Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, he is, and always has, been the director of Mierce Miniatures Ltd, and he was a director of Maelstrom Games Ltd.

People are aware that if an individual is found guilty of conducting themselves in a manner unbecoming they can be banned from being a director, possibly for life?

I understand how people may feel bitter towards Maelstrom, and that a few particularly resentful people, for whatever reasons, may have transferred that ire to Mierce, but what I can't let ride is this fairly consistent implication from some posters that there is something deliberately dishonest in the way these companies went about their business, rather than an unfortunate set of circumstances, and perhaps some bad decisions.

People need to accept that this is now history, and that outside of a select few we won't ever have a clear idea of what went on, because even with the best of intentions any account will be inherently biased.

The provable, demonstrable facts are that Maelstrom Games were wound up, investigated and found not to contravene any laws or regulations, one can also surmise the case is the same for Rob himself, or he would have been forced to stand aside at Mierce (which is also registered at the same address as Maelstrom was BTW, yet another clue that they were always closely linked.)

One could debate the morality of some of Maelstrom's actions towards the end separately from the legality, but seeing as the only sources of info we have for any of that could be considered as having a vested interest and lacking impartiality, I'm really not prepared to speculate. Which, ultimately, for most of us, is all it is.

 Azreal13 wrote:

I understand how people may feel bitter towards Maelstrom, and that a few particularly resentful people, for whatever reasons, may have transferred that ire to Mierce, but what I can't let ride is this fairly consistent implication from some posters that there is something deliberately dishonest in the way these companies went about their business, rather than an unfortunate set of circumstances, and perhaps some bad decisions.

People need to accept that this is now history, and that outside of a select few we won't ever have a clear idea of what went on, because even with the best of intentions any account will be inherently biased.

No, they really don't. People can speculate as they please, they can choose to not let it rest or accept it as "history" and so forth yadda yadda. You don't actually get to tell people what they should or must do, and the argument that the WAREHOUSE-MOVING-SALE debacle was anything other than dishonestly taking from Peter to pay Paul is both laughable and something you'll just have to "let ride", because you can't do a thing about it. Or to quote Homer on many people's behalf: "Make me." You're just another random voice on the internet and have no authority to tell others Jack gak on how they should behave or thin or what they should let go, etc. So good luck with that.

As I've said elsewhere, Mierce is a Jenga puzzle built on a series of Kickstarters. Rob has stated in the Mierce KS thread that he needs the constant influx of KS money to pay rent and wages. So... They indeed make lovely figures. I even have a fair few of them that I've bought off a mate who sold off a bunch, plus a few I bought direct from Maelstrom. Enjoy them while you can get them, but don't be surprised if it all falls down at some stage.

 Azreal13 wrote:
So, he is, and always has, been the director of Mierce Miniatures Ltd, and he was a director of Maelstrom Games Ltd.

This is correct. Although whilst the debacle was ongoing, Mierce attempted to distance itself from Mr Lane, and attempted very strongly to imply that he was no longer in charge of Mierce, and had no affiliation with it. He was only publicised as being in charge a few months after after Maelstrom had gone down in throes of flame and misery.

I understand how people may feel bitter towards Maelstrom, and that a few particularly resentful people, for whatever reasons, may have transferred that ire to Mierce, but what I can't let ride is this fairly consistent implication from some posters that there is something deliberately dishonest in the way these companies went about their business, rather than an unfortunate set of circumstances, and perhaps some bad decisions.

There was. As has already been stated, Maelstrom started holding 'fire sales' for product that they did not have. Let me be 100% clear about this, so there is no way that it can be mistaken. Maelstrom Games, under Mr Robert Lane, took money from customers knowing that they simply did not possess the product that was being purchased, and would not have it. They took that money, knowing that they would not give it back, and that they had no product to give to the customer.His suppliers had cut him off, he did not possess the product, and he still took orders.

That, my friend, is not a good thing. It is not an honest thing. It is not 'inherently biased'. It is not subjective. It is a fact. It is, to steal your words, a 'proven, demonstrable fact'.

 Ketara wrote:

There was. As has already been stated, Maelstrom started holding 'fire sales' for product that they did not have. Let me be 100% clear about this, so there is no way that it can be mistaken. Maelstrom Games, under Mr Robert Lane, took money from customers knowing that they simply did not possess the product that was being purchased, and would not have it. They took that money, knowing that they would not give it back, and that they had no product to give to the customer.His suppliers had cut him off, he did not possess the product, and he still took orders.

That, my friend, is not a good thing. It is not an honest thing. It is not 'inherently biased'. It is not subjective. It is a fact. It is, to steal your words, a 'proven, demonstrable fact'.

I believe they had all the fire-sale stock in place, as they were shipping it out pretty quickly and the actual online store was almost empty towards the end. I spent about £100 on the various sales (mostly stuff I wouldn't have bought anyway) and only lost out on about £4 from a mispack before the went offline.

It was the pre-orders/regular stock they had a huge backlog on, mostly GW stuff I believe, that was only being ordered in when money came in. There were still a lot of customers to pay for goods that were never ordered, whilst Maelstrom was spending money on expanding that should have been going into stock.

Herzlos wrote:


I believe they had all the fire-sale stock in place, as they were shipping it out pretty quickly and the actual online store was almost empty towards the end.

Perhaps our memories differ, but I distinctly recall quite a few people complaining that stock they'd bought on discount in the varying fire sales (how many did they run total?) was messaged to them as being out of stock. There was a general vibe of, 'Order it, and hope because if they have it, you can get some really good deals, but there's no guarantee how much of your order they actually have left available to them'.

I think you're correct; there were some mix-ups with the inventory since they were running everything down to zero. Stuff being ordered online and bought from the shelf for instance. But I don't think they were deliberately listing stuff they didn't have, just getting too busy to keep up. They certainly took payments for plenty they didn't have before then though.

 Azreal13 wrote:

...The provable, demonstrable facts are that Maelstrom Games were wound up, investigated and found not to contravene any laws or regulations...

That was what I was wondering when I started this out. If you know of some records of this investigation and that it absolved Mierce/Rob Lane of wrong doing, please let us know about it.

There are none. If there were, someone would have posted them by now

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

...The provable, demonstrable facts are that Maelstrom Games were wound up, investigated and found not to contravene any laws or regulations...

That was what I was wondering when I started this out. If you know of some records of this investigation and that it absolved Mierce/Rob Lane of wrong doing, please let us know about it.

That sounds a lot like he's 'guilty until proven innocent'. The receiver finding no fault is basically 'no evidence of guilt' however.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

...The provable, demonstrable facts are that Maelstrom Games were wound up, investigated and found not to contravene any laws or regulations...

That was what I was wondering when I started this out. If you know of some records of this investigation and that it absolved Mierce/Rob Lane of wrong doing, please let us know about it.

Well, from freely available information, it is more inference than explicit.

But the company was subject to a winding up order, and subsequently an investigation by the Official Receiver's office (this is standard, the OR is obligated to investigate for any wrong doing should a winding up order be issued.) The winding up order was concluded earlier this year and Rob is still listed as a company director of Mierce.

As the primary sanction open to the OR is to ban an individual from managing a company for a period of time, and that hasn't happened, it is reasonable to assume nothing incriminating was found.

Some info on Maelstrom is available for free here..

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

With more info available for a small fee.

If one was really interested I suspect full details could be obtained here..


Nottingham

Official Receiver

G O`Hare

Assistants

E Church, K Fox

Address

Level 1, Apex Court, City Link, Nottingham, NG2 4LA

Telephone

0115 852 5000

But I suspect there may be a fee there too.

 Yonan wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

...The provable, demonstrable facts are that Maelstrom Games were wound up, investigated and found not to contravene any laws or regulations...

That was what I was wondering when I started this out. If you know of some records of this investigation and that it absolved Mierce/Rob Lane of wrong doing, please let us know about it.

That sounds a lot like he's 'guilty until proven innocent'. The receiver finding no fault is basically 'no evidence of guilt' however.

No evidence of legal guilt, if that's all you're using to judge people/companies by.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azazelx wrote:

As I've said elsewhere, Mierce is a Jenga puzzle built on a series of Kickstarters. Rob has stated in the Mierce KS thread that he needs the constant influx of KS money to pay rent and wages. So... They indeed make lovely figures. I even have a fair few of them that I've bought off a mate who sold off a bunch, plus a few I bought direct from Maelstrom. Enjoy them while you can get them, but don't be surprised if it all falls down at some stage.

Any source for that comment?

 Ketara wrote:
There was. As has already been stated, Maelstrom started holding 'fire sales' for product that they did not have. Let me be 100% clear about this, so there is no way that it can be mistaken. Maelstrom Games, under Mr Robert Lane, took money from customers knowing that they simply did not possess the product that was being purchased, and would not have it. They took that money, knowing that they would not give it back, and that they had no product to give to the customer.His suppliers had cut him off, he did not possess the product, and he still took orders.

That, my friend, is not a good thing. It is not an honest thing. It is not 'inherently biased'. It is not subjective. It is a fact. It is, to steal your words, a 'proven, demonstrable fact'.

Agreed.

It was plainly obvious that for the last four to six months Maelstrom was playing a shell-game, taking in money today to fulfill yesterdays orders. Not illegal, strictly speaking, but certainly unethical.

To me, it's highly worrying that Mierce apparently operates on much the same principle, constantly requiring yet another Kickstarter to keep afloat. That would indicate, to me at least, that they're not able to fulfill current orders with the money they've got. If that's truly the case, then it's only a matter of time before the whole house of cards come crashing down.

Herzlos wrote:

I believe they had all the fire-sale stock in place, as they were shipping it out pretty quickly and the actual online store was almost empty towards the end. I spent about £100 on the various sales (mostly stuff I wouldn't have bought anyway) and only lost out on about £4 from a mispack before the went offline.

It was the pre-orders/regular stock they had a huge backlog on, mostly GW stuff I believe, that was only being ordered in when money came in. There were still a lot of customers to pay for goods that were never ordered, whilst Maelstrom was spending money on expanding that should have been going into stock.

The other thing is that immediately before the "fire sale" series of sales (and I'd forced most of my own money back via PayPal before that) they had already stopped answering the phone properly and their computer was always "down". There were also a series of onrunning sales through August and September where they barely had any exempt stock (and in-stock wasn't a consideration) before the last-ditch series.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sining wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

As I've said elsewhere, Mierce is a Jenga puzzle built on a series of Kickstarters. Rob has stated in the Mierce KS thread that he needs the constant influx of KS money to pay rent and wages. So... They indeed make lovely figures. I even have a fair few of them that I've bought off a mate who sold off a bunch, plus a few I bought direct from Maelstrom. Enjoy them while you can get them, but don't be surprised if it all falls down at some stage.

Any source for that comment?

I commented on that Comment in the Mierce thread on 9th Sept

Ah - found it - it appears to be Lane in the KS comments, not a Dakka post. Here's me quoting Alph quoting Lane:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/4140/481333.page#7192694

I'm not spending 10 minutes scrolling down to 9/9 in the KS comments to do a screencap, (I've already lost 10 minutes of my life to looking for it) but if you're interested:
https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/mierceminiatures/comments

If Rob is doing KS to cover his costs of last KS, then it is not a shell game, it is a Ponzi Scheme (rob Peter to pay Paul). If that is the case, then he's running on the edge of tipping over, and it will fall apart eventually.

-However, needing KS money to pay the bills isn't evidence of wrong-doing. Kickstarter, whether we like it or not, is not a legitimate business model for some companies. If his KS funds are always going to fullfill the last KS he ran, then there is a problem, but if he just needs a constant stream of profits, and finds KS to be the best way to sell a bunch of minis at once, he's not really running anything untoward.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

...The provable, demonstrable facts are that Maelstrom Games were wound up, investigated and found not to contravene any laws or regulations...

That was what I was wondering when I started this out. If you know of some records of this investigation and that it absolved Mierce/Rob Lane of wrong doing, please let us know about it.

Well, from freely available information, it is more inference than explicit.

But the company was subject to a winding up order, and subsequently an investigation by the Official Receiver's office (this is standard, the OR is obligated to investigate for any wrong doing should a winding up order be issued.) The winding up order was concluded earlier this year and Rob is still listed as a company director of Mierce.

As the primary sanction open to the OR is to ban an individual from managing a company for a period of time, and that hasn't happened, it is reasonable to assume nothing incriminating was found.

Some info on Maelstrom is available for free here..

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

-Thanks- that is the sort of thing I was looking for. Investigations can take ages, and it isn't always clear when progress has been made. In addition, sometimes it requires the wronged party to press for investigation, and the stakes are often deemed not worth it to the wronged people.

What that probably means is that enough money was moved from Mierce to Maelstrom to cover the cost of the molds and copyrights on those minis- and likely also the stock (if they kept much on hand).

So we do know that an investigation was started and completed, and that Rob did whatever was required of him legally (maybe nothing, maybe a fine, but certainly he wasn't banned from running his company or required to hand his assets over to Wayland/Simple).

I was rather worried that the investigation was still ongoing, or that it simply hadn't taken place.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
If Rob is doing KS to cover his costs of last KS, then it is not a shell game, it is a Ponzi Scheme (rob Peter to pay Paul). If that is the case, then he's running on the edge of tipping over, and it will fall apart eventually.

Is that what is happening now?

Has that been said?

Is there evidence of that?

What I've seen is that independent sculptors need to be booked well in advance, with some portion of money up front, and that's the biggest reason that Mierce is the "Kickstarter C0mpany" that it is.

I think that their weekly communication and showing of progress/updates runs counter to your statement, though if you're reading that somewhere, and it is a pretty strong statement/accusation, so I'd be curious to know where you're reading that.

Alpharius wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
If Rob is doing KS to cover his costs of last KS, then it is not a shell game, it is a Ponzi Scheme (rob Peter to pay Paul). If that is the case, then he's running on the edge of tipping over, and it will fall apart eventually.

-However, needing KS money to pay the bills isn't evidence of wrong-doing. Kickstarter, whether we like it or not, is not a legitimate business model for some companies. If his KS funds are always going to fullfill the last KS he ran, then there is a problem, but if he just needs a constant stream of profits, and finds KS to be the best way to sell a bunch of minis at once, he's not really running anything untoward.

Is that what is happening now?

Has that been said?

Is there evidence of that?

What I've seen is that independent sculptors need to be booked well in advance, with some portion of money up front, and that's the biggest reason that Mierce is the "Kickstarter C0mpany" that it is.

I think that their weekly communication and showing of progress/updates runs counter to your statement, though if you're reading that somewhere, and it is a pretty strong statement/accusation, so I'd be curious to know where you're reading that.

Yes that has been said- in this thread.

I do not believe there is evidence of it, except that he's got overlapping Kickstarters (which doesn't really mean that much). I have expanded the part where you quote me so include the place where I basically say that it is quite possible that no wrong doing is happening, and that businesses needing a constant stream of money coming in is perfectly normal, and that there's nothing wrong with it coming through Kickstarters (as much as people think that Kickstarter is a new distribution format, it is looking more and more like old ones every day).

I was honestly just annoyed that people call their theory a 'shell game' when they mean "Ponzi scheme." There's a word for it, and I want people to use the right one when they make accusations.


I do worry that companies can inadvertently end up in a position where the new KS is paying for the old KS orders- to my knowledge, only Going Native: Warpath has admitted to that. But I've seen other companies that fire up new KS before delivering on older ones, and I can see that being a dangerous tactic. I think that can be a perfectly honest mistake made by people without more business sense (Kickstarter can attract people who don't know what they're doing).

I don't think it has been explicitly said in here - only a bit of "OH YOU KNOW ITS COMING!!!11!!~!!" speculation.

Yeah- so not a strong statement with evidence to back it up.

Honestly, I'm super pleased to find out that the investigation did finish. It means that it isn't hanging over Mierce's head anymore.

Back up a minute. Is there something fishy with the Going Native Kickstarter? (Which, on a sidenote, is maybe the worst name ever.) Aside from it most likely not reaching its funding goal, is there something else?

Back on topic, the Mierce issue is pretty clear to me. Even if Mierce as a business is squeaky clean, that doesn't change the fact that their current owner was also the owner of Maelstrom. While I didn't lose any money personally, I saw more than enough dakkaites lose money. The outright theft that occurred at the end is inexcusable.

 Guildsman wrote:
Back up a minute. Is there something fishy with the Going Native Kickstarter? (Which, on a sidenote, is maybe the worst name ever.) Aside from it most likely not reaching its funding goal, is there something else?

It has reached its goal.

What I was referring to was Paymaster's candidness in this update on the original Kickstarter. It isn't fishy- he's open and honest.

He had some unfinished business in the first kickstarter. My original reading of it was that he'd use money from the second to complete it, but I think instead he just forfeited parts of what he promised in the first one.

 Guildsman wrote:

Back on topic, the Mierce issue is pretty clear to me. Even if Mierce as a business is squeaky clean, that doesn't change the fact that their current owner was also the owner of Maelstrom. While I didn't lose any money personally, I saw more than enough dakkaites lose money. The outright theft that occurred at the end is inexcusable.

I'm just hoping that same attitude will eventually be displayed toward Spikey Bits. Thusfar, based on that thread, it doesn't seem to be...

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Guildsman wrote:
Back up a minute. Is there something fishy with the Going Native Kickstarter? (Which, on a sidenote, is maybe the worst name ever.) Aside from it most likely not reaching its funding goal, is there something else?

It has reached its goal.

What I was referring to was Paymaster's candidness in this update on the original Kickstarter. It isn't fishy- he's open and honest.

He had some unfinished business in the first kickstarter. My original reading of it was that he'd use money from the second to complete it, but I think instead he just forfeited parts of what he promised in the first one.

From the looks of it, the creator decided on the latter, which is totally fair. I misinterpteted that comment of yours. Glad to see that everything's above board, and that they reached their funding goal (last time I checked, Kicktraq had it trending under its goal, and those almost always err on the side of going too high).