Mythic Kickstarter is a Scam

[CatmanStu]

The concern this throws up to me is whether there is a vetting process at Kickstarter for all projects before being green lit.
If there isn't then that is pretty stupid because at best you are setting yourself up for a PR nightmare, at worst you are an accessory to fraud.
If there is a vetting process then it is obviously pretty shit. The report states that it was the Disney/Pixar claim that set off the red lights, NOT the fact that they were claiming they could produce something on the scale of WoW and Skyrim on a Kickstarter budget.
It's true that everyones insight is better with hindsight, but come on; it took Bethesda four years to create Skyrim and they had backing from a major company and decades of previous experience to draw on. Even if the developer was good to their word, you would surely have to be suspicious of anyone making such grand claims while needing a "good faith" start-up kitty.

 

[Alfonzo Burton]

The person responsible is ---------. This is a complete disrespect to the gaming community and he owes it to this industry to pay the money back to real fans of games.

His email is -Information removed by Mod

Everyone tell him to return the money and stop frauding people

Please don't post people's public information on forums, nor ask people to be your own personal army. If I see you posting stuff like this again, I'll ban you.

-Mod

 

[Scars Unseen]

So Mythic is the spiritual successor to Dawn, then?

The comic character?

Er.. no. Dawn, [http://www.glitchless.com/dawn.html] a "revolutionary" MMO that has been in "late alpha" for the past 11 years. [http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?t=105220] Because of the hype it generated a decade ago, it's probably one of the most notable pieces of vaporware in gaming history(now that Duke Nukem Forever actually got released). Granted, Mythic hasn't even come close to the notoriety that Dawn had back then, but if they had managed to complete the Kickstarter before getting caught... There wouldn't have been enough popcorn in the world.

 

[Scars Unseen]

The person responsible is --------. This is a complete disrespect to the gaming community and he owes it to this industry to pay the money back to real fans of games.

-----------

Everyone tell him to return the money and stop frauding people

No money to return. Kickstarter doesn't collect money until the goal is met, which will never happen since the Kickstarter was pulled. This is more funny than enraging, really.

 

[Shameless]

It was bound to happen sooner or later , I am glad Kickstarter were aware of this.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

Seems like this was a very poorly done scam as well. If I was them, I would've at least created a VERY BASIC engine and shat out a few new screenshots and maybe even some footage. Then I could open a "public alpha" and release that as a "finished project". Then I would take the rest of the money and bail.

 

[surg3n]

Herp derp, throwed money at screen but magic ideal game not happen... sad face.

Nip kickstarter in the butt, stop supporting it, it'll ruin the gaming industry, and all you guys who support it are just nails in the damn coffin!. A bit negative, I know, but frankly I'm sick of every failing development studio holding a game to ransom, and using nostalgia as a selling force, because older gamers have more money right?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can anyone name a kickstarter project that has been completed?
What happend to that documentary about Mojang? - apparantly it's in the 'final stages', after a year some people might expect to see where their money went. What happens when a game turns out to be absolute crap?

I have to stop posting about it, kickstarter is giving me a fricken ulcer. I'm not throwing money at the screen, I'll keep it in my wallet until there's something tangible I can put some faith in. People say 'nobodies forcing you', which is fair enough, what really concerns me is how it will turn into normality to expect public funding, as if our support is fair game, as if just buying the damn thing isn't enough.

 

[Bostur]

Actually, I think this serves as an effective demonstration of Kickstarter's safety. Folks figured out the con pretty quickly, and no one involved lost anything. It's even entirely possible that, as shady as this looked, the con-men themselves pledge a lot of that money just to add an air of legitimacy (It's what I would do)... which would mean not many people were fooled at all.

It certainly mitigates some of the risk. Without having a 3rd party involved people wouldn't have much of a chance getting their money back in a case like this. It can't root out all scams but it helps.

 

[Iron Criterion]

Nip kickstarter in the butt, stop supporting it, it'll ruin the gaming industry, and all you guys who support it are just nails in the damn coffin!. A bit negative, I know, but frankly I'm sick of every failing development studio holding a game to ransom, and using nostalgia as a selling force, because older gamers have more money right?

And yet Wasteland 2 will still be better than COD 7,000.

 

[subtlefuge]

This really shouldn't bother anyone. The chances of someone actually getting away with a scam seem rather low.

What I'm worried about is the inevitability of a major Kickstarter game not being finished. Games with full budgets occasionally fall through, it seems unlikely that ones funded through donations would be somehow immune.

 

[BrotherRool]

The thing that shows just how amateurish this was is that they thought 'the gameplay of WoW' was an incentive

I was wondering when the first kickstarter scam would crop up. Although to it's credit, it was a lot later than I anticipated.

same, surprised it took this long. which i suppose can be interpreted as a good thing

Or, if you're pessimistic, can be interpreted as 'this was the one most amateurish to be caught out'

Because seriously, as people have said the whole concept takes a lot of effort not to scam. Someone you don't know gives you a lot of money upfront and then you have to carefully budget to make that money last whilst putting work in every day for something that you might feel you've already been paid for.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to take the money and then not do anything and if you're small it'll be a while before you're found out, if you want to put any effort into it, you just release a blogpost every now and then discussing some random design element and no-one will know.

That's not the problem with Kickstarter though, the problem is that big professional teams with lots of experience misjudge how much something will cost or screw up a bit or life throws them a problem (say the lead dev gets sick with the flu for a couple of months before he can do some very crucial designing) and suddenly you've got a game you can release incomplete or you've got to employ so many people with no money to actually pay them.

Even with developers being constantly watched and milestoned by publishers like EA you still get games that go sour. LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption, Alan Wake, Final Fantasy Versus, Half Life 3 are all games that have gone way over time/budget/both, never mind the Duke Nukem fiasco.

Kickstarter is fun while it's small amounts of money, one-off things or well-known and trusted people, but there are huge risks if you want to get serious with it and if you think of it as a charity donation (Which it's probably best to in most cases) well maybe there are some others places to put your money if you're going to be talking about any serious amount.

 

[surg3n]

Nip kickstarter in the butt, stop supporting it, it'll ruin the gaming industry, and all you guys who support it are just nails in the damn coffin!. A bit negative, I know, but frankly I'm sick of every failing development studio holding a game to ransom, and using nostalgia as a selling force, because older gamers have more money right?

And yet Wasteland 2 will still be better than COD 7,000.

Of course!

Really Wasteland2 is a no brainer, I can't remember the original, but I'm still gonna buy it if it see's the light of day. These good kickstarter projects really shouldn't need to be kickstarted IMO.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Nip kickstarter in the butt, stop supporting it, it'll ruin the gaming industry, and all you guys who support it are just nails in the damn coffin!. A bit negative, I know, but frankly I'm sick of every failing development studio holding a game to ransom, and using nostalgia as a selling force, because older gamers have more money right?

And yet Wasteland 2 will still be better than COD 7,000.

Of course!

Really Wasteland2 is a no brainer, I can't remember the original, but I'm still gonna buy it if it see's the light of day. These good kickstarter projects really shouldn't need to be kickstarted IMO.

For Wasteland 2 it's less "holding to ransom" more publishers wanting to throw money at COD clones instead of niche game the some people like. Brian Fargo even made a little video describing his trials in dealing with potential corporate backers.


As for a scam appearing on Kickstarter, it's human nature to mess up or completely break the system.

 

[DestinyCall]

The person responsible is --------. This is a complete disrespect to the gaming community and he owes it to this industry to pay the money back to real fans of games.

Everyone tell him to return the money and stop frauding people

Who are you and why should we believe you?

Sounds like scam.

 

[XDravond]

As long as you can earn money people will try to exploit it....
It provably happened before and will happen again... But then there is also a whole bunch of ill thought up projects promising the world and perfect games for silly amounts of money....
Good thing with kickstarter though is that several of these "almost" scams doesn't get funded and no one gets financially hurt....

 

[paislyabmj]

good thing they got there cash back but it seems like it wont be to long until someone actually pulls of one of these scams for real.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

The person responsible is ----------- This is a complete disrespect to the gaming community and he owes it to this industry to pay the money back to real fans of games.

------------

Everyone tell him to return the money and stop frauding people

No need to do that. With the Kickstarter halted, none of the backers will see their bank accounts debited. Westfall's idiotic efforts won't amount to much. Kickstarter doesn't charge you for your pledge's worth until the project reaches its intended goal. Mythic obviously never did.

 

[disappointed]

The concern this throws up to me is whether there is a vetting process at Kickstarter for all projects before being green lit.

Yeah, they've got too big to get by without some decent oversight. There's a ton of unrealistic projects on Kickstarter that are never going to get funded/made and it would be a lot better for everyone if they were culled. Personally, I don't think there should be any MMO projects allowed. They're just too expensive and fragile to be funded this way.

 

[MetalMagpie]

Ever since I seen Kickstart I awaited a story like this. I cant help but also wonder what would happen to donated money if the developers suddenly dropped the project a month or two after achieving their goals, what legal action could be taken?

Kickstarter's T&C state that they do not in any way guarantee any of the projects, so you can't take any action via them. And I'm fairly certain that in most countries there would be no action you could take directly with the devs unless your pledge had been in direct exchange for a copy of the finished game, in which case you could probably claim your money back. But even that I'm not certain of.

Probably best to only pledge an amount you'd be willing to lose, unless the company involved already has products on the market that you can use to judge their likely chances of success.

 

[Strazdas]

Its amazing it took them so long.