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LeoNatan
☢ NFOHump Despot ☢
Posts: 74071
Location: Israel
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 Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 14:20 Post subject: |
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I'm not saying managed the company or the game or marketing well. I was specifically commenting on the $3m "grab" as if they hit the jackpot. That sum of money, if they were running a team of developers, designers, PMs and QAs, is a relatively small sum.
Regarding "indie games", the people have spoken. The fact is they threw their money (stupidly) at a project they were interested in, instead of the other indie efforts on KS. You can cry about how company mismanages its funds, yes, but you can't really blame the people who saw something interesting and put their money where their mouth is. You can call them dumb, which is true, but still.
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 16:56 Post subject: |
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There are easier and more lucrative ways to scam than having to half-ass game development. I think the vast majority of these projects are simply incompetent project and scope management rather than malicious attempts to scam backers.
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 17:10 Post subject: |
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I don't know about that. From the start the main guy said the whole project was fully funded, and there's no board and all the bs.
They constantly maintained an appearance of confidence while charging massive sums for early access to testing phases and then for cosmetics, even though the game was still in development.
A lot of the game was oversold with a lot of bs and if not out-right lies than exagerations at the very least.
Also worth a mention that they released the game on steam not long before this, in what looks like an attempt to avoid refunds for the kickstarter, since he promised everyone will be refunded if the game doesn't release.
So yeah, going back to the initial lie, apparently now he has a board and they had a different direction. So ... how did you not have a board before?
Well, it looks like he took a bunch of loans and likely couldn't pay them so he ended losing control of the company that way. You could be charitable and say that maybe he wasn't trying to scam, but he was at least hoping to make it big and took nonsense risk that he couldn't shoulder, and lied about a lot of things to get people to buy in.
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 19:09 Post subject: |
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| LeoNatan wrote: |
I'm not saying managed the company or the game or marketing well. I was specifically commenting on the $3m "grab" as if they hit the jackpot. That sum of money, if they were running a team of developers, designers, PMs and QAs, is a relatively small sum.
Regarding "indie games", the people have spoken. The fact is they threw their money (stupidly) at a project they were interested in, instead of the other indie efforts on KS. You can cry about how company mismanages its funds, yes, but you can't really blame the people who saw something interesting and put their money where their mouth is. You can call them dumb, which is true, but still. |
I don't think it's dumb to believe in and/or support a Kickstarter project that resonates with you.
What can be 'dumb' is not seeing the signs that something's off with that project.
Don't know about this project, didn't follow it, wasn't interested in. We might claim 'now', in retrospect, that asking $750.000 for an MMO might be a 'red flag'.
But, is it?!
In which way?
Also, can you truly analyze this shite without knowing what the flark truly happened back-stage? |
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 19:46 Post subject: |
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| Kezmark wrote: | I don't know about that. From the start the main guy said the whole project was fully funded, and there's no board and all the bs.
They constantly maintained an appearance of confidence while charging massive sums for early access to testing phases and then for cosmetics, even though the game was still in development.
A lot of the game was oversold with a lot of bs and if not out-right lies than exagerations at the very least.
Also worth a mention that they released the game on steam not long before this, in what looks like an attempt to avoid refunds for the kickstarter, since he promised everyone will be refunded if the game doesn't release.
So yeah, going back to the initial lie, apparently now he has a board and they had a different direction. So ... how did you not have a board before?
Well, it looks like he took a bunch of loans and likely couldn't pay them so he ended losing control of the company that way. You could be charitable and say that maybe he wasn't trying to scam, but he was at least hoping to make it big and took nonsense risk that he couldn't shoulder, and lied about a lot of things to get people to buy in. |
Oh it was definitely an overhyped project with a bunch of questionable statements made. I think they actually intended to have a product out however. Clearly not one that was ever going to live up to the hype and lies. |
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Nodrim
Posts: 9812
Location: Romania
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 20:51 Post subject: |
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Wasn't the guy involved with some mlm bullshit?
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 21:38 Post subject: |
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Not trying to defend anything here but... making videogames is fucking hard, man.
Especially in an era where we've seen and played 'everything'.
It's getting harder and harder to come up with something 'new', 'fresh', 'successful'. Especially if your company revolves around numbers, statistics and shareholders (investment funds) instead of passion, soul, innovation, creativity...
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LeoNatan
☢ NFOHump Despot ☢
Posts: 74071
Location: Israel
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 22:13 Post subject: |
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Sorry, to me, any Kickstarter at this point, with all the experience we have, is dumb, and I’ve done it in the past, when it was novel.
But I don’t think 750K is, or must be, a red flag. I’m not familiar with this specifically, but it all depends on how they present it and how they present the future they envision. I’m also sure many people still think 750K, or indeed, 3.5M is a huge sum and surely “dis gon be gud”, just like that. Kind of part of the dumb thing I was speaking about earlier.
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| Posted: Wed, 4th Feb 2026 23:14 Post subject: |
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On the Intrepid Studios site is listed 22 people working on the game. Even if they all work on minimum wage in California (17$ per hour) in total that would be 778k per year. For the 8 years in development so far the very least cost is $6m. But surely they take a lot more money as devs and designers. And that's only for the wages. There's also insurances, hardware and software costs, bills etc.
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| Posted: Thu, 5th Feb 2026 09:51 Post subject: |
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| PredOborG wrote: | | On the Intrepid Studios site is listed 22 people working on the game. Even if they all work on minimum wage in California (17$ per hour) in total that would be 778k per year. For the 8 years in development so far the very least cost is $6m. But surely they take a lot more money as devs and designers. And that's only for the wages. There's also insurances, hardware and software costs, bills etc. |
It's why almost all these Kickstarters that aren't solo or very small teams, are very often about attracting investors or publishers by showing how much demand there is for their product.
It's what Warhorse did with their KCD kickstarter, the KS was mostly about showing their investors there was a market for their idea.
Indie devs on KS are often a bit different, as for them it is usually about getting extra funding to complete their projects and increase production values etc. |
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| Posted: Thu, 5th Feb 2026 14:25 Post subject: |
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They had a publisher who dropped out after a short time. Perhaps they saw the scam soon enough.
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| Posted: Thu, 5th Feb 2026 14:27 Post subject: |
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I believe KS is still (very) viable for solo / small indie devs.
It NEEDS to be, as there has to be a way to let creativity and innovation enter the stage.
Otherwise we'd only get tons of 'AAAAaaaaarrrghhh' corporate soulless shite.
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Last edited by blackeyedboy on Thu, 5th Feb 2026 15:23; edited 1 time in total
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| Posted: Thu, 5th Feb 2026 14:30 Post subject: |
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| blackeyedboy wrote: | | I believe KS is still (very) viable for solo / small indie devs. |
Yep. They usually request far more reasonable sums of money and don't usually get massively overfunded which helps avoid the scope creep. |
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