5 Video Game Kickstarters That Ran Away with your Money! | Dan Ibbertson

a few months back I covered the top 10 best looking Kickstarter games that sadly never got funded and due to the popularity of that video I've decided to do the video to pretty much every other person in the comment section suggested I do next failed Kickstarter's that did get funded right ok so to start my journey off I fought the infamous mighty number 9 of its constant delays and eventual under par release would be a good place to start Burano compared to what I talk about on this list that game can pretty much be rivaled with megaman 2 in regards to quality mainly because well it actually got released you see pretty much everything on this list not only exceeded the funding needed to make the project a reality but actually took the combined total of seven hundred and nine thousand four hundred and eighty six dollars from fourteen thousand seven hundred and seventy three backers yes I did the math and well they even never finished the game went bankrupt or just disappeared running away with the money leaving all those backers empty-handed hey guys I'm Daniel Batson and here are five video game Kickstarter's that didn't deliver number one [Music] multiplayer survival games are pretty big business if you get them done right and the stomping land again that involves you trying to survive in a dinosaur field land is an exciting concept the Kickstarter campaign video looks great and managed to raise 114 thousand and sixty dollars from 4427 backers of a tiny twenty thousand dollar goal that's almost six times the amount requested how the hell did they [ __ ] this one up well turns out since the game was funded on June 6 2013 updates were frequent constantly telling backers a few times a month in most instances what was going on with the project and on May 30th 2014 early access keys make their way into the hands of all of the backers that pledged a reward to get them the game was being talked about on Steam community pages and the game subreddit everything was fine then nothing everything stops with the website Twitter page and Facebook page all disappearing leaving nothing but a long list of angry commenters on the Kickstarter page even model of Vlad Konstantinov never got a reply from lead guy Alex from Dora saying that he didn't even get paid for his latest work and no messages were replied to so he had no choice but to sell what he had done to pay his team for the work that they have done that's it I wish I had more to tell you but it looks obvious that this at least by the time the Alpha was released was a scam Alex not only grabbed the remaining money and ran away but also put the unfinished game back on sale on Steam greenlight with his final ever post being it has had a year of progress and will continue to undergo production with frequent updates until the end of 2015 and that is it [Music] number two for anyone out there that is watch the previous Kickstarter video you'll know I'm a bit of a board and card gamer outside of video gaming and youtubing which is why I'm happy as hell to not have known about Zico if I knew about the Kickstarter I would have backed it however at least 973 backers did know about it as it was able to beat the 250 thousand dollar goal by raising two hundred and fifty seven thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars for those who don't know Zico was originally a board and card game that was marketed as Pokemon with a purpose the campaign video is actually quite heartwarming explaining how Amy Tucker made the game to raise awareness of endangered animals and thankfully for a while at least actually succeeded it ended up getting interest for major American chains and coffee shops before the recession happened which was lowered in almost all of those connections pulling out if you go over to BoardGameGeek comm an absolute must of a site for any tabletop fans the people that did actually play that original card game seem to quite enjoy it and the feedback was great a truly brilliant car experience for alder family sadly even though the game was a critical success due to a lot of the major partners pulling out the company went under the Kickstarter campaign was Amy's chance to bring Zico back from the brink the game had amazing artwork and a great team behind it and even had legends such as Mike Williams and Nolan Bushnell working on it yes the nolan bushnell the guy who is known to many as the father of video games being the guy who started Atari and chuck-e-cheese these guys would actually be helping create the game anyway funding was successful me 12 hours before cutoff point and that's when updates started to slow down sure you had the standard survey and thanks are all involved including a special thanks to Michael Williams eCos biggest fan who I can only assume is the guy that put down ten thousand to help the project but then six months passed before any kind of an update then another two months after that not updating the game's progress but instead just saying that rewards are still being worked on before being shipped out another month passes with an update that explains that there have been a number of issues that we've had to address and we assure you the rewards will be coming many thanks for your patience that was on June the 10th 2013 three months after the estimated delivery date and that's it until you look in the comment section on December 14th and December 17th 2013 Zico posted a comment explaining that the company creating the game called boomba the company that created the campaign called Weber and game designer Amy Tucker couldn't reach an agreement and boom Weber went bankrupt it was explained that a lawsuit by one of the previous directors of hairy entertainment was put in place another company that had previously purchased Zico when it was a card game for 80,000 dollars plus another 100,000 still to pay to complete the purchase and no one knows apart from the people making the game where the rest of the money went but don't feel bad according to the game's creator that two hundred and fifty seven thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars actually came from friends and family of the members of their company and the number of Zico players able to willingly support the project was actually less than 40 people so let me get this straight you managed to get at least 933 family and friends to back a project that less than 40 people were interested in if that is true which is surely can't be that's one member of the family that's definitely getting knocked off the Christmas list [Music] number three the fall of Nemesis clash of the Cajun or kco one as it was Frank phileas is the final word in giant monster battle games it takes the call team and Technology from pipeworks Atari Godzilla fighting games and merges them with the design input and creative output of our amazing fans yep sign me up I didn't know that this game when it was live thankfully but after looking at the campaign video which claims that this will be the ultimate monster fighting game with direct input from the fans well it would have been right up my street however what have we learned from videos like this never back games that show no real game footage and this game only showed one tiny bit of animation help nice artwork though am i right either way 1247 backers did help fund the project's goal of $100,000 and even exceeded it by getting the project up to one hundred and twelve thousand five hundred and thirteen dollars and who knows how much was put towards the project using the PayPal donation option officially the game is not cancelled according to the developer who actually posted a replied to forum backers as recently as the 23rd of November this year however the game's progress is suspended that means the company is no longer actively doing development on the game apparently money was not the issue but instead it was the unexpected death of environment artist Ron Claiborne that halted what was several months of good development on the game up to this point and sadly it started with all team members not being able to work with an environment artist and no longer are able to work on the project whatsoever money was not an issue and in this instance at least the main developer Simon strange still responds to the odd comment on the Kickstarter page and on his son stone game forum page - one of the saddest stories on this list that in my opinion is down to ever see a proper release here's to you Sunstone games let's hope you actually do get to continue working on the game and here's to the five backers who pledged two hundred and fifty dollars a piece the fifty backers who pledged $500 a piece and the two backers who pledged five thousand dollars a piece ouch number four [Music] Alex pink really really wanted this game to happen code hero a game that teaches you to make games was a Kickstarter backed by seven thousand four hundred and fifty nine backers spending a hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and fifty four dollars above one hundred thousand dollar Target yep people were obviously really into the look of the game and during the campaign the guys over at primer labs were constantly update in the site page with celebration videos of hitting their target updating fans almost every single day and then after the Kickstarter ended on February 24 2012 the updates well they actually continued fairly frequently every few months or so giving those seven thousand odd backers an update as to what was happening although those updates were not always great just what practically every kick started going it got delayed from its expected February 2014 release date several times over this mix with updates becoming more and more infrequent was followed up on March the 4th 2014 over two years after the expected release date showing 22 sixth graders playtesting the game and the text I'm sad to say that I'm probably not going to be able to update as regular always often but even though you may not hear from us as often we'll still be working on code hero and moving forward with development this was a common theme with this project the infrequent updates that they did give were $0.99 at a time when backers know that the game was getting delayed or to give bad news like fewer updates or that they needed more time but hardly ever giving any more information or explaining the reasons why these as you would expect left the comments section to become a pretty dark place of nothing but angry backers who had lost their money claiming that they would be asking Kickstarter to get their money back money that they were soon to be discovered had completely gone Peak paid between 4,000 and 5,000 a month for each program of which he claims he had ten employees one of which was david lopez a game designer from california who quit working at red giant studios to the offer of $55,000 a year however this actually equated to every paycheck bouncing and peak having to pay lopez $800 from his personal account david lopez said in an interview regarding this that I gave him tons of time I quit my job in the gaming industry to come and help this dude out a couple of weeks later he disappears and drops the whole project backers had to search far and wide for this information as the final update to them was on April the 4th 2014 code heroes April updates good boys and code-based soapbox I suggest going over to the site and checking out it's surprising how little is actually explained and that's a real shame leaving the comment section themed backers updating other backers in a nutshell the money run out and pink was unable to get outside of funding asking his team to work for free which they did it legal action for the larger contributors have gone forward but pink says that they will not get their refunds until after the game is released that is if it ever is released strangely enough code heroes website actually has reappeared with updates going up and giving you the chance to even pre-ordered a soundtrack however sadly nothing is being done with those seven thousand four hundred and fifty nine backers that helped the project get off the ground in the beginning and the fact that those backers aren't even getting updates really does go to show how little Alex Peake actually cares about his backers [Music] number fine this game actually asked for the least ironically titled greed monger disappointing 667 people by taking ninety thousand one hundred and thirty two dollars of a thirty thousand dollar goal but that's not all including the paypal donations they apparently exceeded over one hundred thousand dollars who the hell knows exactly how many people and how much was wasted on this project well Jason Appleton probably knows hi everyone this is Jason Appleton producer and lead designer of green bonger the game was a free D free-to-play sandbox MMORPG with a focus on crafting economics and politics in a world where you can literally do whatever you want sounds good right well I'm sure if you into that sort of thing it is plus it's probably good for all of those backers that were looking to get land in the game as part of [ __ ] Awards in an attempt to sell that land for real money when the game eventually came out ah good old flippers PU dares wins you see the biggest problem here and one to keep in mind the most is that this is not a typical small indie platformer it's not an RPG it's not a puzzle game it's an MMORPG probably the most expensive and hardest games to ever make an electric crow a company that has never released a single game to date with limited funds was the company that was behind it however limited funds technically shouldn't be an issue because after the Kickstarter finished and the shitstorm that was greed monger started to unfold Jason actually stated in a video clearing his name that he is in fact a credible guy to take on a project like this and that he already had enough money to make a server farm even if the Kickstarter failed yep money was not a problem to Jason as he was probably the biggest entrepreneur I'd ever seen just looking down the guys personal Facebook shows him doing more jobs than all of his backers combined there's his web design work his mortgage consultancy work Club promoting voice-over work DJ competitions jiu-jitsu competitions and his very own marketing SEO company yep Jason is not ashamed to get his hands dirty dan is looking at it you think he's the sort of guy to very much get the job done well except for finishing greed monger that is after scrolling back for a couple years I couldn't find anything related to the game whatsoever now that's enough about Jason James Proctor the lead programmer wasn't any better and in the unity forums unity being the game engine that they were going to be using to make the game he was starting new projects every five minutes none of which ever got completed as much as James for he was probably the world's greatest coder he was far far from it greed monger was an MMORPG with hardly anything made from scratch and instead the majority of that Kickstarter money was going on store bought already made assets to literally just paste into James's barebone world eventually a build of the game was shown three years after the Kickstarter campaign ended and as expected it was awful problems continued when James quit after three years of being on the project and went on to explain how working with Jason was abysmal apparently the deal was that he would not be getting paid until completion and then he would be getting a cut of the profits because of this James played the sympathy card explaining that he couldn't continue to afford the long hours spent on the game and tried to leave on at least one occasion beforehand but do so because he was being threatened to be sued by Jason if he did keep in mind no contract was signed between the two and all they had was their Skype conversations now the story gets even stranger when you find out that James was actually disabled with depression and couldn't leave his house that the pressure was so severe that he would get panic attacks if he saw a large crowd and this was how he was able to get by making the game on absolutely no salary at all he was getting disability allowance meaning that that $100,000 at least spent on the game was going on other people's hard work buying off the shelf unity assets and the creation of the game was being funded by the taxpayer anyway like I said James the sole developer of the game quit Jason left the project presumably taking the remaining Kickstarter money with him and now he's gone silent not even going by Kickstarter's own laws of explaining where the money actually went and what we have left is a lot of pissed-off backers with nothing to show for the crazy amount of money that was spent on the project the websites gone and almost all talk of the game other than the understandably upset backers in the comments section of the campaign has become non-existent that is other than a random update from James from time to time who still has a quick gun building the game in between our projects adding even more unity store-bought assets and let's face it never ever being able to finish it hey there guys whether you're watching this on larry bundy juniors channel or my slopes game room channel thanks very much for watching click the links on the screen or in the description to check out either of our channels and patreon pages but for now that's it from me this is DJ slope signing out and hopefully I'll see you all next time

Channel: Larry Bundy Jr

Views: 1,621,408

Rating: 4.6637397 out of 5

Keywords: failed kickstarters, 5 kickstarters that ran away with your money, kickstarters that ran away with your money, guru larry kickstarter, kickstarter fails, kickstarter games, larry bundy jr kickstarter, failed kickstarter games, kickstarter scams, kickstarter scam, kickstarter fail, Dan Ibbertson, Kickstarter, Fails, money, Guru, Larry, Bundy, Jr, Jnr, Funny, DJSlope, corruption, stolen, steal, swindle, Guru Larry, Indigogo, lost, Greed Monger - A Crafting Focused Sandbox MMORPG, larry bundy jr

Id: 03A5lQ2vM2U

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/HuTheFinnMan]

This popped up on my youtube suggested videos list and I thought it might be interesting to some people in this sub.

[u/BigDaddy_Delta]

Good video, thanks!

[u/danwin]

No CLANG? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

[u/johnibizu]

Just 5 among many.

[u/cheat-master30]

There's also a part 2 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNedOKN7s_w

And the Yogscast game will be the sole focus of part 3.

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Snapshots:

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[u/tylercoder]

No double fine adventure? seriously?

Man snopes sure isn't what it used to