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Greed Monger Cancelled; $100,000+ in Kickstarter Funds Unaccounted For
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The core of the problem is that there are suckers out there. No amount of EULA, warning and stuff like that will prevent fraud. Heck, there are still people smoking .. and everyone on the planet knows that is is poison.
So I purely see KS a way to make money off fraud .. and the KS management knows it. Now it may be legal, and may be they can't change it ... but they are making money off fraud. I am quite sure that no one is going to change anything since who is going to resist a legal way of making money off fraud?
But I can still call them out, and have some fun, can I? (not that i need to change anything .. since i won't be giving them a single cent).
So you include the process of accepting money from buyers in return for delivering them a product they can enjoy and/or to serve its intended purpose as fraud? Or did you mean to say that Kickstarter, like any other facet of a entrepreneurial market, can be exploited by people looking to commit fraud?
Because, I don't know if you're aware.. But there's been quite a few successful (both commercially and critically successful) projects that have resulted from Kickstarter. Do a high percentage fail? Sure do. But that's no different from any other business venture on the market. Check some statistics: According to Forbes, 8 out of 10 business entrepreneurs fail within the first 18 months. The only difference here is the investors. So 8 out of 10 folks out there attempting business enterprises are defrauding (most likely) themselves (or, in some cases, family and friends) by attempting to start a business?
Your view is so black and white as to be dangerously confounding.
Sigh ~ this is pointless, do whatever you want, convince youself of whatever you wish ~
Have fun mate
I almost wonder if the modern day "get rich quick" scam is just come up with an amazing idea, Kickstarter the project and - when it goes green - just pocket the money and run.
It's one thing I doubt the law has caught up with yet.
I don't think that kickstarter is the one to blame. It's merely a platform for companies to receive funding; however, it's up to the potential backers to make sure they aren't donating to a project that isn't likely to succeed. Legal recourse has yet to be seen, as there hasn't really been many actions taken against these cases yet; the few that have been started, haven't been in court long enough to see a result.
The stock market works in a very similar way to Kickstarter, and no one blames brokers when people invest money into something that later loses value. At least, that's how I see it.
Greed Monger, regardless if it was a "scam" or not, was very very very obviously not going to succeed in the first place if you did research on the company, it's team, and asking amount.
$30,000 for a MMO.
Seriously.
That's all you needed to see in order to know it wasn't going to succeed.
People who keep buying into promises, dreams, and hype that aren't based in a realm of achievable results are going to continuously lose their money until they actually learn to research projects before funding them.
It depends. There are legal issues and brokers shoulder a certain amount of culpability for fraud, etc. Generally they're very certain to work within guidelines. Crowdfunding has very few guidelines and next to no legal recourse. We discuss over and over around here how these projects have absolutely no guarantees and people still throw money at them. Even still, the phrase "no guarantee" is euphemistic. It's more like throwing 20 or 50 or 200 bucks in a slot machine. People will complain anyway.
How about "KS makes *some* money off fraud"? Now that is accurate, right?
I don't deny there are successful KS projects .. but so what ... KS knowingly makes *some* of its money off fraud. Ebay was sued because of counterfeit products on its site .. so i suspect claiming you are a platform does not protect you from law suits.
Plus, i don't see KS is interested in eliminating fraud. In fact, they are hiding behind all these "oh .. i can't control what people do on my platform" .. so i am not interested in spending money on them.
And oh, yeah ... According to Forbes, 8 out of 10 business entrepreneurs fail within the first 18 months.
In fact, that helps make my point. Even if it is not fraud .. do you want to be a VC on KS funding these "entrepreneurs"? At these odds .... why should i bother?
If enough people lose enough money, the law will catch up.
Pointless? Have fun is the point ... calling out train wrecks is fun.
Now you're point is that offering a platform for which entrepreneurs to advertise their ideas isn't a good idea because of the failure rate of entrepreneurs in general?
Just wanna make sure I know what your argument is before I refute it.
If you are investing in a business startup, or just giving a friend some money to get things going.. YOU have to do you research and homework. Kickstarter is just a pathway between you and your decision to fund something.
Like I said, what intelligent person would give money to someone to build an MMORPG who has never made a game before. Look at professionally produced MMORPGs with a team of fully educated and experienced programmers... and they often fall apart. With both Trials of Ascension and GreedMonger, you have 0 other games produced by their lead developers. Why in the world would you think they could produce a MMORPG? Because some mentally ill man-child who lives in his mother´s house says so? We have the freakin internet.. do some research. People want to blame Kickstarter because they donate $100 to a freaking mentally challenged kid with a $300 computer who wants to build a MMORPG?
All you had to do was... BEFORE YOU GIVE MONEY... demand that James show you another game he created. This entire KS debacle with Greedmonger falls apart was soon as everyone sees his Space Invaders clone that doesn´t work.
We basically forced Trials of Ascension to shut down by demanding to see what they had created before their kickstarter. 3 devs working 3 years could show nothing, and so their fans abandoned them.
I know this might shock some of you.. but Kickstarter does not force you to donate to someone´s game just because you read their webpage.
No my point is that offering a platform for which scammers to advertise their scams isn't a good idea because of the lack of oversight and accountability.
and i won't ... but i don't see why i cannot point out that there are those who will do so .. and some people just got scammed.
3 devs working 3 years and have nothing to show ... i don't see why fans should stick with them.
I really don't understand how some of you think it's ok for a legitimate business to earn money off fraud. In law there is a word for this I believe.
As for the suggestion that monitoring is the same as getting involved in the management of the project, I really fail to see how that is so. The transition of new ownership was printed on the Greed monger site. The closure of Greed monger was published on the Greed monger site as well. I don't necessarily think they should monitor project webpages, but these kind of updates should be on the Kickstarter webpage, and Kickstarter should require the project leaders to give regular updates in that place.
All these projects that have not delivered yet, have one thing in common. The Kickstarter owner appears to be missing a few months after they received their funds. Once Kickstarter sees the project owner does no longer update their project page there should be a big fat warning. Is that too much? Is that getting involved in the project?
This is a decent debate, and you can make it honestly without going all Fox News on us. I will make these points
1. You are looking at KS as a gamer. KS is much bigger than just games and MMORPGs. While there is a lot of crazy stuff, like the guy who got 50k to make potato salad, that is all on the up-and-up because people knew what they were doing. For the vast majority of KS, it is just little projects like band camp. Do you want to force harsh new laws on a 12 year old trying to go to band camp because 3 MMORPGs scammed people?
2. Who do you want regulating KS? Do you want the US gov´t telling KS which fundraisers are valid? Do you want congress passing laws? Just to give you some typical outcomes of that.. have you ever seen when a company does some time of lottery or raffel.. and then they have to exclude people who live in Quebec, half the countries in Europe and some random US states? That is what you are going to end up with. ´ We are sorry, you are not allowed to start a KS if you live in AZ, MN, Quebec, Poland, Greece or the western portion of North Dakota.
3. Scams are everywhere. If you blame KS, then you need to also shut down Craigslist, Fiverr, most newspapers and many TV stations. Heck, we should probably shut down Yahoo and Gmail because those Nigerian princes keep asking me for money.
I am just not a fan of government intervention on things where it only takes a small amount of common sense to overcome... where even slightly less laziness will help you avoid the scam.
I also think it is correcting itself just through education anyway. As these guys started scamming KS for their MMORPGs.. word got out and the newer ones are having a harder time. Trials of Ascension tried to do their KS in January of this year.... they raised like $22k out of $600k, and most of that was seed money. I don´t think you need to change anything with KS because people have already learned their lesson.
Me personally, my biggest fear is just Unity, and how powerful it is. If I could have anything, it would be for every gamer to know just how easy it is to do stuff in Unity. Like I said. Proctor released a video a few months ago of Rise of Heroes .. the video is 25 minutes long of a guy running around the world. It literally would take someone less than 25 minutes to create what Proctor spent 25 minutes showing.
I mean, arguing with you about being Kickstarter fault or not, is pointless.
Then you might also want to find a soapbox to call out the religious organizations throughout the world. Mad potential for scamming there, and the main oversight (in my opinion) is a make-believe guy in the sky. Seems a lot less oversight than Kickstarter.
Also, as another poster pointed out, there are many other platforms for people to offer products and services that are potential avenues to scamming. In fact, if a platform exists at all in which people offer the opportunity to invest and/or pay for products or services, there (by realistic definition) exists a potential for scamming.
This is hilarious. I almost worked for Jason, he tried to have the audacity to low ball me on the terrain system that would take 6-9 months of work. thankfully I declined his offer though as it was laughable. The dude is a pompous, arrogant fool, who knows how to talk himself up and make it seem like he knows what he is doing. All he probably does is read some articles on google and takes on a project as his next hobby until it fails only take on a new scam or project. He is a definite poser and a scammer.
James Proctor is what I call a borderline Poser; meaning he can code just enough to get by, but not do anything remotely complex or engaging that requires true talent. I know a few programmers younger than him that are 10x better, worked for Disney, and Intel that are barely in college that would be a better fit than he ever will be. He also does not take criticism and advice very well. Always starts and stop projects. Like an artist I know who is just like him and just as untalented; I would never hire James for anything remotely complex. He clearly was over his head. This crap is hilarious and reeks of irony lol. it is like a train wreck that took place over the span of 3 years. I am kind of glad this fiasco is over, but feel sorry for the backers who will likely not see their money refunded. I hope a lawsuit is drawn up against Jason.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
I'm still trying to figure out what Joel got out of the loot bag.
Appleton got anywhere from 60- 80k out of the loot bag by most accounts.
Proctor got a small cut of $$, new computer, software and licenses from the loot.
What did Joel get to warrant his time? A new couch perhaps?
AFAIK Joel was never part of the team prior to James taking over. Even after James took over, Joel was working on a volunteer basis, and really just served as another person for James to point his finger at when things weren't going properly. I imagine that's why Joel has a grand total of like ... 15 (?) posts as the PR-Front man. If you're not going to pay someone, you can't expect them to put in the same amount of work as someone who gets a salary.
Sure .. when i have time. Calling out KS here is convenient since I am here already (and you know how much i like convenience).
not surprised by this. can't believe people fall for these kickstarter money grabs.
If I could +1 a post, I'd give you an upvote here, narius.
A thumbs up emote will have to suffice!