Prodos-Ninja Division unpaid games pg 4

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.

**JohnHwangDD**

overtyrant wrote:
Wait what?? I was wondering why my RK was taking so darn long to get delivered!! I've not read the last number of KS updates. I best go find them and have a read.

SPM/ND stopped doing KS Updates, because they have zero progress to share.

**overtyrant**

Thanks for the update peeps, hopefully we will hear something but from what I've been reading on here and the other threads here I'm not hopefull!

**JohnHwangDD**

We have an Update!

Selected highlights:

"Soda Pop Miniatures" wrote: Breaking Radio Silence

February 18, 2019

Boise, ID.
Ninja Division Company Update

It broke our hearts to let the majority of our incredible staff go at the end of 2018. Ninja Division is currently staffed by its three owners (who are off salary) and a sales manager who continue to work towards the successful reorganization of Ninja Division and pursue Kickstarter fulfillment options.

With staff layoffs, we are unable to individually respond to all email and social media posts we receive, and our time is best spent pursuing all available options for the continuance of the brands we all love.

Ninja Division would like to request that backers from all of our outstanding projects direct your questions and inquiries to us. Our outside partners are not able to service refunds, returns, or ship your product.

Super Dungeon

the Super Dungeon Kickstarter project was restructured
This restructuring of the project increased development time, development costs, manufacturing costs, and future shipping costs.

Super Dungeon then suffered an additional delay in March 2017 when the lead designer for Super Dungeon developed health problems which cut work availability for over six months.

As of now, Super Dungeon is 95% complete and production ready, requiring only finalization and layout of the Legends core game.

Relic Knights

All sculpts, including non-Kickstarter Void Break units, are sculpted and ready for production with the exception of Relic Knight Zineda.

Starfinder Masterclass

To date, Ninja Division has manufactured and delivered over 28,000 miniatures to backers but has a great many more to complete. All sculpts are fully re-engineered and ready for production.

Way of the Fighter

Only models, which are not required for gameplay, are outstanding. Production of all non-Super Dungeon crossover miniatures is 50% complete. All remaining sculpts are complete and ready for production.

Financial Disclosure

The Cost Overrun chart below illustrates the revenue collected by Ninja Division through crowdsourced funding, the costs Ninja Division has spent to date, and the total costs required for completion of the entire project through to delivery.

Questions and Answers

Over the past months, we have received many questions and want to provide answers to the most common ones we hear that were not addressed above.

Q: Is Ninja Division bankrupt/out of business?

No. Ninja Division continues to operate and pursue all available avenues to continue all our brands and provide backers with their rewards.

Q: Will I receive my rewards?

We have not given up. Every day we work towards the goal of delivering backers rewards and the revitalization of the brands and products we have spent a decade creating.

Looking Ahead

Despite our current difficulties, Ninja Division continues to doggedly pursue any and all avenues we can to get products to backers and bring new products to market featuring the brands our customers love. To that end, we are currently working under consultation to reorganize Ninja Division in order to better position it for success and secure investment.

As we proceed with our reorganization we have had partners and fans with operational, business, and financial acumen help us tremendously. If you have a professional skill set and passion in those areas, we would encourage you to reach out as we are working across various stages of consultation to repair components of our operation. As a bicameral entity, our business has sometimes been separated from our creative skill sets, and this realization makes us not too proud to seek professional assistance to ensure a stable and positive growth into the future.

Once we have concrete information regarding the company, new production, and fulfillment we will post another update. We thank you for taking the time to read through this lengthy announcement, as well as your continued patience.

Go Ninja Go!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sodapopminiatures/super-dungeon-explore-legends/posts/2420163

If you cut through it:
* SPM can't afford any staff; OTOH, they have no product to sell, so that doesn't matter.
* SPM decided to rework the SDE:L project with no concept of delivery or cost, just burning cash on hand
* ALL 4 KS projects are ready to produce, if they just had the ~$1.2M required to press the buttons, but...
* SPM doesn't even have the ~$50k required to complete WotF (minis production & delivery)!
* SPM/ND hasn't yet filed for bankruptcy, pretending a miracle will occur

If you just want the three key points:
* SPM is a "zombie" company
* SPM has ~$2.5M in liabilities
* SPM has <$50k cash on hand
They are functionally bankrupt because they cannot pay the bills that are due, and nobody is coming out to save them.

But don't worry, SPM is still working on getting you your rewards! Honest!

**Col Hammer**

Go Ninja Go!

No, wait, why am I laughing?

**TheSecretSquig**

Added to the above:
* None of the Charts included the cash they took from the Pledge Managers. Only shows the KS collected funds, so where did all the additional funds go?
* SPM took the "Shipping" cost from backers because the Product was ready to ship. This update confirms nothing was ready to ship. Where did all the shipping funds go because they had nothing to ship?
* Royalty Fee's which ND/SPM pay to themselves (they are the same Company).
* This update is a cut down version from what they have sent to their creditors. Again, lack of transparency with their backers.

Archon Studios who produce all of SPM's resins have already stated that Relic Knights 2 will not be delivered. It's 100% complete and sitting in their warehouse in Poland. Unfortunately, they've not been paid for it. Tax and VAT work differently in Poland, it's due in the next Tax period after issue of an invoice, not when they recieve the ££££. So invoice had been issued, Archon owe the Tax bill. The only way around this is to issue a 'Bad Invoice', but they can only do that if the owing company, SPM, declares themselves Bankrupt. Highly likey this will all be destroyed. They are also owed for the Starfinder Production.

**Monkeysloth**

They're just trying to find a buyer for their IPs then run. If they declare bankruptcy they can't get the payout from selling said IP as that money will go to creditors. But there's no way anyone will buy the IPs with this much baggage (even though a buyer could buy an IP and not have to follow through on the KSer or be held responsbile for it's delivery) as the backlash would destroy any value.

SPM/ND really are run by idiots.

**JohnHwangDD**

Col Hammer wrote:
Go Ninja Go!

No, wait, why am I laughing?

Better than "SPARKLEBURST!!!"

**Gallahad**

"We are seriously crossing our fingers so hard that it will start raining money so we can send you guys your products!"-Ninja Division

**Monkeysloth**

Well at least they haven't gone the "by non-controlling stock in our company" that another boardgame KSer did last year to get the funds to finish.

So I guess we have more entertainment to look forwards too with they do that or a pateron. $500/mo to get a 10% discount on our webstore.

**angel of death 007**

It's easy for them to look back at their failures and know why they failed. They list no path in which to correctly go forward. I would say it would be time for a hail mary but they can't even afford to field the team let alone the quarterback to throw it.

I look for them to pull the plug, they painted themselves into a corner with no possible way out.

**jake**

At this point I think their plan is to stall until everyone just forgets (which won't happen) or hope that someone buys their IP and they can slip away into the night (which seems unlikely). I don't expect they'll ever admit that the project is failed and won't be delivered.

As a side note, as a game designer I'd love to be on their development team. $500,000 to develop Relic Knights post Kickstarter (after claiming during the Kickstarter that the game was nearly finished with development)? Either their developers are by far the best paid in the industry or they're lying about development costs.

**lord_blackfang**

Lots of pretty language but nothing about how they intend to salvage things.

Best option for backers would be to sink this gakshow ASAP so Prodos can maybe get the IP as part of their payout.

**jake**

Someone on another thread asked why people had funded Relic Knights after the first Kickstarter was a disaster, and with SDE still undelivered at the time. Looking back, its interesting to see what a good job ND did of glossing over fears and convincing everyone that this time would be different. Including me. I had been an early player of SDE, pre-rodering the original game. I also had some of the old resin Relic Knights models. I had gone in on the Forgotten King Kickstarter, and even though it was late I was pretty satisfied with the whole thing. So when the first Relic Knights kickstarter came around I convinced several of my friends to go in on it, and between the 4 of us we spent about $1300. It was so disappointing to get out stuff (very late) and to find that it was super low quality, with most of the models being so poorly cast that they didn't even have faces. After that we all decided not to support ND anymore. But...

When Relic Knights 2 came around I foolishly decided to give it a look. I liked the designs, I liked the rules and it seemed like, maybe ND had learned from their mistakes. In fact, they said so, and talked about how development was nearly done and many of the models were ready to go. It was easy to forget the previous Kickstarter and instead remember how much fun I had with SDE. It was easy to think that ND had learned their lesson, and perhaps the previous problems had really been the fault of CMON and other partners.

I should have known better. We all should have. And its not as if there weren't people warning us. But one of the things ND does well is convincing people that they're doing the best they can, and that they just need another chance. Thats even the message in this latest update. "We're doing the best we can, now be quiet and just wait."

I'm a big believer in Kickstarter, and I use it to produce my own games and comics, but no one has abused Kickstarter more than ND has, and its really disappointing that they've soured so many people on the idea of crowd funding.

**Agamemnon2**

jake wrote:
As a side note, as a game designer I'd love to be on their development team. $500,000 to develop Relic Knights post Kickstarter (after claiming during the Kickstarter that the game was nearly finished with development)? Either their developers are by far the best paid in the industry or they're lying about development costs.

I think at this point, it's a given they're lying, and have been lying, about everything. They are thieves and liars.

**lord_blackfang**

Hm. I'm actually happy with the first RK kickstarter. Sure, at the time it was annoying that it was a year late and some minis were poor, but it was the first generation of tabletop kickstarters and it later turned out this was the norm for all KS projects. The game itself was good and innovative and everything promised was actually delivered. Soda Pop even replaced one of the exclusive Penny Arcade promos for me that was missing an arm eventhough I complained more than a year after delivery.

**Skinnereal**

I have nothing in this, having backed any of it. But, I have been following from afar...

Can they not cut back to the bare-bones of each product, ship the most basic packs out, and top up with add-ons and stretch goals later?
Sure, it would make shipping more expensive, but at least people would have something.

Or, are they too-far-gone even to manage that?

**parakuribo**

So in other words, no one will see ANY Relic Knight figures while the only way to play SDE is now Arcadia Quest, huh?

**Krinsath**

Skinnereal wrote:
I have nothing in this, having backed any of it. But, I have been following from afar...

Can they not cut back to the bare-bones of each product, ship the most basic packs out, and top up with add-ons and stretch goals later?
Sure, it would make shipping more expensive, but at least people would have something.

Or, are they too-far-gone even to manage that?

It would appear they don't have 50k on hand to finish the least of the projects, and that would likely be an amount of similar scope to the shipping costs for some of the others.

Also they don't actually have much in-hand to ship. From my reading Prodos has manufactured everything they were supposed to and it's sitting in Poland but I doubt Prodos would be amenable to dribs and drabs of product being paid for; they likely want the job lot gone. So as I believe JohnHDD summarized, they have no money with which to get their product, thus they have no product to sell with which to generate money, which they would need to acquire the product in the first place. They're basically waiting for someone to donate sufficient money as an "investment" it seems, which seems more than slightly unlikely unless they're friends with a billionaire looking for a losing business venture to get a tax write-off from.

Further, the claim that they spent more than $596K on SDE's development seems a bit farcical since based on their explanation, that does not include tooling and production of the miniatures. As was opined, that would be some impressively paid developers. Similarly they claim in excess of $278K spent on Relic Knight's artists and developers, with not a dime spent on production. This is based on the amounts raised by each KS, multiplied by the given percentage and based on the premise that the "Costs to date" column exceeds the funds collected column. To say that they spent in excess of three-quarters of a million dollars without getting a single mold or figure made is either untrue or a sign of serious incompetence in either planning or recording costs. Could be a combination, but those numbers just do not sit right with me.

Are there those with experience in the development process who can comment if those numbers are anything close to reasonable or just a way to hide gross mismanagement of finances?

**DaveC**

One of the sculptors posted in the comments that they were paid $350-$450 per chibi mini and $650-$800 per boss depending on complexity. Even when you add in concept art, final art, design and layout etc. I can’t see how they’ve spent close to $600k without having produced any physical product yet.

**LunarSol**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Hm. I'm actually happy with the first RK kickstarter. Sure, at the time it was annoying that it was a year late and some minis were poor, but it was the first generation of tabletop kickstarters and it later turned out this was the norm for all KS projects. The game itself was good and innovative and everything promised was actually delivered. Soda Pop even replaced one of the exclusive Penny Arcade promos for me that was missing an arm eventhough I complained more than a year after delivery.

I was disappointed with RK1.0, no doubt. In part though, it just came out when Warmachine was at its peak, so getting people to play wasn't really on my radar anyway and the rules didn't wow me so... meh. Disappointed, but I wasn't surprised given prior experience with SDE's "great in theory not quite in practice" gameplay. I skipped SPM for a while, including Forgotten King, which.... ended up being pretty successful and reinvigorated my interest in SDE. It wasn't perfect, but as a co-op it was super fixable and really fun to run with the family. I ended up picking up a lot of it at retail and really wished I'd been in on the KS, so when the Legends KS came around...

**ced1106**

How much is Prodos owed? If Prodos was counting on the ND money to help fund *its* projects... house of cards, anyone??

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

they've not said, but they've claimed that it won't effect them except for slowing down some of their internal development in the last round of statements and counterstatements several months back

(but that was before this tax bill situation so what happens if they end up having to pay it, and how much it is who knows)

**jake**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Hm. I'm actually happy with the first RK kickstarter. Sure, at the time it was annoying that it was a year late and some minis were poor, but it was the first generation of tabletop kickstarters and it later turned out this was the norm for all KS projects. The game itself was good and innovative and everything promised was actually delivered. Soda Pop even replaced one of the exclusive Penny Arcade promos for me that was missing an arm eventhough I complained more than a year after delivery.

You may have been lucky. A lot of backers go really poor quality miniatures. we were stuck with over $1000 worth of stuff that looked like it had been melted with a hair dryer.

**Kid_Kyoto**

ced1106 wrote:
How much is Prodos owed? If Prodos was counting on the ND money to help fund *its* projects... house of cards, anyone??

You mean we might not get Space Crusaders?!?!

**TheAuldGrump**

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
ced1106 wrote:
How much is Prodos owed? If Prodos was counting on the ND money to help fund *its* projects... house of cards, anyone??

You mean we might not get Space Crusaders?!?!

Oh, lordy! I keep trying to blot those models from my memory! Female space marines with terminator style legs and arms, but nekkid bewbs....

The Auld Grump

**Nostromodamus**

But remember they have energy shields that protect the bewbs so they can Rusade around without fear of jubbly-related injuries.

**LunarSol**

jake wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
Hm. I'm actually happy with the first RK kickstarter. Sure, at the time it was annoying that it was a year late and some minis were poor, but it was the first generation of tabletop kickstarters and it later turned out this was the norm for all KS projects. The game itself was good and innovative and everything promised was actually delivered. Soda Pop even replaced one of the exclusive Penny Arcade promos for me that was missing an arm eventhough I complained more than a year after delivery.

You may have been lucky. A lot of backers go really poor quality miniatures. we were stuck with over $1000 worth of stuff that looked like it had been melted with a hair dryer.

It REALLY varied depending on the faction. Early, soft, PVC, so a lot of mold shrinkage meant that bigger models held up better than the smaller ones and some of their scaling was iffy. I got the pirates, knights, and some of the student stuff. The students were generally small and lacked detail, particularly on the faces. Some were hilariously tiny but SPM fixed that. The base knight unit was a mess of tons of tiny parts and were why I gave up on assembly rather quickly. The pirates were overall pretty good though, with really only Squall being a notably poor figure. A few suffer from being obviously beginner sculpts (never daring to cross into the 3rd dimension) but even the small based stuff was pretty good. I focused on these guys when we recently started playing and.... not too bad really. The spec ops and Noh were also fine from what I played against. Haven't seen much of the racers in person.

**Monkeysloth**

LunarSol wrote:
jake wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
Hm. I'm actually happy with the first RK kickstarter. Sure, at the time it was annoying that it was a year late and some minis were poor, but it was the first generation of tabletop kickstarters and it later turned out this was the norm for all KS projects. The game itself was good and innovative and everything promised was actually delivered. Soda Pop even replaced one of the exclusive Penny Arcade promos for me that was missing an arm eventhough I complained more than a year after delivery.

You may have been lucky. A lot of backers go really poor quality miniatures. we were stuck with over $1000 worth of stuff that looked like it had been melted with a hair dryer.
It REALLY varied depending on the faction. Early, soft, PVC, so a lot of mold shrinkage meant that bigger models held up better than the smaller ones and some of their scaling was iffy. I got the pirates, knights, and some of the student stuff. The students were generally small and lacked detail, particularly on the faces. Some were hilariously tiny but SPM fixed that. The base knight unit was a mess of tons of tiny parts and were why I gave up on assembly rather quickly. The pirates were overall pretty good though, with really only Squall being a notably poor figure. A few suffer from being obviously beginner sculpts (never daring to cross into the 3rd dimension) but even the small based stuff was pretty good. I focused on these guys when we recently started playing and.... not too bad really. The spec ops and Noh were also fine from what I played against. Haven't seen much of the racers in person.

I bought a bunch from MM last black Friday and I can agree. Outside of one of the hardcases (bomb people) in the pirate faction everything was pretty decent quality considering they weren't sculpted for PVC. I'm sure there are plenty of bad ones out there as the female from that pirate set had no face across 3 models but the ones I got would have been pretty good back when the first Relic Knights came out.

**lord_blackfang**

I went all in on everything but the Noh (ogre guys) and by far the most jarring fault was that even within a faction, some figures had Infinity like slender proportions and others were as chunky as 90s GW plastics. Softness of facial detail I put down to anime faces being flat as a matter of course. I put everything together and some of the big Knights are still some of my favorite minis.

**Grot 6**

Am I to understand it that there is still more from the KS to be released from Super Dungeon Explore?