MYTHIC: The Story Of Gods And Men (Canceled) | Hacker News Reader

MYTHIC: The Story Of Gods And Men (Canceled)

kickstarter.com

60 pointsGabeN42 comments

Project has already been taken down by creator, and all of the companies information is being deleted from the internet, yet they still managed to get nearly $5,000 in the few hours it was up, which is quite worrying.

Points of evidence

- God character art is from http://pgwebdesign.net/blog/35-mythological-art-masterpieces...

- Backgrounds are from http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=211755 and http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/painting/ancient-temple-en...

- Poster consists of this icon; http://xooplate.com/templates/details/2443-ancient-warrior-s... on top of this texture; http://panzertm.deviantart.com/art/Old-Yellowed-Paper-125646...

- The sword reward pictures are from; http://www.knifecave.com/fantasy/store/products/Designer+Cus...

- The reward tier text and values are copied wholesale from The Banner Saga's kickstarter, with just a game name search & replace.

- The office photos; http://i.imgur.com/uTCBT.png are just crops from the Burton Design Group; http://i.imgur.com/XOFdi.jpg

The don't actually get that $5,000. It's worrying that that amount was pledged, but Kickstarter / Amazon Payments doesn't charge until after a project is complete, and in the case of an unfinished, canceled project, never.

No, they get paid once the project reaches its goal and the time runs out. There's no guarantee that your money is going towards a project that gets finished.

> and in the case of an unfinished [...] never.

That is incorrect. The money is transferred once funding period has ended if funding goals have been reached.

From that point on, the project authorship has the money (minus Amazon's and Kickstarter's shares) and may never get it done still.

Source: funded half a dozen of KS so far, I know when money leaves me. It would also completely unmake the point of kickstarter: it's about providing funds for the project to be done, not guaranteeing sales so people can go get institutional investors showing they have 3 million sales in already (especially since most KS are a few thousand, the current million+ craze is not the median project)

You are correct, but nevertheless, they did not get the $5000. The funding goal was $80 000 and they got nowhere near that. So that was a scam that did not work.

This is only because the project was rumbled so quickly after it was launched. If they had maybe spent a few hours time mocking up some original images they could have been on their way to a fully funded project.

Half of that $5000 is from a single pledge. Is it possible that they pledged $2500 to themselves to make it look like their project is getting more attention than it actually is? Or does someone out there just really really want this game?

Mostly likely that's exactly what it is. I know if I were to run a scam like this, the first thing I'd do is a bunch of fake pledges to drive eyeballs. I think the total overhead is about 10% (split between Amazon and Kickstarter), and of course you only end up paying it if the scam is a success.

You wouldn't actually need to pay the money. You'd just need to make sure it got pre-authorized. Then once you got another legitimate pledges you could withdraw your fake ones (or leave them up but without any money in the accounts, I believe it's fairly common for KS not to be able to collect al the pledges at the end)

Known as "salting" (found out in Cialdini's Influence)

How were the stolen images tracked down? Through services like TinEye?

I'm really sorry, but I have to ask... do you perchance work for a game development firm in Washington?

> yet they still managed to get nearly $5,000 in the few hours it was up, which is quite worrying.

Well, the funding was canceled, which according to the FAQ means that all pledges are voided. So they actually managed to get exactly $0.

I like the t-shirt and the bag too. You can clearly see it hasn't been screenprinted. It's been done in Photoshop.

To be fair, that's what I would do if I was doing a legit product- mock up the t's and bags, then get them printed once the money is received.

I've been wondering for a while how long it would take for mass fake projects being created on kickstarter/indiegogo once these sites got more widely known. This project uses stolen pictures, but one could easily mock up random 3D scenes, make a cool video and walk away with 100k for two days work

It would have taken a lot more than some 3D mock ups to make this project believable. First he'd have to fix a bunch of stupid mistakes like leaving Activation/Blizzard (they are two separate groups that are just own by the same company), and claiming to be working with Disney (what happens when someone at Disney asks who this idiot claiming to be associated with them is.) Probably, most damming though was his claim to already have funding for a AAA title but still needing an extra $80K overall the numbers just don't add up. This is a really tight spot if he asks for too much money it is more likely funding will fail or that people will investigate his claims. Too little money and he doesn't sound credible.

Second the game concept was incredibly vague about a game that was supposedly already in production. Making big vague promises should always be a warning sign of scam. Conversely when Double Fine did their campaign it was okay that gave gave no details about the game because, 1 it hadn't been started yet, 2 they actually explicitly stated that the game might suck. Coming up with a real good detailed game concept is actually pretty hard.

Next the studio and team wer never shown. Instead you see one young guy sitting at a desk in a poorly lit room with no windows, and a laptop running some stupid animation on it. In other videos we walked though real offices with real people with names, and real workstations that actually look like they are in use.

These last two are going to be very difficult to fake as they require a reputation, accomplices, and money, which scam artists tend to lack. Not to say scams are impossible but I think they are going to be harding then people think.

I think you'll find the "walk away" part is not that simple, considering the fact that it would constitute a crime. The kind of crime law enforcement is quite familiar with and that leaves plenty of traceable evidence because it involves financial transactions.

I'm sure there will someday be someone clever enough to get away with it, but most people are likely to get caught very quickly.

While I agree it would be a crime, how hard would it be to enforce? Can't the perps just claim some lame excuse for why they didn't execute on their stated plan?

A lame excuse isn't going to hold up in court. Imagine you raised $100K to make some cool gizmo but instead buy your self a sports car, the fact that you never had any intent to even try to make the product is going to be really obvious. If you actually spent enough of the money raised on the project to convive a judge that you weren't running a scam, then you not going to have enough left over to really be considered a scam.

That rather depends on who you pay and how convincing their invoices look.

20 folks on here could create a convincing Eco system of sub contractors and out sourcers - spend 20k on equipment and rest on salaries, you can spend most of yourdays on the yc startup subsidised by the game income

or is that sounding like actual work?

Anywhere there's money flowing, scammers will appear... clearly, this sort of problem is going to be a growing pain for Kickstarter and the whole crowd-funding idea. It's certainly not insurmountable, but it's an issue that isn't well handled/prevented now, as far as I see it.

If anything, this is should be kind of a relief to Kickstarter users since people have PLENTY of time to discover these scam projects before payment is distributed.

The only scams like these which will work on Kickstarter is campaigns that aren't especially interesting or may not appeal to a huge audience. Once a campaign gets to 100k, there is press involved and people researching. If you get $5k in pledges, no one would look deep enough to check if you're legit. Kickstarter is quite tough in terms of getting on the site and through the month process.

I think it shows, always do some due diligence, it seems people did in this case. Look up the creator, their experience. They don't have to provide any work at the end of it all, so it's up to you as a possible pledger.

I think the problem though is that projects can end up "scammy" even if they aren't outright scams. If a project makes very ambitious promises, and upon getting the funds, the developers don't put forth much effort and deliver a bug-ridden, lackluster product, it might not technically be a scam. But it will sure feel like one to contributors, and I think Kickstarter is going to increasingly run into this problem in the future.

I don't know about that. One of the big selling points of the Double Fine, and Shadowrun campaigns was that it was a established team with a reputation for making good games. Also, say you do raise $100K and produce a lousy product, your not going to find funding for you next project. You can actually see this already as some projects are now on their second or third campaign.

Was this a real attempt at a scam? Or just an attempt to get some news coverage - like a prank? Like the first real scam on AirBNB someone wants to be the project everyone always talks about with online fundraising.

When you start collecting money from people a prank becomes a scam.

They didn't collect any money, simply took pledges. And, looking at it that way, it's easy to see how it could be looked at as just a prank.

the difference is it got taken down before the prank became a scam. If it was never caught, and cashed out I don't think anyone would be calling a prank. Every system involving money always has people testing the boundries. This isn't the first and probably won't be the last.

Bostinno also recently reported another project that simply failed to deliver: http://bostinno.com/2012/04/25/kickstarters-dark-side/

Could this create a market for 'verified' kickstarter projects? Kickstarter as an organization states they dont verify, but as they grow the need will also grow. I'm thinking this could be an optional feature that everyone would be aware of (IE: grayed out badge when not invoked). For a small fee a typically background check will be performed, either by kickstarter or an independent.

Ugh. No. Every damn news site on the planet misrepresented the Star Command money issue.

First, Star Command didn't fail to deliver. It simply hasn't delivered yet. The game was being shown at a trade show last month. It's on it's way. This is not a case of a cancelled project or someone running off with the money.

Second, the article's statement that only 4k went to the game is an outright lie. They clearly state that 6k went to music, 5k to marketing (poster + PAX), and 1k to development/demo hardware. That's not necessarily ideal but it's not entirely unreasonable either. You can argue the marketing/hardware issue perhaps, but 6k went directly into the game in the form of music.

The real lesson to take away from Star Command is their under-estimation of time and money required to create, package, and ship backer rewards. That's the real danger that other projects should be wary of.

Yeah, the way their funds evaporated into nothing after delivering all those t-shirts and whatnot was large in my mind this past week as I worked out the rewards for the comic book I just started the campaign for. I'm basically not offering anything physical beyond the book - more money gets you sponsor credit in the back.

Deleted comment

Hello,

SHOUTING isn't a great approach to try on HN. Phrases like "Try READING the article next time" and "Sounds to me like you have no more business sense than[...]" will probably earn you a few down votes too.

Personally, I think it's up to the individual (or in this case, collective) investor to perform due diligence before handing over your cash. I've only chipped into 3 kickstarter projects, but in each instance I'd done the appropriate due diligence before signing up.

As the saying goes, a fool and their money are soon parted!

Making a Kickstarter pledge is no more investing than ordering a pizza.

When you pay for a pizza you get a damn pizza or you get your money back. Kickstarter projects aren't anywhere near as certain. They are much closer to an investment, except your return is fixed at either 1 unit of project product OR nothing.

PREordering pizza...

This is why kickstarter/indiegogo need to release an api or a data dump. It will only help them and the public, just the same as the sec releases public company data.

An API or a data dump of what?

Of campaigns, basically a scrape of their website (they make their money fees, not advertising). Then other people can do review sites of campaigns and do statistical analysis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com