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Well to be fair to Mythic that's just one hub for Monolith (EU) so if the US, Canada and Digery Doo Land are similar that's 50k increase maybe (asia is shipped from China and RoW is shipped from EU I think for Monolith). Still a lot less then 3 million.

Flyos Games are saying $200,000 cad for the shortfall on Vampire the Masquerade Chapters. The campaign only raised $1.35 mil cad. They tried to raise the shortfall by selling $20 exclusive card packs with some new item cards. They didn’t quite raise enough so the directors took out $20k cad personal loan to cover the rest.

This all just proves why some KS projects take the safe route and only charge for shipping when they're ready to ship.

 Gallahad wrote:
I don't think you can lay too much blame at Mythic's door. Shipping prices really are much higher than they were when they ran the campaign.

I disagree.

They only closed the pledge manager 6 months ago. They could, and should, have warned people then that they might have to charge additional shipping fees. Shipping costs did not magically sky rocket in 6 months they've been rising for years. Before the game went into production. Before the tenor of things became 'we have your half-completed pledge but we refuse to ship it to you until you pay us more money in the next ten days and then you'll just have to hope we don't feth you over a second time.' If they didn't suspect this six months ago, they're incompetent. If they did then they deliberately hid it and said nothing until they could say they had what we paid for but refuse to ship it. Shipping for this game was already oddly high when it was paid.

That's a radically different situation from a project that falls through and comes to nothing. For all intents and purposes, the project is complete. Even Wave II is already 'paid for' at the factory and set to enter production. The only problem is that Mythic is refusing to ship what people bought unless they pony up more money that should be their burden for failing to deliver the game for so long. If any other business operated in this fashion they'd be sued. I'm pretty sure Mythic can already be sued because crowdfunding no longer works this way in the EU. They passed laws against it. People there are obligated by law to a refund if they ask even on a Kickstarter. It's just the US with its gakky corporation's first stance on everything that's likely to suffer (and even then, the FTC and state AG's have sued Kickstarter campaigns for certain things).

Mythic is even calling the produced games 'ours' yet in a live stream just yesterday when directly asked if they would resell games that people didn't pay the new shipping costs for to other people, the guy on the stream gave an overtly non-commital answer. All this while the announcement backlashing on their other projects with a lot of people saying they're backing out (I only have their word that this is happening) and the refusal from Mythic to provide any clarity on what happens even if we pay now. They've been asked repeatedly what assurances they can give that delivery will actually happen and they've notably talked around the topic and refused to engage any question that isn't 'how do I pay.'

Mythic can't just create money out of thin air.

Mythic is an established multi-million dollar company, not some indie developer operating on shoe strings. They don't have this excuse. They made 7.6 million dollars. Where did it go?

Asking for more money is the responsibile thing to do, rather than using money from newer Kickstarters to cover the cost.

I'm suspicious that that's exactly what they did, except the Darkest Dungeon game is so much bigger than the projects that followed it they can't subsidize costs for it with future games.

Mythic isn't an indie developer, but neither do they have a big retail presence. Their money comes from Kickstarter. If they don't have the money from the DD KS they don't have the money. For businesses, cash flow matters. I believe that some of the delays on Hel The Last Saga is Mythic trying to wait for cheaper shipping.

I agree they should have communicated with backers before the PM closed, but they might not have known at the time and ground freight might have changed in the intervening 6mo. Are they not offering refunds?

Mythic isn't handling this as well as they could, but all of those criticisms are criticisms around the margin. You can have sloppy communication and execution in a world where shipping costs don't go up by 200%.

Sounds like they need someone else managing their logistics. They should have locked in a rate with a contract when the PM closed, but they didn't. So now they need extra money to ship your game. Sloppy execution. Not some conspiracy to defraud you of your money.

 Gallahad wrote:
Are they not offering refunds?

They won't tell anyone, but in my language any answer to the question 'can I have a refund' that isn't an immediate yes is a no. And that's in normal business where it comes down to huge multi-billion dollar companies knowing you could never challenge their bs in court even if you wanted to. These guys have 'insert standard Kickstarter isn't a store excuse.' Myself and others have all asked and the only word we've gotten is third hand from people in Mythic's discord where someone from the company said 'we aren't offering refunds right now and will let you know next week.'

I still interpret that as a no.

Worse, I interpret that as Mythic doesn't have the money to cover refunds or shipping and is going sit and wait to see how things shake out, which calls into question their ability to deliver anything at all. What happens if too few people pony up? Will they refund those who paid when the shipment doesn't happen? If they can't afford to ship how the hell are they launching retail orders by the end of the year? Will they charge a second time when Wave II is due to ship?

Even if they were bothering to answer a single one of these questions I don't know that it would matter.

You can't break an agreement and then be upset when your customers don't trust your word anymore and with how cagey they're being about the questions they will answer I doubt their intentions and reliability completely. Today has only made this worse with reps of the company dodging everyone who doesn't ask how to pay the fee.

They should have locked in a rate with a contract when the PM closed, but they didn't.

They could have delivered it on time if they hadn't spent 18 months downgrading the product to save costs. That was a shrug w/e a year ago when they admitted to it and the cost to the backer seemed negligible, but apparently, we're getting upcharge anyway because they delayed production for so long. I think that makes it worse.

Not some conspiracy to defraud you of your money.

The only difference is incompetence or malice. In either case, I still call it fraud. They have too many projects behind their backs to legitimately claim shock and surprise. If US consumer protection laws weren't so bloody backward, and if this were anything but a Kickstarter with the standard Kickstarter excuse, Mythic would be staring down lawsuits so big they'd probably ship the game at any cost rather than incur the consequences. Just because they have a legal out means very little to me. Backers paid all obligations and Mythic closed on those obligations when they shut down the pledge manager.

Now they want to change the terms and shift the burden of their failures onto us.

 Gallahad wrote:
Are they not offering refunds?

That's a big negatory good buddy. The email I received from them today when I requested a refund a few days ago.

"We have halted the refunds for Darkest Dungeon at the moment, until we gather enough data this week. More news will be shared next week regarding the possibility of processing refunds at this point.
Please note that if you cannot pay the additional contribution, your order can still be shipped at a later date. We do not have a current timeline and will keep backers updated. The contribution just guarantees that your game will ship now and/or when the relevant wave is ready.
More news will be shared in future Updates about the estimated shipping time of such orders."

While it's not a hard no, as LordofHats said, basically anything other than a yes is a no.

I haven't even gotten an email and it's funny because it looks like they're throwing out an automated pre-written response after telling us we'd all get a personal response addressing our concerns when our tickets were acknowledged.

Flyos went a very roundabout way of offering refunds. They were not prepared to do it themselves but had a list of people who missed out on the game and wanted a copy, so would match up anyone who wanted a refund with someone after a copy and then get them to transfer the money directly across from replacement backer to original backer.

> I am attaching here the official quote from my carrier.

I remember when Reaper was passing down info from their Chinese manufacturer and backers got mildly screwed, anyway. I mean, telling backers what your suppliers told you is CYA, but if you picked a bad supplier, or if the supplier can't get good info, you're still passing on bad info that won't help backers.

> For 9 months now, the price of containers has only gone down.

I've read that they "only" went down to 6x that of pre-pandemic levels. Better than 10x. Anywho, I found a pretty graph that shows 7K vs. under 2K pre-pandemic. Personally, I don't think we're going to return to anywhere close to pre-pandemic levels until China quits locking down ports, and that's not going to happen since the President Xi has made CoVid into a "East vs. West" political issue (no, really). Also, the "last leg" of the shipping is 50% of the cost. Once the ships arrive, those packages don't pack and ship themselves. NA backers who backed Fantasy Series 1 from Blacklist Games have been waiting over a year for the shipping of boxes that have arrived in Florida at Quarter Master Logistic's warehouse. In any case, different companies subsidize shipping differently. Pick 'em carefully. (Or pick retail if you're washing your paint-soaked hands off KS plasticrack like I keep trying to do.



"That said, container imports remain near record levels as China's export decline ends, so it is not yet clear if the shortage in container shipping is ending. The Federal Reserve's global supply chain pressure index remains near an all-time high, though it has declined markedly since December. Accordingly, the overall dynamic of container shipping remains strong as the market remains in a tight shortage. However, the data indicates a peak in container shipping that a contraction will likely follow." : https://seekingalpha.com/article/4524551-container-shipping-shortage-ending-danaos-stock-considerably-oversold

"As a share of the total cost of shipping, last mile delivery costs are substantial—comprising 53% overall." : https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/last-mile-delivery-shipping-explained/

Bonus points: China and CoVid : https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-on-earth-is-china-e2-80-99s-covid-strategy-now/ar-AAZRwZ0

So... Who wants 110 Sine Tempore miniatures and a copy of Stargrave for $75? https://funagain.com/products/stargrave-bundle?variant=39717744181357

 ced1106 wrote:


I remember when Reaper was passing down info from their Chinese manufacturer and backers got mildly screwed, anyway. I mean, telling backers what your suppliers told you is CYA, but if you picked a bad supplier, or if the supplier can't get good info, you're still passing on bad info that won't help backers.

It can be CYA for sure but in this case Monolith doesn't have anything being delivered right now so it really is just Fred responding to the Mythic kerfuffle as people were asking if they'd have to ask for more money months from now.

It's now on (or getting on) to boats, and any overstock can be preordered on the Mythic Games Store website

https://mythicgames.net/game/darkest-dungeon/

I paid Mythic the extra cash they requested to send me the game I already paid for because I could understand the problem they were facing with the sudden shipping price jump, but I sure as gak will slap them around when Anastyr is ready to ship, probably in 2 years, if they don't go out of their way to refund me the the difference between the peak shipping bubble price they charged for me for that game and the price they will actually pay when the game is ready to ship.

It has to work both ways, otherwise it's just a scam.

I'm half-convinced it's already just a scam honestly. At this point it's all cost-loss analysis on our end.

To be fair, this is how you should always look at kickstarter until the thing is sitting on your living room.

That said, I'll give Mythic the benefit of the doubt and follow Hanlon's razor and say that it's just gross incompetence on their part and not malice.

I have to, otherwise it means I got conned twice by max pledging 2 of their games.

But whatever the result is in the end, I think I wont be supporting them anytime soon.

I jumped on board for Anastyr because of the minies, at the time DD didn't asked me for more cash to deliver what I already paid and I they did a good job at hiding the fact that they were not including the shipping price in the pledge (and made sure to not tell you what the price would be until the campaign was over and your pledge locked).

I'm all for supporting the little guy and backing gak, but at some point you have get some self respect and cut your loss.

Welp.

Mine has arrived. Everything looks right. Good quality plastic. The cards are solid. The tokens are decently made. The models indeed look fantastic.

Guess I've mellowed since the shipping fee hit, but my enthusiasm also just isn't what it was before.

Still never doing a Kickstarter ever again. Guess I'll have to sit and decide what to do with all of this now that I have it.

 LordofHats wrote:
Welp.

Mine has arrived. Everything looks right. Good quality plastic. The cards are solid. The tokens are decently made. The models indeed look fantastic.

Guess I've mellowed since the shipping fee hit, but my enthusiasm also just isn't what it was before.

Still never doing a Kickstarter ever again. Guess I'll have to sit and decide what to do with all of this now that I have it.

Glad to hear you got your pledge. Reception seems to be generally favorable.

I have backed many KS campaigns and enthusiasm for the actual product rarely matches the idealized product I create in my head during the campaign.

I've still got some great games out of it at great prices.

Maybe play a game or two, see if you like it!