulbound, Xsolla and similar companies squirm!

Dattelis · September 2021

znushu said:

at this rate it seems like the lawsuit is just going to end up with the courts ruling in favor of the company and not the users. Hopefully i'm wrong though.

Unfortunately, I'm leaning this way as well. The courts might just rule that its just similar to losing money in the stock market or something and just treat it as a 'bad investment' case or something like that.

shokadezz · September 2021

Lol yeeehawwwww boys! fly the kite, fire the cannons, and bring some gravy to the party. what am i talking about... idk

Slapshot1188 · September 2021

BrotherMaynard said:

"I want to flood Xsolla with hundreds of demands to arbitrate"

Lol, I see they opted for exactly the approach described in our earlier CoE lawsuit discussion.

Seems like weaponising arbitration this way against bad-faith actors who force arbitration to scare off individual clients and avoid potentially very damaging court decisions is indeed an effective and novel way of consumer protection.

Crowdfund the crap out of these forced arbitrations and watch Soulbound, Xsolla and similar companies squirm!

If it’s legal that is one fund that I would happily Crowdfund.

Kyleran · September 2021

BrotherMaynard said:

"I want to flood Xsolla with hundreds of demands to arbitrate"

Lol, I see they opted for exactly the approach described in our earlier CoE lawsuit discussion.

Seems like weaponising arbitration this way against bad-faith actors who force arbitration to scare off individual clients and avoid potentially very damaging court decisions is indeed an effective and novel way of consumer protection.

Crowdfund the crap out of these forced arbitrations and watch Soulbound, Xsolla and similar companies squirm!

Soulbound has nothing to fear having no assets to speak of it can easily file bankruptcy and close down.

Xsolla not so much, but I suspect in the end even if the plaintiffs prevail the only real winners will be the lawyers.

Scot · September 2021

I think those pushing the action forward may need to skip over CoE to get at a company that has actually got money to repay them. We can't be sure what the situation is at CoE but the idea Jeremy is lying on a bed of gold coins and just does not want to pay people back is unlikely.

But I think more importantly we all need to learn a lesson here, you put your money on the line without guarantee of recompense when crowd funding anything. They may give you a guarantee but if they fold your money went down a money pit.

Utinni · September 2021

Lawsuit for crowdfund refunds. This is just pathetic

Slapshot1188 · September 2021

Utinni said:

Lawsuit for crowdfund refunds. This is just pathetic

Fraud is pretty pathetic.

olepi · September 2021

Slapshot1188 said:

Utinni said:

Lawsuit for crowdfund refunds. This is just pathetic

Fraud is pretty pathetic.

Fraud has been going on since forever. People sell oil that doesn't exist (see Billy Sol Estes), land that has no water, etc, etc. And there is a legal remedy, and criminal exposure.

But in a crowdsourced case, there are no "investors", you aren't investing to get a return. You are simply donating to an effort. I doubt the CoE investors get anything back. Most efforts like this include clauses that make it clear if nothing is produced, nobody gets their money back (see Star Citizen).

But Xsolla may have some actual exposure. They *sell* things. You *buy* things. What if you buy something, hand over the money, but get nothing? That is a breach of contract at the least, and criminal fraud is possible.

My guess is that Xsolla will claim they didn't know CoE was a fraud, and Xsolla acted in good faith. And i bet they prevail. The consumer might get their money back if they are lucky.

Slapshot1188 · September 2021

olepi said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Utinni said:

Lawsuit for crowdfund refunds. This is just pathetic

Fraud is pretty pathetic.

Fraud has been going on since forever. People sell oil that doesn't exist (see Billy Sol Estes), land that has no water, etc, etc. And there is a legal remedy, and criminal exposure.

But in a crowdsourced case, there are no "investors", you aren't investing to get a return. You are simply donating to an effort. I doubt the CoE investors get anything back. Most efforts like this include clauses that make it clear if nothing is produced, nobody gets their money back (see Star Citizen).

But Xsolla may have some actual exposure. They *sell* things. You *buy* things. What if you buy something, hand over the money, but get nothing? That is a breach of contract at the least, and criminal fraud is possible.

My guess is that Xsolla will claim they didn't know CoE was a fraud, and Xsolla acted in good faith. And i bet they prevail. The consumer might get their money back if they are lucky.

Fraud is saying "You can get a refund up until the game releases" and then not honoring that. Doesn't matter if it goes back to the StoneAge.

olepi · September 2021

Slapshot1188 said:

olepi said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Utinni said:

Lawsuit for crowdfund refunds. This is just pathetic

Fraud is pretty pathetic.

Fraud has been going on since forever. People sell oil that doesn't exist (see Billy Sol Estes), land that has no water, etc, etc. And there is a legal remedy, and criminal exposure.

But in a crowdsourced case, there are no "investors", you aren't investing to get a return. You are simply donating to an effort. I doubt the CoE investors get anything back. Most efforts like this include clauses that make it clear if nothing is produced, nobody gets their money back (see Star Citizen).

But Xsolla may have some actual exposure. They *sell* things. You *buy* things. What if you buy something, hand over the money, but get nothing? That is a breach of contract at the least, and criminal fraud is possible.

My guess is that Xsolla will claim they didn't know CoE was a fraud, and Xsolla acted in good faith. And i bet they prevail. The consumer might get their money back if they are lucky.

Fraud is saying "You can get a refund up until the game releases" and then not honoring that. Doesn't matter if it goes back to the StoneAge.

If CoE actually promised they will return their money if they don't make a game, that was dumb. So the plaintiffs might win, but what will they win? There's probably no money left.

Was CoE sold as an early access? Or as a crowdsourced game development effort?

Slapshot1188 · September 2021

olepi said:

Slapshot1188 said:

olepi said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Utinni said:

Lawsuit for crowdfund refunds. This is just pathetic

Fraud is pretty pathetic.

Fraud has been going on since forever. People sell oil that doesn't exist (see Billy Sol Estes), land that has no water, etc, etc. And there is a legal remedy, and criminal exposure.

But in a crowdsourced case, there are no "investors", you aren't investing to get a return. You are simply donating to an effort. I doubt the CoE investors get anything back. Most efforts like this include clauses that make it clear if nothing is produced, nobody gets their money back (see Star Citizen).

But Xsolla may have some actual exposure. They *sell* things. You *buy* things. What if you buy something, hand over the money, but get nothing? That is a breach of contract at the least, and criminal fraud is possible.

My guess is that Xsolla will claim they didn't know CoE was a fraud, and Xsolla acted in good faith. And i bet they prevail. The consumer might get their money back if they are lucky.

Fraud is saying "You can get a refund up until the game releases" and then not honoring that. Doesn't matter if it goes back to the StoneAge.

If CoE actually promised they will return their money if they don't make a game, that was dumb. So the plaintiffs might win, but what will they win? There's probably no money left.

Was CoE sold as an early access? Or as a crowdsourced game development effort?

Xsolla had that in their TOS. And to kick it up a notch, CoE said that 3rd party TOS (Xsolla) would prevail over their own.

The only money will be from Xsolla since you can’t get blood from a stone, but I think they want COE just for the principle of the matter. They feel Walsh lied to them about the state of the game. We will see.

Mendel · September 2021

SBS was certainly the one that initiated the false and deceptive business actions. At best, Xsolla was an accomplice. I've always thought that adding Xsolla into a class action against SBS was an error, a way for the guilty to avoid punishment. It would have been more accurate to approach this action against both companies, separately.

Right now, it certainly seems that both SBS and Xsolla are trying to legally hide behind each other. I don't see this case being resolved in the plaintiff's favor against either party.

Does SBS have money? Principles are living in houses, eating food, driving cars, developing another game (reportedly), etc. That $8 million is still around, in some form. Maybe well hidden, but that can be discovered, with enough effort and authority.

Kyleran · September 2021

Mendel said:

SBS was certainly the one that initiated the false and deceptive business actions. At best, Xsolla was an accomplice. I've always thought that adding Xsolla into a class action against SBS was an error, a way for the guilty to avoid punishment. It would have been more accurate to approach this action against both companies, separately.

Right now, it certainly seems that both SBS and Xsolla are trying to legally hide behind each other. I don't see this case being resolved in the plaintiff's favor against either party.

Does SBS have money? Principles are living in houses, eating food, driving cars, developing another game (reportedly), etc. That $8 million is still around, in some form. Maybe well hidden, but that can be discovered, with enough effort and authority.

Principals assets are protected by their corporate shield unless plaintiffs pierce the veil, a difficult thing to do unless SBS totally fkd up and paid employees personal bills directly using corporate funds.

Mendel · September 2021

Kyleran said:

Mendel said:

SBS was certainly the one that initiated the false and deceptive business actions. At best, Xsolla was an accomplice. I've always thought that adding Xsolla into a class action against SBS was an error, a way for the guilty to avoid punishment. It would have been more accurate to approach this action against both companies, separately.

Right now, it certainly seems that both SBS and Xsolla are trying to legally hide behind each other. I don't see this case being resolved in the plaintiff's favor against either party.

Does SBS have money? Principles are living in houses, eating food, driving cars, developing another game (reportedly), etc. That $8 million is still around, in some form. Maybe well hidden, but that can be discovered, with enough effort and authority.

Principals assets are protected by their corporate shield unless plaintiffs pierce the veil, a difficult thing to do unless SBS totally fkd up and paid employees personal bills directly using corporate funds.

True. It's difficult, but not impossible. The first step towards that is accounting for all the funds, something SBS has been reluctant to do.

Rennisa · September 2021

Mendel said:

Kyleran said:

Mendel said:

SBS was certainly the one that initiated the false and deceptive business actions. At best, Xsolla was an accomplice. I've always thought that adding Xsolla into a class action against SBS was an error, a way for the guilty to avoid punishment. It would have been more accurate to approach this action against both companies, separately.

Right now, it certainly seems that both SBS and Xsolla are trying to legally hide behind each other. I don't see this case being resolved in the plaintiff's favor against either party.

Does SBS have money? Principles are living in houses, eating food, driving cars, developing another game (reportedly), etc. That $8 million is still around, in some form. Maybe well hidden, but that can be discovered, with enough effort and authority.

Principals assets are protected by their corporate shield unless plaintiffs pierce the veil, a difficult thing to do unless SBS totally fkd up and paid employees personal bills directly using corporate funds.

True. It's difficult, but not impossible. The first step towards that is accounting for all the funds, something SBS has been reluctant to do.

This is the thing that always got me with how people view this atrocity of a situation.

I'm sure the whole project was a giant mismanaged mess, but so many assume that it was a purely fraud from the start as opposed to the possibility that people placed their bets on a project run by those who couldn't deliver.

I do believe that if the strongest case for fraud was for anyone bought land in that last land sale right before he shut everything down.

At that point he knew that they still didn't have anything remotely close to a functioning alpha (and that's putting it nicely) and the funds have all but dried up.

Kickstarter projects thst are not almost finished or strictly promised as such definitely fit the definitely of crowd funding a project. It's an investment, but not all investments mature into actual results.

Sure to anyone including myself 8 million dollars sounds like a lot, but for an MMO of any modern day caliber it can be enough to get the project to a viable point to get non crowd funded based investors to take it to the finish line.

Of course this was never a triple A title producing developer and we've seen indie games pull of great and unusual successes. Yet those are all so few, far and in-between and none if those are MMOs that promised systems of play that when combined no other game on the market had come close to offering.

I wouldn't be surprised if SBS's goal was to get to that state where their project gained major backing investment wise and their team could then grow in scope to deliver the project that was promised.

But the complete god tier level of incompetence of Jeremy Walsh obviously possesses makes it easy to see most of the money being blown in head meets wall banging decisions.

He is a textbook narcissist, in many ways his natural ability to dodgr while attempting to spin a narrative that is fully disconnected from reality may be more attributed to that than blanket outright fraud.

A person like him obviously wants to come out ontop with this lawsuit, but no matter what does not ever want to admit or be proven wrong.

That's why I can see that being the primary reason why he continues to avoid putting anything out there. The courts will require that information and it still may never become public or result in a judgment against him and his "company".

Though I'd love it to be outright fraud cause people like this guy do not deserve the limelight they received and it hurts projects led by those who aren't complete clowns who seek crowdfunding.

Final thing I want to add EverQuest 2 though a triple A game that never lived up to its potential costs a hell of a lot more to develope in the early 2000s. And from what I heard about CoE its systems were far more complex and original than EQ2 set out to achieve for its launch.

For straight up fraud 8 million is a nice sum to run off into the sunset with, for a grand indie MMO project the odds of it blossoming into something great with further / future big investment would only occur under the watchful eye of an extremely gifted and competent individual.

I once again hope I'm wrong, but I think ya'll are most likely going to be disappointed with the outcome of this trial. : /

Slapshot1188 · September 2021

Rennisa said:

Mendel said:

Kyleran said:

Mendel said:

SBS was certainly the one that initiated the false and deceptive business actions. At best, Xsolla was an accomplice. I've always thought that adding Xsolla into a class action against SBS was an error, a way for the guilty to avoid punishment. It would have been more accurate to approach this action against both companies, separately.

Right now, it certainly seems that both SBS and Xsolla are trying to legally hide behind each other. I don't see this case being resolved in the plaintiff's favor against either party.

Does SBS have money? Principles are living in houses, eating food, driving cars, developing another game (reportedly), etc. That $8 million is still around, in some form. Maybe well hidden, but that can be discovered, with enough effort and authority.

Principals assets are protected by their corporate shield unless plaintiffs pierce the veil, a difficult thing to do unless SBS totally fkd up and paid employees personal bills directly using corporate funds.

True. It's difficult, but not impossible. The first step towards that is accounting for all the funds, something SBS has been reluctant to do.

This is the thing that always got me with how people view this atrocity of a situation.

I'm sure the whole project was a giant mismanaged mess, but so many assume that it was a purely fraud from the start as opposed to the possibility that people placed their bets on a project run by those who couldn't deliver.

I do believe that if the strongest case for fraud was for anyone bought land in that last land sale right before he shut everything down.

At that point he knew that they still didn't have anything remotely close to a functioning alpha (and that's putting it nicely) and the funds have all but dried up.

Kickstarter projects thst are not almost finished or strictly promised as such definitely fit the definitely of crowd funding a project. It's an investment, but not all investments mature into actual results.

Sure to anyone including myself 8 million dollars sounds like a lot, but for an MMO of any modern day caliber it can be enough to get the project to a viable point to get non crowd funded based investors to take it to the finish line.

Of course this was never a triple A title producing developer and we've seen indie games pull of great and unusual successes. Yet those are all so few, far and in-between and none if those are MMOs that promised systems of play that when combined no other game on the market had come close to offering.

I wouldn't be surprised if SBS's goal was to get to that state where their project gained major backing investment wise and their team could then grow in scope to deliver the project that was promised.

But the complete god tier level of incompetence of Jeremy Walsh obviously possesses makes it easy to see most of the money being blown in head meets wall banging decisions.

He is a textbook narcissist, in many ways his natural ability to dodgr while attempting to spin a narrative that is fully disconnected from reality may be more attributed to that than blanket outright fraud.

A person like him obviously wants to come out ontop with this lawsuit, but no matter what does not ever want to admit or be proven wrong.

That's why I can see that being the primary reason why he continues to avoid putting anything out there. The courts will require that information and it still may never become public or result in a judgment against him and his "company".

Though I'd love it to be outright fraud cause people like this guy do not deserve the limelight they received and it hurts projects led by those who aren't complete clowns who seek crowdfunding.

Final thing I want to add EverQuest 2 though a triple A game that never lived up to its potential costs a hell of a lot more to develope in the early 2000s. And from what I heard about CoE its systems were far more complex and original than EQ2 set out to achieve for its launch.

For straight up fraud 8 million is a nice sum to run off into the sunset with, for a grand indie MMO project the odds of it blossoming into something great with further / future big investment would only occur under the watchful eye of an extremely gifted and competent individual.

I once again hope I'm wrong, but I think ya'll are most likely going to be disappointed with the outcome of this trial. : /

Again, despite everything you posted: Xsolla TOS said you can get a refund right up to launch. CoE TOS said to follow the Xsolla one.

So whether he spent the money, lost the money, has it under his mattress…. Irrelevant to the agreement they made.

BrotherMaynard · September 2021

Kyleran said:

BrotherMaynard said:

"I want to flood Xsolla with hundreds of demands to arbitrate"

Lol, I see they opted for exactly the approach described in our earlier CoE lawsuit discussion.

Seems like weaponising arbitration this way against bad-faith actors who force arbitration to scare off individual clients and avoid potentially very damaging court decisions is indeed an effective and novel way of consumer protection.

Crowdfund the crap out of these forced arbitrations and watch Soulbound, Xsolla and similar companies squirm!

Soulbound has nothing to fear having no assets to speak of it can easily file bankruptcy and close down.

Xsolla not so much, but I suspect in the end even if the plaintiffs prevail the only real winners will be the lawyers.

That was the case from the moment this CoE class action began. There is no good outcome regardless of the decision: if the class action side wins, it will encourage more irresponsible Kickstarter spending in future, since based on this precedent people will know their money is safe no matter what; if Soulbound wins, it will give a very strong signal to all the DreamWorld fraudsters out there that they can get away with their schemes and keep the money tricked out of the gullible and uninformed - Kickstarter scams would multiply.

However, not all wins are measured in monetary terms. As far as those go, the arbitration chambers and the lawyers will be the only winners, true. But simply having the satisfaction of seeing Soulbound and Xsolla punished for what they did would certainly be enough for many class action participants, so that would a kind of a win for them too.

Quizzical · September 2021

I think that it should be a standard rule that if a crowdfunded game fails by running out of money in this manner, then they are required to:

1) Account for how the money was spent in a very detailed manner to demonstrate that it was all spent on developing the game, and without paying outlandish salaries to whoever ran the project, and
2) Release all assets that they've created to backers under a very permissive license to demonstrate that you actually did create something, even if your big blob of source code is in such a buggy state as to not be ready for alpha testing.

The goal is to distinguish criminal fraud from mere incompetence. If the game development shut down with $3 million unspent or paid $3 million of its "development" funds to Jeromy Walsh, then that's fraud and someone should go to prison. If they spent all of the money in a good-faith effort at developing the game and have a lot of assets that they created with it but just not in a playable state, then that's not fraud.

Slapshot1188 · September 2021

Quizzical said:

I think that it should be a standard rule that if a crowdfunded game fails by running out of money in this manner, then they are required to:

1) Account for how the money was spent in a very detailed manner to demonstrate that it was all spent on developing the game, and without paying outlandish salaries to whoever ran the project, and
2) Release all assets that they've created to backers under a very permissive license to demonstrate that you actually did create something, even if your big blob of source code is in such a buggy state as to not be ready for alpha testing.

The goal is to distinguish criminal fraud from mere incompetence. If the game development shut down with $3 million unspent or paid $3 million of its "development" funds to Jeromy Walsh, then that's fraud and someone should go to prison. If they spent all of the money in a good-faith effort at developing the game and have a lot of assets that they created with it but just not in a playable state, then that's not fraud.

I agree and a large part of the frustration has been Walsh’s not honoring his promises to do much of what you propose. Then you combine it with his lead designer talking about c-suite salaries and rumors of paying friends and family and you get this shitstorm. Release who was paid what and where the $8M went and I’d bet the majority from the lawsuit would b satisfied ( or further enraged if rumors are confirmed)

laserit · September 2021

Slapshot1188 said:

olepi said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Utinni said:

Lawsuit for crowdfund refunds. This is just pathetic

Fraud is pretty pathetic.

Fraud has been going on since forever. People sell oil that doesn't exist (see Billy Sol Estes), land that has no water, etc, etc. And there is a legal remedy, and criminal exposure.

But in a crowdsourced case, there are no "investors", you aren't investing to get a return. You are simply donating to an effort. I doubt the CoE investors get anything back. Most efforts like this include clauses that make it clear if nothing is produced, nobody gets their money back (see Star Citizen).

But Xsolla may have some actual exposure. They *sell* things. You *buy* things. What if you buy something, hand over the money, but get nothing? That is a breach of contract at the least, and criminal fraud is possible.

My guess is that Xsolla will claim they didn't know CoE was a fraud, and Xsolla acted in good faith. And i bet they prevail. The consumer might get their money back if they are lucky.

Fraud is saying "You can get a refund up until the game releases" and then not honoring that. Doesn't matter if it goes back to the StoneAge.

That’s not considered fraud and if you have a disclaimer buried somewhere it’s just everyday business and marketing. Sadly for some, making money is so much about what they can get away with.

Silvwolf3 · August 2022

honestly, hot take here it was a kickstarter game you took a risk did it pan out well no not reaally oh well you bet on the underdog and lost.
was he competent at using the funds given, probably no
is making great games cheap? No with exceptions

IF by magic CoE launched in the next 5 years would you still play it?
I would that's for certain

Should someone tweet Elon and be like bro this guy had a rad idea for a videogame you should buy it and hire a competent team to finish it? I dunno

[Deleted User] · August 2022

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Scot · August 2022

Silvwolf3 said:

honestly, hot take here it was a kickstarter game you took a risk did it pan out well no not reaally oh well you bet on the underdog and lost.
was he competent at using the funds given, probably no
is making great games cheap? No with exceptions

IF by magic CoE launched in the next 5 years would you still play it?
I would that's for certain

Should someone tweet Elon and be like bro this guy had a rad idea for a videogame you should buy it and hire a competent team to finish it? I dunno

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Court Rules Lawsuit Against Soulbound Studios Must Conclude Before Taking the Fight to Xsolla | MMOR

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Court Rules Lawsuit Against Soulbound Studios Must Conclude Before Taking the Fight to Xsolla | MMOR

Comments

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV