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[Xgamer4]

Your first link talks about legal action against a campaign that, apparently, literally took the money and ran, then lied about it. That's very different from That Which Sleeps.

Your second link is press about Kickstarter updating its ToS. Great, sure, but not really relevant.

Your third link is actually notable, but caveats being it was a default judgement, and the actual restitition was only $668. There's an additional $54000 in there, but that's legal fees ($23,183) and penalties for violating the state Consumer Protection Act ($31,000). And that was 2.5 years ago without, as far as I can tell, Washington filing anymore suits.

So, sure, the FTC pursued someone for not even trying, and Washington state got a default judgement on the one suit they filed. So other than "it might happen", I'm not sure you've established what you wanted to.

[ZeroGravitas]

Your first link talks about legal action against a campaign that, apparently, literally took the money and ran, then lied about it. That's very different from That Which Sleeps.

 

[Zangi]

Your first link talks about legal action against a campaign that, apparently, literally took the money and ran, then lied about it. That's very different from That Which Sleeps.

 

Keyword is 'ran'. 
But hey, I'm no lawyer or anything.

Seriously though, ya'll should just go ahead and sue him if ya'll really think it should be done.

[Xgamer4]

Your first link talks about legal action against a campaign that, apparently, literally took the money and ran, then lied about it. That's very different from That Which Sleeps.

 

Keyword is 'ran'. 
But hey, I'm no lawyer or anything.

Seriously though, ya'll should just go ahead and sue him if ya'll really think it should be done.

Yeah, exactly. The big thing was that the creator spent a year and a half saying production delays were happening, he's working, etc. But in reality he used it to finance an unrelated move, projects completely unrelated to the project, and other definitively-unrelated things. The creator didn't even try, essentially.

The videos alone are proof Josh has done *something*. The UI change between the Kickstarter and the videos shows a lot of work just on its own.

[Serenseven]

Well, regardless of if the game itself appears, the metagame has been a resounding success: This project has induced varying degrees of madness in nearly everyone who has come into more than casual contact with it.

Damiac, you are missing the point: There are those of us who long ago made peace with the fact that our money is gone, and are uninterested in revenge or even justice. It's a sunk cost to me, spent over 3-1/2 years ago. What I want instead is to ensure that if Josh does not finish the game, someone gets the opportunity to do so instead of TWS disappearing forever. That someone could be a publisher; it could be an open source community; hell if he wanted to give it to me as the third-most-involved person in the project behind himself and Fenicks, I'd take it, if only to be a caretaker for it until I could find it a more suitable home.

Whether TWS arose in fraudulent circumstances or not is simply irrelevant to this line of reasoning.

Suppose as a hypothetical that there is no working AI behind these latest videos, that this is still a scripted exercise. There is still, at minimum, a very pretty UI interface in Unity, a truckload of lore and flavor text, a metric fuckton of art and sound assets, at least some mechanism (the Locations' stats vary from turn to turn, Challenges progress and resolve, so something minimal is going on there even if the main AI is absent), and enough remaining discussions and posts from Josh to the official forums and elsewhere to determine how the game was intended to work.

It doesn't matter whether Josh created these things with a pure heart or with nefarious motives. The fact is, they demonstrably exist, and someone who had all these things, and knew how to code the AI, could finish the game. It might take a very long time, depending on whether it was an individual coder with a day job working on TWS on the side (which for all we know might be the current state of TWS) or whether an actual publisher got involved and threw a lot of resources at it.

Suing Josh would instead tie all these assets up in court. What happens then I do not know, but I do know while they're trapped Josh likely wouldn't be able to give or sell them to anyone, and it's unlikely he'd work on the game while waging a court battle over it. So at the bare minimum, suing him will only delay the game at best, and (more likely) finish off any chance of it ever existing as a finished product at worst.

So it's better - at least for backers more interested in maximizing the chance the game eventually exists in some form than in getting revenge/justice - to simply wait and see what happens, go on about our lives in the lengthy intervals between videos, and scrutinize said videos (or not) as they do appear as our own level of interest moves us (or not).

[Damiac]

That's fine. You're not the only backer, there are some others who posted here who do mind that lost money, and aren't willing to just let it go because maybe someday modders will make something good out of this.

You want whatever you can get out of this project, and believe trying to reclaim your lost money would interfere with that.  Fine, although I think you'd do just as well just taking the various loose descriptions of a game and making your own.  But neither of us knows how many 'assets' exist for this game, so no real point arguing that further.

Your position is fine. You're entitled to it, after all.  But you're not here telling people who are annoyed at what happened to "Get over it" and "Technically he's allowed to just take the money as long as he posts something once every 3 years"

So yeah, you point out the duality in the backers.  Some want whatever they can get of "That which sleeps" and some don't want this guy to get away with fraud, and as you point out they might have conflicting goals.  You explained your position logically, attacked nobody, that's fine.  It's better than fine really, it's the epitome of what this whole 'internet' thing could do for large scale discussions.  There should be a discussion between people like you and people who want some measure of justice.  You people are the only relevant parties at this point. 

The people who want to tell people that they aren't entitled to anything are just flat wrong, as spelled out by Kickstarter itself, as implied by the 'reward tier' structure, and as made obvious by the fact that it's how this whole economy thing has always worked.  Pay money for stuff, get stuff. No stuff? Gimme my money back.  The fraud is just extra icing on the breach of contract cake. 

[Egan_BW]

Let me just be selfish here (as always) and say that I want to see more of whatever it is Josh is working on, and suing his ass is a perfectly good way of making sure that this dies permanently. So don't do that.

[Retropunch]

All very valid points from Severn, Xgamer, Zangi and forsaken.

To add to it though, Kickstarter DOES have risks. It's investment - you have no idea what the final project will look like or if it'll make it. 9% of all projects don't deliver what they're supposed to when they're funded (https://www.kickstarter.com/fulfillment). That's quite a big number statistically. If the money was so precious to you in the first place, you shouldn't have put it in an investment scheme - you should have waited till it came out. Whilst it's a tired cliche - it's true.

Treat it as a sunk cost and a lesson on investment, don't try (and 99% fail) to exact revenge just to teach him a lesson. That lesson has been learned - he'll never get a kickerstarter going again, never get a job in the industry and it'll probably haunt him for the rest of his business life.

[Damiac]

...It's investment - you have no idea what the final project will look like or if it'll make it. 9% of all projects don't deliver what they're supposed to when they're funded (https://www.kickstarter.com/fulfillment). That's quite a big number statistically. If the money was so precious to you in the first place, you shouldn't have put it in an investment scheme - you should have waited till it came out. Whilst it's a tired cliche - it's true.

It's not an investment. https://www.harvestreturns.com/blog/2017/7/25/how-equity-crowdfunding-is-different-from-kickstarter

There are two major types of crowdfunding: donation-based crowdfunding like Kickstarter or GoFundMe, and investment, or equity crowdfunding.

Try to remember, this game took pre-orders as well, so while I don't think your kickstarter argument holds water, it's also kind of irrelevant. But here's kickstarter's position on whether the creator owes the backers anything:

When a project is successfully funded, the creator is responsible for completing the project and fulfilling each reward. Their fundamental obligation to backers is to finish all the work that was promised. Once a creator has done so, they’ve fulfilled their obligation to their backers.

 At the same time, backers must understand that Kickstarter is not a store. When you back a project, you’re helping to create something new — not ordering something that already exists. There’s a chance something could happen that prevents the creator from being able to finish the project as promised. If a creator is absolutely unable to complete the project and fulfill rewards, they must make every reasonable effort to find another way of bringing the project to a satisfying conclusion for their backers.

So kickstarter's position is, if you get the money, you are responsible to deliver what you said you would. If it turns out to be literally impossible, you must work together with the backers to find a way to bring the project to a satisfying conclusion.  No mention of going radio silent for years, oddly enough.

Treat it as a sunk cost and a lesson on investment, don't try (and 99% fail) to exact revenge just to teach him a lesson. That lesson has been learned - he'll never get a kickerstarter going again, never get a job in the industry and it'll probably haunt him for the rest of his business life.

No. Instead treat it as a guy committing fraud, and if you're interested in reducing fraud, or recovering maybe a portion of what you were defrauded out of, maybe try to pursue legal options like talking to the Attorney General of your state (This is free).  Complain to kickstarter, pointing out how the guy lied(This is free too).

Nobody at all is telling people to spend their own money, so I don't know what exactly you're saying has a 99% chance of failing, or even what succeeding or failing would mean in this context. I know you have 100% chance to recover none of your money if you do not try to, which seems to be your position.

It's not that the 30 dollars or whatever people backed this for is "So precious to them" more than not being robbed without recourse is.  You instead should take this as a lesson on the existence of legal remedies and the responsibilities of people who commit fraud and fail to perform their duties.

[Cruxador]

If, as some people seem to want, these promises don't have to be kept, then why the hell should anyone give anything to any crowdfunded project?  It's not as if the people who funded the project get some percentage of the returns.  Basically, that position amounts to the idea that an entrepreneur should be able to have no risk, but the potential for great reward.

QFT

I mean, it's sort of forgetting what kickstarter is supposed to be. All this money making stuff is basically ancillary to the original purpose, which is funding something that otherwise wouldn't be funded. It's getting used for big business but that's really a side thing that happens to have a lot of money changing hands. I absolutely agree that it's not a sound financial investment, but that's really not what it's for in the first place. Like investing in crypto currency or any other investment that isn't sound, you shouldn't put in money that you're not okay with losing.

As for entrepreneurial opportunities that involve the potential for great reward without direct financial risk, those aren't rare and in fact I've benefited from that kind of thing myself. The balancing factor is generally that you have to invest a fair amount of your time and effort to realize the rewards. I don't think there's a reasonable argument to be made that Josh hasn't done that.

[Zangi]

I'm pretty sure most of us here are already set in our camps. 

Round 12: 'this is totally fraud' versus 'meh, he fucked up'


Anyone switching sides has already done so long ago.

[Damiac]

Zangi, I can imagine that debate for whether it was a scam.  I suppose for something to be a scam there has to be intent.

There's really no room for debate whether it was fraud.  He claimed something: "I have working prototype of fun game" to aid in his fundraising to create "Fun game". He gave descriptions of playthroughs of "Fun game". However, "Working prototype of fun game" has failed to surface in all this time, proving "I have working prototype of fun game" was a lie.

If you tell a lie to aid in fundraising, you are committing fraud.  Even if you fully intend to do everything you say you will, it's still fraud, because you lied.  If he instead said "I have these ideas for a fun game" then he probably would have gotten a lot less backing, but he wouldn't have committed fraud. 

Imagine, if you will, that I tell a bunch of investment bankers that I have invented a tablet that you put into a gallon of water and it turns into a gallon of gasoline, then went on to describe various instances of myself using said tablet on water to get gasoline to power my car. Imagine then I claimed I just need some seed money to make some pretty designs for packaging and for initial distribution, and asked for $100,000.

Imagine then, that these investors gave me the money, because holy crap of course this is going to make tons of money.

Imagine next, that every time they asked me for a demonstration of my tablet I just kept coming up with weird excuses, and they never ever got to see any water turned to gasoline.  Finally they find out I never had any such tablet, and that I've instead used their money to try to invent the tablet I claimed I already had.

You know what happens next? I go to jail for fraud. I owe the investors their money back, plus all sorts of penalties. If I already spent the money trying to create the tablet, it doesn't matter, I still owe it, and it will be taken from me one way or another.

[Egan_BW]

However, "Working prototype of fun game" has failed to surface in all this time, proving "I have working prototype of fun game" was a lie.

I do not think that is how proof works.

[Damiac]

Isn't that version of reality even worse? He actually had the game he described all along, but for some crazy reason never showed a single bit of it, didn't send it out to backers saying "I want you to have something, but I'm still working on the real game I promised"? He's under this incredible pressure, and he actually has the thing to take the pressure off him, pressure which is so clearly bothering him, but for same insane reason he's not doing the very easy thing to make it go away?

OK, maybe "proving" was a bit strong.  Maybe I should have said "Making it blatantly logically obvious" because there is a tiny chance I suppose that the above paragraph is true and Chris is actually so insane that he has the game and just isn't giving it to anyone.  Are you telling me that's the version of reality you believe in?

[Zangi]

Insane or insanely obsessed with perfection.  I can go with either.  I'm fine with it.