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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Seems like the "product" is made by a art collective (https://mschf.com/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSCHF) based in New York. Since it doesn't seem to actually be available, it seems to just be landing page with graphics, rather than a actual game/program. Vaporware essentially.

Still, really funny idea and I'm sure it'd help someone to file their taxes (if it's real), as there seem to be people really obsessed with anime or dating sims out there, or a combination of both.

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MSCHF have a history of ridiculous ideas that actually get released, so I'm not sure that I'd discount this as vaporware so fast

I've never heard about them before, and my initial impression of art collectives releasing things like this without actually be able to try it is to assume it's just to gather reactions out of people, rather than actually releasing finished products.

But of course, you might be right, I hope no one put any weight on my initial impression which is based on very little.

They've made a bunch of real stuff, and also do weird stunts. For example I really really loved their ATM leaderboard at Art Basel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKeFWA5etkw - Diplo got first place for a little while but was dethroned the next day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwfIspLAiLw&ab_channel=tadje...

They've made some wild shoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNAsx7kQ6PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0KHuSctqtg

Coffeezilla covered them a couple of years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZKGJCbP6Y

As I said when this was posted yesterday, I'm for sure a fanboi.

Most important for the audience of this website is this project of theirs: https://deadstartuptoys.com/

Ha! Don't forget to "Press [F] to Pay Respects to Capitalism"

I remembered the Satan-themed sneaks, and assumed that was what your link would be for 'wild shoes'. Nope. TIL they also made Strongbad cosplay boots.

Mschf and Improv Everywhere have done some endearing stunts over the years.

> just to gather reactions out of people

"Gather reactions" and do what with them exactly? This seems like a cynical view of art

Gathering reactions is the purpose of art. Art doesn't need to function to serve its purpose.

> Gathering reactions is the purpose of art

According to who?

Plenty of artists do what they do in order to invoke some emotion in people, myself included.

as in some kind of emotional reaction?

I purchased their Illegal Chips series [1], because I'm weird like that. They had partnered with Good Mythical Morning's Josh Scherer to make the fugu flavor. I did get finished products - the horse meat and maggot cheese ones didn't taste like anything wild, like normal bbq and cheese flavors. But fugu was actually really cool in my opinion. I've also see their Big Red Boot [2] while watching wrestling. I believe MSCHF was also behind the Eat the Rich Ice Cream bars [3].

Overall, its a limited edition designer brand "art collective". But they've consistently released their products. Thinking about the TurboTax workflow, it doesn't sound outlandish for MSCHF to contract a game company to make the same thing with an anime school background and cartoon avatar to guide the process.

[1] https://illegalchips.com/

[2] https://www.instagram.com/reel/CooJI8WujyJ

[3] https://stupiddope.com/2022/07/mschf-creates-eat-the-rich-ic...

Another example of an art collective bringing very cool things into existence is MeowWolf. If you're ever in Vegas, check out Omega Mart and do the full story.

https://meowwolf.com/about

This is a very entertaining real life video game experience. Big fan!

The best is the 3 story experience in Denver

I actually worked with them to develop a fake SAT test. It was released, and they had an online competition where they gave $26k to the highest scoring test taker.

Hey I know you~

How did you end up working with them? Super jealous!

They actually contacted me based on my Upwork.com profile. At the time, I think I was the top search result for SAT or SAT verbal.

It seemed to be briefly listed on Steam, though the link is now dead. Here's the Wayback Machine archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230322031642/https://store.ste...

Their itch.io page is still up

https://taxheaven3000.itch.io/tax-heaven-3000

Still vapor. No download link.

The modal dialog that immediately pops up when you navigate to the taxheaven3000.com site usefully tells you that it's not released yet and gives a date: April 4.

It literally says "Coming next" next to that project on their timeline, with the project before listed as "Latest release". Hold your horses, it is releasing soon.

>UPDATE: STEAM IS DEPLATFORMING TH3K. DIRECT DOWNLOAD VIA TAXHEAVEN3000.COM ON APRIL 4. Maybe TurboTax sent a check, we don’t know.

Perhaps because it asked for your social security number.

https://imgur.com/a/KmWM6KU

Is that... Illegal?

/from someone who never lived in the US

No. You might be surprised at all the forms that use SSN improperly/lazily as some form of unique identifier though.

IN the past 2 days I've encountered that both the cable and gas companies used mine to verify. I sure didn't give it to em either, that's the more concerning part.

its required to fill in your taxes, but also potentially abusive if the developer isn't honest, and probably not something steam wants on their platform.

it's not illegal, but it sure is shady.

handing out your SSN makes it easy for someone to try to open lines of credit, credit cards, loans, etc. in your name. You'd need other data, but that's often trivial.

SSN also wasn't designed as a universal ID and has a few weaknesses, on top of being shoehorned into a role it wasn't meant to fill.

The USA should just bite the bullet and publish everyone's Social Security numbers. That way we can stop pretending they're some kind of secret password and finally force companies who don't want to be defrauded to stop using them. They should not be used for authentication in any way! It's crazy that non-secret information about me, like my SSN, birthday, home address, and mother's maiden name, can be used by anyone to prove that they are me.

IANAL, but in cases where the SSN is just used as a unique identifier (rather than for tax purposes and/or social-services benefits), there are laws about having to offer people a different number.

For example: in the US, drivers licenses are issued by state (what would be called a province anywhere else) governments, not the federal (i.e. national) government. My first drivers license used my SSN as my license number, but if I had asked, the state government would have been required to issue me a license with a different number.

These laws were passed because it got to the point where just getting someones name and SSN were nearly sufficient to completely steal their identity.

US states are states are not provinces for the same reason EU member states are states and not provinces.

It's also why the US Senate designed to represent states like the EU council, was never intended to be proportional.

Maybe this was true 200 years ago, but US state sovereignty has declined steadily

Worth noting that every other product MSCHF has made has actually been real though.

No reason to believe this will be any different just because they are an art collective.

It definitely existed and it was definitely on steam as of last week. Not sure why it’s not there anymore. But it’s a real game.

It says April 4th release date in some modal that pops up.

Not just any art collective, a VC-backed art collective!

The game is available here: https://taxheaven3000.itch.io/tax-heaven-3000

Their site says it’s got a release scheduled for tomorrow.

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