Lowtide Update

The Federal Trade Commission has squished some guy who claimed he was making a board game and went to Kickstarter. He asked for $30,000 and got $122,000 and guess what. He didn't make the game. He did announce to his backers that the game would never be made, though. What a nice guy. Anyways, the guy is actually ordered to pay back the backers! How awesome is that?!

Click right here to read about it.

What does this situation remind you of? Anything? Oh, that's RIGHT! Goblins: Alternate Realities! Evertide Games asked for $30,000 to make a game, too! Except they didn't get $122,000" they got $182,000. And while this other guy told his backers that the game project was cancelled, Richard James (CEO of Evertide Games) just kinda" disappeared with the money. And while this other guy gave a few people refunds, Richard was still making NEW sales for his nonexistent Goblins: Alternate Realities merchandise for two years before he finally (recently) took that page down. And while the other guy doesn't have a warehouse of Goblins merchandise, books and convention banners that disappeared with him and the money" Richard does.

Y'know, when I compare this other guy to Richard, this other guy seems like the lesser of two evils.

At any rate, I'm going to the FTC with this story. If he'd contacted me with some kind of reasoning for what's happened, my reactions would be very different, but I'm giving Richard mountains of opportunities to contact me with some kind of explanation. I've been understanding and taken the "Let's work this all out together, I know how being overwhelmed can feel" route, but he's never contacted me (or anyone). So screw it. If there's a chance I can get the thousands of backers some of their $182,000 back, I'm all over that.

If you're a G:AR backer and you want to help out with this (or even if you're just somebody who wants to see this come to somewhat of a happy ending for the people who were ripped off), please contact the FTC as well. I don't usually call for Goblinites to do something 'spamy' like this, but this is a lot of people who lost a lot of money.

Click here to go to the FTC site.

The actual amounts are"

$177,850 Direct payments through Kickstarter

$5314 Payments made to the Kickstarter campaign through Paypal/credit cards

$??? Roughly two years of profits from his ongoing, merchandise sales for G:AR products that were never to be made and shipped.

As for the actual game, I've been playtesting it with friends and brought the finished product into focus. Lately, my efforts have been on drawing/creating the actual cards. It's a slow process and it's slowed down the amount of time spend drawing Goblins. I can say for certain, that it will definitely be made available for everyone to play online. Programs like Tabletop Simulator will make that possible. As for G:AR becoming a physical game that people can hold in their hands" I'm doing everything I can, but it's still a big question mark.

You can contact me on Twitter for whatever you need (Click here).

Thanks!

-Tarol