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.

I think the theory of the "relaunch" being another kickstarter for the Robotech (whether the same products or another era) is a bit more likely than a suprise "we've made everything!" announcement. Either way, I'm not buying (figuratively and literally) either for more than $1.00.

Me neither. I'm firmly in the camp of "Give me what I paid for, then maybe we can discuss* me spending more money with you."





*
Said discussion to be along the lines of -
PB: Here are more goodies you haven't already paid for, you really want to buy them, don't you.
Me: This is not the sucker, mug, er customer you are looking for. You want to go home and think about your business practices.
PB: We want to go home and think about our business practices.

"Surprise! We've finally finished the gak you've been waiting on for over 3 years! Also please give us another million or two for series 2 and 3 figures! We totes promise we won't take another 3 years to do them!* :-D"

*: spoiler alert: it'll take 4. Maybe 5. If you're lucky.

Nah! Kev'll promise it'll be guaranteed to be shipped 7 months from the end of the campaign, because, y'know, 98% done already, but in secret Wayne'll get told off for forgetting the '0' again.

See, not fraud or malicious. Just a simple decimal point error. It's all good, Palladium!

 warboss wrote:
The Palladium forums have always been odd in different ways and, despite my feelings now, NMI didn't used to be as heavy handed many years ago.

When your "job" is to support and defend a company led by lying thief who's now been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, yeah, things change...

I'm not one to defend PB or Kevin from their mistakes, but I've seen no evidence of personal embezzlement whatsoever. Plenty of evidence of either deliberate misinformation or staggering incompetence, or both. Could well be misuse of the Kickstarter funds in small part to cover operating costs, but I doubt by beyond a portion that is acceptable. More likely a total disregard for market research or knee jerk reaction to setup (tooling) costs and a consequent massive doubling down on stock from the initial production run.

Not to speak for John, but by "thief" I think he's referring to taking backer money and failing to deliver in full for years, rather than them absconding with the funds.

Though there's some grey area that Morgan has touched on a few times where questions about whether or not they're using KS funds for day to day bills, which *can* be acceptable if actual RRT work is ongoing.

Putting in a 20 minute chat with HG and 'China' a couple times a month not remotely justifying that, y'know?

It is definitely theft / embezzlement if any funds are being spent on PB operating costs not directly related to RRT development. Paying for the electricity and rent above and beyond the pro rata portion tied to RRT development.

For example, Kevin claims to have made a couple calls. That's maybe 0.3 hours each call, as RRT work should be documented to the 0.1 hour like legal billing. Anyhow, that 0.6 hours needs to pro rate against the 60+ hours per week that Kevin should be working. Plus the other staffers / volunteers, and RRT might be 1% of the total time. So PB could allocate up to 1% of their general overhead as a RRT cost. If they allocated more, then that would be illegal.

After a full year of nothing but lies and excuses, Kevco no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt, and may be branded fething liars and thieves until they can prove otherwise.

Whatever is going on, they've been very deliberate about keeping us in the dark, with many "We've been good to you in the past, just hang in there" updates.

Personally, I'm pretty damn sure they are out of mney, and until PB comes forward with a real status update on Wave 2 or a summary of funds expended/left, that's the stance I'm staying at.

If, as a customer, I can't get an update from them, I'll find a legal entity that WILL get an answer out of them, regardless whether either of us likes the end result (I just want what I paid for).

All agreed, but posting something inflammatory like 'caught with his fingers in the jar' is only going to help an on-point defense attorney paint backers in an unreasonable light, as opposed to stating the cold, hard, damning facts themselves or backing up a supposition with corroborating information. Play it smart chaps.

Edit: Also, you have to remember that Kickstarter is NOT an investment, nor a purchase. It is in effect a donation of money, which is refundable if the rewards promised are not achievable. What the money is spent on, as long as there is a good faith* attempt to deliver all rewards, is irrelevant.

*Good faith, from what I've read of commercial law so far, runs under the tenet that commercially accepted standards of work are followed; and this would include correct, competent management of a complex development project like this.

The fact is that PB has been caught in multiple lies. They have obviously misspent monies based on their inability to deliver or account for funds. The reasonable conclusion is criminal neglect, criminal fraud, criminal malfeasance, criminal theft, and criminal embezzlement.

On both information and belief, I hold the above to be true. That means it is neither libel nor slander, under American law, where both I and PB are located.

And if PB has the money to hire lawyers, they have the money to refund and/or deliver. Or negotiate a settlement. Not to stonewall like the lying criminals that they are.

Wow...how sad is this?

Years ago, I was excited to finally get a game based on a show that I loved as a child. My friends were excited. We brought new friends into the fold by making them watch the entire Macross Saga (on VHS no less). We all spent hundreds of dollars. We started talking about standardizing the paint schemes, so that everything would match on the table top. We started making plans for different tables. I wanted to do Mars, so I watched that episode over and over for terrain ideas.

Now, years after our initial excitement, we could care less. I have my big box of Wave 1 product...still unopened...hiding behind a table upstairs. I have no desire to even open it, let alone put anything together.

One of my favorite mecha designs of all time, the Female Power Armor, will never be delivered to me it seems.

The game store we all go to has 4 boxes of product sitting on the shelf...the same 4 boxes that they ordered years ago. No one has even asked about them.

One of the guys, that I introduced to the series, just gave me the models that he had left after selling what he could on eBay...at a considerable loss...and even then no one wanted everything that he was offering. How sad is it that we cannot even give our stuff away...

And now, we are talking about PB without funds, full of lies and deception, and people wanting to go to the authorities.

It could have been so good. It could have been such a fun ride. Instead, we are left with frustration, bitterness, and disappointment.

At this point, all of my friends have withdrawn from the game. They have dumped their stuff, and don't want to even talk about the game. How in the heck is PB going to "re-launch" this game? It's dead...if it was ever alive in the first place.

Sorry for the long post. But, I am tired of reading page after page of this junk. Regardless of the reasons for this joke of a KS, I think we need to finally do something. As a community.

We need to either bring this thing to life, which seems almost impossible at this point, or we need to hear official word from PB about ending this disaster. They are not going to say or do ANYTHING unless we, as a community, make them.

So, what is it going to be? As a community of gamers, are we going to bring this corpse back to life, or are we going to finally DO something about it?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The fact is that PB has been caught in multiple lies. They have obviously misspent monies based on their inability to deliver or account for funds. The reasonable conclusion is criminal neglect, criminal fraud, criminal malfeasance, criminal theft, and criminal embezzlement.

On both information and belief, I hold the above to be true. That means it is neither libel nor slander, under American law, where both I and PB are located.

And if PB has the money to hire lawyers, they have the money to refund and/or deliver. Or negotiate a settlement. Not to stonewall like the lying criminals that they are.

Problem is, in the end, lies have to be proven. We cannot without seeing their finances. They have no obligation to share them to all backers. Lawsuits may make them available to those instigating the lawsuit, but not to the entirety of the pledgers.

So proving negligence and misuse of funds is, basically, not going to happen in a way to benefit all backers UNLESS their is a class action style lawsuit. Reasonable conclusions matter not one whit in these types of cases. It helps to reason things out, but it does not get the money back.

In the end, if PB does not have the $, they simply do not have the value in books, IP, pretty pictures, or whatever else, to pay the backers back more than a fraction of what was paid.

Life isn't perfect but there it is in a nutshell.

I will gladly accept pennies on the dollar if it means that PB is bankrupted and liquidated, with any assets sold at auction.

 warboss wrote:
Jaymz might be able to comment more about the white knight vigilantes as I believe he interacted more with them than I did (with my average one post per month for years prior to Robotech).

Indeed there were a few I had multiple encounters with.

First - yes they would in fact tell new and old players alike that if they didn't like the rules to play another game OR they were obviously not intelligent enough to actually understand the rules properly...that was almost always their reaction to people posting that the rules did not work in one fashion or another.

Second - my most direct confrontation with some was over the Facebook fiasco.

Fall 2010. Kevin was interviewed on the Palladium fluff podcast Gateway to the Megaverse. usually a decent listen even when Kevin is interviewed. This particular time he went on at length, after being asked about Facebook, about how hard it is and how time consuming it would be to set up an official company page. All the man hours and maintenance time needed to run it, so on and so forth., would be too much right then. THAT pissed me off. Such blatant ignorance was just unfathomable to me, be it intentional or one of his yes men telling him that was the way it was.

So I took to the forums and said as much. Well here they came going on and on about how I knew nothing and this and that and blah blah blah and cries of PROVE IT. So I did. I had no desire to actually run a Facebook group but these clowns pushed me over the edge. It took about 30 minutes, while assembling Lego for my son, to set up a group. About 5-10 minutes the next 24-48 hours to tweak a few things and bam. By the next week 100 people were members and looked like it was going to be a good endeavor, Hell I even got in contact with right hand man Alex about doing up a gallery of book covers with links back to their webstore.

Then...out came the White Knights again. Slinging accusations galore of how I was out to embarrass Kevin and Palladium and this that and every other. I even had Kevin go off partly and attribute things that were said to me which I never said as well as him effectively whining that they and to put up their official FB Page months in advance of when THEY wanted to put it up.

The funniest part of all this was I did it shut up the White Knight who kept screaming for em to prove I was right in my position then when I did they came back with effectively "HOW DARE YOU DO SOMETHING AND BE RIGHT PROVING US WRONG?!?"

The group for the record is still up and running though I handed off the reigns back on March 1st of 2015.

On the other side however there are any number of the "Cabal" (the opposite f the "White Knights") who don't like me much either since I am not 100% anti Palladium. Right no I am sort of 60/40 anti/pro. But that number is steadily shifting more to the anti side the longer this farce continues.

jaymz wrote:

On the other side however there are any number of the "Cabal" (the opposite f the "White Knights") who don't like me much either since I am not 100% anti Palladium. Right no I am sort of 60/40 anti/pro. But that number is steadily shifting more to the anti side the longer this farce continues.

I hate you 40% declining as we speak

jaymz wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Jaymz might be able to comment more about the white knight vigilantes as I believe he interacted more with them than I did (with my average one post per month for years prior to Robotech).

Indeed there were a few I had multiple encounters with.

First - yes they would in fact tell new and old players alike that if they didn't like the rules to play another game OR they were obviously not intelligent enough to actually understand the rules properly...that was almost always their reaction to people posting that the rules did not work in one fashion or another.

I believe that in PRPG a thief was unable to scale a wall 13 feet or greater. I assume that every wall on the planet was 13 feet higher or greater, for 100% thief-proof security.

Hopefully the atmosphere surrounding this project will reach critical toxic mass and Palladium will feel forced to respond. After decades, they're immune to smouldering discontent and can ignore it for years. It's only when the situation worsens significantly do they prepare a useless canned response. Spartangate, the sham Gencon vote, the scale switch... that's the level of vitriol that Palladium needs to notice the paltry after years of delays. It's sad but true... so feed the anger! *insert Sith speech here about anger leading to hate and hate leading to an update*

Is that the litmus test for being a thief? Not being able to scale a 13 foot wall?
Can anyone at palladium scale a 13 foot wall to prove no wrong doing?

What needs to happen is simple, a gakload of people need to complain to the FTC, not Palladium. The FTC will then handle it and Palladium will gak the proverbial brick.

Is there anyone local to Palladium that can follow up possibly at some point in the future with the BBB in person?

winterdyne wrote:


Edit: Also, you have to remember that Kickstarter is NOT an investment, nor a purchase. It is in effect a donation of money, which is refundable if the rewards promised are not achievable. What the money is spent on, as long as there is a good faith* attempt to deliver all rewards, is irrelevant.

Regardless of how KS or PB wants it to be true, that's a bunch of BS. The RRT KS was nothing more than a preorder, in the same way I could have order GTA 5 before it came out. They can't explain away the backerkit (where *specific* items were ordered). If it were a donation, everyone would have recieved the same thing - a boxed set, a t-shirt or whatever. Not specific items of specific value each.

 Stormonu wrote:

winterdyne wrote:


Edit: Also, you have to remember that Kickstarter is NOT an investment, nor a purchase. It is in effect a donation of money, which is refundable if the rewards promised are not achievable. What the money is spent on, as long as there is a good faith* attempt to deliver all rewards, is irrelevant.

Regardless of how KS or PB wants it to be true, that's a bunch of BS. The RRT KS was nothing more than a preorder, in the same way I could have order GTA 5 before it came out. They can't explain away the backerkit (where *specific* items were ordered). If it were a donation, everyone would have recieved the same thing - a boxed set, a t-shirt or whatever. Not specific items of specific value each.

Yeah. I'm sorry, but if I'm giving you a specific amount of money, for a specific type and quantity of product, and we even reach the point where you are REQUIRED to give me a refund if you don't supply said product for said money...

That's a purchase. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

Particularly for any monies added via Pledge Manager...

jaymz wrote:
...So I took to the forums and said as much. Well here they came going on and on about how I knew nothing and this and that and blah blah blah and cries of PROVE IT. So I did. I had no desire to actually run a Facebook group but these clowns pushed me over the edge. It took about 30 minutes, while assembling Lego for my son, to set up a group. About 5-10 minutes the next 24-48 hours to tweak a few things and bam. By the next week 100 people were members and looked like it was going to be a good endeavor, Hell I even got in contact with right hand man Alex about doing up a gallery of book covers with links back to their webstore.

Then...out came the White Knights again. Slinging accusations galore of how I was out to embarrass Kevin and Palladium and this that and every other. I even had Kevin go off partly and attribute things that were said to me which I never said as well as him effectively whining that they and to put up their official FB Page months in advance of when THEY wanted to put it up.

The funniest part of all this was I did it shut up the White Knight who kept screaming for em to prove I was right in my position then when I did they came back with effectively "HOW DARE YOU DO SOMETHING AND BE RIGHT PROVING US WRONG?!?"

That still is pretty funny.

I hate to say but when I filed with the BBB PB was telling me it was no different than the rewards and I was investing in a project.
I was only asking for a refund on wave2 backer kit "purchases".
Their wording would have changed now due to the FTC going after a kickstarter proved a few things different.
Great thing is: all their words are available on file if anyone gets the interest up.
I said as much to the FTC.
Every little bit helps.

Yes, well, an answer like that is all part of covering their asses. They're not going to admit to anything that would cost them a penny without that penny being pried from their cold dead fingers.

 Desmodus wrote:

jaymz wrote:
...So I took to the forums and said as much. Well here they came going on and on about how I knew nothing and this and that and blah blah blah and cries of PROVE IT. So I did. I had no desire to actually run a Facebook group but these clowns pushed me over the edge. It took about 30 minutes, while assembling Lego for my son, to set up a group. About 5-10 minutes the next 24-48 hours to tweak a few things and bam. By the next week 100 people were members and looked like it was going to be a good endeavor, Hell I even got in contact with right hand man Alex about doing up a gallery of book covers with links back to their webstore.

Then...out came the White Knights again. Slinging accusations galore of how I was out to embarrass Kevin and Palladium and this that and every other. I even had Kevin go off partly and attribute things that were said to me which I never said as well as him effectively whining that they and to put up their official FB Page months in advance of when THEY wanted to put it up.

The funniest part of all this was I did it shut up the White Knight who kept screaming for em to prove I was right in my position then when I did they came back with effectively "HOW DARE YOU DO SOMETHING AND BE RIGHT PROVING US WRONG?!?"

That still is pretty funny.

What is funnier is how he swore the guys that work for him were pretty tech savvy.......yet apparently they told him it would take weeks to set up a Facebook page and once i showed it wouldn't and had showed it was a good thing with people joining etc, they had theirs up in a day or so.

Weeks is probably quick measured in Palladium time.