This has to be made illegal.

MightyUnclean · April 2021

I know a lot of people believe in free enterprise, but this isn't about protecting potential suckers from themselves. This is about stopping "developers" like this from getting away with no consequences. DreamWorld may be the most blatant example yet, at least in the gaming world, as to why crowdfunding needs to have more legal oversight for holding people accountable. There have to be financial and criminal consequences.

Asm0deus · April 2021

Saw this on KS and thought, "prime example of a bullshit artist". Here's some reddit thread about Garrison.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/m7zuni/dreamworld_the_last_game_youll_ever_play_yeah/

User avatar level 2 Mr_Throw_away_41 5 days ago Hijacking this top comment to try and shed some light on the CEO. (Throw away for obvious reasons) Garrison and I went to Michigan together. He was perhaps the most narcissistic person I had ever met, and that is saying something consider the school we attended. We worked on the solar car together, and he always thought he was top shit and knew everything. He thought his skillset was so impressive he could use it as an excuse to sexually harass the females on our team. He was kicked off the solar car team. I hope no one has to ever work with that asshole in their lives. He will bullshit his way through life, and unfortunately gullible people buy into it because he is WAY TOO GOOD AT IT! Turn away people. Don't touch anything with his name on it.

I also went to Michigan with Garrison. Please take a look at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrison-bellack-1a55b165. He refers to himself as a "super star ex google engineer" in the kickstarter. In reality he was an intern at Google for a single summer. Same with Facebook.
This guy is a useless asshole, I promise.

Dunno if any of this is true but seems like a red flag right off the bat.

francis_baud · April 2021

MightyUnclean said:

I know a lot of people believe in free enterprise, but this isn't about protecting potential suckers from themselves. This is about stopping "developers" like this from getting away with no consequences. DreamWorld may be the most blatant example yet, at least in the gaming world, as to why crowdfunding needs to have more legal oversight for holding people accountable. There have to be financial and criminal consequences.

Financial and criminal consequences for what behaviors? Not launching the game, with the promised features, before the estimated date of release?

One recourse backers have is class-action lawsuit, which is uncommon but still happens in the MMO industry (1, 2, 3).

Quizzical · April 2021

Would I like to see whoever is behind this scam face prison time for it? Sure. But not if it results in people who make a good faith effort at making a real game and merely fail also going to prison.

Are existing anti-fraud laws sufficient to deal with this guy? I don't know. They might be. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and the people who threw money at it likely won't get it back. But a year in prison would be an ample warning to anyone else thinking about trying the same thing even if the money is spent and gone.

There shouldn't be a new law created to deal with this unless existing laws can't handle it. Which might be the case. But if there is a new law created, you have to figure out some way to distinguish between actual scams and good faith failures.

AngryElf · April 2021

KS/crowd funded games = loot box. You will waste your money 99% of the time. Don't be a rube.

Kyleran · April 2021

AngryElf said:

KS/crowd funded games = loot box. You will waste your money 99% of the time. Don't be a rube.

Hey now, loot boxes almost always give you something of value, can't say the same is true for crowd funded MMORPGs.

Iselin · April 2021

Asm0deus said:

Saw this on KS and thought, "prime example of a bullshit artist". Here's some reddit thread about Garrison.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/m7zuni/dreamworld_the_last_game_youll_ever_play_yeah/

User avatar level 2 Mr_Throw_away_41 5 days ago Hijacking this top comment to try and shed some light on the CEO. (Throw away for obvious reasons) Garrison and I went to Michigan together. He was perhaps the most narcissistic person I had ever met, and that is saying something consider the school we attended. We worked on the solar car together, and he always thought he was top shit and knew everything. He thought his skillset was so impressive he could use it as an excuse to sexually harass the females on our team. He was kicked off the solar car team. I hope no one has to ever work with that asshole in their lives. He will bullshit his way through life, and unfortunately gullible people buy into it because he is WAY TOO GOOD AT IT! Turn away people. Don't touch anything with his name on it.

I also went to Michigan with Garrison. Please take a look at his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrison-bellack-1a55b165. He refers to himself as a "super star ex google engineer" in the kickstarter. In reality he was an intern at Google for a single summer. Same with Facebook.
This guy is a useless asshole, I promise.
Dunno if any of this is true but seems like a red flag right off the back.

And here I thought chest speaker guy was the con man and chubby face was just his useful idiot buddy but it turns out they're both scumbags.

$60K+ on KS raised... what was I saying the other day about gamers being easy marks?

Nilden · April 2021

Vrika · April 2021

Quizzical said:

Would I like to see whoever is behind this scam face prison time for it? Sure. But not if it results in people who make a good faith effort at making a real game and merely fail also going to prison.

Are existing anti-fraud laws sufficient to deal with this guy? I don't know. They might be. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and the people who threw money at it likely won't get it back. But a year in prison would be an ample warning to anyone else thinking about trying the same thing even if the money is spent and gone.

There shouldn't be a new law created to deal with this unless existing laws can't handle it. Which might be the case. But if there is a new law created, you have to figure out some way to distinguish between actual scams and good faith failures.

I think we'd need more laws on information provided to backers.

Public companies need to release certain financial information, verified by an accountant. If those laws were extended to crowdfunding so that if you collect large enough amount of money you'll need to have your accounts checked and the info released to backers, something like that would decrease the amount of scammers a lot by making it harder to get away with.

Or maybe we could make a law where creators must provide the backers with ETA on when full delivery is made, and if that ETA is missed they must pay for independent audit that gets released to the backers, in addition to continuing their work.

Or some other disclosure rule like that, that would at least expose the most blatant scammers and make getting away with it a little harder. We can't stop all the scams, but currently we're making it too easy to by giving projects millions of dollars without proper oversight.

Scot · April 2021

Well these are a form of Crowd Funding, can the company not require full details of the background of those involved on their website? Getting details of the job experience of those involved and what projects they have been involved in so far would be good. That said if the bar is too high people with talent but little experience will be excluded.

BruceYee · April 2021

Nothing will ever happen cause 'game companies' can excuse away anything/everything like they've been doing since day 1.

The only way anything can ever change is if game companies are somehow forced to give legal ownership of everything they sell to the customer while also being forced to keep whatever game they develop up indefinitely. There's 0.002% chance of that ever happening.

Giving trillions of dollars to these companies for decades for pixels we never own hasn't done us any favors and removed any power we may have once had to change things a long time ago.

All we can do now is just discuss what we'd like to change but that's about it. That trillion dollar beast is unmovable, unkillable and gives zero shits what we think.

francis_baud · April 2021

Scot said:

Well these are a form of Crowd Funding, can the company not require full details of the background of those involved on their website? Getting details of the job experience of those involved and what projects they have been involved in so far would be good. That said if the bar is too high people with talent but little experience will be excluded.

If we look at the big 6 crowdfunded projects (SC, CU, DU, AoC, CF, P:RotF), they all have very experienced developers working on them, but still did not meet their initial estimated release date (exceeding it by 150-300%, and still no ETA in sight nor guarantees of launch).

Quizzical · April 2021

Vrika said:

Quizzical said:

Would I like to see whoever is behind this scam face prison time for it? Sure. But not if it results in people who make a good faith effort at making a real game and merely fail also going to prison.

Are existing anti-fraud laws sufficient to deal with this guy? I don't know. They might be. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and the people who threw money at it likely won't get it back. But a year in prison would be an ample warning to anyone else thinking about trying the same thing even if the money is spent and gone.

There shouldn't be a new law created to deal with this unless existing laws can't handle it. Which might be the case. But if there is a new law created, you have to figure out some way to distinguish between actual scams and good faith failures.

I think we'd need more laws on information provided to backers.

Public companies need to release certain financial information, verified by an accountant. If those laws were extended to crowdfunding so that if you collect large enough amount of money you'll need to have your accounts checked and the info released to backers, something like that would decrease the amount of scammers a lot by making it harder to get away with.

Or maybe we could make a law where creators must provide the backers with ETA on when full delivery is made, and if that ETA is missed they must pay for independent audit that gets released to the backers, in addition to continuing their work.

Or some other disclosure rule like that, that would at least expose the most blatant scammers and make getting away with it a little harder. We can't stop all the scams, but currently we're making it too easy to by giving projects millions of dollars without proper oversight.

The problem is that independent audits cost money. One of the problems with crowdfunding is that games raise some money, but not enough to actually make their game. Add in a bunch of regulatory costs and you make that problem even worse.

Wizardry · April 2021

Well there is a few layers to discuss.
I am pretty sure BigFry has been mentioned on SidAlphas channel a few times because typically when people like this make damning videos they are often met with harsh feedback from the developers.

Ok so there is mention here of using others bought work,store assets.I have often mentioned that it is possible to make a quality game if you sub out the work and use store assets.I really don't have a problem HOW you get there so long you get there.

This however is NOT doable with a few guys but we should also realize the recent success of Valheim is only a 6 man team of which likely less than 6 were actual coders.That game however has been in development for at least 3-4 years.THIS team of 2-6 depending what you believe is at the 6-8 month period so they would have another 2/3 years to get to a point of being a decent playable game again pointing out that many enjoy Valheim alot which is basically using the same timeline.

Do i think these guys are cons,most certainly.I believe this one dude was down and out and turned to the idea of "nothing to lose"by conning people so let's make some money.The other guy was likely being paid very little and perhaps even a contracted employee working part tiem contracts.

What i want to see is laws covering the very sight itself "Kickstarter".That BS business doesn't care one iota about legitimacy or the consumer or the gamers,it only cares about it's CUT on the money raised.I think the problem is that any government will look foolish if they devote time to creating new laws surrounding gaming and deciding what section they fall under.Whenever you google gaming laws you usually get gambling related articles/laws nothing actually related to gaming.

olepi · April 2021

You can't make it illegal. If people want to give money to something, they can.

Take religion for example, in some you can "buy" forgiveness with indulgences. Can anyone prove it is real? You can't make that illegal.

Only if you enter into a contract, where you provide money for a stated return. If you don't get the return, you can sue. It's still not illegal, but you might get an award of damages to make you whole.

Smart crowd-funding efforts, like Star Citizen, make it abundantly clear that you are making a donation, a pledge, for a *possible* future product. If they don't make the product, you don't get your money back. That is your contract with them.

Vrika · April 2021

Quizzical said:

Vrika said:

Quizzical said:

Would I like to see whoever is behind this scam face prison time for it? Sure. But not if it results in people who make a good faith effort at making a real game and merely fail also going to prison.

Are existing anti-fraud laws sufficient to deal with this guy? I don't know. They might be. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and the people who threw money at it likely won't get it back. But a year in prison would be an ample warning to anyone else thinking about trying the same thing even if the money is spent and gone.

There shouldn't be a new law created to deal with this unless existing laws can't handle it. Which might be the case. But if there is a new law created, you have to figure out some way to distinguish between actual scams and good faith failures.

I think we'd need more laws on information provided to backers.

Public companies need to release certain financial information, verified by an accountant. If those laws were extended to crowdfunding so that if you collect large enough amount of money you'll need to have your accounts checked and the info released to backers, something like that would decrease the amount of scammers a lot by making it harder to get away with.

Or maybe we could make a law where creators must provide the backers with ETA on when full delivery is made, and if that ETA is missed they must pay for independent audit that gets released to the backers, in addition to continuing their work.

Or some other disclosure rule like that, that would at least expose the most blatant scammers and make getting away with it a little harder. We can't stop all the scams, but currently we're making it too easy to by giving projects millions of dollars without proper oversight.

The problem is that independent audits cost money. One of the problems with crowdfunding is that games raise some money, but not enough to actually make their game. Add in a bunch of regulatory costs and you make that problem even worse.

Ideally the amount of regulatory stuff applied would depend on how much money you raise, so that only big projects would need to pay for audits.

One of the problems with crowdfunding big projects like MMOs is that they don't raise enough money to actually make their game, and I think that problem could be helped by making sure there's good enough oversight and scam-prevention that people would trust big crowdfunding projects more, and consequently buy more stuff from them.

Nilden · April 2021

francis_baud said:

Scot said:

Well these are a form of Crowd Funding, can the company not require full details of the background of those involved on their website? Getting details of the job experience of those involved and what projects they have been involved in so far would be good. That said if the bar is too high people with talent but little experience will be excluded.

If we look at the big 6 crowdfunded projects (SC, CU, DU, AoC, CF, P:RotF), they all have very experienced developers working on them, but still did not meet their initial estimated release date (exceeding it by 150-300%, and still no ETA in sight nor guarantees of launch).

So you can't just hand wave this away as inexperience. There is no way they are all this inept.

Which to my mind means it's an inherent flaw in crowdfunding itself. No accountability. Missed release date, so what, this isn't a publisher that will shut it down. As long as they have people giving them money they can keep going.

Let's be real tho kickstarter obviously doesn't care if this is a scam and is taking their cut. The sites reporting on this should be calling this out too. Instead this unrealistic scam is up to 80k. Good job everybody.

francis_baud · April 2021

olepi said:

Smart crowd-funding efforts, like Star Citizen, make it abundantly clear that you are making a donation, a pledge, for a *possible* future product. If they don't make the product, you don't get your money back. That is your contract with them.

On Kickstarter it's different, it's not treated as an actual donation (the ToS doesn't even mention the term "donation").

"When a creator posts a project on Kickstarter, they’re inviting other people to form a contract with them. Anyone who backs a project is accepting the creator’s offer, and forming that contract. [...] the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers. [...] If they’re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they may be subject to legal action by backers."

Quizzical · April 2021

francis_baud said:

olepi said:

Smart crowd-funding efforts, like Star Citizen, make it abundantly clear that you are making a donation, a pledge, for a *possible* future product. If they don't make the product, you don't get your money back. That is your contract with them.

On Kickstarter it's different, it's not treated as an actual donation (the ToS doesn't even mention the term "donation").

"When a creator posts a project on Kickstarter, they’re inviting other people to form a contract with them. Anyone who backs a project is accepting the creator’s offer, and forming that contract. [...] the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers. [...] If they’re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they may be subject to legal action by backers."

In other words, after the Kickstarter drive ends, Kickstarter takes their fee and wants nothing more to do with the project. Backers and creators, please settle this amongst yourselves and leave us (Kickstarter) out of it, and definitely don't sue us.

Vrika · April 2021

francis_baud said:

olepi said:

Smart crowd-funding efforts, like Star Citizen, make it abundantly clear that you are making a donation, a pledge, for a *possible* future product. If they don't make the product, you don't get your money back. That is your contract with them.

On Kickstarter it's different, it's not treated as an actual donation (the ToS doesn't even mention the term "donation").

"When a creator posts a project on Kickstarter, they’re inviting other people to form a contract with them. Anyone who backs a project is accepting the creator’s offer, and forming that contract. [...] the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers. [...] If they’re unable to satisfy the terms of this agreement, they may be subject to legal action by backers."

Star Citizen doesn't use term donation either. They use term pledge, like Kickstarter.

Star Citizen's and Kickstarter's current terms are actually to large extend similar in that both say that the seller must either deliver product, or take some actions if they're unable to do it, but as long as those actions are taken they can keep the money even without delivering product. Also both are careful to avoid terms "donate" "buy" "purchase", and instead use "pledge" to tell that it's neither a traditional purchase nor a donation.

francis_baud · April 2021

Nilden said:

francis_baud said:

Scot said:

Well these are a form of Crowd Funding, can the company not require full details of the background of those involved on their website? Getting details of the job experience of those involved and what projects they have been involved in so far would be good. That said if the bar is too high people with talent but little experience will be excluded.

If we look at the big 6 crowdfunded projects (SC, CU, DU, AoC, CF, P:RotF), they all have very experienced developers working on them, but still did not meet their initial estimated release date (exceeding it by 150-300%, and still no ETA in sight nor guarantees of launch).

So you can't just hand wave this away as inexperience. There is no way they are all this inept.

Which to my mind means it's an inherent flaw in crowdfunding itself. No accountability. Missed release date, so what, this isn't a publisher that will shut it down. As long as they have people giving them money they can keep going.

Let's be real tho kickstarter obviously doesn't care if this is a scam and is taking their cut. The sites reporting on this should be calling this out too. Instead this unrealistic scam is up to 80k. Good job everybody.

The thing is that they're most likely trying their best to deliver a high quality game and in a reasonable time frame, because the crowdfunding they receive is tiny (less than a million per year for Crowfall) compared to the development expenses (~$4 millions yearly for a team of 40 developers) and even more compared to the revenues they would get from a launched / operating MMO (possibly +$4M still for CF on the first year if ~50K players).

There are many reasons I guess why they haven't shipped yet, and it has in part to do with the nature of crowdfunding/open-development which is to grow a player base over the years, retain the players and earn crowdfunding revenues. Some of those reasons are that they spent many resources on:

PR: forums/FB/Twitter/discord, teasers, weekly/monthly updates, live streams, user stories, patch notes, press releases...
Art: concept art, wallpapers, screenshots, videos
Testing environments: large variety of maps for testers to playtest (extremely time consuming)
Website: updates and make-overs
KS rewards: forum badges, testing access, forum access, in-game mounts, cosmetics, buildings, etc.
Side projects (AoE's Apocalypse, CF's Hunger Dome, CU's FS:R)
Remade assets: over time upgrades of models, VFX, SFX, environment assets
Tech revamp: due to long delays, have to implement new versions of solutions, upgrade engine, replace technologies

There are likely many other reasons for the delays (scope creep, design changes, overly complex initial vision, overly optimistic estimates, etc.)

olepi · April 2021

I suppose a legal case of fraud could be made if you can conclusively prove that the company/CEO deliberately sold something knowing that they were not going to do it.

But the defense to that would be any amount of work they put in to actually create the product. Even if they fail, it's not a crime.

And even if you can prove fraud, like in the recent case of Trump's "University", the only punishment was that they had to give the money back. Nobody was charged with any crimes.

Or another example is the used car salesman that tells you the car is in perfect shape, and you buy it only to find out they lied and it's falling apart. It's your fault that you bought it.

BruceYee · April 2021

Torval said:

This is why we need extensive and detailed regulation in the entertainment industry and crowd-funding in general.

Have you paid any attention to government related happenings recently? They are so in it for themselves that if it ever came down to regulating games the game lobby would just shove millions into the pockets of who they need to so that any issue that comes up just goes away.

The only way any type of regulation can happen is if we self-regulate. That means average gamers do their own research into companies that are worth supporting but IMO that is an almost impossible task. Many people are addicted to games so it makes those individuals not care about where their money goes as long as they are getting their fix.

If individuals chose to not support the companies that see us as just walking currency it would be a start but those companies count on average joe gamer never knowing the details about industry related stuff and it's how they thrive. They also in recent times called in an extra line of support/cover with streamers that keep them cloaked even more...

Individuals(if not addicted) should evaluate games on a case by case basis and determine for themselves if X company is worth supporting for various reasons. I personally determine how I spend my money based on amount of content, replayability, not too expensive, small dev team. The exception I make for the 'small dev team' part is certain Tencent games like PoE cause they really transform game companies into production powerhouses that provide their players with far more than they ask for in return.

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This has to be made illegal.

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This has to be made illegal.

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