The Biggest MMO Scam Ever | Asmongold Reacts

the biggest MMO scam ever ever the arrival of Kickstarter and the unfulfilled desire for exciting new MMOs combined with unreal engine's capability to make absolutely look scary things look beautiful was the perfect formula for the introduction of MMO scams into the world absolutely today we're going to talk about the five most interesting MMO scams to exist so far we'll talk about how they came to be and perhaps most important can you imagine if this guy put ashes of creation on the list oh my God people would lose their [ __ ] minds certainly where they are now was it malice or ignorance that led to millions of dollars disappearing while having nothing to show for it which ones went to jail and which ones got away with it probably all wrong about any of them let's find out first up Chronicles of Illyria this was another fascinating one to follow with a story that's going to start to sound very familiar as we go through this list it all starts on Kickstarter led by a man named Jeremy Walsh right was it malice or an aptitude that caused this to play out the way that it did let me know down in the comments what you think it all starts on September 18 2015 the first screenshot was shared on the company's Twitter feed remember what this looks like it's going to be important because this is hand shot hand size who the [ __ ] wants hand size foot size it's not what was delivered then ironically on April 1st 2016 the first gameplay footage is shown in a video titled meet the team again remember what this footage looks like yeah this is um this footage is from uh Elder Scrolls uh three I think it was Morrowind on May 3rd 2006 came out football Studios announces its long-awaited Kickstarter campaign asking for just 900 000 US Dollars and Promises dying and souls an epic 10-year storyline invites you to experience your character over multiple lifetimes with each life you will develop your character and make your mark in The Chronic well that sounds more but it sure eventually dies their soul will be reincarnated stronger than I don't want to do that Destiny will live on in another character of your making what the king described was on a scale never before seen it was going to have every system and feature that you've ever wanted all rolled into one I mean that's just like the best idea right because like why have only some good systems let's just have every good system and that way we'll just make everybody happy and it'll be perfect RPG or at least that's what they told us of course and apparently it worked just one month later on June 3rd 2016 they hit their Kickstarter goal with four people going as far as donating ten thousand dollars each so that they would be considered royalty in the game oh God oh my God oh my God who would do that oh man like it's like we can call these people dumb right but like there's plenty of people that spend this kind of money on gotcha games too so it's like really not that big of a surprise like I think that's kind of just like normal established titles yeah but that wasn't as much money to be fair this point in 2016 soulbound Studios claimed they would have the game in players hands in just over 18 months not in 18 months wasn't this like four years ago finished but at least in a playable state after raising one million dollars on Kickstarter Jeremy announced the game would continue to raise money on its own personal website and raise money it did to the tune of over 8 million dollars as the deadline for this bro I need to make an MMO I I need to do this this is such a good idea like that's such a good idea and then you just take everybody's money and then you disappear and you don't make the game that's like the or maybe you could make the game but it's really bad and you actually only spend like a million dollars making the game and you pocket the other the other seven million game approached in 2017 Jeremy announced that the game isn't going to meet the deadline he had promised due to their inability to attract talented developers yeah the first sign that I wonder why they weren't going well fast forward to 2018 when everyone was originally expecting the game when everyone was originally expecting one more fast forward to 2018 when everyone was originally expecting the game to be in a playable State and it was not in fact no one had any proof that there was a playable game at all no member of the public had played a single minute of it later in that year November 2018 with over 6 million in funding secured people were beginning to worry about the future of the game they noticed it had been nearly two years since they saw wow look at that is this RuneScape 3 I never even saw the game I've only watched uh osrs so I've never seen so this is RuneScape three holy [ __ ] wow it does look a little bit better huh any new footage of the game surely with millions of dollars and years of work put into the game there must be something impressive to show Almost enough well they have the belt they literally have the guys what the hell happened to the back of his head what the hell is this another year passes by and on September 6 2019 the first gameplay footage since 2017 is released the first gameplay footage since 2017 is released remember when I told you to remember what the original gameplay footage would look like this is what backers thought they were getting no it's what they were told they were getting and this is what they get God [Music] oh my God to say that fans were disappointed would be an understatement of a lifetime the game was now two years past this initial Supply and delivery date and eight times over budget and disresponding to show for it this was the result of four years dude imagine watching the unreal five tech demo and then thinking bro I donated ten thousand dollars I can't wait to have my own castle and have it look like this and the game comes out and then it's this woman and millions of dollars I'm a Founder Guy where most of the bankers soured on the game some going as far as to threaten legal action against soulbound on March 11 2020 the settlers of Elyria event would they should have they should have a cosmetic for the founders and it's one of those hats with a propeller on it it says royalty on it to allow participation in a 45-day test of the clown mask of course included massive microtransactions to allow players to spend hundreds every Alpha tests included massive microtransactions to allow players to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars buying plots of land within this unfinished game there you go buying land in an unfinished game you know people used to do this they would sell land in Florida and they had to make a law against selling land on the Moon because they kept doing this in real life too like most online scams were real life scams until somebody made a law against it they wanted amazing it was a disaster players were not happy and now with a much more realistic idea of what this game was going to be the funding for the game stopped coming in in an event that was only surprising to the backers with their heads Six Feet Under the sand on March 25th 2020 soulbound announced the studio would be shuddering on April's but to our great sadness with the failure or Settlers of el Ria and five long months of only limited crowdfunding Revenue coming in Soul bound Studios has officially run out of money last night I was forced to do something that I never thought I would have to do I closed the online store put Settlers of el Ria map back into read-only mode and laid off all the employees and after that I booked my trip over to Cancun with my 8 million dollars and I'm on to the next stage of my life 6 2020 however there wasn't a bow face due to the spread of legal consequences an FAQ appeared on the Coe website stating that the game would very much be released as they had promised to deliver a game in exchange for the money they'd collected to Simply state that the game wasn't coming without refunding any of the money could leave them vulnerable to some legal action that's true so they have to technically make a game now is the game going to be any good no but it will it will be a game it could be Tetris or Minesweeper but it is a game with angry Bankers undeterred by this promise on August 17 2020 class action lawsuit was filed demanding that soulbound refund the money for the game smart they failed to deliver absolutely soulbound would decline the demands to refund the backers so on no refunds no refunds gentlemen February 3rd 2021 it's around the same time Illyria was posting a couple of videos a month about the progress of the game probably to appear as though they were still working on it so where's the game now two years after all of that and how did the loss today was Justice served was the people's money returned was anyone held accountable for the complete mismanagement of the funds no well I wish I could say that the court laid the law down on this man in this practice of taking people's money without the realistic possibility of being able to deliver what was promised the court case had sent a signal to would-be Kickstarter scammers but unfortunately the lawsuit was dismissed and Walsh escaped with everything except for his reputation he's now oh he only has eight million dollars oh bro like oh now working on a completely different game in a completely different engine known as kingdoms of Illyria my guess is this game has as much of a chance of turning into a polished way from his kingdoms of Alaric he's now working on a completely different game in a completely different engine known as kingdoms of valyria I honestly think that you shouldn't be able to sue him the second time you should have been able to sue him the first time but like at a certain point like how much due diligence does somebody have to do before they just decide to light their own game on Fire Light their own money on fire my guess is this game has as much of a chance of turning into a polished finished product as Chronicles of Illyria whatever you do don't give Jeremy Walsh another dime of your money for a game that isn't yet Complete because it's probable he's selling you a bridge to nowhere I'm not saying don't buy his game when it's finished I'm just saying don't bite I would assume that whenever whenever it's finished it's not really finished they're just selling it yeah so I I mean they're just they're not it's not the finished game they're just selling the game now is game until it's finished which is actually fantastic advice for any of the games on this list today next up we have the day before the first award from today's sponsor pressure Nirvana is an amazing martial arts fantasy MMORPG mobile game that was just released in this game you will play as a warrior and experience a vast open world with immersive Graphics there are how do we how does a mobile game have this but the chronicles of valyria couldn't figure it out for the PC how's that possible wait do you guys ever think about this for like three seconds like how is it possible we got a mobile game looks like this but the PC games look like [ __ ] like what happened seven classes and roles within the game each with specific skills weapons and appearances in the exploration of the vast open world you can fight with monsters and bosses in different maps and scenes to acquire materials to learn martial arts upgrade your weapons and practice your successive attack skills if you get bored with your first character you're free to change your profession not only that books better combat than Wu long that you can also turn into a demon a demonized player has a completely different appearance along with more powerful abilities in the process of completing tasks you will encounter a variety of NPCs and constantly delve into the character's storyline the game also features a deep PVP and Guild for skilled system where you can team up with friends to fight together and challenge yourself with more special Side Stories the game I love how like a lot of these mobile games just invent these numbers Mike what's your power level 136 million oh so it's pretty low then you know most normal players are up to 1 billion now also adds an intriguing social system that allows players who prefer interpersonal relationships to quickly make friends buy and love and get married to other players and game so be sure to check out this unit that escalated quickly within a gorgeous oh my God setting log into the game now and get 200 consecutive draws for free it's highly possible for you to get rare drops pets and skins so download using the link in the description below and use my code gift 2023 for epic rewards thank you for listening and now let's get back to the video this is the most recent possible scam to be added to this list and I say possible scam because it's not really confirmed yet I don't think that I do not think that I have seen sufficient evidence that the day before is a scam I actually don't think so this story starts in January of 2021 when a developer known as fantastic drop the trailer for their upcoming title the day before it was announced as an open world survival MMO set in a deadly post-pandemic America that has been overrun by flesh hungry infected it caught massive attention the public was incredibly excited for this idea people announced that on March 31st 2021 they would people have always wanted a survival shooter like MMO FPS game and people have wanted this ever since like the 2000s and there were a couple of attempts at it like right now we have Destiny I think that's probably the biggest game like that but besides that you've also got uh [ __ ] what's that other game uh shits PlanetSide 2. yeah there it is the division yeah a few more but like nothing has like really hit holy [ __ ] oh yo what's up boys thank you shy Lily for the raid thank you very much oh my god wow thank you thank you thank you guys uh we're uh we're watching a video about games that are [ __ ] scams or at least they might be scams show everyone some gameplay footage the day before it was set to air on March 30th they ended up delaying the trailer a week due to technical problems the new airing date would be a week later April 6 9 A.M and so on April 6 everyone tuned in and were met with a starting soon screen they would watch this screen for over nine hours until the stream was finally shut down on it what so on April 6 everyone tuned in and were met with a starting soon screen they would watch this screen for over nine hours until the stream was finally shut down on bro that reminds me of that girl oh my [ __ ] god that girl uh Taylor [ __ ] she has like a French last name or something like that and she would just stand off the camera oh Rock and yes yes April 19. 13 minutes of gameplay was finally revealed the 13 minutes of gameplay looked great as far as everyone could tell it would look so great that the game would become the most wishlisted game on Steam over top of games from AAA Studios like Spider-Man stalker 2 and even Bethesda star Fields attention fantastic accomplish this without having a great track record to stand on looking back to their history they sold Early Access to their game called wild eight and then almost immediately abandon it oh not good they moved on to a game called Dead dozen which had even more problems it went into Early Access and shut down completely three months later this one's gonna be different things kept getting weirder though yeah this little trailer looked too good to be true literally developers would even react to the video stating that at the very least this looked like a vertical slice of the game that they had just created for the purposes of marketing it I remember the character in The Cinematic we watched the video and the girl was wearing like really tight pants and she had a big ass and nobody was even paying attention to the Gameplay at all like it was like a 17 minute video and people were like yeah I don't know about this game I I don't know maybe if they release gameplay for it I'll have to watch it and it's like you just watch the 17 minute video of gameplay we're like no I didn't day before it is oh my I'm getting very the division vibes from this wow the Shadows are incredible the lighting is just excellent look at no reflection oh man in an MMO though I'm okay I'm skeptical how can they do that I'm getting a feeling it's all been rendered this is not I think it's more of a vertical Slice on first impression a vertical slice if you don't know is this doesn't mean that the whole game is done and it looks like this this is probably a section that they popped out uh and we're able we're able to develop and carve out and make certain things look final when they're not that's what happened with Watchdogs uh that's what happened with cyberpunk for a while so it's kind of like whenever you take a picture or like you clean up your room and then you throw all this the stuff behind the door and hope your mom doesn't close the door and see what's behind the door yeah out of it so we're uh I'm a little skeptical so we're about to get heated over here here's the thing and this is why I think it's pre-banged yeah that's supposed to be another player right can we go back see the way they come in it looks like it's an animated character that's not another player but that means that those can't actually be other players it could be it could very well be they have their own you know AI players it's a move like that they would have to be AI because if it was a real player the animation wouldn't well I don't know when you actually play a game you're kind of jittery This Bites yeah I think that's fair I I don't find that to be very strong evidence though I think that the other examples and just like kind of like a logic example yeah number one not necessarily number two it could be another player but they're moving in that specific way so it looks good for the video number three it could be an AI generated uh you know like [ __ ] like NPC which I also think is fine like there are many other examples where I think this was not really that big of a deal itself wasn't totally unheard of but with this Studio's history in mind it starts to cast out on the viability of the game being delivered as promised things would continue to get weirder when fantastic used a bait and switch tactic on their fans pretending a big new announcement was coming for the day before and then when the announcement arrived it was actually for a completely different game essentially it was either gained for the hype around the day before to advertise and launch another game they were working on okay people weren't happy about it at all but it was somewhat smoothed over when the studio also provided a launch day of June 21. to be fair the recent reviews are mostly positive 2022 at that time that meant the game was just over eight months away so people were pretty excited fast forward May 3rd a little over a month before the game scheduled launch date fantastic posted an announcement letting the community know that they would be giving a big update about the game that week and what was the big update they hyped up the big update they got that week was that they were delaying the launch of the game another nine months into March of 20. oh March the release date of the game will be March 1st 2023 wait did we miss it oh my how did we miss this oh [ __ ] guys we missed the launch [ __ ] 2023 the reason for the delay well there was such massive interest in the game that they wanted to spend more time making sure they got it right honestly for a studio that had never seen this kind of interest to look at its project landing at the top of the steam wishlist and decide hey we better spend the time to get this right well it isn't all that surprising among the changes that would be made if I were them I would do the same thing because if this game comes out and it's bad it's a bad game that's it period for forever that it's done like cyberpunk like BFA uh like mini games like yeah if it comes out it's bad it's bad they would be switching the game over from ue4 to ue5 this also isn't surprising as we've seen multiple Studios make the same move around the same time so far we have a lot of red flags that could be genuine mistakes or intentional deception but there wasn't anything you could point at and say these guys are definitely acting in bad faith that was until they later posted a video asking for people to work on their game for free as volunteers naturally alarm Bells were really sad I mean as a twitch streamer I mean this is kind of like normal morning now it was weird that the studio was promising to deliver a game far far beyond anything they'd ever created before a game massive AAA studios are afraid to attempt because of the budget it demands but people were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until they had a reason not to and for a lot of people this was that reason how are you going to make a game that by its very nature required a triple A budget all while using well you just make all the people that were working for it work for free I mean it's actually kind of an ingenious solution because so you have this problem where it's like oh [ __ ] like we have to pay all these people what are we gonna do and somebody Smart in the office is like what if we just don't pay them what if we just tell them that we're not going to pay them and that's it you know what do you think that's gonna work apparently paid volunteers what kind of quality would that provide and what kind of a studio do you have to be to even be willing to publicly ask for such things if things weren't bizarre enough I don't know I I I I can commend somebody for just being that ballsy on January 4th 2023 fantastic released another video on their YouTube that was a poorly hidden ad for another product they were developing some kind of awesome I see the whole thing was pretending to be talking about the studio and its development of the day before but actually it just felt like you were watching a really weird ad for some product and that's because you were they had now used their attention that they garnered for the day before to launch two other projects that are not smart before and they had also tried to get people to work on their game for free yep while also delaying the release date of The Game twice the longer the story goes on the more the red flags pile uh-huh and people noticed they ended up having to turn and likes and dislikes on videos to hide the ire of the community on the bright side the game was going to be launching in just three months yeah so fantastic it was fast approaching that is until it wasn't on January 24 2023 the most wishlisted game on Steam was removed from Steam in another twist fantastic fantastic would go on to say that it was a bug that caused it to be removed from the steam store but then fantastic would later that same day post a separate post that contradicted that saying five days earlier they found out that someone owned the rights to the name the day before unfortunately for fantastic this also was a provable lie as there was evidence that they had received the word in their trademark for the name had been rejected months prior two different posts with two different lies in the same day from these guys didn't do a lot to maintain and restore the faith of the people excited for the day before with the game not even out yet all the red flags and now a trail of Lies leaking out of the studio things were getting weirder than ever people were beginning to worry if this was even a real game at all the only trailer they'd seen seemed to have been at best a vertical slice of the game or at worse entirely pre-rendered but that was all going to be a problem of the past though as fantastic was due to show their Gameplay trailer featuring real gameplay this time that's true yeah so like they're gonna fix it so it's not really a big deal like all the haters are just gonna get get owned and uh they're just going to set the record straight and put them all to sleep at the last second they canceled stating that they needed to talk to their lawyers about their name being taken before released their trailer wasn't the only thing to be delayed the game's launch was also going to be delayed again for another six months to November of 2023. the internet was now crying scam everyone was beginning to think this game didn't exist in response fantastic would turn around shortly thereafter and dropped the game they would say that it's not as in fact guys I know that there have been some of you out there who think that our game is a scam it is in fact not a scam there's no need to worry I know some people might think of it as a scam it's not a scam okay yeah yeah never mind Play trailer for the game as expected it didn't look nearly as good as the highly touched up trailer that came before it yeah and to be honest the fact that it looked worse now wasn't surprising and isn't all that uncommon in the industry they tend to show very early on a concept of what they are aiming to make that ends up being far more attractive than what they're actually able to drive through the road we've seen a lot of AAA Studios make this mistake in the past and then get rightfully called out on it by their communities afterwards that looks pretty good it was odd about this trailer was that the 10 minutes or so of gameplay showed a massive world that felt far from a massive world it was devoid of action a lot of walking and not a lot going on particularly for a game that was originally supposed to release a year ago on top of that viewers would also immediately notice that many of the Assets in the game were purchased straight off of the Unreal Engine Shop and set into the game nearly untouched and then finally to make things even larger the trailer even had sections that were an exact copy of other game trailers in fact it wasn't us trailers that were copies of other games smart even the game's logo was a copy of another game it also was its Arts yeah I mean you just the thing is when you take everything that people have already done because you know that works I mean you know it works and so you might as well just keep doing it you may still launch but we would have to be ignoring an absolute ton of red flags to say with any level of confidence that the launch will go well if it does end up being a scam it will have been an impressive one as it will be the first scam MMO to have achieved the status of most wishlisted game on Steam I hope they I don't think it's a scam I actually do not think that the day before is a scam the reason why I don't think that it's a scam is because they're not asking for money like who are they scamming they're scamming the publisher the publisher for this game is a literal like multi hundreds of millions of dollars company that has gone on record and said that they have reviewed the game and it's actually a game and it's actually happening so unless you think that you as a redditor YouTube commenter YouTube viewer have a better insight into this than the [ __ ] multi 100 plus dollar million dollar company that is producing this game come on maybe they're just [ __ ] dumb scamming my time by watching a 10-minute chart yeah I just don't think it's a scam it's not a scam it's a [ __ ] game yes I think so multi multi hundred dollar company yeah sorry I was I I was for a second I thought I was talking about blizzard it could just be a marketing scheme I doubt that a massive publisher like the one that's publishing this game I forgot the name um would want to attach themselves to something that's as problematic as this there's no reason to and also the publisher is mainly a mobile game publisher which means that like reputation doesn't matter as much but it still does matter because you you have to have people that buy into the gotcha of like the next game face Drama Oh is there face drama I don't know all of the doubters wrong but as right now history would suggest this game will be sold in Early Access before dropping in a state that is completely unfit for release ultimately being abandoned by the developer yet again where is the game today two launch delays later and six months before its newest scheduled release date two launch delays so far okay keep that in mind well on February 16 2023 the developer released a Dev log where they talked about the Journey of the game so far oh the website is still up but if you click add to wishlist it just takes you to the front page of steam because you can't actually add it to your wish list because the game doesn't exist on Steam anymore this game hasn't stolen anyone's money yet so it's not a scam yet but the developers have been caught lying they've been caught copying other developers work they've promised the moon and they have a history of selling unfinished games and then walking away from them hopefully fantastic keeps delaying their game until it's finished but I wouldn't spend any money on this one until it's proven to be a finished playable product there's just way too many red flags at this point if you want to be kept up to date on how this all unfolds be sure to subscribe and hit that Bell notification button I don't know why I can't make it even like the video and leave a comment if you're enjoying it for the algorithm Gods next up dream world a game just oh God oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy here we go described as being the infinite open world MMO where you could sculpt the world and create anything you wanted with a massive catalog of objects in one single world with millions of other players Millions thousands of unique biomes and fight and tame dream world's incredible creatures this game claimed it would be the last game you ever played this should have been the first red flag because the slogan doesn't even make sense the dream world Kickstarter led by Zachary Kaplan and Gareth this guy apparently just had like Rich parents and they just pretty much paid for everything and so things kind of worked itself out made a lot of promises that were more or less impossible to fulfill but who are they what is Zachary kaplan's history that allows him to believe he is capable of taking these people's money and delivering on his massive promise okay well he opened a crowd fund for a speaker you wear on your chest back in 2015 because he claims he was hit by a car not once but twice while running with his earphones in this man does yeah I could see that yeah yeah no I I could see yeah yeah for sure yeah doesn't need a speaker on his chest he needs to stop running in the freeway I think he's trying to stop that crowdfund and promise all of his backers they would be able to purchase these speakers in just a few short months that was in 2015 and here we are eight years later and the website is still up with the products still listening oh it's just coming soon oh I see so it'll be soon then okay it's a hundred and fifty dollars are you [ __ ] kidding me are you [ __ ] insane as it has coming soon after that he started a clothing brand and it doesn't seem that panned out for him either and neither of these projects are particularly oh wow because it's like that's a tiger you know what I mean that's cool because it's like a [ __ ] like a tiger and [ __ ] I won't fall to anyone for trying to be an inventor or an entrepreneur by themselves these ideas are completely fine but they're not though because it didn't work out it didn't work so like if you have somebody that takes two L's and it's like uh you know I got another one in me well I I don't want to back that this guy [ __ ] up hey you know what [ __ ] ups do they [ __ ] up that's what happens this guy's a [ __ ] up he got hit by a car twice for the same reason boomerizes when those two failed projects behind him he decided he would then use everything he learned about creating wearable speakers and t-shirts and applied that incredibly relevant knowledge to creating a massively multiplayer online game Zachary Kaplan and his partner Garrison Bellic would create a Kickstarter and start hyping up their new game and the fact that it would be able to have millions of people play together and modify the entire world at will to their hearts content fortunately they didn't misleadbackers by saying that they had come up with the solution to all of the problems that prevented this technology from existing already because I see yeah so they've already they've solved the problem that all these big game studios could never solve as you can see here as that would have been lying to their investors the largest digital world that exists today can only have thousands of people then we came up with a solution that allows us to have millions okay well that's not a good sign is it naturally all of this took place where many of these stories take place Kickstarter while other MMOs with 400 million dollar budgets were struggling to achieve a fraction of what dream world was promising these two were going to do it all with a Kickstarter campaign for ten thousand dollars that's right ten thousand dollars and two people to develop something multi-million dollar AAA yeah these guys are gonna just they're just gonna borrow light they're just gonna whip something up and uh just kind of just make the best game you'll ever play you know just get it done from their brains this Kickstarter would somehow hit its goal and then some earning a total of 64. why are they using fake money I've never seen a 20 or a five that looks like that I thought Abraham Lincoln's supposed to be on that what the hell they using fake money for 1706. every ounce of footage for this game was nothing more than random assets it's like every ounce of footage for this game was nothing more than random assets the fact that it looked like everything one more footage for this game was nothing more than random assets from the Unreal Engine store oh my God into the game with no Rhyme or Reason it looked like that because that's exactly what it was this Callum up improved on his YouTube channel by showing each asset pack in the store the main protagonist featured in all of the shots is the default mannequin from the Unreal Engine the red flags were everywhere but somehow that didn't stop four people from donating nearly two thousand dollars to the wait so the main character was just like a [ __ ] placeholder the game once you've backed the game you were promised access to the pre-alpha however the fine print stipulated that you wouldn't actually receive access to the pre-alpha until you also forced two of your friends to back the project as well oh that's smart you know they do this with a lot of those uh these schemes where it's like you you can't just get addicted you have to get your friends addicted to it's like yeah yeah we've seen this right it's like whether you're selling juice knives stuff like that yeah it's things like this that start to push this entire Kickstarter farther away from ignorance and closer to malice as soon as the kickstarter closed and they had all of their money they went to work on the game right well no they immediately went on vacation causing everyone to wonder if they'd run with the money it would eventually come back however I do have to give it to him the dream world guys they did release a game and you've got to have some big [ __ ] balls to release what they did you gotta have a massive dick to say this is our game you can play it on Windows 95. and resume work on the game they started a Discord server that used 14 to 16 year olds as modern a full-time job was promised to 14 year old mod Jack who left the community Raiders so they wouldn't have to pay anyone like many of the stories on this list this is one that just kept on giving even Zachary's ex-girlfriend chimed in on the whole situation to explain that the nine years of game development experience Zachary claimed he had was actually nothing more than him writing ideas down on paper at best Garrison's claims oh guys I have more than not I have like probably 20 years of game development experience then yeah I got like at least 20 like minimum probably more than that so being a former employee at Google we're also a bit misleading as it turns out he was does he use Google you search for things before on Google so I mean he basically works there right there's nothing more than an intern for a few months she also explains that she broke up with Zach for a number of reasons one of which being that when she went to get her wedding ring refitted so that she could actually wear it the Jeweler explained that it was so fake that it would break in half if they tried oh my God he gave her a fake wedding ring wow this the guy got hit by a car two times for the same reason I'm not at all materialistic and I don't care about the size or the quality of oh no no the the thing is like I don't think it matters like I don't care I I bet if if this guy had given her a ring pop ring she would have probably responded better to him giving her a diamond ring saying it's a diamond ring and then it's not true it's the fact that it's deceptive is the problem the wedding ring I'd argue it's the least important aspect of any marriage but buying your fiancee a ring so fake it can't be resized and then gaslighting her for asking about it shows severe lack of communication and maturity but this was some pretty damning information we basically confirmed that both of these guys greatly misled their investors where it pertained to their previous experience in this type of a project fortunately for them they would have a chance to prove all of their doubters wrong as with all things like this and eventually the product would be delivered that's right or not on May 20th of 2021 we'd finally get to see dream world in all of its Glory the moment everyone had been waiting for content creator skiasso posted a video of himself bro you remember this guy and he was so excited and happy about this game he was like bro I know there have been haters but I think it's really going to come through it's going to happen this guy had like a hundred subscribers and like he's just going through the alpha for the game and he's like oh God it's like guys it might maybe one day it'll be good playing the alpha and by the way like huge huge W's for him because he actually came out and says I was wrong it's it is bad I was swindled and it can happen to you let's just say it was somehow worse than anyone expected this footage was pure nightmare fuel it looked like something that someone's toddler could have made in about five minutes of spamming random assets into an open world in the Unreal Engine it was unforgivably bad probably because that's exactly what Zachary did in fact I'm positive someone could have made something far more attractive given just five minutes in the Unreal Engine yeah leaving everyone wondering where did the money go and what was the time spent on well did you see the picture of the vacation okay well but hey maybe the game just needed more time it was an ambitious project after all well that major reveal was two years ago so where's the game now nearly two years after becoming quote unquote playable to their credit they did continue to try and at least give the impression that they were trying that was a good game for some time posting weekly updates on their website and on YouTube however those updates mysteriously stopped a little over two months ago I think that like all of the YouTube reviewers should get together in like some [ __ ] Illuminati thing and just try to Hype up a game that's this bad and have everybody collectively talk about how great it is and like [ __ ] make all the viewers feel like they're in some kind of [ __ ] like uh uh like Twilight Zone fever dream where everybody's talking about how [ __ ] lit this game is and every content creator is like bro this is gonna change the world for all their work their YouTube channels of existence has managed to gather about 500 subscribers so what is the future of dream world that's I don't think there is these guys set out to make an ambitious game and failed that in itself would have been acceptable if it weren't for the fact that they misled people claiming they had years of experience in an industry that they didn't in an effort to get their money claiming that they had a solution to a problem that prevented games like this from existing in the first place when they didn't which begs the question at which point do we call these things the con at what point do they slide past an aptitude and into malicious intent I think it's very obvious what the difference is so if you are misleading people knowingly like for example saying that you worked at Google or saying that you have nine years of game experience game design experience I think that is very clearly misleading people and also to an extent I think that gross negligence and gross mismanagement is the same as misleading people and it should be treated the same because if you take people's money at a certain point it doesn't matter why it didn't work out you still lost their money let me know down in the comments below is richer and all it costs them was their entire reputation Zachary Kaplan and Garrison bellick left quite a trail of evidence on the internet at this point telling the world exactly what type of people they just make a new name just invent new name thanks to YouTubers like Callum Upton and Karen TV it's been incredibly well documented and I think it's safe to say no one in their right mind would work with these guys or give them money in the future we'll see about that next up we have identity identity is another game put on Kickstarter way back in 2015 that promised the Moon it was going to deliver not just any MMO experience but the MMO experience where you could do literally anything in a game full of other people doing literally anything they want the world and its economy would be determined by the players playing the game what did they need from the public just one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to deliver an experience that AAA Studios would spend hundreds of Millions on but this was 2015 before we'd seen a ton of scam Kickstarter projects materialized and failed to deliver people's guards were down and so they managed to collect 10 times their goal with over 1.5 million dollars earned how did they do this well a handful of assets purchased from the Unreal Engine Shop and placed into a world of course we are leave your mark gain Fame through your expressions wow gaming really is something nowadays isn't it starting to see a trend here aren't we pledgers were even able to spend five thousand dollars for packages that would allow them to go into the office and game with the development team except there wasn't one there was no off passport stamp a unique backer hat closed beta access plus fifteen thousand dollars of in-game Cash Plus used motorcycle Plus Sports Car Plus semi truck plus Penthouse apartment plus a five-car garage closet stacked with a dozen random outfits plus 60 Minute video conference with John and the development team plus design your own unique in-game t-shirt plus invitation to visit the office and spend half the day gaming with the team this and there was no development team just two friends the studio was only just created immediately prior to this Kickstarter by John vandersweet one of the consistent problems with all of these scams is the lies every development Studio on this list has a habit of lying these lies were a large part of why people were willing to give their money to these projects in the first place yeah of course these lies that should absolutely come back to haunt them in court but for some reason never do in the case of John vandersweet his lie was that he had invested lots of his own money in the game and that he just needed the last one it was a lot of his money because he had a hundred dollars and he invested like fifty dollars so that's like half of his total net worth into this game that's a lot of money I said yeah fifty dollars it's a lot of [ __ ] money man he had a hundred dollars now he's only got 50 left he spent half his money on this [ __ ] 150 000 to get it over the Finish Line even when as far as saying should we meet our goal here in Kickstarter we'll have everything we need to ensure that identity gets completed as mentioned the game received 10 times what he asked for John received 1.5 million dollars so according to him this was now a slam dunk he needed 150 000 but received 1.5 million the estimated delivery of this game according to the kickstarter page December of 2016. the kickstarter I don't think it can begin accepting additional funding on their own personal websites It wasn't until 2016 the year the game was due to release that people started becoming suspicious of the problem you've got to remember like 2015-16 this was in the dark ages of MMOs where there were no good MMOs that had come out Final Fantasy was still garbage Warlords of Draenor was in full swing like every other MMO was dead bad or garbage so like people were throwing their money at anything project noticing that outside of the initial video of some pre-made assets placed into Unreal Engine the only thing the developers had produced for the public were some sketches and some conversations yet another thing this game has in common with the rest of the games on this list with the beta supposedly just months away the developers still had zero footage of the game to show to the backers heck they couldn't even manage to share a screenshot the developers explained that they were simply too busy to communicate with the public due to the fact that they were hard at work on the game so they were claiming they didn't have time to do this simply hitting the print screen button here will do the trick the image is now on your clipboard ready to paste into paint or other Imaging programs yeah but like I mean then they have to use it on another program and then name it and then put it on the website and you have to talk to the website developer and then you have to upload its website and then you have the resolution of the picture and like what if the revolution resolution is wrong and so like you put all these things together and it's like there's just no way we can get this out in time like he just yeah there's no way yeah that makes total sense it's at this point that the people with a brain started to realize something was wrong while the zealots without a brain attacked them for questioning their developers this is the stage we see all too often in these publicly funded game development Cycles the first people to talk critically about the game and question how realistic its plans are are crucified by those who have chosen remember this is what happened to me with new world is I was I spoke out and they hated me for it we believe in their new higher power without questioning it a couple of months before the beta due date they announced that something playable would be available in 2017. this was a delay but not a massive one they followed this announcement up with an actual video of gameplay much to everyone's surprise amazing the video received hundreds of thousands of views and was mostly well received by the audience but now with 2017 coming and going despite the promise of a playable beta releasing that year an announcement would come on November 3rd 2017 stating that something playable would be released on March 21st 2018. you want to see the whole game but rather just a small module not the entire world that you could do anything you wanted anywhere you wanted but instead One Small Town Square yeah it's like I mean you're not really going to get the thing that you were paying for but like you will get something at this point Asylum had raised over eight hundred thousand dollars over five times what it asked for it was also behind schedule and proposing to deliver a small fraction of the game that was promised but at least it was something tangible oh that's smart for them to put lyric on the screen since like lyric plays a lot of games like this so it's like hopefully they're trying to bait his audience into watching it or to get him to look at it that's smart players would finally be able to boot up and play on February 12 2018 they finally released a trailer with actual gameplay footage although this footage was incredibly underwhelming as much as backers wanted to see this gameplay they were ultimately disappointed with what they got this game still looked like little more than some basic assets slapped into the Unreal Engine something we're growing all too familiar with now backers had one thing to keep their hopes up the playable beta was only weeks away yeah that is until Asylum Delayed it again but this time only by a month given players had wait I'm starting to see a trend here with this long one extra month was not a big deal yeah true ten days before the launch They delayed it again this time indefinitely and why not they had at this point made over 1 million dollars by delivering absolutely nothing players still knew next to nothing about the game something that seems to be quite key to getting thousands of people to part with millions of dollars tell them you're creating something amazing while also telling them nothing at all and watch how easy well exactly because the the less that you tell people the more that you can get out of them because everything in their mind is always going to be better than what the reality is your fool and his money are separated on November 30th 2018 the game would finally be playable on stage at least the Town Square module which is just a name for a handful of buildings slapped together around a few streets that players could walk around wait where's he going players could no longer imagine what the game would be instead they had to face what it actually was he's on unplayable unsalvageable mess and so with the illusion shattered players would stop sending funding to the game the game instantly received a mostly negative review on steam the worst yet that you could get so where is Asylum entertainment and its MMO five years later almost none of the bugs or problems that existed at launch have been fixed but it gets better it seems John vanders went emboldened by successfully scamming his backers couldn't help himself in 2020 he would go on to explain that the studio needed more money to finish identity that's smart a game that had basically seen no progress in almost two years since its release he explained by another developer had asked us because if you can get money for him once at that point the thing is is it's easier to get money from people multiple times because then they're invested into it you know hello to be the publisher of their mobile game now you might be wondering why would any developer and their right mind go to this man to publish their game given his 100 track record of failure in delivering games as a studio well what he did not tell everyone is that the developer that approached him to publish their game was him yeah he created a second Studio to develop a mobile game while he was supposedly working on identity and that's smart this guy yeah let him cook uh-huh smart guy us to give him more money to fund this new game so that identity would have the money it needed yeah finish he even created this is like bro can I borrow five dollars no I'll pay you back the ten dollars from last week tomorrow but yeah could I get five dollars today because yeah it's like because then I gotta have like a [ __ ] like my money's tied up right now but like tomorrow I'm gonna get paid and like then I'll get you this five you know what I'll just get you 20 back all right so if I could just get five dollars this is perhaps the most infuriating part of people getting away with this they dive right into it again he claimed that none of the money from Identity went into the new mobile game and that he only worked on it on his free time while he wasn't working on identity two things that are all but certainly a lie fortunately this time the kickstarter campaign would be a complete failure people were not as easily fooled by Jon given the reputation that he had now rightfully earned for himself he should have just done it under a fake name why would he do it under the same name that was stupid he should have just invented a new person like just have an AI create a new character a new human being and then just use that person and be like that's me now I'm now Bill and uh bill is just a lifelong MMORPG fan he loves video games he grew up playing Pac-Man and now he's trying to make one of his own he's got 15 years in the uh in this in the space in the industry he worked for Microsoft and like you know Photoshop them next to build Gates and just [ __ ] make an entirely new person Kira TV did some great research on Jon after the fact and discovered that he had consistently moved into a more expensive home despite John claiming he lost money on the Venture and had no other form of employment yeah they realized that a substantial amount of the money that was due to be invested into identity actually was just used by John a nicer house if that's the case would anyone be surprised recently Asylum put up a post a few months back at the end of 2022 reaffirming that the game still the Studio's main priority though they are also working on others it's been a long time far too long since I gave you an update on identity and its progress when are we going to see a new update that's a difficult one to answer but I do hope fairly soon projects now tragically the game itself is still available on Steam for thirty dollars though with the reviews we hit a bit of a vicious circle here where in order to improve funding and development we need to give you some awesome updates to build trust but at the same time we had to feed our families and we couldn't do that without the funding so we decided that we could start some smaller projects in-house to raise money for identity and that's actually gone quite well yeah it's gonna be fine guys but it's garnered I doubt anyone is falling for it after eight years and 1.6 million dollars raised all John was able to produce was a few assets slapped into unreal engines in a completely unplayable State whether it was malicious intent or complete ignorance I would never invest in John vandersweet ever again he's proven that he's willing to embellish on his experience as a developer and fail to reach unrealistic goals I've always said this I'll say it again if somebody if you're doing something and you can't make sure that you can enforce the contract you need like the moment that anything even the smallest detail is off if they say to meet you at McDonald's and they're out the other Taco Bell uh nope I gotta go home I gotta go if you're buying it for 450 dollars and they give you four hundred and forty dollars nope not I I gotta go guys I gotta go yeah uh that's it I'm done because anything [ __ ] anything like that if a person is operating in good faith they're not gonna lie to you at all has a new house but he lost his reputation proven by the fact that his second Kickstarter earned him a whopping 430 next up we have day of dragons day of dragons was supposed to essentially be a survival game where you played as a dragon you spawned that sounds [ __ ] stupid what dumbass thought of this my name is an egg then you have to navigate the typical oh you spawn it as an egg I've ah yeah I know where this is going guys Bible game elements like our thirst and predators with a Twist being that you were actually a dragon instead of a person this is simple enough and unlike many of the games on this list sounds like an actually achievable goal the kickstarter started on September 2nd of 2019 and promised to deliver the game just two months later oh that's easy okay well that part sounds a lot less achievable it set an initial goal of twelve thousand dollars but by the end of the campaign it had brought like that scaly and furry culture there's nobody that has more monies than them like I'm telling you bro like they they drop a they drop a rack or two on a fursuit and I hear from other people that those things get dirty made over half a million dollars once again the demo that sold the entire game is just another asset flip demo meaning that the supposed developer of the game simply purchased these assets threw them into the game and gave the impression that this is the type of work that they were able of producing the kickstarter claimed that this game had been in development for two years but the developer Jo himself was a ghost no one could find him on the Internet or any proof of him having any experience in the industry though that didn't stop Jail from making over 500 000 from this Kickstarter campaign jail would even go on to post pictures of work that wasn't even his own as examples of progress being made on the game essentially smart you know that way because like you can show the work but you don't have to do it so it's like a win-win situation like number one people are happy number two you don't have to do anything so it's like this is the obvious decision lying about what was being done to the game seeing the success of his Kickstarter campaign Jo greedily rushed to add more tears of funding to the kickstarter campaign oh yeah such as extra Dragon DLCs that Founders would have to purchase to enjoy this wasn't all though he even intended to sell merchandise for the game he hadn't built yet everything he was doing and saying was 100 focused on extracting money from the people that supported his game when accused of Simply using focus on it I just can't see how any person in their right mind can look at this and think that it's worth even one dollar I would pay one dollar to not have to see this wait I would pay five dollars to never have to play this like if somebody said all right listen you either played you know you're you're locked in a room and you have to either give us twenty dollars to leave or you have to play this game for eight hours I would give them twenty dollars extracting money from the people that supported his game when accused of Simply using store-bought assets Joe denied it claiming that he had coded a substantial portion of the game himself but when Olympics after the steam build was unpacked it revealed that there were only four lines of custom code in the entire game okay so it was it was a custom it's custom code right yeah that's custom right for sure and he had supposedly been working for two years and had secured half a million in funds like one line of code every six months being to finish had an impressive four lines of code in it when the beta of the game was finally released to the content creators to play it was 100 asset flips without any core functions existing in the game at all you literally spawn in and fly around that's it there was no eating drinking or so it's like dragonflight any systems in the game there wasn't even sound it was nothing more than store-bought dragons placed with a store-bought terrain package into a Precast this is where they got the idea yeah terrain package but despite the fact that the game was so far from finished to Jail's credit the game did release in 2019 as promised wow so where is the game now almost four years later in 2020. well probably not where you would expect actually it's currently on Steam with recent reviews showing a very positive rating while the all-time review is mostly positive it's got hundreds of players online at any given moment and is receiving the monthly updates to the game presently you can do little more than choose one of the multiple dragons available in the game fly around and kill a few things and after a half a million dollar cash injection from the kickstarter plus the money made from the thousands of steam sales at 20 each and over three years of additional development time it's still incredibly far from being a finish game but so furries are just keeping this game on life support like I don't understand players seem to be enjoying scales thanks to the sheer beauty of Unreal Engine 5 and the gorgeous dragons they get to fly around as in this small and simple world the fact that there doesn't seem to be much more to it than that doesn't seem to bother the customers and if the customers are happy that's all that really matters right was this a game that was meant to be a scam or was it just incredibly poorly handled in the early days no one knows except for Jo the game isn't finished nor is it close to finish but it's still being supported and its players are on average quite happy I bet you can make a furry sex scam and have it be complete garbage and people would still play it so it looks like for now at least the jail has been delivering on his promise of making a Dragon Simulator game that people could enjoy as expected progress is slow as this is about as small and indeed Dev as you can get but it would appear he is legitimately trying which makes this story a nice change of pace from the rest on this list I mean I think the takeaway from this video should be that it's entirely too easy to make it look like you are creating something amazing and Unreal Engine when in reality all you've done is purchased a few assets from talented individuals and slap them into a map that you also bought from another talented individual most of these games showed a few moments of gameplay inside of a gorgeous engine using entirely purchased assets that would take an experienced developer mere hours to put together they then leverage that footage and greatly exaggerated their experience while promising the moon to successfully separate people from their money the main difference between the MMOs on this list that ended in failure and the one that has a positive rating in Steam is that the ones that failed promised to solve technical problems AAA studios in the genre with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal have not been I want to just go back just so you guys can listen to this one more time and contextualize it around I think one of the biggest ones that we're hearing about right now urge that footage and greatly exaggerated their experience while promising the moon to successfully separate people from their money the main difference between the MMOs on this list that ended in failure and the one that has a positive rating in Steam is that the ones that failed promised to solve technical problems AAA studios in the genre with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal have not been able to solve that's the exact thing that people are complaining about with docs saying that his game is going to solve cheating it's the exact same thing meanwhile day of dragons merely promised to be a simple game that is little more than a Dragon Simulator a promise that is actually realistic to deliver on if you take anything away from this video let it be that if it is well no I mean the difference I would say with ashes is that they actually have a play test of a Siege they they have a play test of a siege that exists on YouTube that you can look up right now like it it oh it's not copy it's but it's but it's there you can look it but I but you can look it up MMO promises to deliver everything if it promises to have every system you can imagine and to have player numbers the developers can only dream of fitting into a single server that MMO is either being driven by malicious intent or severe incompetence neither of which you should be giving money to until it's a finished product that has proven its worth and if you do give it your money history has shown that you will be disappointed so be careful with those Kickstarter campaigns friends and if you enjoyed this video be sure to check out the amazing content creators like Purity watch and Callum Upton who have both done a lot to protect the MMO Community from fraudulent kickstarters by covering them in depth massive shout out to my YouTube members if you want to be a YouTube member to help me make the best content I can and for behind the scenes footage emotes and private Discord channels and more click the join button down below please like And subscribe for the algorithm this is a great video and if you're into it catch me live on Twitch over at twitch.tv lucky ghost if you're not sure what to do next check out one of the amazing videos popping up on screen right now now easy to eat [ __ ] see this is a great video I like that one a lot let me link it for you guys there it is yeah I don't understand why are people giving the example of Ashes never ashes had a play test showing that many people actually moving around and playing in the game like I mean I'm not the thing is like I'm not trying to like [ __ ] on a on it but like that's just ashes boy how's it copium if if you can see it though I don't understand like how could that possibly be copium yeah you're Mimi no okay I mean if it's just memes that's fine I just it just didn't make sense to me that's all but yeah this video is [ __ ] amazing I love this uh especially talking about the scams in these games they're so [ __ ] funny especially seeing people just dump their money into it oh my God how can you possibly do that it is crazy foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 2,770,575

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, asmongold youtube, world of warcraft, asmongold funny, asmongold tv, asmongold channel, ZackRawrr

Id: 3jopYqx4WKw

Length: 68min 43sec (4123 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Dina_The_Melonzaurus]

Tbf in that video, DoD had the upper hand against the rest of the scam games since its actually going somewhere. I really wouldn't call it a scam anymore since Jao is actively working on the game(not that hes getting very far any time soon) i'd just call they're practices kinda scummy at this point. Jao has too big of an ego and its getting out of hand.

[u/Queen631]

The fuck is asmongold even doing. Why is he looking at games he would never play nor actually do research on.

Hes just causing toxicity. With no real facts.

Cant call something scam if they are actually using the money to make the game. SMH.

A scam is someone taking the money and running without producing anything. Get your facts straight.

[u/Queen631]

Man asmongold and that other guy are rude as fuck. I use to watch him alot but now fuck him. Legit being straight up rude to the people playing DoD.