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Minor correction to my above statement. It was 18 months ago that I sold my pledge. I hope that poor sods got his pledge

 Panic wrote:
Yeah,
prodos what's happening with the clear predators?

Can you answer somewhere?

When will I get them?
And all the other stuff you owe the AVP backers?

...

LOAD - Customers this is what you can expect in 5 days time.
Prodos take your money and shut down communications.
3 years later you wonder what happened???

Save your money, buy at retail.
In our experience you will get your miniatures cheaper and quicker than backers.

Panic...

Hi doors I would like Panic to get an answer to this to

Also as Panic said Fyi bAckers

From BGG: Prodos/Archon are sending 'please come back' messages to backers that dropped their pledges. Desperation?

Hi,
Thank you for once considering being backer of LOAD!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1915792245/load-the-boa...
We came a long way since start of the campaign and would like to invite you to take another look. All stretch goals in the game are now unlocked and you are offered a great deal with a game containing a lot of miniatures of great quality at affordable price.
If you want to see how the game looks, here is a video done by Undead Viking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch…
Our backer AliceXVI organized a few games of LOAD via Tabletop Simulator and streamed it on her Twitch account Bubbalubber. You can check the games played here:
https://www.twitch.tv/bubbalubber/v/69891112
https://www.twitch.tv/bubbalubber/v/69940653
LOAD is offered in 7 different languages and those who pledge will be given option during Pledge Manager to choose the language they prefer.
Hope to see you again as backer of LOAD!
Thank you!
Archon

I've been part of several projects that havie issued "please come back!" or "why did you leave?" messages.

This actually happens with plenty of KS projects. I have dropped out of a few (simply due to money issues or coming to my senses, lol) and have gotten emails either asking why I left or trying to lure me back in. I think Mantic has even done this, but I'm not certain.

It is easy to see why they're sending those messages out:




It will be interesting to see if it works!

Its a sensible move if you think you can (or have already) fix the issues with your campaign,

for example if you've put up a rule book download, or a detailed gameplay video that people have been asking for,

or if you've unlocked that faction everybody wanted but you'd put as a late stretch and hoped to use to drive revenue at the end of the campaign

but I think it's not going to work here as most of those dropping are probably those with issues with the company making the game

Yeah, I dropped because Jerek/Prodos were involved. Them giving every stretch goal doesn't make up for the initial deception and continued dishonesty.

There may be another factor here as well, beyond the Prodos debacle. And that is, this is yet another fairly well presented but nondescript board game with a stack of renders. I've lost count on the amount of these that have been punted with varying degrees of success. With a new CMON Kickstarter on the horizon, people look at this, the drama, the mound of unpainted miniatures, the generic blandness and think; sod it, I'm out...

The total dropped below $220k!

The Stretch Goals no longer reference dollar amounts as the previous "$235k" goal is now unlocked for no obvious reason.

But yeah, very unlikely that backers return - it's not a value thing. It's a corporate trust and ethics thing, and no amount of unlocked Stretch Goals can change that.

Zed - There are physical final minis shown for quite a lot of the models here (just FYI since you mentioned renders).

 RiTides wrote:
Zed - There are physical final minis shown for quite a lot of the models here (just FYI since you mentioned renders).

So there is. They look nice enough, but I stand by my statement. As for me? I've got a humongous pile that I'll never ever paint and I look at this and think; "Do I really need more games or another range of miniatures"? The answer is no. At the risk of sidetracking, I've been doing a colossal thinning of my collection this last year. I've binned Sedition Wars, despite being a fan, lots of my GW specialist games collection has gone, 40k projects have been given the boot, Oldhammer projects, dropzone commander went and I've now decided to sell off kingdom death. That leaves me with some 40k, 30k, Darklands and space for the redone specialist games. It's been liberating and my unpainted pile doesn't demoralise me anywhere near as much as before! Er, anyway, sorry slight sidetrack there...

They showed physical models for AvP at a trade show back in 2013 and some backers don't have Wave 1 yet. LOAD backers are also voting on Epic Models (?), which are only at the concept art stage.

Considering that Prodos isn't willing to use funds from their non-KS projects to ship AvP product, how do we know that $220K will be enough to fund LOAD -- including the SG's that were supposed to be unlocked at higher funding levels?

22% of project money is for profit / backup margin. but that was for the project before the free SG's and paint services. Will this be enough? (EDIT: Cost breakdowns are based on 1000 backers.)

I don't have as much budget for the hobby as others, so I compare risks among different projects then decide where to pledge my money. Nowadays, I can find more easily find projects by KS creators with experience fulfilling projects (eg. CMON, Stonemaier Games, Johnny Lauck) , so don't have to pledge on riskier projects for my KS fix. I've skipped many "must have" KS projects, only to find another one that wants my money. If LOAD succeeds and backers are happy, I'm sure Prodos / Archon will come back to us asking for money and offering another set of well-sculpted miniatures -- and I can pick up LOAD retail at the OLGS discount.

MaxT wrote:

 TheWaspinator wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
I LOVE seeing the Prodos logo representing the Archon work in the above image.

Yet when it is convenient for Jarek and crew we must believe they are completely separate entities.

Good stuff.

Yeah, the idea that they are at all independent companies is a pretty laughable lie.

Legally it's a fact, not a lie.

But as it's the same people running things, don't expect wildly different outcomes and results. After all, the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Fair enough, they are separate companies from a legal perspective. From a practical perspective, though? One has heavy ownership of the other, they apparently have employees who work for both, and the same forum account is being used as the mouthpiece to promote both on this forum. The practical distinction is questionable.

 TheWaspinator wrote:

Legally it's a fact, not a lie.

But as it's the same people running things, don't expect wildly different outcomes and results. After all, the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.
Fair enough, they are separate companies from a legal perspective. From a practical perspective, though? One has heavy ownership of the other, they apparently have employees who work for both, and the same forum account is being used as the mouthpiece to promote both on this forum. The practical distinction is questionable.

You're not wrong- legally Archon and Prodos are separate entities.

Jarek and his business partner Michal own Prodos with Jarek being the majority shareholder. He (Jarek) has been (with the exception of his partner Agata who handles replacement parts) pretty much the only voice of Prodos since Mark Rapson resigned to run his own company Word Forge Games about a year ago.

The only person speaking on behalf of Archon also appear to be Jarek. He doesn't own Archon though, he "just" works there. The company is owned by his father (with the other major shareholders being, I think, Michal's mother AND Prodos - ie effectively Jarek and Michal.

So yes they are legally separate,

but absolutely they need to be considered to be the same company in terms of who's running them, and therefore likely how they will be run. Sure the separation probably means Archon can't pay off Prodos debts or visa versa, but to be honest, it's pretty easy to transfer assets between companies when you control both. Heh, it's already possibly happening - Prodos had 30 odd employees according to Jarek during the AvP kickstarter. Now they have 4 apparently. Meanwhile Archon now has - you guessed it - 30 employees. In addition both Prodos and then Archon have laid claim to owning the Unicast technology.



So we have a kickstarter launched by a company called LOAD Board Game based in Chicago (no such company exists) run by Mihajlo Vlaskovic (according to google, a waiter and taxi driver) who apparently runs CritOnHitGames in Chicago - a company created as a limited liability company (ie they'll be next to impossible to chase after the fact once they've transferred KS monies to Archon) just a month before this KS launched. They initially refused to identify who the underlying creator was, claiming an NDA, but then lifted the NDA (how does one lift one's own NDA) to tell us it was Archon. They'd stated previously they would come clean as to the underlying creator after the project funded. In other words they went out of their way to avoid telling the community that Prodos was involved. This can only have been to avoid backlash, and yet by doing so, they essentially deceived backers and created a bigger back lash.

Now they've taken a project that was trending towards 750k before all the above revelations, and which had stretch goals running up to somewhere around the 280k mark, and unlocked everything 3 days early despite being 60k+ short of that mark (say goodbye to profits) and then sent an email to those who had backed and pulled out begging them to return and back the game. Desperation much ?

Just how many red flags do people need to steer clear of this shambles ?

biggusdoggus wrote:

So we have a kickstarter launched by a company called LOAD Board Game based in Chicago (no such company exists) run by Mihajlo Vlaskovic (according to google, a waiter and taxi driver) who apparently runs CritOnHitGames in Chicago - a company created as a limited liability company (ie they'll be next to impossible to chase after the fact once they've transferred KS monies to Archon) just a month before this KS launched.

Also an insurance salesman if this is the same Mihajlo Vlaskovic in Chicago according to Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihajlo-vlaskovic-a6221b7

biggusdoggus wrote:

They initially refused to identify who the underlying creator was, claiming an NDA, but then lifted the NDA (how does one lift one's own NDA) to tell us it was Archon.

Just while I'm being picky, lifting an NDA is easy - it's essentially a contract between 2 companies saying what they can and can't discuss, so if the contract only prevented Mihajlo Vlaskovic from saying "It's Prodos", all Prodos need to do is release him from that contract. (Read Achon in place of Prodos if you prefer, I still call Snickers bars Marathons - if the ingredients are the same, the chocolate bar is the same )

perhaps a better way of putting it would be what kind of company starts a project by telling the marketing company in charge of product launch that they should not disclose the name of the company, and then having been found out, effectively announces themselves anyway?

You can tell btw, that 90% of posts and updates made by the creator have been written not by the creator/marketer, but by Jarek - ie Archon. Same writing style, same grammar errors.

and incidentally, there have been at least one, possibly more highly pro-Archon "backer" accounts that write with an identical style as well. Can't prove anything of course, but I call shenanigans.

It wouldn't even remotely surprise me to learn that not all of the 218k currently in the project is from legitimate backer sources.

Currently 77 out of 1663 backers have never backed a KS project before - not sure if that's an unusual %age or not (4.6%) - never having researched it before it feels high as a gut feeling, but I have no data to compare it to.

This one is now basically down to having only added backers the first two days - everything else has been eroded in the last two weeks!

I don't think I've ever seen a campaign with this type of activity - it's certainly an odd one!

richred_uk wrote:
Currently 77 out of 1663 backers have never backed a KS project before - not sure if that's an unusual %age or not (4.6%) - never having researched it before it feels high as a gut feeling, but I have no data to compare it to.

how did you find that stat?

I doubt it's that unusual - every backer has to have a first. I just hope they did their research and understand what they might be getting themselves into.

If you click on the "Community" link (next to Updates and Comments), you get a page that gives you the top supporting cities and countries - scroll down that and it gives you a number of new and returning backers.

richred_uk wrote:
If you click on the "Community" link (next to Updates and Comments), you get a page that gives you the top supporting cities and countries - scroll down that and it gives you a number of new and returning backers.

Thanks - I'd never paid attention to that link before. Interesting stuff.

biggusdoggus wrote:
It wouldn't even remotely surprise me to learn that not all of the 218k currently in the project is from legitimate backer sources.

It is possible although that probability doesn't make any sense. If SGs could get unlocked then locked if funding fell below an amount, that could make sense. From the tracking I've been following though, the changes don't look abnormal.

richred_uk wrote:
Currently 77 out of 1663 backers have never backed a KS project before - not sure if that's an unusual %age or not (4.6%) - never having researched it before it feels high as a gut feeling, but I have no data to compare it to.

The majority of those who however never backed are most likely $1 pledges to track how the campaign turns out and keep updated. There could be 77 of them with "high pledges" who might drop at the last minute in a method to be malicious. Given some statements over the years, I could see that happening as well.

Currently there are 1666 backers ($219,528)

1205 backers $99 ($111 US, $124 RoW) - $133755-$149420
168 backers $99 ($111 US, $124 RoW) - $18648-$20832
141 backers $249 ($261 US, $274 RoW) - $36801-$38634
14 backers $499 ($517 US, $530 RoW) - $7238-$7420
9 backers $999 ($1017 US, $1030 RoW) - $9153-$9270

1537 backer pledges are accounted for, which means the remaining 129 backers are at a $1 pledge level. Just based on the accounted pledges that means the min/max amount of possible funds (without accounting for add-ons) is $205,595 (US only) to $225,576 (RoW only). We know the backers aren't all US based (only 689 from US) so it isn't completely outside being legit pledges.

 Dark Severance wrote:

14 backers $249 ($261 US, $274 RoW) - $3654-$3836

Your spreadsheet has a data error in this line - this is the Painted Full Load pledge and should be $499 base cost, not $249, so this should 'soak up' about twice as much of the pledged values (making it seem more legit as a spread of costs - assuming that none of the high Painted pledges are Prodos Shills).

richred_uk wrote:
Your spreadsheet has a data error in this line - this is the Painted Full Load pledge and should be $499 base cost, not $249, so this should 'soak up' about twice as much of the pledged values (making it seem more legit as a spread of costs - assuming that none of the high Painted pledges are Prodos Shills).

Whoops you are correct. It isn't a spreadsheet, which would probably have prevented the error. I manually type it up each time I compare because I wasn't initially planning on tracking it as much as I was. It should be correct now.

 Dark Severance wrote:

richred_uk wrote:
Your spreadsheet has a data error in this line - this is the Painted Full Load pledge and should be $499 base cost, not $249, so this should 'soak up' about twice as much of the pledged values (making it seem more legit as a spread of costs - assuming that none of the high Painted pledges are Prodos Shills).

Whoops you are correct. It isn't a spreadsheet, which would probably have prevented the error. I manually type it up each time I compare because I wasn't initially planning on tracking it as much as I was. It should be correct now.

I assume everything is a spreadsheet as that's how I do everything (forget word, access, powerpoint, if it can't be expressed in excel it's not getting expressed by me

richred_uk wrote:
I assume everything is a spreadsheet as that's how I do everything (forget word, access, powerpoint, if it can't be expressed in excel it's not getting expressed by me

Yeah normally I would have probably put them in a spreadsheet. Originally it started as a post to explain how backers were leaving but funding level was still maintaining. I did it just in google docs so I can keep the information in one place between work and home. I normally clear them out. Then another discussion caused me to get another tally, then another and now I have more days worth of tracking than I had started with. I was going to put it all in a spreadsheet but since it was already created, didn't care that much... call it the lazy factor. LOL! I ended up getting way more bogged down in discussions than I originally planned as I'm just seeing how things develop.

 Alpharius wrote:

I don't think I've ever seen a campaign with this type of activity - it's certainly an odd one!

More like surreal. I can't stop watching this one. Won't touch it with a barge pole, but I keep looking at the comments, Kicktraq, drama, Prodos bizzarro posts and a tiny subset of rabid defenders (who've gone quiet lately) with fascination:




I think there are some important Kickstarter and general business lessons to be learned from this one...

 Artemis Black wrote:

 Warzone Resurrection wrote:

1) Origin of Customer Protection Act is Poland as the Invoice (contract) will be issued from Archon to each backer post pledge manager. Kickstarter is not providing any invoice to backers because they would be then accounted for not-delivering.

Invoice is a proof of payment. Invoice is an itemized bill for goods sold or services provided, containing individual prices, the total charge, and the terms.

What?

Warzone Resurrection / Archon / Prodos / Whoever wrote:As a manufacturer we have an access to Custom clearance system ECS. It means that every parcel we are shipping out is custom cleared by us in Poland. To explain in depth, 35% of the cost of shipping a parcel outside EU by courier like UPS for instance, is cost of custom clearance, we don’t have this costs as we do all the paperwork work by our self.

Also, what?

Normally I'm mocking you but I'm genuinely interested in what the hell you're on about in both of these.

.

I guess no answer to these. It does seem like both of these claims are total nonsense so I was hoping there was some cool loopholes I didnt know about :(

Yeah, I still question those claims. As I understand it, US commerce law applies to most if not all transactions being mailed to US destinations. To bring up another Kickstarter trainwreck, that's one of the major problems that might happen if Heroquest 25th ever stops being vaporware since they don't appear to have the rights to the Heroquest name in the US.