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Cadwallon are making their own game and I'd honestly hope they abandon the recasting and jsut focus on their own product. I do agree that itsa rare case where the recasters are coming off better than the actual "firm" legit casting these models.

 ced1106 wrote:

Well, Stellar owns the license, and San Detour is the licensee but both companies are, more or less, owned / operated by the same people. Or are you referring to how Stellar originally got the license from Rackham?
.

The Sodapop Miniature set up. Where you run a KSer then pay a large amount of money from what was earned in licensing fees to yourself. Considering the accountant is the same guy that owns your IP via a shell company I think my original statement is true is spirit.

Rackham hasn't existed since it went bankrupt. Cyanide, the video game publisher, had owned the rights if I remember correctly (and were the ones that licensed it out to Legacy/CMoN) after they bought them during the bankruptcy but Stellar stated they bought the rights and the old masters (thus why the sold some of them off). While not a huge IP it's more then likely way more money then Stellar/San/Ludick could afford without some unknown investors or money that was supposed to go elsewhere that they shifted in hopes of making enough to pay back everything owed. Since Stellar is in China maybe they convinced some well off person(s) there to give them whatever amount needed? It's hard to really say how they got the money.

> The Sodapop Miniature set up. Where you run a KSer then pay a large amount of money from what was earned in licensing fees to yourself.

Whoops! Forgot that one. Thanks for reminding me!

https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/9wbzoe/super_dungeon_explore_legends_kickstarter_project/

Also, thanks for the Cyanide / Stellar info. Some links to kill time with...
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/confrontation-rackham-what-happened.717502/
https://confrontation-classic.backerkit.com/faq
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/673989/theyre-back
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/blog/381684.page

It's kind of sad reading the BBG post from 2014 about how Dust (via the Legacy label) CMoN and FFG (boardgames) being involved as a positive sign--which is understandable back then. That was right before the Duct and FFG fallout and the start of FFGs short attention span for games, and Dusts burning though partners and good will.

They have promised their backers so much for their dollar that a single dollar is all they have got from me. I am still waiting in the KS comments for these ardent supporters of old to point me towards a sane and feasible way to make a single reasonably sized mold for injecting plastic with less than 5K (not in bitcoins, obviously).

A shame, though...

If we are discussing whether SD is pulling a scam or just incompetent - there are a whole lot of things to consider. First - this is a company that has never produced a miniature (and is currently outsourcing the casting to multiple firms). They made claims that they would be able to produce the minis in plastic (an unknown kind of plastic) that would hold the same amount of detail as the original metals. That's either a lie, or they just really don't grasp the very basics of miniature production. Either may be true. They are now producing metal miniatures (which from their pictures do look good).

Sans Detour also has never really commented on the game they are selling. They linked the third edition rulebook on the KS page, but haven't talked about the basics of the faction abilities or how the game works. Their faction sets are nowhere near equal by any measure - though this may change with a new edition. Anything is possible I suppose. So when they went to make unit cards they decided to make a change and instead of listing abilities through text they would use symbols. This would allow for a single card to be used for multiple languages much easier. However, there are somewhere around 100 abilities, so I have no idea how you would begin to look one up for reference. That is most likely incompetence.

Next there was a recent pledge to communicate more frequently, with one update every two weeks. This happened exactly one time, and it has been since October 15 since an update. None of the news shared here has been mentioned by anyone at Sans Detour in the Kickstarter, though it certainly seems relevant. This could be incompetence, but based on how they have a history of shady business dealings (not paying Chaosium then starting a Kickstarter that got shut down because it continued to use IP from Chaosium), I think malice is more likely.

I'm a huge fan of Confrontation, I continue to play it with some regularity and they are my favorite minis to paint to this day. I want Confrontation to come back, but Sans Detour isn't qualified to do it and has a history of insanely shady business practices. There's probably a bit of both malice and incompetence going on, but I don't think they knew quite how much they had to know to get this off the ground enough for the scam to take hold and for them to ship cheap product right before they start another KS that would build off the assumed success of this one.

According to comments on kickstarter it seems that Josselin Moureau, Project Manager of Confrontation has said in a facebook's group of beta testers of resurrection that he has resigned from the project and from Sans Détour

Sounds like SD is falling apart if their project manager is jumping ship. Esp since small miniature firms means that he's likely doing a lot more than just project managing behind the scenes.


Of course that might just be Resurrection, however considering that SD took all that money for a fan-service release of models; then failed to actually make it in the material they said they would; its likely meant all money for Resurrection has vanished. Which is somewhat what I and others predicted a good while back. It was a real oddity that they'd run a KS for one game whilst saying they had background funds for a totally different version of the same game. It was another one of those warning signs that made you think either they've got someone rich bankrolling them; or they've got their numbers wrong.

Yep, I was worried that this might eventuate as it has, and my concerns have, unfortunately, become reality. They were on shaky ground from the start, with no real clear way of being able to supply what they had promised. The smart people either didn't back, or dropped out early before the game closed, the others have just been taken for a ride.

It's a shame to see Confrontation end out like this. They were one of my favourite miniature manufacturers, so to see them end up like they have is disappointing.

It's the end, Sans Détour is in judicial liquidation since 04/08/2020.

https://www.societe.com/societe/sans-detour-504290206.html

Didn't go with a bang, barely a wet fart.

Of course, nothing was announced so far. It's just people who found out by reading the information elsewhere.

RIP.

A huge shame for any who backed, but I'm not surprised. Considering that many of their other firms did exactly the same thing the big thing now will be if the licence comes up for sale (who knows those Ukrainian recasters might legit buy the licence now - though they've their own game now); or if they manage to keep repeating their old tricks of killing off one firm and starting another. A pattern which at some point surely has to get spotted by authorities and come to an end.

 Overread wrote:
(who knows those Ukrainian recasters might legit buy the licence now - though they've their own game now)

Since the license was always in the hands of Stellar (https://www.stellarlicencing.com/), that doesn't matter if Sans Détour disappeared. Stellar is not impacted by the liquidation.

And since its founder is Piotr's buddy...well, maybe they're not buddies anymore after this debacle, but I wouldn't count too much about getting the license in competent hands for cheap...

Rumors from french people said Sans Détour is already empty anyway or left with worthless garbage. There's nothing much to scavenge on its corpse.

Pretty much sure the backers are completely fethed up. There are no miniatures hidden in some secret storage room anywhere.

Considering how efficient they are with stripping companies of assets and closing and opening new ones its really hard to think that this is just incompetence.

I do feel badly for anyone who has lost money here.

The red flags were many, and really obvious, but I still almost pledged - I loved Confrontation and would love to see it return.

But now, it is almost as if the Confrontation game is cursed or something!

€403,575 raised here, plus whatever extra in the PM - last update on the KS page was in October... just awful...

Still, per KS T&C's, they've now got some explaining to do, right?!?

Boy Miniature Market is probably upset as well as it seams like they invested into the line as well.

This looked inevitable right from the get go. I would not be surprised if it was the plan all along, given the histories of the actors involved.

 Alpharius wrote:
€403,575 raised here, plus whatever extra in the PM - last update on the KS page was in October... just awful...

Still, per KS T&C's, they've now got some explaining to do, right?!?

Not sure if you're kidding. KS T&C will at best allow them to request an update explaining the situation with no enforcement if they don't (or just post BS). You're really just throwing your money into the wind and hoping that your rewards will arrive on a future gust.

Wasn't the amount significantly higher at one point? I remember red flags being raised during the campaign and the funding amount backsliding significantly with them paradoxically promising more to slow the descent but I only followed it peripherally.

Yeah, the writing was on the wall with this from Day One just like with the Heroquest crowdfunder.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Boy Miniature Market is probably upset as well as it seams like they invested into the line as well.

Were they foolish enough as business to put up a large sum of money up front sight unseen?

 warboss wrote:
Wasn't the amount significantly higher at one point? I remember red flags being raised during the campaign and the funding amount backsliding significantly with them paradoxically promising more to slow the descent but I only followed it peripherally.

Yeah, the writing was on the wall with this from Day One just like with the Heroquest crowdfunder.

Absolutely - they ended up with less funding than they got on Day 1. Total used to be 50% more than the final number, or viewed from the peak they lost 1/3rd. https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/

Yeah a lot of red flags were raised. Especially as they were talking about doing all this in plastic with just the KS funds alone and then also dumping all the models and making another whole set for a re-release of the game. Basically plans that just sounded really insane and like they would only have worked if they'd raked in millions to afford all those plastic moulds.

That and almost every subsidiary company they own/use/work with tends to end up folding. Far as anyone can see they are basically just opening companies; getting investment; ferreting the money away into other companies that friends/companions own and then killing off the core company. It's hard to give them benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to inexperience when issues were raised in the first weeks of funding and when they appear very well practised at this whole process of liquidation and ferreting away the money/assets.

 warboss wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
€403,575 raised here, plus whatever extra in the PM - last update on the KS page was in October... just awful...

Still, per KS T&C's, they've now got some explaining to do, right?!?

Not sure if you're kidding. KS T&C will at best allow them to request an update explaining the situation with no enforcement if they don't (or just post BS). You're really just throwing your money into the wind and hoping that your rewards will arrive on a future gust.

Wasn't the amount significantly higher at one point? I remember red flags being raised during the campaign and the funding amount backsliding significantly with them paradoxically promising more to slow the descent but I only followed it peripherally.

Yeah, the writing was on the wall with this from Day One just like with the Heroquest crowdfunder.

My Brother just finished up a successfully KSer and he was telling me last night was was surprised with his interactions with the KSer people. He said they're really clueless about how people use their platform and what people running campaigns actually want functionality wise. I mentioned they're pretty clueless about backers too. We came to the conclusion they don't really know why they're such a popular platform and don't want to change anything too much in fear of everyone just going somewhere else.

So, what you’re saying is that the system worked exactly as designed?

Any chance there will ever be legal consequences to this type of behavior?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So, what you’re saying is that the system worked exactly as designed?

Any chance there will ever be legal consequences to this type of behavior?

The problem is each person only has a small amount of money invested which is typically too small to make it worth going through legal channels. For many they'd have spent more than they lost just getting to a stage of trying to get the company to go to court let alone actually battling it out in court. Plus organising a class action is difficult; especially because it crosses international boarders. Again the costs just become too large and the potential rewards are low. In most cases when things fail its because the company has missmanaged or didn't have an income stream for when the project went over its deadlines etc... So basically even if you did win there isn't all that much left to get your money back from.

In very scam heavy situations the issue would be that it would be hard to ferret out where the money went and, again, whilst its a big sum of money, its small by professional levels.


Finally its hobby money. So this isn't peoples life investments or insurance or such; its their "play money" that they spent on the hobby. It's important to them, but its not life or death to them. So for many its easier to write it off than it is to go through the whole mess of going through the courts.


I suspect the only way it would ever get off the ground is if someone who was a backer is also a lawyer in the right field to actually just do the legwork themselves and get the ball rolling. Or if someone with significant personal finances wants to make a point and is willing to spend more to get a company to court just to make the point.



So in a way what makes KS work also acts as a sort of protection that, sadly, works for the benefit of those who might want to scam

The issue is that in such cases the only party with enough money for a legal solution would be Kickstarter itself, which doesn't really know what people are doing behind the scenes or whether something is an honest company suffering delays and unforeseen costs or a scammer just going about stealing money.

One way to help prevent those issues would be for Kickstarter to do background checks, but that just means you might be unable to get your project funded because you have no background in the area for example and are thus a liability, even if your campaign is adequately structured.

Essentially the only way to reduce this issue is to cut on potentially shady creators, throwing out many good people along as well. There is no perfect solution.

One of the things that I have thought when thinking about using crowd funding for future projects is precisely whether or not I would be able to deliver what I promised, but that is not always the case.

Aye a lot of the KS are run by people who have no or limited background and are using it specifically to start something. Or they have a background in one area (eg making a comic) and are using the KS to start up something in a new direction (books of the comic).

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Boy Miniature Market is probably upset as well as it seams like they invested into the line as well.

I read the KS comments, and MM supposedly would only buy the overstock. Since there's no overstock, MM isn't out any money.

Drew (Odinson) in the comments is good in providing information. If anyone really wants to know what's going on, I recommend reading it.

 ced1106 wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Boy Miniature Market is probably upset as well as it seams like they invested into the line as well.

I read the KS comments, and MM supposedly would only buy the overstock. Since there's no overstock, MM isn't out any money.

Drew (Odinson) in the comments is good in providing information. If anyone really wants to know what's going on, I recommend reading it.

Thank you.

In this particular instance, I don't know anything about the specific deal between Miniatures Market and Sans Detour, and I think the person who originally posted that was speculating.

But it is probable. Retailers generally don't pay up front for pre-orders because they need to constantly use their sales to purchase new stock (so they can't spend money on something that doesn't go on the shelves right away). Not paying full price up front is the main feature of CMON's retail pledge program for this reason.

So it is possible that Miniatures Market did pay a portion up front. I've been told that Confrontation was a big deal in the local scene for MM, so it isn't impossible that they talked themselves into attempting to bail out the game.

 warboss wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
€403,575 raised here, plus whatever extra in the PM - last update on the KS page was in October... just awful...

Still, per KS T&C's, they've now got some explaining to do, right?!?

Not sure if you're kidding. KS T&C will at best allow them to request an update explaining the situation with no enforcement if they don't (or just post BS). You're really just throwing your money into the wind and hoping that your rewards will arrive on a future gust.

Yeah, I was mostly kidding.

Sans Detour is *supposed* to know detail where the money went, but, yeah, probably not going to happen.

Still, there have been cases in the past where legal means were brought to bear against KS campaigns that went belly up like this... who knows?

(No breath holding though please! )

 Overread wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So, what you’re saying is that the system worked exactly as designed?

Any chance there will ever be legal consequences to this type of behavior?

The problem is each person only has a small amount of money invested which is typically too small to make it worth going through legal channels. For many they'd have spent more than they lost just getting to a stage of trying to get the company to go to court let alone actually battling it out in court. Plus organising a class action is difficult; especially because it crosses international boarders. Again the costs just become too large and the potential rewards are low. In most cases when things fail its because the company has missmanaged or didn't have an income stream for when the project went over its deadlines etc... So basically even if you did win there isn't all that much left to get your money back from.

In very scam heavy situations the issue would be that it would be hard to ferret out where the money went and, again, whilst its a big sum of money, its small by professional levels.


Finally its hobby money. So this isn't peoples life investments or insurance or such; its their "play money" that they spent on the hobby. It's important to them, but its not life or death to them. So for many its easier to write it off than it is to go through the whole mess of going through the courts.


I suspect the only way it would ever get off the ground is if someone who was a backer is also a lawyer in the right field to actually just do the legwork themselves and get the ball rolling. Or if someone with significant personal finances wants to make a point and is willing to spend more to get a company to court just to make the point.



So in a way what makes KS work also acts as a sort of protection that, sadly, works for the benefit of those who might want to scam

Ah- legal action against Kickstarter creators. Here's how this goes:

- If the local legal authorities decide that a criminal case has merit, they can press charges. This is what happened with The Doom That Came to Atlantic City. There are many reasons why this might not happen, though.

- Backers can persue a civil lawsuit against the company, but I haven't yet seen one get off the ground. The closest was against Prodos, but apparently Prodos moved offices out of the UK before it could come to fruition.

- With the company out of business, people they owe are out of luck. There's really no company left to sue for damages.

Usually this only affects business partners, but it happens to customers in traditional retail models as well. I mean, if you had a pre-order or gift card with Mediaplay, Sears or K-Mart when they went out of business, you were out of luck. A little closer to home are the customers of New Wave Mail Order or Maelstrom Games who never got what they were owed.

Obviously, Kickstarter creats a situation where this is all more visible, but it isn't like this never happened before.


- Fixing crowd funding to be a safer place for backers seems like it would necessarily make it a less friendly place for new creators and defeat its purpose of eliminating gatekeeping. At least I don't see a way to have one without the other.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 ced1106 wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Boy Miniature Market is probably upset as well as it seams like they invested into the line as well.

I read the KS comments, and MM supposedly would only buy the overstock. Since there's no overstock, MM isn't out any money.

Drew (Odinson) in the comments is good in providing information. If anyone really wants to know what's going on, I recommend reading it.

Thank you.

In this particular instance, I don't know anything about the specific deal between Miniatures Market and Sans Detour, and I think the person who originally posted that was speculating.

But it is probable. Retailers generally don't pay up front for pre-orders because they need to constantly use their sales to purchase new stock (so they can't spend money on something that doesn't go on the shelves right away). Not paying full price up front is the main feature of CMON's retail pledge program for this reason.

So it is possible that Miniatures Market did pay a portion up front. I've been told that Confrontation was a big deal in the local scene for MM, so it isn't impossible that they talked themselves into attempting to bail out the game.

My speculation was based off of the KSer update https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2540914 Even your comment in that update states that MM probably paid some amount for the boxes they reserved. There's no way SD would make a big deal out of a no cash upfront reservation on non-existing product.

Lets also not forgot MM made a big deal about them having the confrontation minis at their gencon booth last year. They had a webpage, no longer around nor on the wayback machine, all about them. Also MM does distribution too and distributors will sometimes pay in advance for pre-orders. I don't think they paid SD a hundred grand for those boxes but they gave them something I'm sure. Even letting SD use their name is a form of capital that SD could use to get more orders.

You make some good points. It is entirely possible that Miniatures Market is out a lot of money over this.