Quoting: dpanter

Quoting: ssokolowThe official response from 505 is that they can't refund Linux and Mac backers because the money from the Kickstarter has been spent.

...creative accounting...

What a bunch of dickbags. Lawsuit incoming?

Hopefully. I don't know what my options are when I'm in Canada and none of the parties I checked have a direct presence in Canada, but 505 Games does have a division in Los Angeles, California and U.S. backers have successfully taken Kickstarter projects to court in Oregon and Arizona. (The Arizona one being "justice court", which, as I understand it, is basically a more precedent-setting cousin to small claims court.)

They're headquartered in Italy, with divisions in California, the U.K, France, Germany, and Spain, in case it encourages anyone in one of those jurisdictions to go after them. It's not as if small claims court expects both sides to lawyer up like superior court does.

If nothing else, it'd be nice to have a court records link for a citation, so this mess could be added to 505 Games's Wikipedia page to counterbalance their 2015 "Best Indie Games Label" award and help drive home that there are consequences.

(As jph pointed out in the Kickstarter comments, this is basically an old Hollywood trick that courts are not amused by: Trying to escape your legal responsibilities by putting your assets and liabilities in separate legal entities and letting the one with the liabilities go bankrupt.)

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Status update:

The official response from 505 is that they can't refund Linux and Mac backers because the money from the Kickstarter has been spent.

For those who want to read the official text, they've posted it both as a comment reply [External Link] on the Linux/Mac cancellation announcement and in the official forums [External Link].

The first major comment [External Link] in reply over on Kickstarter boils down to "Nice try, but that kind of creative accounting won't hold up in court. Kickstarter terms specify that backer rewards are legal contracts and, if you can't satisfy them, you refund from whatever you're using to pay employees now, from post-release sales, or by declaring the project failed and liquidating the assets produced."

A previous comment [External Link] also linked to three examples of Kickstarter campaigns being successfully taken to court over failed promises. ([[1]](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/feds-take-first-action-against-a-failed-kickstarter-with-112k-judgment/), [[2]](https://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/why-this-jilted-kickstarter-backer-decided-to-sue-why-he-was-right/), [[3]](https://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2017/06/coolest_cooler_settles_with_or.html))

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Quoting: Guestyooka laylee did not really live up to the promises the devs made in the kickstarter pitch

so basically due to getting a publisher and backers not feeling like they got the product they backed the community around that game is forever divided

basically this [External Link]

Speaking of Yooka-Laylee, Stop Skeletons From Fighting has an excellent analysis of how Yooka-Laylee screwed up [External Link]... most memorably, very insightful comments on how they misunderstood the purpose of level design elements available to them and why "the game we always wanted to make" is actually a bad thing if you're trying to please existing fans.

(That said, you also have to be careful to not go too far in the opposite direction either. Snoman Gaming has a great game design video [External Link] on the nature and importance of differentiating between what made NES games special and what were merely flaws that should be left in the past, with examples drawn from Shovel Knight.)

...and, on the topic of Bloodstained, it's a shame that his hope for "some upcoming projects" learning from Yooka-Laylee's mistakes may not be fulfilled.

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Quoting: Smoke39...

However, there are other requirements I don't think they've met:

• they post an update that explains what work has been done, how funds were used, and what prevents them from finishing the project as planned;


• they work diligently and in good faith to bring the project to the best possible conclusion in a timeframe that’s communicated to backers;


• they’re able to demonstrate that they’ve used funds appropriately and made every reasonable effort to complete the project as promised;

Their "challenges of supporting middleware" explanation is meaninglessly vague, and they've given no assurance that this "middleware" issue wasn't due to a bad faith decision to use middleware that didn't support their promised platforms.

Thank you for that. I had been having a little trouble finding the time to go through the ToS with a fine-toothed comb and I'll incorporate that into future postings.

That said, giving Vita backers refunds does set a bit of a precedent in how they interpreted the ToS. A physical hardware upgrade is clearly onerous, but are they intending to encourage piracy of Microsoft Windows?

Otherwise, can it really be said that they're delivering something as promised, when, without pirating or paying for Windows, running a Windows copy on Wine is a matter of luck, which I'd consider comparable to delivering a product so buggy that it flat-out refuses to run.

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Quoting: adamhmIf they don't give refunds, take the Windows version and then leave a review on Steam/GOG at launch. At the start of the review bring up this incident & make it clear to readers that they are scumbag developers who should not be supported; perhaps suggest some alternative games made by more worthy developers.

As for the review- see if it works in Wine/Proton and then harshly review it based on that, emphasising its flaws/everything that doesn't work quite right. If it doesn't work at all in Wine/Proton then mention that.

Do your best to dissuade potential buyers and make this cost them as much as possible - hopefully a lot more than just giving out refunds would have cost.

That's what I intend to do if I don't get a refund.

I have experience writing detailed, nuanced, insightful, professional reviews (mostly of fanfiction but some games too), so I plan to write a GOG review that deserves to be top review on its own merits, but dwells on every design flaw, every bug and place where they didn't optimize something another comparable indie game did, every way in which it doesn't live up to what it promises, etc. and then cap it off with evidence for why buyers shouldn't trust 505 and ArtPlay to give them any support if they buy it.

I'm also hoping, after a week or so once I've given Kickstarter a fair chance to respond, to find time to write a detailed guide to raising hell, including a step-by-step guide to reporting ArtPlay, 505, and Kickstarter to all relevant authorities and ratings groups, a list of all the places to complain to them to make them nervous (eg. all their Twitter accounts, etc.), and so on.

(I'll probably also advise people to apply indirect pressure by including mention that the suspicious timing of bringing WayForward onboard is making them wary that WayForward might have advised them to violate the ToS to get the project back on track.)

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Quoting: scaineIt's a minor thing, but one action you can take is to "Ignore" 505 Games as a creator on Steam. Provided Valve actually honour the setting, it should prevent any games published by "505 Games" from appearing in your store, either in queues, or recommendations.

No idea if they have visibility of this, but I'm certainly never dropping money on scammers where I can help it, so I've given it a shot.

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/505Games/lists/ [External Link]

Click on the gear icon on the top right and choose "Ignore Creator".

Sadly, the developer "Artplay" haven't created a content page, so I'm not sure if there's a way to ignore them. If find one, I'll post again.

Good to know. I don't use Steam as anything beyond a backup proof-of-purchase for my Humble Bundle buys and a way to bridge them into GOG Connect, but I did that in case they get stats out of it and it also got me thinking about a site I do use. Given the amount of metadata and filtering offered by IsThereAnyDeal.com, and the existing support for hiding undesired stores, it seems like something ITAD might offer, so I've suggested adding it.

Also, that "Report this Creator" option got me thinking in another direction. It doesn't apply to this kind of issue, but I wonder if there's another way to report them to Valve which might be useful for turning up the pressure on them.

(On that note, since I refuse to give Steam any money, I still have a limited account. If anyone else wants to, nobody has yet pointed this thread [External Link] at the Kickstarter URL that says this sort of thing is a ToS violation.)

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Quoting: no_information_here

I just can't believe my eyes, given they had over eleven times their original funding goal!

Yes. I know that development is hard and I try to be understanding. However, this requires just one response:

Fuck you, Iga.

Apparently that's not even the half of it.

According to this /r/linux_gaming/ post [External Link], "It took months for the backers who asked after they canned Vita version, and these pricks haven't even gave complete refunds. They gave like 50% of the backed amout, or 70%, but not everything."

Unless it was "50% of the backed amount, plus a key for another platform" (which I seriously doubt), that's just insult to injury.

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Quoting: omer666Maybe I should mail them to ask for an alternative game to give my money to. (Because obviously, it won't be theirs...)

That's a real shame because they had Castlevania's creator on board, I really wanted to play this.

Technically, IGA was the assistant director of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

I haven't researched it in depth, but the guy who has the best claim on the title "Castlevania's creator" is probably Akihiko Nagata, who Wikipedia lists as the producer of the original NES Castlevania and the designer of the MSX2 version that was developed in parallel and released a month later.

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I didn't stop backing, but I only select the base tier now (i.e. just the game).

I've never seen a base tier that satisfies my policy of only paying "$5 US or less for Windows-only games... unless it's a GOG sale exceeding a 75% discount, in which case I'll consider going higher".

Other blunders are cases of promised DRM-free releases that never materialized (at least yet). Such as Insomina: the Ark and Underworld Ascendant.

I also backed Underworld Ascendant before I stopped backing things, and contacted them when they said that. They assured me that they still intend to come to GOG, that the Steam-downloadable version doesn't require Steam to run, and it's just delayed, so I'm willing to put my outrage on "snooze" for a while.

(That said, I plan to spin up the copy of steamcmd in a VirtualBox VM that I use for downloading ROMs and ScummVM resources which are missing from the DRM-free sides of Humble Bundles, so I can verify that statement and, if it's true, archive a few copies in case they renege.)

Paying for soundtrack is dumb, IMO. If one owns a right to use a game, then (s)he is also allowed to use its components (modding, creating screenshots, listening to its music etc. ).

Agreed. I keep copies of UnXWB, Unity Assets Explorer, and so on at the ready as a matter of principle.

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Since nobody else seems to have mentioned it, this sort of thing is apparently against Kickstarter's terms of service.

https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarter [External Link]

That said, they're effectively worthless. In my experience, since Kickstarter already got their cut, they just remain silent and wait for the backers to give up.

This sort of thing is the reason I stopped backing things years ago. (Though not long enough ago to pass up this game, sadly.)

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