Caspien quietly dumps his State of Elyria update and suggest studio may "run out of money" by EOY

Slapshot1188

IMHO this man literally has no shame at this point...

https://chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/35072/State-of-Elyria-Q2-2022-Update

(Some paragraphs snipped below.  Please read the link for the full post)

And here, I'm afraid, is where I have to make a confession. Almost six years into development, Chronicles of Elyria remains one of the most important and significant things in my life. So much so, that I had a long conversation with my wife and we agreed that Chronicles of Elyria was worth our own livelihood to see it through. So, for the second time in the history of Soulbound Studios, I began emptying my family's savings and liquidating our assets in an effort to fund the continued development of the game.

Each month, since the beginning of the year, I've added additional funds to the company to keep Soulbound Studios alive. When I first started adding funds, I estimated we had just enough to cover the remaining development of KoE (plus a few months of buffer), but when I noticed the increasing costs in May I did some calculations and realized that was no longer the case. My family, and consequently Soulbound, was going to run out of money by the end of the year.

(ROFL... catch this other part)

So, in mid-May I began to look for other ways to keep the company afloat. That's why a major part of my effort over the last two months has been in preparing us for another round of conversations with investors and publishers, as well as exploring opportunities for residual income for myself or the studio. 

(or this one)

Unfortunately, these last couple months of spending time away from programming is a perfect example of that, as I couldn’t make a significant contribution to the engineering of KoE while also handling the finances. As a result, we were unable to release the mid-Alpha playtest and will need to revisit my plan for Q2 in Q3.

There you have it folks... as expected he is teeing up the excuses for his continued inability to do what he says he will do... and IMHO probably do another post saying he had to go get a real job... but will of course continue to work on CoE in his spare time and will come back some day.  Just my take.. but I think the writing is clearly on the wall

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Brainy

what happened to the lawsuit?

lotrlore

Brainy said:

what happened to the lawsuit?

Waiting on arbitration last time there was an update. Stuck in the cogs of the legal system.

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Kyleran

Deathkon1 said:

Brainy said:

what happened to the lawsuit?

Lawsuits tend to take 3-10 years depending on severity and case so if there is one its probably ongoing, lmao didn't know they were in the process of being sued on top of making this game lol

Last I read the lawsuit wasn't going great. Jeremy got it moved from CA to his home state and the judge ruled it could not be handled collectively, each arbitration case would be done individually.

The lawyer representing the case was asking all of the claimants to contact him to file separately from what I recall.

BrotherMaynard

Kyleran said:

Deathkon1 said:

Brainy said:

what happened to the lawsuit?

Lawsuits tend to take 3-10 years depending on severity and case so if there is one its probably ongoing, lmao didn't know they were in the process of being sued on top of making this game lol

Last I read the lawsuit wasn't going great. Jeremy got it moved from CA to his home state and the judge ruled it could not be handled collectively, each arbitration case would be done individually.

The lawyer representing the case was asking all of the claimants to contact him to file separately from what I recall.

That's actually only partially correct and not as negative as you present it. First, there are two ongoing procedures: class action lawsuit against SBS; arbitration with Xsolla.

As for the first, the lawsuit is ongoing (as per the latest update of 09/2021). The California judge ruled that it should be moved to Washington, but the case continues as a class action lawsuit.

Regarding arbitration (a separate process with Xsolla): yes, it will proceed with individual claims; and no, it is not a bad news - quite the contrary, in fact. See previous posts on why individual arbitration can often be used very effectively against companies.

In short: moving to individual arbitration claims is the chosen strategy of the lawyer representing the claimants in the CoE case (it is also in the CoE / KoE user agreement, so they can't weasel out of it). Generally speaking, depending on the number of claimants and the arbitration fees, the filing process alone can be ruinous for the defending companies. The CoE class action legal firm was signing agreements with affected players and only they know how many claimants there are, but their aim was to have at least hundreds. That alone could bring the arbitration costs for Xsolla into millions of $$$, as opposed to mere thousands in a class action arbitration.

Edit: just to add the following from the discord post: However, the Court ruled to stay (put on hold) Plaintiff's arbitration until the Soulbound class action is concluded.

So the class action will have to be concluded first, before the arbitration will proceed.

Scot

So the new game never came out? Presumably the additional funds he has been adding to keep things afloat came from all the CF money he took.

While I still support CF games in a theoretical sense, CoE is the warning flag that went up and told us to be very careful about games we financially support.

Which brings me on to Early Access, there must be some failed launches there but we hear nothing about them, not just talking about this site, anywhere. I know we have never ending EA but what about ones that closed?

Slapshot1188

As always with Walsh I think you need to have that credibility check.

Each month, since the beginning of the year, I've added additional funds to the company to keep Soulbound Studios alive. When I first started adding funds, I estimated we had just enough to cover the remaining development of KoE (plus a few months of buffer), but when I noticed the increasing costs in May I did some calculations and realized that was no longer the case. My family, and consequently Soulbound, was going to run out of money by the end of the year.

Then think about that.  He STARTED (supposedly) adding funds at the beginning of the year.  He claims to have had enough money to "cover the remaining development of KoE" PLUS a few months buffer.  Then in May he "noticed increasing costs".  That's just 2 months ago.  And now suddenly he, his family and his company are going to "run out of money by the end of the year"

Just put that timeline together in your mind and see if it makes any sense. 

Just like with CoE... he apparently has nothing worthwhile to show publicly of KoE.  He spent the last 2 months supposedly looking for investors/publishers (ROFL!!!!) and thus could not work on the game much.

My take: Man, those costs (by which he seems to hint/blame the lawsuits) must have risen by an amazing amount.  If only those damn litigants weren't suing him... I can see this coming... THEY are the fault he failed, again.  Just like these same people were the reason CoE failed since they just didn't give him more money (just about 8.5 times his Kickstarter goal)!   My guess is he is going job hunting and will use that as a crutch to shelve the project with promises that he is still Pledged To The Eternal Development Of Elyria, and will Rise From The Ashes again.... or some crap like that.

But at the end of the day, people were skeptical that the lawsuit would ever accomplish anything.  Well, I think this proves it DID in fact allow those folks voices to be heard.  They may never get their money back (Maybe some portion from Xsolla) but they will have beaten Walsh and stopped him from ever trying to sell CoE or KoE again, because THAT was his stated goal: To sell KoE to fund CoE (which was laughingly going to be done by 2024).

Mendel

How did no one see this coming???!?!?

/sarcasm off

Slapshot1188

Mendel said:

How did no one see this coming???!?!?

/sarcasm off

I know… we are just “armchair developers”.

Some of us are just Harbingers.

cheyane

Oh god when will this thief be made to pay for what he has done.

Kyleran

cheyane said:

Oh god when will this thief be made to pay for what he has done.

Nice, idea, unlikely to happen, he's covered in too many ways.

What the backers really want is Xsolla to be held accountable since they have the assets to refund the money.

Slapshot1188

Kyleran said:

cheyane said:

Oh god when will this thief be made to pay for what he has done.

Nice, idea, unlikely to happen, he's covered in too many ways.

What the backers really want is Xsolla to be held accountable since they have the assets to refund the money.

He needs to be careful if he really did put money into paying the company’s bills this year… you mix personal and business and bad things can happen 

Kyleran

Slapshot1188 said:

Kyleran said:

cheyane said:

Oh god when will this thief be made to pay for what he has done.

Nice, idea, unlikely to happen, he's covered in too many ways.

What the backers really want is Xsolla to be held accountable since they have the assets to refund the money.

He needs to be careful if he really did put money into paying the company’s bills this year… you mix personal and business and bad things can happen 

Yep, might be construed as piercing the veil. Of course, accepting money to retain the jobs of 30 people and then spending the bulk of it on himself might have already done so.