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 Robert Facepalmer wrote:
Did anyone back the Rivenstone campaign? What did they say in update #61 about those test models?

They are going to pick names from a hat, and those people get some minis.

Former Broken Anvil employee here to clarify some stuff.

Obviously this is a throwaway account and you can't trust an anonymous source, so believe me if you want or not.

There's been some discussion about Level 52 and Broken Anvil being separate. They aren't. They're the same thing with the same people working on both companies projects. Level 52 is the original company that makes statues and Broken Anvil is just a DBA under a different name.

Rivenstone was successfully funded and we had every expectation of fulfilling the KS but due to the success the company grew too big and was hemorrhaging money. Same goes for the Patreon. We had like 4 sculptors working on the patreon and three engineers. They did pay decent so at the end of the day the patreon was barely breaking even. I don't agree with the change in direction it went but that's the decision that was made to try and save money. Due to the company losing money, Rivenstone money was diverted to other projects to try and make more money that way. That's where Forged came in. The genius of Chris thought Forged would be a giant success (like reaper bones) and we'd have so much money that we could fulfill Rivenstone and Forged easily. That didn't happen obviously. Forged started funding twice on Backerkit and didn't take off as quickly as Chris hoped so he went to KS. It funded but didn't make nearly enough to even fund it's own production. I can tell you for a fact that absolutely nothing has been done with that product since the campaign ended, besides the STLs, but those were already made since they were all Patreon rewards already. That money is gone and spent and it is never being made.

The paints were actually super great and everyone in the office was real excited about them. They are some of the best paints I've ever used to be honest. I was super hopeful that these would actually be made because all of the work was done beforehand and all Chris needed to do to fulfill the KS was to email the company in China and tell them to make the product and send it to us. We had enough from the KS to make them but again, Chris used that money to delay the inevitable bankruptcy of his company so I don't think they're ever getting made which is a real shame.

Me and almost everyone else there was laid off in May. For months before then there had been exactly zero work done on any projects except for new ones that would bring in new money. I was told directly that Rivenstone was on the backburner and didn't matter. Those infographics on the KS showing progress are completely made up. Some of the molds were done but they didn't produce the minis for them. Now that everyone is gone there's zero way to produce the minis in siocast so that's why he's asking backers if 3D printed minis is okay because it's easier for him to pump out subpar 3D printed minis than properly make the minis. Super ironic considering he kept bashing PP for going to 3D printed minis. Dude's just a giant hypocrite.

As for the acquisition, or merger, or whatever Chris wants to call it, it's been dead for months now but he's been talking about it like it's in the process of happening as a way to delay. As you know PointEast was in talks to acquire Level 52. Chris would become their sales guy (like some of you saw on his Linkedin before he made his profile private) and they'd gut the company and use it for it's contracts and business partnerships with companies to produce statues. They didn't want Broken Anvil but Chris was pushing for them to keep it alive. PointEast is a smart company so when doing their due diligence when in talks with buying L52 they discovered all the sady business practices Chris and Hanna were up to and they saw the financials and just how much we were losing money. They backed out quick after that and I don't blame them at all. Since then there have been two people working at the company and one of them is just part time. Chris hasn't been in the office in weeks and Hanna has been working for family in another state. The company is dead and everyone's money is long gone but Chris is too narcissistic to rip off the bandaid and tell everyone it's all over. We had so much wasted talent there and it kills all of us who loved working on minis and games because we could have had something great but it was killed by leadership who don't know the first thing about business or the minis industry. I love everyone I worked with there, besides Chris and Hanna obviously, and we are as heartbroken about it all as much as everyone else. The only solace I get from this experience is knowing that Chris and Hanna's reputations are ruined and they'll hopefully never be able to scam anyone in this industry and hobby again.

We hate your guts Chris.

Sincerely,
Everyone who has ever worked for you.

Well huh, I am quite glad I have avoided this Kickstarter. My local group thought it looked good, but VERY happy we came to the conclusion of waiting for a completed product before even considering it.

Unlike the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter, where I really don't expect to not get what I paid for.... Been too many Kickstarter disasters before and after Rivenstone to make me even consider backing a new game from a new company.

Hindsight is 20:20 but I'm thankful I trusted my gut on this one.

Broke_Anvil wrote:
Former Broken Anvil employee here to clarify some stuff.

You left out the part about running off on paying companies threatening to sue them for not filling orders (Skybound Ent.), or ignoring their overseas employees and not paying them for months after they stopped working there. (Even though they were salary) The amount of insanity from Chris is truly a once in a life time experience.

Well. Looks like my pledge has been refunded. No comments or replies. I’d definitely say the Ks is dead and to pull out.

I’ll be contacting my credit card company to issue chargebacks for anything from Level52. Too shady.

Chris has responded to this thread on their now locked discord admitting he's been lying about the merger - even though he doesn't mention they FIRED him TWICE (he just mentions they backed out of the merger) and is claiming Hanna is "fire fighting in orgeon" (shes working at a desk) and blames the companies failure on keeping employees on board - not him lying, gaslighting and running off every client they've ever had. Forged + Paint KS are not in development and he can only work on Rivenstone - he also confirmed only 1 full-time employee and 1 part-time employee currently remain.

The biggest crock of gak he's saying is how they never took paychecks. Chris is one of the most wasteful spenders I have ever met in my life. Doordash 3 meals or more a day. Every new video game, every DLC, played once. Random boardgame purchases he would never play, miniatures he would never paint. When the company was failing before the layoff, he was bragging about wanting to buy a new car - as they WENT ON VACATION. He is truly a huge POS and I hope bankruptcy forces him to stop pretending to be a millionaire with what he told us he had all the time - "adult money".







Mod edit - please do not attach or upload non-wargaming images to your post. Off-site hosting and linking is permitted.

All this is giving me Defiance Games flashbacks with Tony Reidy scamming everyone around him while running the company into the ground. Was the talk of the town here on Dakka for many years. Just checked, and the Hardsuit KS was only $46K and 686 backers, only a fraction of the dollar amount and backers that Broken Anvil has between Rivenstone, Forged and Studio Paints KS. Kinda surprised this isn't getting more attention.

I guess we now know why the Rivenstone models suddenly "weren't suitable for Siocast casting". Didn't make sense earlier, but it does make sense if you have no employees left that know how to make Siocast molds.

Really sucks for all the former employees, I've seen dream companies run into the ground by bad owners before and it's gut wrenching watching it happen from the inside, knowing you can't do anything to stop it. Broken Anvil has some really great mini designs, sad to see them go this way

 Kalamadea wrote:

Really sucks for all the former employees, I've seen dream companies run into the ground by bad owners before and it's gut wrenching watching it happen from the inside, knowing you can't do anything to stop it. Broken Anvil has some really great mini designs, sad to see them go this way

The best part about all of us former employees is that we will continue to take our love for the hobby elsewhere everyone is onto new projects, just sucks to have been working for such a scammer. Took a while for us to realize the truth, but when we did, it was all hands on deck making sure they couldn't screw over any new customers.

tintedbrush wrote:

[...] but when we did, it was all hands on deck making sure they couldn't screw over any new customers.

What did you do?

 juckto wrote:

tintedbrush wrote:

[...] but when we did, it was all hands on deck making sure they couldn't screw over any new customers.

What did you do?

The list is pretty long, but ranges from warning potential new clients to not prepay for anything, tell him to his face he was openly planning to commit fraud (our production manager quit over that actually) and tied up all loose ends on projects so all he had to do was pay for production. It was always a sense of making sure to stop him from screwing over random people all the time to keep a failing business open for no reason, ending with everyone getting laid off a few days after he told us all we were family and that he had plenty of money to continue paying payroll. We knew it was bad when he fired all of our artists and started using Midjourney to design products, but didn't pay the sculptors for the work, while bragging to our community about a "brand new produciton pipeline" he was implementing. It's just a never ending list of insanity. After he laid off half the company before Christmas, he forgot to stop paying for the laid off folks' insurance, then contacted them months later threatening them saying they owed him money for his own mistake.....

So, I feel like I am the one who started the spiral on the Forged mini collection. I was kicked out for asking questions about the production, people actually messaged me after I was removed and banned from the discord about what I said because they were looking for refunds. The moment Chris wouldn't answer questions is when I knew this campaign was dead. If all you do is tell people we have no "news" about fixing the poses on minis that says a lot.

Anyway this was the post that got me banned and there obviously is a reason:

Here are some questions that I would like addressed. When do you expect your merger to go through? What happens to these projects if the merger doesn't complete? When did you start laying people off and why didn't you inform people about that when the kickstarter began? Why didn't you tell us about them when you informed Rivenstone about them? Why did you start 2 extra kickstarters if the first one already had issues? What is your plan to reconcile the KS if the merger/money doesn't happen, are you just gonna throw STL files at us and say good enough? Will there be an option to get the STL files and refund the difference? Where in the manufacturing stage are you; are you still fixing the models or have molds been made or still redwax models? What percent of the issues are fixed currently?

Anyway, have a good one folks and I am sorry to those that didn't get out in time.

darzin wrote:
So, I feel like I am the one who started the spiral on the Forged mini collection. I was kicked out for asking questions about the production, people actually messaged me after I was removed and banned from the discord about what I said because they were looking for refunds. The moment Chris wouldn't answer questions is when I knew this campaign was dead. If all you do is tell people we have no "news" about fixing the poses on minis that says a lot.

Anyway this was the post that got me banned and there obviously is a reason:

Here are some questions that I would like addressed. When do you expect your merger to go through? What happens to these projects if the merger doesn't complete? When did you start laying people off and why didn't you inform people about that when the kickstarter began? Why didn't you tell us about them when you informed Rivenstone about them? Why did you start 2 extra kickstarters if the first one already had issues? What is your plan to reconcile the KS if the merger/money doesn't happen, are you just gonna throw STL files at us and say good enough? Will there be an option to get the STL files and refund the difference? Where in the manufacturing stage are you; are you still fixing the models or have molds been made or still redwax models? What percent of the issues are fixed currently?

Anyway, have a good one folks and I am sorry to those that didn't get out in time.

I'm right there with you... Forced refund for +1 your posts and linking this DAKKA thread. Anyone who links this thread gets instant refunded. Makes me sad as I can't figure out how to contact people still on those projects to 'come here and read this'. If people linking this thread gets people refunds, then that is a net gain IMHO for making some people whole. Otherwise it will give people exposure and closure to the real situation at a minimum.

nkelsch wrote:


I'm right there with you... Forced refund for +1 your posts and linking this DAKKA thread. Anyone who links this thread gets instant refunded. Makes me sad as I can't figure out how to contact people still on those projects to 'come here and read this'. If people linking this thread gets people refunds, then that is a net gain IMHO for making some people whole. Otherwise it will give people exposure and closure to the real situation at a minimum.

I think if people asking questions about a project forces someone to refund them instead of... I don't know -- answering? That says a lot about the company and the project. This thing was dead in the water before it launched. The biggest issue is overpromising addons. Blacklist Games did it on a larger scale.

Should be an official response to the truth coming out today - unless he's too busy playing video games again. I'd bet $50 that the reply is - "well, most of what was said isn't true, but I did mess up, I'm not good at business, but I cared about people too much, I swear I'm not a bad guy." I wonder if he cared too much when he stopped buying everyone toilet paper, soap and hand towels for the bathroom?

Anyway

I backed the campaign with a Chase card. I reached out to their chargeback department and was told that they’d be issuing a credit to me to the backed amount and billing the recipient of the money from the campaign.

They then clarified that the recipient, Broken Anvil, would be allowed to dispute my claim but in order to do so would have to:

(1) Prove they shipped the game.
(2) Provide tracking info for my order.

I mentioned this thread specifically and emphasized that the money paid to Broken Anvil was for a physical good that was not delivered.

For anyone reading this, Washington state where Broken Anvil is located, has a very proactive Attorney General named Bob Ferguson. He has previously taken fraudulent Kickstarter's to court on behalf of consumers.
(geekwire.com/2014/attorney-general-asylum-playing-cards-crowdfunded-project/)

For those interested, you can submit a complaint about a business in Washington state to fortress.wa.gov/atg/formhandler/ago/ComplaintForm.aspx

Considering that Broken Anvil and by extension Chris has stolen and mismanaged over 600k in consumer funds, I'm pretty sure this will get his offices attention if many people choose to file.

Hey Kickstarter backers! Glad you're all reading this! Please understand Chris has intentionally committed fraud, while lying to you, his employees, anyone who would listen. Please complain through the link above, it's the only chance anyone has for holding him (AND HANNA since she got the KS deposit from the paint KS). They took the money and ran.

Hi,

it seems that the register form:

For those interested, you can submit a complaint about a business in Washington state to fortress.wa.gov/atg/formhandler/ago/ComplaintForm.aspx

is only accessible for US citizens. Is there a way to complain also as a customer from Europe?

Oh no, this really sucks. The art style and concept of the game and the minis really did it for me and I went deep on the backerkit preorder :( wanted to get a little bit of everything to play it with friends.
Super sad to hear about the internal drama and overall state of affairs. Will try to get a refund

I love how this guys is like "We are gonna make this right, also we have no money!" Then instead of asking questions is keeping the discord locked and ran away from the kickstarter. Way to build trust!

I'm going to repeat something I put on the discord, for what it's worth:

Things that need to happen for the promised product to be delivered:

• BAM's skeleton crew finish making models
  
• Have someone print rulebooks and deliver them to BAM
  
• Have someone produce dice and deliver them to BAM
  
• Have someone produce cardboard widgets + tokens and deliver them to BAM
  
• Have someone produce acrylic widgets + tokens and deliver them to BAM
  
• Have someone produce battle mats and deliver them to BAM
  
• Probably some other stuff I've forgotten. Dice bags, maybe?
  
• Have someone produce Rivenstone-branded cardboard boxes and deliver them to BAM
  
• BAM buys a whole bunch of regular cardboard boxes and packing peanuts
  
• BAM puts all the bits into their respective boxes
  
• BAM puts all the boxes into people's respective orders
  
• BAM ships it to us
  

Chris has shared more photos of completed castings, since this dakka thread accusations were made, but I haven't seen any of the other things. And I don't see all of that happening if there is no money left.

Some of those things could be already paid for, and BAM is just waiting for delivery, for all I know.
Some of those things could have their production delayed (eg battlemats), or cheapen-ified (eg instead of Riven-branded boxes you could have a plain box with a hand-scrawled label).
But still.


If it were me, and it were at all possible, I would focus on getting the starter kits completed and shipped. Get people playing so their patience to wait for the "extras" will increase and, more importantly, maybe the game won't wither on the vine. God knows, maybe if people were playing it in stores you'd be able to get freshblood buying their own starter kits, and then there would be "bandwidth" to come back and finish the extras.

 juckto wrote:

If it were me, and it were at all possible, I would focus on getting the starter kits completed and shipped. Get people playing so their patience to wait for the "extras" will increase and, more importantly, maybe the game won't wither on the vine. God knows, maybe if people were playing it in stores you'd be able to get freshblood buying their own starter kits, and then there would be "bandwidth" to come back and finish the extras.

Hes shared the same photos of minis from different angles like 5 times, they stopped producing minis months ago. Since he wants to 3d print the big minis like Corum and the Rivenstone deposits, you're looking at 6 months at least of printing 24/7. It ain't happening

If they were trying to fulfill this at the lowest cost possible (as a means to guarantee product delivery), the "Rivenstone-branded cardboard boxes" bit isn't really necessary. You can utilize generic cardboard boxes with a sticker instead. Won't necessarily go over well with retail level backers, but it fulfills the obligation.

There's zero chance they have the money to ship any of it regardless of packaging.

Certainly sounds that way. Just pointing out that there are certain things that are "nice to haves" but not "necessities".

I can't speak for others, but if I had to choose between getting "something" and getting "nothing" at this point, I would settle for taking miniatures in generic brown boxes. Things like dice (assuming that Rivenstone didn't require proprietary dice to play), dice bags, widgets (assuming they aren't anything non-standard and are just player aids). etc. I can all live without - I would be pissed that I paid for them and didn't receive them, but most of the value is in the minis and rulebook.

Rulebook isn't even particularly necessary. We've had the digital version for quite a while.

Now that Chris has the eyes of the world on him and is afraid of the WA state AG - he's posted on Discord updates on ordering paint, producing things for Rivenstone etc. As a former employee I will comment on what he has said.

First off- Rivenstone

Books, dice, tokens and measuring sticks are being ordered this week for Rivenstone.

Dice will likely take a few weeks for manufacturing, tokens a few weeks and books about a week. I will need to see what type of palletization they will all be but i imagine we will need to ocean freight all of it. Which tracks on about a month for shipping.

Dice have been sitting in a box in the office for over a year.

During that time we are also beginning Full printing on the parts that we cannot make in Siocast. Currently i have 1 employee who is doing final cuts and engineering on remaining parts left to be engineered and another employee doing QC. As for the remaining parts to be made in Siocast, I will likely have to farm out of the mold production for those so i will begin doing that as well.

All of the Rivenstone models were engineered for mold making, he has already paid for another company (I wont involve them because they are a real legit business) to make the molds for a faction already. I assume this is Chris' way of showing molds being made outside of the office, but just like the dice, the work has already been done before the layoffs. Typical, lying, delaying, Chris.

We found a place to move to and should get in there October 1st which will really help with the rent bleed.

He always said it would be his garage, so it's his garage.

Studio paints- We are making the deposit for production this week to the manufacturer. When i do, i will also post a work order etc from them as proof. It’s around a 45k$ deposit. They told me it takes around 2 weeks to 3 weeks for full production, plus bottling and labeling. Bottles are almost ready to ship to them, i will air freight them when ready as to mitigate any further delay for manufacturing.

I thought we would have to wait a bit longer for the paint, Happy to report we won’t.

Theres no deposit needed - it's a purchase order. That number tracks, however the bottles literally cost less than $2000 so you are all well aware hes been full of it using bottles as an excuse. (They order off Alibaba) Each final bottle was somewhere around $1.50 to $1.65 to produce, never heard a final number from the people working on that project so you can do the math.

Forged- this will still take the time quoted in the post. But i am hoping that we can start showing progress within the next 45 days.

At the time of laying everyone off with no intention of brining us back - there was no factory working on Forged - no progress at all - he is starting at 0%. I wouldn't be shocked if he airbrushed a 3d print the color of wax and faked progress that way. It will also cost around $80-100k to make the molds for that project. Between the $45k from the paint, there's not enough left spending another $14k in September on rent etc for that money from the paint KS to cover Forged.

(Section about releasing STLs)

We are considering releasing early, as a way for people to play right now. This obviously comes with risk which is why we have not done it. However if we couldn’t deliver Rivenstone then yes you better believe we would make them public. We would have no intention of trying to hold onto this ip, we know how this industry works we would not want to keep it to try to sell it again, that’s insane.

Chris 100% was trying to sell the IP to another game company. On top of that, he told multiple team members that is exactly what he would do, as well as sell the siocast machines etc if the company fell apart.

Historically any time Chris has been faced with legal consiquences he folds. This happened with employees he didn't pay, companies he screwed over (he's in insane legal trouble with Skybound) so I'm not shocked people filing with the AG has him moving at a speed faster than his fingers on the Doordash app.

One thing we haven't mentioned was Chris' intention to crowdfund the cardgame we all completed "Prowl" on KS a month or so after the paint KS. All of these projects were supposed to impress Pointeast that BAM could make plenty of money since they didn't want to invest. I recall Hanna telling all of us that they were showing Pointeast how Rivenstone could make a million a year or some insane number once the KS was delivered.

Because there are things I cannot share. Period. And if/when I can I will be screaming from the rooftops. But some developments I do not have the privilege of sharing.

A lot of this did kind of happen over the weekend. I was working, sorting our budgets and income from other revenue and figuring out how we can allocate.

The only outside revenue would be work from Level52 - but at the time of everyone getting canned they didn't have new work coming in other than potential minis / statues for Dimension20 that they didn't even ask for. Beyond that, Chris has told us multiple times that he would file bankruptcy in case of an emergency because he already fraudulenty forged recycling documents on our 3d printers and siocast machines to show that he has no assets. This is also why, you may notice, that Hanna's name is listed on the paint KS and Chris is on the others.

When you launch a KS project, the name tied to it is the name on the bank account that gets the deposit. Chris files for bankruptcy on the past debt and projects, Hanna's bank is their safety net. Another potential "funding" area is Hanna's parents. During one of our final "trust us we love you we are family" meetings, Hanna mentioned they were begging her parent's to get a second mortgage on their house to fund production on the debt. The house is very expensive. Since we were all laid off a few days later, our take was that obviously that didn't come through. Maybe it did this time because Hanna is now legally tied into the fraud. IF Chris somehow has found his elusive spine we have all been searching for, and somehow starts to finalize these projects somehow with hundreds of thousands of dollars, cool!

We still all hate his guts and he has to live with himself knowing people finally found out the truth about it.

@TintedBrush @Broke_Anvil

Tossing my hat into the " I also hate Chris" Pile.
As someone else who has worked with Chris (and Hanna),
everything so far in this thread tracks with my experiences with them.
I'm happy to see this mess getting exposed.
He should have kept his nose out of an industry he clearly doesn't understand, much less the core character integrity required to run an ethical business.
(Pay your artists and employees)

I hope this thread serves as a warning to anyone dealing with him in the future.

Maybe Hanna's folks will bail him out- but I doubt they want to throw any more money at his raging bonfire of a business model.
It still irks me that through all of this, he refuses to accept full responsibility for his lies and choices. It's always something or someone else's' fault not his.
Chris: Its definitely you.

tintedbrush wrote:


Chris 100% was trying to sell the IP to another game company. On top of that, he told multiple team members that is exactly what he would do, as well as sell the siocast machines etc if the company fell apart.

In other words he tried to sell the IP unsuccessfully and now is scrambling to find another way out.

All of these projects were supposed to impress Pointeast that BAM could make plenty of money since they didn't want to invest. I recall Hanna telling all of us that they were showing Pointeast how Rivenstone could make a million a year or some insane number once the KS was delivered.

What you're describing sounds a lot like a ponzi scheme. I mean the kickstarter pattern is literally a ponzi scheme, but the behind the scenes investment sounds like the makings of one too. Collecting funds from waves of kickstarter "investors" for what are borderline fictional non-existent products that seemed increasingly unlikely to ever be delivered in order to make the company look more financially successful than it really is in the hopes of luring bigger investors who will throw more money at it or buy the business and its nonexistent product range outright and inherit all the problems while he walks away with the money. Maybe somewhere in there he intended to fulfill his obligations to kickstarter backers, but it doesn't sound like that would be realistically viable without very significant outside investment to stabilize the business and balance the ledger.