Vapourware Unknown Realm: The Siege Perilous - an 8-bit RPG for PC and Commodore 64

[Comte]

I think they are exaggerating or outright lying here. They will say anything to keep the scam going on and avoid actually working for a living. I think they probably got some donations with this latest stunt, but I doubt even the suckers will continue to pay them month after month for long.

Spoony has hundreds of people who pay him monthly even though he hasn't put out a video in years. I figure there are probably plenty of well-meaning morons who will continue paying those guys, too.

Yeah just look at his latest streams with no commentary suckers are still throwing this loser a few hundred bucks per stream. Also he is about to lose his house he got a foreclosure notice.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Yeah just look at his latest streams with no commentary suckers are still throwing this loser a few hundred bucks per stream. Also he is about to lose his house he got a foreclosure notice.

I couldn't find a better metaphor for Shroud of the Avatar and how Spoony was all over it as part of the advertising, and now look at both.

Actually, outside of some shitty ads on Facebook that made it look like a Facebook game, Spoony WAS the advertisement.

The #hope and #joy of being scammed, what a wonderful feeling!

I am sure it is quite a joy for some to receive money while they procrastinate, fuck off with other marketing gimmicks, have nothing to show for it years later but a string of merch, and not be fired from a real game development studio. All while living in San Fran. If it weren't for their landlord (assuming that story is true), would they have resorted to doubling down on their begging even sooner?

If that's joy then #ProudJoythief - I'll happily take the joy so these bad acts stop taking money and delivering nothing but bullshit excuses.

#StealingFromAThief

 

[Ladonna]

But how will they ever realise their dreams?

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Awww, they noticed we noticed.

https://twitter.com/StirringDragon/status/1218124445643984897

https://twitter.com/StirringDragon/status/1218329270512013312

Totally going to go places by posting that emo shit instead of the updates that are still overdue by years, of anything to show besides merch and Wall of Excuses. Amazing show by a developer repeating some nOoblets act but without Tim's Epic Weeney to hang onto:

https://twitter.com/Asherett/status/1218193559532244992

Uh... I'm super positive towards the whole Unknown Realm project, and I'm usually defending you. But this is just... I don't know what to say. You're calling the people who gave you 126000 dollars "joy thieves", "jealous" and "envious"?

I understand that you're probably depressed and want support. I wish you the very best. But this isn't the way to go about things.

I'm not sure what kind of person I would be if I were delighted at seeing "developers" scam and then attack their own backers for not being happy at being fleeced for more money with still not a thing to show for any of it but merch - and again - Wall of Excuses.

Oh, right: I'd be Stirring Dragon Games. (Still not a legal business entity that anyone can find!)

 

[jungl]

there needs to be a documentary film made on all these scamstarters

 

[Infinitron]

The Kickstarter comments are also a riot: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-an-8bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/comments
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/2732686

The history of this "campaign":

1) Backers: Please provide an update with real information about development status.

2) SDG: ...

3) Backers: Please provide an update with real information about development status.

4) SDG: ...

5) Backers: Hello?

6) SDG: Hi! We unilaterally decided some of you don't want this project to succeed and so we can ignore you now. But we're working on the game for our "positive" people! Bye!

7) Backers: Uh, please answer our questions we've been asking for months.

8) SDG: Hi again! Buy some stuff from our online store! Bye!

9) Backers: OK, getting frustrated now. Please answer our questions we've been asking for months.

10) SDG: Hi again! We spent your money. Whoops! We have dreams, and other people merely exist to fund our distorted view of reality. But listen to a music track that we didn't create. Bye!

11) Backers: WTF. At least answer our questions we've been asking for months.

12) SDG: Hi again! Instead of doing anything productive, we calculated that of the 2 backers that we still consider "positive", 100% sent us a check for $5. Of the remaining 1,244 backers, some are the same person. You're welcome! Oh, and if you want information about the game you already invested in and we haven't been making, you'll need to pay us more money. That way you can prove you really support us, even though you've already supported us. Also, then we won't ever need to do any work, because you idiots will continue to fund our chosen lifestyle so we can live our "dream"! Bye!

13) Backers: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-



Bottom line: SDG are fairly terrible people, and will never grow up. We will never see our money, let alone a game. My frustration with their childish, toxic, divisive attitude has reached a limit. Obviously, I'm far from alone. But again, I need to take a break for a while, because every time I think about this scam and how I allowed myself to be taken in by it, my blood pressure goes up a notch. Later all.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

there needs to be a documentary film made on all these scamstarters

As he's covered a lot of them, you could probably convince Guru Larry to step up from his usual clickbaiting people into Peter Molyneux dick pics.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I think if this was a scam they'd be nicer to their audience, they gotte be delusional.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

I think if this was a scam they'd be nicer to their audience, they gotte be delusional.

Anything would make more sense if it weren't the Ultima Cult - playing the cultists against each other in class warfare isn't new and exactly what they're trying to do by fleecing the "faithful" in the same way as Apple. (TL;DW video - they're hoping the average cultists will blame themselves instead of looking around and asking questions about the narrative they are given.) That is what Shroud's developers have been doing, to failure despite having an actual Lord Dick to wave around as money bait.

 

[Tweed]

You know, instead of being a joy thief and spreading negative energy you could always buy a coffee mug and send positive energy, also money.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Ooooh, they meant that kind of joy...



Well, yes, I can see how that would be essential to keeping customers happy after you've delivered nothing but years of fucking off on other things for the money you took.

Oh, speaking of which, there's a little game I like to play ever since the shitbag behind Kinetic Void took the remaining dev money and then started up a physical game store next to a Best Buy and went out of business within a year: count the number of KS they have backed while having failed their own.

https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/stirringdragongames

59, about half of them after their own KS. I hope they enjoy the real games everyone else paid for.

 

[Saduj]

At least when they wanted to say "Hurr durr all criticism is just bad people venting jealousy. It has to be true because look at what some guy said once concerning a different situation." they found some quotes to use on Twitter other than the "Man in the Arena" one. They may not be able to produce any evidence that they've worked on the game but at least we can see that they aren't taking the easy way out when attacking their Kickstarter backers.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

You seem to be particularly butthurt bitter, Eli_Havelock , care to tell us how much money you blew on this?

 

[Eli_Havelock]

You seem to be particularly butthurt bitter, Eli_Havelock , care to tell us how much money you blew on this?

None at all. I may be a bit cynical after everything that had Ultima nostalgia used to grab money has turned into one kind of shitshow or another. The fail rate is steadily overcoming anything left to have hope for, so thus the snarky divestment as the corpse of that franchise is pillaged by vultures trying to make a greasy buck.

 

[Ranarama]

Radio Silence doesn't seem so bad now, does it?

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Just about everywhere SDG went around to promote this was already turning on them for wanting $3k-6k a month on top of about $1/4M already from KS and MF and showing nothing.

Now they're really fed up with the latest PR disaster.

 

[Saduj]

People who feel let down or burned by this one should check out the threads for the "Lurking" series. Other than their interest in Ultima-like games, those bros are the exact opposite of the people behind this mess. They deliver finished games and worry about the money later. And the developer who posts here couldn't be a nicer guy.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

People who feel let down or burned by this one should check out the threads for the "Lurking" series. Other than their interest in Ultima-like games, those bros are the exact opposite of the people behind this mess. They deliver finished games and worry about the money later. And the developer who posts here couldn't be a nicer guy.

That kind of thing I like to see, wonderful stuff and I wish the best of success for them. Those restore my faith a bit in the indie scene, which has become so full of "developers" taking money for lofty promises and delivering nothing but excuses and no game for years, some not even giving an update but still whine on twitter how ungrateful all those people who paid in advance so the developer could make the game as a full-time job. Assuming there is a game at all, at this point; Grimoire had more to show and took less money from backers.

Entitled gamers have nothing on entitled developers.

As much as I have come to loathe KS, there are still some who can benefit from it. I've consistently been in awe of Jeff Vogel and how he's been doing business for a stupidly long time, and with a policy reminiscent of Sierra's in that if you don't like his games he doesn't want your money. Except that people have been looking forward to Unknown Realm, which was why they backed the game and followed it.

But instead of any real updates, we get this:

https://twitter.com/StirringDragon/status/1222364008503623680

Millionaire game dev asking for an extra 100k in monthly support from their KS backers:
BACKERS: Sure, here you go!

Dirt poor indie dev asking for 15 cents a day in monthly support from their backers:
BACKERS: F*ck off and die you greedy motherf*ckers, I hope you go to jail!

Millionaire game dev probably got that way because they could do updates like they were competent. Many know of the $126,343 raised in the KS, but there was a further at least $137,541 raised via MegaFounder:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170726024547/https://www.megafounder.com/unknown-realm

~$1/4M and asking for more is "dirt poor".

The whole problem was because of no updates about the game itself and yet these clowns keep throwing shit at those who DID somehow trust them enough to pay before a finished product was available (totally a 1980s experience!) As it has been pointed out, when you spend that much time analyzing your community replies instead of posting an update you owe by a measure of years overdue, then your real product is the community you have lured in and hold by sunk cost. The rest has been deflection.

hemispheres

You gonna post an actual update or keep punching yourselves in the PR and crying about it? I've just been snarky so far; I have other remedies that will become far more - interesting - for everyone, and may provide at least one of your backers with a refund of sorts without your choice in the matter IF you let it get that far. Big IF. Totally legal remedies - just to make that clear - and nobody needs to consult or hire a lawyer to join in the festivities.

I really don't want to have to post an update to this.
You could just post a real update that you still owe your KS backers and we'll call it cool.

 

[Grauken]

Let's not , not worth getting obsessed about vaporware

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Let's not , not worth getting obsessed about vaporware

At the very least their backers should know when the tranny operation is gonna be.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Let's not , not worth getting obsessed about vaporware

It's still kicking shit at the backers, so it's still quite alive and with potential to be very entertaining. I do have to be fair and give them another chance to unfuck themselves before I crowdfuck them by weaponizing the audience they have been abusing. After what they've pulled it would be so easy.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

https://twitter.com/StirringDragon/status/1223449590185132032/photo/1

Cool pic and list, could be from anything, including the merch they actually CAN bother to show everyone in the last year or so. Nice of them to again speak to their backers in the KS comments without trying to play up the tribalism shit again, I do hope we can keep the assisted brand suicide to a minimum from this point on.

hemispheres

I honestly would rather not the nuclear option, but it still remains as a way to offer backers a way to kick back. I want to assure you that I see no need to progress with that, for now, especially since it is a cat out of the bag and horses bolted from the barn mixed with scorched earth policy sort of thing. But I reserve it as an option whenever a developer drops a steamer into the beggar's bowl to ruin the market's goodwill towards the rest.

There is still is that big problem you keep running into, and nothing I can do can change that - only you two can:
You want people to throw you more money = you're going to have to convince them there is something for their money.

Paywalling without anything to show to entice people through the paywall mixed with attacks on those who already showed you trust to basically pay your job - were you really expecting many to give you more money after that? Even so, I'm not sure how you're going to convince those you have taken money from and showed them little.

You basically tried to hit your community for pointing out that you made the crowdfunding pitch equivalent to a porn site where everything before you entered in the credit card was just text menus.

Make that KS update a real one, and you just might get what you want, because the backers finally get what they've been wanting since they gave you any money at all - a serious update that wasn't flogging your other merch or writing more about literally everything else but any details about how your game was progressing.

If you showed your game in the way you show everything else you've been selling then you'd be golden.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Well, this was a mildly entertaining dev meltdown.

Here's some perspective in regards to the excuses from idiots like this:

Stirring Dragon Games: Regular updates like normal crowdfunding developers and per KS ToS is So Not Us and Not How We Do Things, because we'd rather write pages and pages of many excuses about why we will not show updates. We're not your normal crowdfunding campaign devs!

Also Stirring Dragon Games: We'll do regular updates for the backers who keep paying us more money.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

They are so delusional it actually makes one angry in that way where you wanna reach through the screen and just shake them and ask them what the hell is wrong with them.

 

[V_K]

you wanna reach through the screen and just shake them and ask them what the hell is wrong with them.

If that's what you want to do, I envy your restraint.