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Greed Monger Cancelled; $100,000+ in Kickstarter Funds Unaccounted For
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appleton is a thief.
proctor is just incompetent.
imo
I think we've actually sunk about as low as we can go here. I thought Cryptic selling Closed Beta spots in Star Trek Online for buying a lifetime subscription to Champions Online and then trying to renege on the deal was the ultimate low blow to the gaming public. However here you have game developers using the discontent of MMO gamers with the state of MMO games to get the MMO gamers to literally GIVE them money in exchange for a promise to develop a game the gamers will like.
I don't know which is worse. That game developers were cynical enough to sink to this level or that the gaming public was so desperate for games they would enjoy that it could be buffaloed into throwing money into a deep dark hole in the hopes that something would grow out of the hole.
Kickstarter works on the "how much will you bet on this?" theory. Basically they ask for donors to contribute an amount they feel comfortable giving away. Most donors will stick with the minimum amount since they feel comfortable risking $20 to $100 dollars on a promise. While there may be legal recourse (maybe) the vast majority of donors will say, "Oh, well it was just $20.00" and cut their losses. By the time a class action suit gets fired up to recover the $100,000.00 there won't be enough left over to pay the lawyers at the end of the case. What really needs to happen is some of the State's Attorney Generals' offices launch an investigation and prosecute a few people for fraud, but that won't happen either. They're too busy pursuing money from the tobacco companies and fast food joints.
In the end what will happen is future Kickstarter campaigns will be haunted by this rip off and people who truly intend to do what they say won't be able to get public funding this way. The only defense the consumer has is to refuse to participate in any future projects. Ultimately Kickstarter type funding sights were doomed because of things like this because 1) they made their money up front so it doesn't matter to them whether the projects go off or not 2) they immediately hold up their hands and say, "Hey we didn't do anything but provide a conduit for willing donors to meet willing project developers" and 3) there is no legal recourse against Kickstarter or between Kickstarter and people who post projects there. That language that has been quoted is in a contract between Kickstarter and Greed Monger. I'm pretty sure it doesn't confer any rights on anyone that isn't a signatory to the contract. In other words the donors probably can't use that contract to sue Greed Monger. More is the pity.
The sad part is someone out there will cook up a way to burn the gaming public even worse than this.
I guess it goes back to the old adage, never loan more money than you're comfortable just giving away.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
hehe .. i am in principle opposed to any KS project using MY OWN MONEY. Other people's money ... well .. it is their right to risk it on wishful thinking.
If they are scammed, they can claim that they don't know better.
I'm not willing to say most Kickstarters are a scam, however, people should really be more aware of the risks involved in donating thousands of dollars to nothing more than ideas, promises, and hype. I'd go so far as to say I think that Kickstarter is a good thing, overall. Even in this instance, it was only $150,000~ (don't forget, they were taking paypal donations for quite some time), which isn't a lot in terms of running a company, but it is a lot to people who donated $3,500+.
What happens when it's $1,000,000?
I do think that James Proctor at least knew it was a scam the entire time. The entire original development team bailed within weeks of their successful funding, and I'm sure they knew it, too. James Proctor even claimed to have been warned that it was a scam (IIRC), but still choose to continue on, even after being warned. I believe that makes him a willing accomplice, if nothing else.
Even one week after funding, James questioned the probability of the team succeeding:
[12/5/2012 11:05:49 PM] James Proctor: To get it done in a reasonable time it's going to take a team twice this size... Takes AAA companies with hundreds of people 4+ years just to release a MMO...
[12/5/2012 11:06:08 PM] Jason Appleton: No it wont. I've done my research man
[12/5/2012 11:06:27 PM] Jason Appleton: Early on I didnt know for sure. But I've been reading on gamasutra and other resources
For anyone interested, James Proctor has "10 years" experience as a "programmer", and his portfolio currently has no finished projects with his name on them. However, this is the laundry list of games and projects he's been part of and abandoned:
I'm actually surprised that it took this long (ten years or so) for a scam to actually coalesce in this genre.
But as far as scams go, this one was weaksause compared to Age of Mourning or Dark & Light. It seems that even the scams have gotten worse, like everything else, post-WoW.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I had almost completely forgotten about those. Thanks for reminding me!
While not as stronk as D&L and AoM, it's far more comical, at the very lest.
The next 2-3 years will be very telling of how successful Kickstarter MMOs can be, I believe. In the meantime, stories like this should encourage curious backers to do more research on the projects they have interest in backing.
Why bother with research? Just back nothing. It is not like there is a lack of good entertainment, and we need to pay for wishful thinking.
I'm not really looking to debate the reasons people have for backing projects through outlets such as Kickstarter. It's a trend that seems likes it's here to stay; however, if it does, people need to know that there are risks involved, and that people have been scammed though the system based on good-will and promises.
Personally hoping to see a lawsuit take shape, would be nice to basically have a legal precedent established regarding crowd funded video games.
Also be nice if the IRS was informed so they could go after them on tax fraud or rico charges.
Very good question.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think this will serve as a lesson to those who back kickstarters that claim they will make a game for less than its possible to do so. The most basic mmorpg using stock assets cannot be made for 100k after the cost of licenses, even if you are paying your artists, coders and designers minimum wage. Even a side scrolling game like castlevania that recently funded asked for a minimum of 500k (they were at 2.6M last time I checked).
If they were honest, they'd have said straightway that the money was for a demo to attract VC down the line. At least then you can know that its a gamble and you have to decide whether they are competent enough to pull it off, and whether their business plan is viable... but a game on 100k? Thats just crazy.
Jason Appleton is the real crook here. He is a smart scam artist that tried many schemes to make a quick buck. Right now he poses as an SEO expert on his http://upstager.com/ website. It's a complete scam, some pages with his references/clients still have the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text from the Template he bought to make this website.
He also claims to be an SEO expert:
"Having been doing online marketing, web design, SEO and PPC management for many years for multiple industries, I knew I wanted to help small businesses without $20,000 budgets be able to compete with the industry players. Upstager's focus is doing exactly that."
http://upstager.com/partner-view/school-of-art/
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Ah nothing like a daily dose of Greedmonger drama, while sipping your first cup of coffee in the morning. Unfortunately this morning I'm reading the first sensible thing coming out of this project and that's closing it down. But... I'm still missing one element. That's for James to contact Kickstarter and show his contract he shouldn't have signed, and ask them for advise. Try to combine a legal force with them. Kickstarter should be interested, and so should James.
Once the law starts coming after people you can't run. Be smart about it, it will look a lot better in the eyes of the law when you get the ball rolling yourself. And in the eyes of the backers it will be a great service when Appleton will stand trial, and all his scams will end.
James, now unplug your Internet cord from your PC and let the world be what it is. If you still have dreams, follow them and only come back when you had a LAN party with friends and your system didn't crash, and you're ready to sell something REAL.
O.o
Holy shit. Deplorable
The Contract we signed with Jason prevents us from being part of any lawsuits regarding what;s happened with KS. And trust me MMOI isn't done... We WILL be back when we have something ready for the public to see. Until then I will still be hanging around on these forums like I've been doing since like 2009 I believe it was when I first joined.
Edit: I take that back it was 2006 that I joined MMORPG.com
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
Appleton played Dr. Frankenstein
Proctor played Igor
Greed Monger was the monster
The KS backers just played the villagers... who always get hosed
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Jason and I had a discussion concerning this back in January when I first found it... Here's a little of our discussion...
[1/20/2015 10:13:18 PM] James Proctor: So upstager.com is that something YOU are doing or is it just an article on a new Website Company?
[1/20/2015 10:20:24 PM] James Proctor: Just some words of advice... UpStager's website is in some BAD need of a redesign... You should have your contact information both up near the top and at the bottom of the page... People aren't going to want to go all the way to the bottom just to find your contact details... Also things should be much more organized then what they currently are... You should actually have a top Nav bar where there is actually a Contact Us Link that takes them to a page with a nice little form they can fill out to send you a email and your phone number and mailing address so they have those options as well. You should then have a link like about us or something to that effect that takes them to a page where they can learn more about the company. Then another page that lists your prices and packages, and finally a showcase page where you can show off YOUR work...
[1/20/2015 10:24:21 PM] James Proctor: And another word of advice... Your claiming to have 15 years of experience in website design and Development... Redesign GM's website, get GM to the top of the Google Search Ranks and use that as your starting Showcase to show people interested in your services that you have what it takes... GM's website was just Outsourced and looks like crap right now with it being half broken...
[1/20/2015 10:42:02 PM] Jason Appleton: A small business website is a lot different than what I wanted for GM
[1/20/2015 10:42:14 PM] Jason Appleton: I've done over 40 sites for people in the past several years
[1/20/2015 10:42:18 PM] Jason Appleton: I've ranked several
[1/20/2015 10:42:55 PM] Jason Appleton: and the upstager site is responsive and made more for cell phones
[1/20/2015 10:44:32 PM] James Proctor: Yes it might be responsive... However the majority of your potential Clients will be searching through their Desktops or Laptops not their mobile phones... It should be optimized for them with another version specifically for Cell Phones...
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
Again... no contract can waive criminal actions. Not taking actions makes it the first criminal offence you make. You have to take action, because you see money missing.
Also I know this prob. won't matter much because at this point you guys don't care all that much about what I say. However I really don't think Jason was ever a Scammer and I know GM wasn't a Scam. We mismanged the project. We both made mistakes that hopefully we both will learn from. Until yesterday Jason had been refusing to give us ANY records concerning where the KS Money went to. However yesterday Joel and I sat down with him and went over some of the data. We didn't take the time to go over everything but what we did go over would seem to indicate enough that the entire $100,000 or however GM made in total did in fact go toward the development of GM.
At the time I wasn't part of the discussions concerning how much each person would get and so I never had that information. Jason was paying people I didn't even know about and there were other expenses I wasn't aware of.
In the end as Team Lead I should have managed the team better. I should have insisted on conducting Team Meetings every week and I SHOULD have made sure everything was much more organized... Lesson learned! I need to learn to be more assertive when I know I'm right about something and stand my ground. In the end I believe this will be a great learning experience for all involved.
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
Read my last post... After going over the paypal data with Jason I don't believe there IS any missing money... We didn't go over everything but what we did go over certainly seems to indicate it all went toward GM.
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
Sorry for dragging this... but this is very important. What you say here is very different from what you said earlier. You have said you accounted for about $20k worth of salaries, assets, rental of servers. The kickstarter mentions Jason A. received $100k, and as others have pointed out more donations have been via paypal, for the sale of more imaginary plots in a game that's now officially vaporware. I'm not an economist, nor a mathemetician, but what happened to the $80k?
If it can not be accounted for, it's called fraud.
Yes like I said up until yesterday Jason had been refusing us access to the data. Yesterday though we did sit down with him and he DID make the data available to us and it does suggest that every penny went toward GM. Jason had some where else to be and so we didn't go over every little detail to account for every single penny but there enough data there that I wasn't aware of to suggest that it did in fact go to where it was supposed to go. We have screenshots of his Paypal records but he has asked us not to release them.
Company Owner
MMO Interactive