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You've got that right. Stores, distributors, and anyone who bought from Spartan Direct.

 NTRabbit wrote:
Which is also a non-starter for KS backers, because it funded December 22 last year, and as far as I'm aware it's rare for a bank to process chargebacks past 90 days.

Paypal usually won't process chargebacks past 90 days but credit cards will chargeback years. At least I've never had any issues doing chargebacks on multiple cards for failed delivery of something I paid for years (a couple Indiegogo projects I had an issue with had to be charged back).

So anyone that spent less than 1000 doesnt have to do anything. is that right?

i hate legalese.

 Formosa wrote:

They are selling the list of customers or have I read that wrong?

The company dealing with the closure is selling the customer list - its an asset like any other and the company selling assets is doing just that. They will sell EVERYTHING that they legally can sell in order to raise funds to cover the amounts owed.

 Desubot wrote:
So anyone that spent less than 1000 doesnt have to do anything. is that right?

i hate legalese.

People who spent less than 1000L don't have to provide documentation of their investment/expenditure. We would still have to submit the form though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Most of us do have documentation however, due to most online sales being done through credit/debit cards, and KS recording the transactions done on their site.

Allrighty than.

I think this method isn't required if we go through our credit card companies.

The problem with the chargeback for KS backers is that it charges back from Kickstarter, not Spartan, and I doubt that's something that will be problem-free. Even doing a chargeback on the pledge manager is taking the money back from Backerkit.

Screw kickstarter. As a multimillion company, they can afford to list themselves as a creditor if needed or absorb the losses alternately. As a corporate entity they don't lift a finger to help let alone shed any tears for backers screwed over by unscrupulous creators. They won't even bother to stop failed creators who fail to complete their previous crowdfunding rewards from attempting to do so again. They give no loyalty or claim to bear no responsibility so they deserve no loyalty either.

I don't care about Kickstarter or Backerkit as a company, I do care about them potentially closing my account and blacklisting me for a chargeback they consider false.

 NTRabbit wrote:
I don't care about Kickstarter or Backerkit as a company, I do care about them potentially closing my account and blacklisting me for a chargeback they consider false.

They aren't going to blacklist you. They don't even care or make the determination or investigation if something is false. It is the price of doing business that they are doing. Since they don't enforce and investigate the completion or delivery of a Kickstarter, they don't have a group or person who investigations charge backs to determine that the claim is false.

Wow, a customer list of only 15K? No wonder why they are out of business.

No, that'll be the list of customers that dealt with them directly, not through a local or online retailer, and didn't check/uncheck the little "use my details" box as well, presumably.

Well it looks like my dreams of business expansion and bringing it to better US distribution channels, providing organized play support are shot. I am not one of the top offers, at least for, Spartan Scenics and Firestorm Armada. For Firestorm Armada at least, whoever is picking them up is investing over £50,000.

£50,000 for firestorm, I would image that would have been going for less than dystopian as well.
Hopefully some serious players are taking these games on.

 Tamereth wrote:
£50,000 for firestorm, I would image that would have been going for less than dystopian as well.
Hopefully some serious players are taking these games on.

Well the Firestorm Armada line also includes Planetfall since it falls into that same universe.

Some of it might just be the upsell of the administration taking offers. According to Spartan Games last full financial year, the reported revenue for Dystopian was £89,513 plus £135,000 raised in the Kickstarter Campaign; Firestorm did £142,953 and Spartan Scenics did £20,709.

However that is just revenue, that isn't profit, doesn't account for cost and other factors. I could see someone reading that as they made £142,000+ so they will get their investment back in a year. I was really only willing to go in for as much as the sculpts cost to create. Yes they have an existing customer base and moving them from the UK to the US could have potentially been big, but there is no guarantee of it. At worst relaunch their Kickstarter (since those digital files are part of it) but there is still a cost involved... rebranding, repackaging, increasing current resin production.

I hope that someone is taking them on and improves on them. It will be interesting to see what happens with them though. That was all I could pull together on such short notice, only had 2 weeks to finalize offers. I am curious who ends up with it. Supposedly top offers were told they are the top offers. They have an opportunity to inspect the assets before placing their final offer.

The short notice is a big problem, it might well mean a company spends a fortune getting the IP this year, but then has to wait a year or more to really have further investment to put it into production.
However its approached its a big investment but one that will take time.

One, if bitter sweet, bonus is that because of the way Spartan was running; its not too bad if there's a longish gap before things go back on sale again; because Spartan was already run down to a small core fanbase. So its unlikely that they'll lose many customers/fans over that time period. Plus any marketing would be essential to reboot so doesn't matter if its all on sale and marketed tomorrow or in a years time. (though of course the sooner the better).

The people who could benefit most from all that firestorm IP mat never use it, Hawk could buy it to sit on it basicly reducing there competition to zero.

If GW really are working on a new BFG or Epic then 50k is much cheaper than legal action to get rid of a competitor.

Hopefully it is someone who wants to build on the game as I do love FSA. TT, Element or wayland all might be interested or even Mantic or Warlord to reskin it to there universe's. Fingers crossed

 Dark Severance wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:
Which is also a non-starter for KS backers, because it funded December 22 last year, and as far as I'm aware it's rare for a bank to process chargebacks past 90 days.

Paypal usually won't process chargebacks past 90 days but credit cards will chargeback years. At least I've never had any issues doing chargebacks on multiple cards for failed delivery of something I paid for years (a couple Indiegogo projects I had an issue with had to be charged back).

Both credit cards and Paypal, at least in the US, now have to give you a 180-day window - this was updated a while back for Paypal, I think partly because scammers were able to run out the 90-day clock too easily. Even with that, right when they changed over I was able to call and get the 180-day window applied to a problematic transaction I had.

To reply to your later point, I successfully did a chargeback on a non-delivering KS, and all that happened was KS sent me an email saying it was them paying, not the creator. Given the amount KS makes on non-delivering projects, I think as many people as possible should file chargebacks regarding failed projects (I would prefer that KS refund at least part of their 10% fee to backers of those projects instead, if they were being more reputable, but they refuse to do so).

So yes, this is absolutely an option and no one should be dissauded from trying it if they backed this project. You literally have nothing to lose, and absolutely no other recourse to recover your funds, so you should definitely do so before 180 days is up.

SeanDrake wrote:
The people who could benefit most from all that firestorm IP mat never use it, Hawk could buy it to sit on it basicly reducing there competition to zero.

If GW really are working on a new BFG or Epic then 50k is much cheaper than legal action to get rid of a competitor.

Hopefully it is someone who wants to build on the game as I do love FSA. TT, Element or wayland all might be interested or even Mantic or Warlord to reskin it to there universe's. Fingers crossed

Honestly Firestorm was tiny compared to BFG and GW's potential reach. I can't see them worrying unless Firestorm was infringing on their copyright/IP/trademark. GW has never really taken the harsh line of trying to shut down competition unless it was directly attempting to do resculpts/alternate sculpts. Firestorm wasn't so I can't see GW investing any attention in it what so ever - sure its cheap but its still a big chunk of money in this market.

Firestorm was (at its best) bigger than Hawks game, but Hawk doesn't strike me as a company with the investment potential to outright sink competition like that - for a company their size that $50+K would be far better spent on their own product line rather than attempting to buy-out competition.

There is great potential that the IP could get taken up by a company that never uses it; or that it gets taken up by a company outside of wargaming (perhaps with a view that its a cheap buy now that can be resold later for a higher profit with more time/marketing - though I'd think that unlikely given that this is Firestorm not Warhammer we are talking about).

It could even be some video game company buying it so they'll have a ready-made setting and designs for whatever video games they want to use it for.

Firestorm's IP is worth nothing. Why? Because it's generic space IP, and is designed so. There's nothing to build off of, except for a number of spaceship sculpt models which to be honest, while nice are in fact showing their age compared to current state of the art.

Anyone who's going to be creating space tabletop games will use their own IP, in part to also avoid the backlash that Firestorm has had and very poor reputation of Spartan thanks to their history of incompetence.

Killionaire wrote:Firestorm's IP is worth nothing.

Well, that's objectively untrue..

Dark Severance wrote:Well it looks like my dreams of business expansion and bringing it to better US distribution channels, providing organized play support are shot. I am not one of the top offers, at least for, Spartan Scenics and Firestorm Armada. For Firestorm Armada at least, whoever is picking them up is investing over £50,000.

Given the old adage something is worth what someone is willing to pay, Firestorm Armada is worth upwards of fifty grand.

The strength of a generic, fairly popular ruleset is that it can be easily adapted. Sure, Halo didn't work out so well, but I wonder how much it would cost to buy the rights to a few book series and make a sort of a heroclix range, with Kzin, the Culture, Lensmen, the Pax, whatever other setting is effectively dead weight for a publisher but a potential modest hit for a game maker.

The story setting of Firestorm is weak, the fluff is weak. But assuming that the IP comes with moulds and designs then its an instant product that can be produced at a high quality level.

Sure I'd expect any company taking over to change the stories and even the rules, but the models themselves are what would be the profit turner.

Happy to hear the Firestorm IP got picked up. It will be interesting to see what's done with it.

 Overread wrote:
The story setting of Firestorm is weak, the fluff is weak. But assuming that the IP comes with moulds and designs then its an instant product that can be produced at a high quality level.

Sure I'd expect any company taking over to change the stories and even the rules, but the models themselves are what would be the profit turner.

At the end of the day, people can and will continue playing whatever version of rules they want, if the models are still available.

 Elessar wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The story setting of Firestorm is weak, the fluff is weak. But assuming that the IP comes with moulds and designs then its an instant product that can be produced at a high quality level.

Sure I'd expect any company taking over to change the stories and even the rules, but the models themselves are what would be the profit turner.

At the end of the day, people can and will continue playing whatever version of rules they want, if the models are still available.

Besides, if it was popular enough and no new version of the rules are released, you could see the game become a fan project, like BFG, or 9th Age.

Anyone heard of a confirmation date as to when the sales will be finalised and thus we might hear some news on what has happened to the various IP ?

Today I believe, but announcements will be up to the parties involved. Just what I've head on the grapevine.