Nekro has been abandoned by one of the creators, the story isn't so clear

Quoting: Kristian

Quoting: Mountain ManI've said it before an I'll say it again: The only developers who deserve my money are ones with a finished product to sell. I will never support Kickstarter or "early access" or any other crowd-funding scam.

Crowdfunding campaigns are NOT inherently scams.

Quoting: WurmphlegmSo then what happens to people who all pledged for physical items?

Quoting: Ignis@Storminator16, lawyers are fine but slow. It's not like you can't do both.

Quoting: neowiz73all it takes is a few bad apples to ruin the whole bunch. cases like these only destroy credibility of the crowdfunding process for all the other devs out there. it's going to boil down to experienced devs that have good reputations that gain any sort of headway with crowdfunding. all of the small time start-up devs will be SOL because of these shady devs like this one seems to be.

Quoting: ShmerlNot really. It only shows that one has to prepare for that process instead of doing blindly. Others will learn from such mistakes.

QuoteKlegran

Guys, I'm not directly responding to that horrible post made by my partner because I *refuse* to get into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ match. The fact that he wants to publicly attack my character (the person he chose to go into business with) only serves to show his true character. He's an angry person who needs to let his anger out and I want to let him. It doesn't mean what he's saying is true, and I'm certainly not orchestrating some big coverup here. That said, I don't want to get into a he-said-she-said match -- it serves no purpose. Since you keep asking, I'll tell my side:

We made 168k on Kickstarter, after taxes, fees and 'no show' money it was 130$ (Yes, 35-40k was lost right from the start), my partner immediately used 40k to buy new equipment, hire his buddies to make some models, and pay for all manor of software. We then had 90k left. Now I knew the second we scaled the game up from where it was in the Kickstarter days that it was going to take more than a year. Most likely more than two. So what we did is devise a plan that would help us spread 90k over multiple years - only one of use would go full time as salary, the other would not.

Who should go full time? Well, he knew art. I knew how to program, do art and backend stuff. So the choice was pretty easy - in order to make Nekro with the money we had I would have to go full time while he did not. This was something we both agreed on. It was really the only way to do it.

Most mid-level programming positions start at around 70k a year, so clearly I had to take a massive cut in salary to work on this game as 70 / 2 or more years was barely a livable salary. I knew I would need to put my saving into it as well. And I was fine with that - this was my passion project and I wanted to see it through. I would eat ramen and do the whole 'indie dev' thing. No big deal.

This went on for years - we worked on the game as planned. I took less and less money as the money thinned out. Let me make that clear - I was taking below poverty line salary at some points to work on the game. I knew the one simple fact remained true: If I wasn't working on the game, the game made no progress. None of the other team members knew how to code and I'm sure you know, code is what makes the game work. Therefore, I had to be the one to do it.

When Thomas says this line:

Bear in mind Scott was taking 100% of all revenue even though we have a contract that explicitly states he can only take 50%.


This doesn't make sense. If I took 100% of the revenue I would have run out of money immediately. Hell, if I took 50% the same thing would have happened. Mathematically this doesn't compute. We put the revenue into a back account, where I then took small piece mail chunks to pay myself a salary since I had no other job. Thomas, who had a full time job and was working on the game part time, CHOSE not to because he wanted me to finish the game just like I did. I never asked, forced, or told anyone not to take money. We agreed to do it, because < 50k can't pay for multiple full time employees plus taxes and overhead. It just doesn't.

The proof of this is that we updated the game for years, adding to it, posting, making videos. I streamed for 8 hours every day showing my work. If I wasn't working on the game and just taking money, how did I make updates? No one else knows how to code! What's my motive to steal? The money was so thin by this point it was less than what someone was making working at McDonalds. I have no reason to steal from that. I have every reason to get it done and finish the game. Which is exactly what I was doing.

That brings us to now. The game simply wasn't as popular as we hoped and it didn't end up making a lot of money (of the 30k purchases on steam spy 20k were from Groupees which sold our game for one single dollar.) We both took a HUGE risk making a startup. We both put lots of our own cash into it. It didn't work out. That's life, that's business.

Normally that should be it. Project fails we move on. But the part that is ugly is now Thomas wants to get money back. He feels like because he put money in he should get money out. That's not how business works, but it's clearly how he feels. So who does he target? The easiest target. Me.

I refused to bring the game out of early access without it being finished. He wanted to cash in so he can see a return on his investment no matter what. I said I wouldn't bring it out of EA since it's wrong to the playerbase to deceive them. So, he then tried to get the company for himself, so he can release it out of EA (in an unfinished state) to get a what he felt he was owed - what he knowingly risked. He pulled out the remaining money from the bank account to 'cut me off' so I was forced to move on from Nekro - something he clearly thought would make me give up Nekro as well. He threatened to sue me, he posted the attack on my character you see in the review post. He even lied that he has all the Kickstarter rewards (he doesn't) to try to rally a cause. Once he saw the game failing, he went into panic mode and tried to get back whatever he could. I don't blame him. But using me as a catalyst to achieve this goal was wrong, and I don't agree with it. We were partners, and that's not the right way to treat each other.

Me? I'm just sad about my little game. All I want to do is finish it. But now I can't. And as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ as that is, I'm more sad that I have to tell you guys. And that you had to see it happen like this. But that's life sometimes.