Crowdfunding Fraudsters: Life Is Strange 2


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Update: And the campaign has been shut down.

2a:  a person who is not what he or she pretends to be :impostor; also:  one who defrauds:cheat

Today’s Crowdfunding Fraudster comes to us from Kickstarter, for Life Is Strange 2. You may be thinking right now, “Connor, Life Is Strange was a completely legitimate game. It was published by Square Enix for crying out loud. How could a crowdfunding effort to make a sequel be fraudulent?”

The answer is simple: This campaign isn’t being run by developer Dontnod Entertainment, nor is it manned by publisher Square Enix. This campaign was started by a fan Scott Ashby, trying to raise twenty thousand dollars to persuade Dontnod to make the sequel a reality. According to the campaign page, there are two options should this be successfully funded: Give the money to Dontnod to fund the sequel or use the money to buy the rights to Life is Strange and hand it over to another developer to make said sequel.

Despite the money going to someone else to create the game, the campaign creator has already made some promises on how the game will be including 16 different endings, a musical mini-game, and other game features. Quite presumptive to think you can raise nowhere near the amount of money that such a game would require to develop, but to also hold said money ransom unless your demands are met. Whoever donates at the $1,000 level will be allowed to write the backstory for Principal Wells with every $1,000 donation after that being allowed to voice a character. Because that’s exactly what you want in a story, character plots that are essentially fanfiction and amateur voice actors.

So obviously the campaign is filled with as much ambition as it is lacking self awareness or a basic understanding of how the gaming industry works. Ashby does not have the rights to the game, is not making anywhere near enough money to buy said rights, can’t compel the developer anyway, and in some distant parallel universe where this campaign had any hope of succeeding, could simply walk away with twenty grand in his pocket and say that at least he tried.

Ultimately the sincerity of the campaign creator is irrelevant to the ultimate outcome: That backers will not see a return on their investment, and fans of the game could be tricked into thinking that this is somehow legitimate. The sooner that this project gets shut down, the better.

(Source: Kickstarter)

In Plain English: Bassett V. Electronic Arts Dismissed


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It’s been over a year since we last checked in on the curious case of Justin Bassett and Electronic Arts, so a brief history may be in order:

Justin Bassett sued Electronic Arts over the company shutting down their game servers even though the games are still available in stores with online play advertised on the box. EA attempted to take the case into arbitration, citing their EULA, and Bassett argued that the arbitration clause was not valid as it was added later on. EA argued that Bassett agreed to the new EULA when he attempted to log into the online servers. Last year, the judge sided with Electronic Arts and threw the case into arbitration.

As I said back then, we will probably never know what the final ruling was as arbitration results are almost always sealed to the public. What we do know is that, as of last month, the case has been dismissed with prejudice.

Plaintiff Justin T. Bassett (“Plaintiff”) and defendant Electronic Arts Inc., the parties to the above-captioned action, stipulate and agree, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), that Plaintiff hereby does and shall voluntarily dismiss the above-captioned action, and all of the claims within it, with prejudice.

What does that mean? Dismissal with prejudice bars Bassett from bringing an action on the same claim in the future.

Defiance Piling On Events This Month


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Trion Worlds is celebrating three years of Defiance with events aplenty this month. Starting April 1st and going through the 25th, players will be able to engage with the Midsummer Mutiny, Hulker Hell, New Frontier Harvest, Solstice Strike, and Colony Courtship events. Players are also invited to share their memories of the game on social media.

As part of the event, previous elite lockboxes and synergy crates are returning to the game store.

(Source: Defiance)

Daybreak Game Company Already Making Another Game


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You might be under the impression that Daybreak Game Company is facing tough times, given the layoffs, shutting off a large section of its library, and recent cancellation of Everquest Next, but don’t let that fool you: Daybreak is hiring. According to their official website, Daybreak is hiring for an unannounced title and is seeking a senior producer and a creative director.

There aren’t a whole lot of details, but judging from the experience required the game will be action-oriented and launch on PC and consoles. Given their recent history, it is very likely that this title will wind up on sale as an early access title.

(Source: Daybreak Game Company)

Test Wild Terra Free This Week


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Wild Terra is an upcoming MMO where players train and live on a map that generates as they explore, and the developers have opened up testing to everyone for the next week. From March 29th to April 5th, you’ll be able to download the client and give the game a try.

MMO Fallout will have more coverage on Wild Terra coming this week.

(Source: Wild Terra)

Trion Worlds Punishes Impersonation Scam, Community Explodes


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Trion Worlds has spent the better part of the past six or so months attempting to slowly detoxify the very virulent community whose actions they have actively coddled and defended as ‘in the spirit of the game,’ and that shift in management has come to a head once again with Trion reversing a trade scam against a high profile streamer during a charity event. The streamer was duped into trading expensive equipment to an imposter account during a charity stream for Doctors Without Borders, after which Trion reversed the trade and banned the imposter account.

Impersonating someone else, even if it’s by name, to separate someone from their hard earned goods is not allowed and has not been allowed in ArcheAge. In the past, there have been situations where a player impersonated another player and, in those situations, our Customer Service team has reversed the outcome of the scam no matter if it was items or gold.

Some of the anger seems to stem from the fact that the impersonation rule, while it has always existed, has admittedly not been publicized and may not even have been properly enforced until this recent incident. The majority of it, however, is coming from the ‘hardcore’ end of the community who view the idea of impersonating another player to defraud someone as fair game, with the usual attitude of ‘the victim deserved it for being stupid.’

We realize that this policy has not been made public in the past, but this high profile incident has made us realize that we need to publicly acknowledge and reinforce our stance on name impersonation within the game. This is not a new policy that was made simply for this stream — this is a policy that we as a company have had for the past year and beyond, and it is a policy that is referenced within our Terms of Use (11. Code of Conduct, Rule A.)

There are numerous false reports circulating that the rule did not exist before this event, and MMO Fallout has been able to confirm via archives of the terms of service that the rule has always been in place. Regardless of certain members of the community using wordplay, unaffiliated rules, and technical trickery as justification, it objectively was not allowed, even with ArcheAge’s lax stance on scams. The rule explicitly forbids creating a character with a name “belonging to another person with the intent to impersonate that person, including without limitation a “Game Master” or any other employee or agent of Trion.”

Still, there is plenty of valid criticism towards Trion Worlds for not bringing this rule to light until it happened to a high profile player, regardless of the fact that it existed prior to this incident.

(Source: ArcheAge)

[Not Massive] Fig’s Crowd Funding Platform Is Fading


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Psychonauts 2 raised more than $3 million in crowd funding using a new platform called Fig, one which Double Fine President Tim Schafer serves on the advisory board. More than twenty thousand people pooled their money together to make the sequel to 2005’s Psychonauts a reality, but did the success of a widely anticipated game bring lasting attention to the Fig platform? Judging from the followup campaigns, it doesn’t seem so.

And let’s be fair, Fig is still a very young platform, it still has a life ahead of it to blow up into a big platform for video game crowdfunding. For now, however, the platform is comprised of five campaigns overall. Psychonauts 2 and Outer Wilds were both successful in reaching their goal, however the latter only aimed for $125 grand and beat the mark by one thousand dollars. Anchors in the Drift, the third and last campaign to have ended, missed its goal by a wide margin: Just a fifth of the half a million for a free to play ARPG from the creators of Scribblenauts.

Fig’s other two remaining projects aren’t looking that great. The Rock Band 4 PC port, for which Harmonix wants $1.5 million up front, has ten days to go and just scratched half a million dollars. The other campaign, a video game based on the Jay & Silent Bob characters from film creator Kevin Smith, may see itself become the platform’s third successful campaign if it raises fifty grand in the next five days.

With the success of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, all sorts of third party groups are coming out of the woodwork with their own short-lived crowdfunding platforms, and if Fig wants to continue off of its early successes, it will need to keep the momentum going.

Brace For Death, Deadman Season 2 Begins


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Welcome to Deadman mode. On these worlds, you die.

RuneScape’s Deadman Mode has proven to be a rather successful spinoff to Old School, requiring players to stay on their toes as death means heavy losses in experience, inventory, and bank. To keep things exciting, Jagex began a seasonal Deadman mode, allowing players to level up over the course of three months with the top two thousand players gaining entry to the Deadman tournament servers, culminating in a deathmatch tournament whereby the winner goes home with ten grand in real money.

Well the first season has come and gone, and its victor has been crowned and will be receiving his money. Season 2 has begun, and all seasonal server characters have been reset. Players can log into the new seasonal servers and start grinding away.

As usual, players on seasonal deadman will enjoy boosted experience rates at the cost of heavy losses on death.

(Source: Old School)

Credit Card Fraud Hits Black Desert Online


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If you were looking to give the gift of cash shop items in Black Desert Online, you’re out of luck. Due to rampant credit card fraud, Black Desert Online will no longer allow cash shop items to be gifted. In a post on the official forums, Daum Games also announced that players purchasing from gold selling services will be “sanctioned accordingly.”

Due to abuse and credit card fraud by third parties (gold sellers and others) we will shut down the gifting feature in our cash shop. All players who purchased items/silver from those services will be inquired and sanctioned accordingly.

As a commodity that already finds itself in the grey area of the law, gold farmers and credit card fraud are two pieces that often come packaged together, using stolen cards to traffic in goods at no cost to themselves, with the funds inevitably reversed at the developer’s expense. The practice has been growing in selling CD keys purchased off of gaming websites with stolen credit cards, causing numerous developers to begin disabling associated keys.

(Source: Black Desert Online)

Indie MMO Revival Ends Development


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Indie sandbox MMO Revival has announced that development has ceased due to lack of funds.

Starting in the very new future, you will find that homes are no longer for sale through the Dunwich and Innsmouth section of our website and future patches to the client are, at least as of now, highly unlikely. I will never give up on Revival, and I know I’m not alone, but we just don’t have the resources at our disposal that we need, and the sacrifices necessary to acquire them don’t make much sense given our goal, here.

When we first set out to build Revival, we had access to expertise and resources that aren’t available today. Making up for their loss, be it as simple as lacking sufficient animators or as complicated as losing access to certain networking expertise, has been a costly affair, far more costly than we can honestly afford to bear. So, what does that mean? Is Revival completely dead?

Not particularly, no, just delayed indefinitely. Founders will still have access to their renovation kits, their properties, etc, with no intention of shutting those down for the foreseeable future. In addition, it looks like development will still continue on Revival in some fashion, even if it is unpaid and slow. Founders will also receive Steam keys for two other games, Nexuiz and Moving Hazards.

(Source: Revival)