Burning the good will candle at both ends.
Laniatus, LLC is based in Boulder, Colorado which is fitting because you’d quicker get water out of a rock than find much remaining good will in the wake of the launch of Magic 2 Master’s Kickstarter campaign. A Kickstarter campaign that I should note is going swimmingly, provided your definition of swimmingly involves drowning yet somehow still being on fire.
You may have noticed MassivelyOP and MMORPG posted notices about fake testimonials on the game’s Kickstarter, and that’s because the Kickstarter launched with fake testimonials. Now Laniatus has come forward and apologized, noting these were placeholder texts and not meant to go live with the campaign. Whether you choose to believe them on that explanation is your prerogative.
Personally I choose to believe the explanation that the testimonials were posted by mistake. Why? Why not? Is it really that hard to believe that this was the result of incompetence rather than malice? The Hero Engine eats, breathes, and sweats incompetence out of every pore and has done pretty much nothing else for thirteen years. Just ask how that Directx11 development is going, or how the engine demands a much higher cut than any other engine and provides so much less.
But as is often the case, the folks decided to take a bad situation and make it stupid by complaining about the news coverage of the fake testimonials.
“Only 4-5 people saw the page. It is MOP’s mistake to damage the brand image by reporting this. We have already fixed it and removed it, it could have been reported instead of reporting it. Anyway, it only worked for some people, that’s the only thing I’m upset about.”
Let’s chat for a second; Magic 2 Master doesn’t have a brand to damage. Magic 2 Master is the soon to be failed attempt to cobble together a paltry $26 grand after a failed attempt in 2020 to do funding via Patreon following a who cares existence back in the late aughts. It assumes way too much about the game’s potential success looking like a 2005 dollar store Korean cash grinder built on an engine the industry didn’t so much leave behind as it never bothered acknowledging.
Chatter on the Discord has become a truly embarrassing mess of whining, pointing fingers, and several parties fighting out over who has actual control over the Hero Engine and who is doing an illegal and trying to profit via fraud and deception. Which seems like fighting over ownership of a toolshed filled with brined rat corpses and spare nickels, but that might just be my perspective as a lurker.
This is the closest we’ll get to a video game business episode of Jerry Springer. Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
MMO Fallout 