Palladium, im seriously dissapointed in you.

[CushionRide]

Hi, my name is Tim. i live in western Wisconsin. back around 1995 maybe even a couple of years before i purchased my first palladium books. they were from the Macross 2 series. i was totally excited. i was a huge robotech fan, and i was watching it on SciFi channel in the morning before school. then i found my books. then i met my roommate after high school and he introduced me to Rifts. again i was stoked. i started reading and reading and reading. the books were amazing. i loved the worlds the immersion. the time just making characters i would never use. it was the most fantastic voyage i ever had in the RPG world.

then my first GenCon in 1995 and i got to meet so many people. i think my best experience was getting to meet walter koenig. garret wang. and most of all getting 2 of the books i purchased signed by Kevin. those experiences will be with me forever. i still have all of my books old and new versions.

then i heard about some of the problems. shaky things that i will not get into. but i sent letters to kevin and others sharing my support for their problems as i cared and felt for the company that i loved and endorsed. so much.

a couple of years before the tactics fiasco i learned that new Robotech RPG books were being released. or had been released and i just missed the announcement. i jumped on it and started ordering thru my local store. i just got my last book 2 weeks ago. but between then and now i also learned of Robotech tactics. a miniature game.

well the first thing i thought was.... GREAT. i cant wait. me and a couple of my friends were stoked to find out that this was a thing. i wasnt familiar with kickstarter. but i figured ill throw a couple of bucks in cause im not that rich and just watch and see where this goes. i figured that it would maybe retail somewhere. and sure enough i was right. my local store has a copy, and i got a copy on ebay. i didnt mind the models to much, it think it could have been done differently. maybe if they were done like cast miniatures, instead of model kits, it would have been better for the players and people wanting to buy the game. the rules.... ehhh. honestly i just wanted the game to give a table to my RPGs. and it was fantastic.. we had loads of fun.

this is where my disappointment lies..... i saw these 2 videos. and this makes me shake my head in disbelief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1z38N0vQkc&t=94s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG83FB041is

what the hell is going on....... seriously. what happened to the game company i loved back in the 90's or the last 20 years. why the hell is this happening? look im not trying to drag your faces in the mud or talk smack. im asking, as a respectful fan. someone who owns a 60 book collection of palladium books, someone who looks at your catalogs and realizes i still have books i want to buy. you kevin, need to fix this. the restitution i saw offered on kickstarter is something i would expect from a company like EA. a company that doesnt give a rip about the people buying their products. this is not what i expect from you. i dont understand.

i want to know that what i have seen here has shattered my faith in this company, and untill people are properly compensated for their dollars i cannot justify purchasing any new material. this to me ranks up their with Kyberlite stealing Ripperblade designs, EA lootbox scandals, pay models on other mmo's, Inkjet cartrage scandals. the list goes on. this burns your reputation. and it will be like a cancer at the heart of your business. im sorry if moderators feel my post location is inappropriate, but i wanted my opinion known to the general public.

Please do the right thing.

[Vincent Takeda]

Ouch! Palladium may have taken a lot of customer money and wound up with not a lot to show for it, but EA is orders of magnitude worse. Several orders of magnitude. Cuts deep!

[jaymz]

Cushion you are not alone in your disappointment or boycott due to it.

In the meantime if you want to PM me maybe I can help you still get you RRT fix.

[Armorlord]

Hi Tim. Speaking as someone that backed the project pretty hard and has been following every update and bit of news for the past few years, I can say this is not some great betrayal or sudden move.

Palladium did try to fulfill the dream for Tactics, unfortunately everything they'd been told about the project costs turned out to be wrong within months (and I could say some choice things about the partner advising them). They cared too much about the IP to do the smart thing and accept failure then, and too proud to hold a second fundraising drive for it (as other kickstarter projects have had to do at times). They clung desperately to the hope that they could raise enough money through sales to produce the rest of the product and make it a huge success. Harmony Gold cutting the license forced them to have to drop everything without being able to keep trying anymore.
I now have an extra crate of figures and bits as part of my rewards exchange, and I am satisfied with that. It is honestly more than I expected.
Money was never an option, if they had the funds they would have just had the product made, but they didn't have it, they couldn't get anyone to invest in it, and HG pulled the plug. Considering that the shipping is one of the things that killed the project in the first place, it wasn't surprising that isn't something they could afford either.
With the license gone they couldn't offer anything else Robotech in the future either, HG burned that end of the bridge, and with the money used up on it, there's not much else they can do.

Ultimately, I believe Palladium Books acted in good faith to see this project through. While hindsight allows me to question choices that were made, I have no doubts that Palladium cared about Tactics and tried to make it work for everyone. (Chief bit of hindsight was ever working with Ninja Division, whose "professional advice" scored multiple torpedo strikes against this project.)

Kickstarting a project is an inherent risk, though I wish I could have had some of the Waves 2 figures, I'm certainly happier with the results here than I've had with some other projects that didn't work out. (I'm looking at you Mighty No. 9)

[rosco60559]

armorlord, I need to disagree about the good faith. lying to a group or anyone for that fact is bad. carrying that lie for 3 years is even worse.

cushionride, your post is fine. the powers that be don't really tread into the forums anyways.

[Armorlord]

I'll say that I wish they were more open about the issues, but it seemed pretty clear what the problems were when they announced the Wave 1&2 plan, once you brush the sugar coating off. I just wish they'd laid their cards out and gone for a second round of crowdfunding at that point instead, but it seems they were still taking advice from ND at the time.
Then again, with ND in the mix still at that time, maybe their options were contractually limited in some way.

[Forar]

They lied to the backers for years. Strung us along with statements about how "201_ will be the year of Robotech!" that it'd totally deliver in 2015, I mean 2016, I mean 2017, oh... never mind it's a flop.

That's not acting in good faith, no matter how you slice it.

One can quibble over what portion (if any) of the blame Ninja Division might hold, or how Harmony Gold might have complicated matters, but at the end of the day, nobody forced Palladium to keep up a facade that everything was fine, here have some random infantry and SDF-1 base renders, go silent for a couple of months, only to abruptly signal that the end was nigh.

That they admit to knowing of issues stretching years back only worsens their lack of transparency. That they split into two waves was indeed initially concerning, but the reassurances remained.

This was supposed to have been wrapped up in less than a year. HG pulling the license is only an issue because this debacle stretched out to nearly half a decade.

Do I think this was done maliciously? With ill intent? No. But the massive excess in product (based on factory stamps indicating vastly more was made than was necessary for retail, which makes for a reasonable question of whether or not backer funds were spent on retail product) certainly makes one question whether or not this wasn't run with some fast and loose practices in place. They have said publicly that they didn't spend KS money on cars or houses or vacations in one of the long past Updates, but aside from a vague pie chart we have no assurances (that I've seen) that KS funds weren't used to snag possibly tens of thousands of extra core boxes and expansions on our dime.

It's not just that they failed to be open about the issues, it's that they flat out lied to the backers, and those lies make even the truths they may have told us hard to believe sincerely when they reside in grey areas themselves.

[Dunia]

Have they repaid their backers for not being able to create the product that was prepaiid for?

I just want to know, because i am considering prepayig for some products for a friend who still loves PBs rpgs, but all this has made me doubt that PB will be able to deliver and if they do not that I will get my money back

[jaymz]

Nope. NO offer of refunds whatsoever and in fact outright denial and refusal to refund. The only thing they did was offer wave one stock, as well as anything else robotech they had in stock, in kind (at inflated priced to boot compared to the liquidation sale prices) in place of the refund owed. Wave one stock that every one already has plenty of and does not need more of.

[Armorlord]

Have they repaid their backers for not being able to create the product that was prepaiid for?

I just want to know, because i am considering prepayig for some products for a friend who still loves PBs rpgs, but all this has made me doubt that PB will be able to deliver and if they do not that I will get my money back

They gave us a remaining reward value credit that we were able to put toward available product at the same discount as the original project rewards, which was still a better value than buying from the store front.
Also, it was a kickstarter project with another company involved as well, not a traditional preorder.

As for regular preorders, they don't charge for those until the product is shipping out, so no issues there.
Though anything other than a Rifter is likely to take awhile to come out.

There's never been issues with purchases of in-stock product.

Also, the crowdsourcing efforts they've done independently for Lemuria and two Northern Gun book have been filled in full.

[Zer0 Kay]

Have they repaid their backers for not being able to create the product that was prepaiid for?

I just want to know, because i am considering prepayig for some products for a friend who still loves PBs rpgs, but all this has made me doubt that PB will be able to deliver and if they do not that I will get my money back

They gave us a remaining reward value credit that we were able to put toward available product at the same discount as the original project rewards, which was still a better value than buying from the store front.
Also, it was a kickstarter project with another company involved as well, not a traditional preorder.

As for regular preorders, they don't charge for those until the product is shipping out, so no issues there.
Though anything other than a Rifter is likely to take awhile to come out.

There's never been issues with purchases of in-stock product.

Also, the crowdsourcing efforts they've done independently for Lemuria and two Northern Gun book have been filled in full.

Amen.
Note: the use of you is generalized and not directed at Armorlord (esp. As he seems to be one of the few with their heads screwed on straight)

I find it funny that the haters are complaining that entering into an investment with a higher innate risk than stocks (meaning ANY kickstarter) is NOW too high a risk.

Be interesting to see how these people deal with real investments.

One should not put coin into a slot machine and expect a payout (again referring to the kickstarter concept in general) even if it had paid out on the previous 100 spins. To assume a payout from a gamble and therefore be entitled to malign is childish.

The backers invested in an alternate mode of financially backing an idea and many not because of the love of the concept or a belief in its superiority and chance of success but because they wanted what the kickstarter backers were supposed to get.

The backers are basically taking on the same responsibility the hosts of shark tank do when they buy into or buy out a company. Except instead of potential value being in the form of revenue the backers were offered product. A shark doesn't hunt down the person if the concept they bought out fails. They don't go after the inventor because the producer the inventor chose fails to produce. It is a business loss. They pick themselves up and move on without throwing a tantrum. It was a business loss and that is what it seems many backers fail to understand. This was a failed business venture it wasn't fraud. Stop acting like entitled millennials (I deserve, you owe me) or Hollywood producers (you'll never work in this town again). You played you lost, get up and carry on.

And to certain idiots in line who'll likely never see this. Pally is in as much danger losing the RT license as they were the last time. Meaning PB was better off without it and produced more stuff during the license's absence. Technically with a larger fanbase they potentially lost more with the loss of the TMNT license which also didn't really seem to hurt them.

[Shark_Force]

Have they repaid their backers for not being able to create the product that was prepaiid for?

I just want to know, because i am considering prepayig for some products for a friend who still loves PBs rpgs, but all this has made me doubt that PB will be able to deliver and if they do not that I will get my money back

They gave us a remaining reward value credit that we were able to put toward available product at the same discount as the original project rewards, which was still a better value than buying from the store front.
Also, it was a kickstarter project with another company involved as well, not a traditional preorder.

As for regular preorders, they don't charge for those until the product is shipping out, so no issues there.
Though anything other than a Rifter is likely to take awhile to come out.

There's never been issues with purchases of in-stock product.

Also, the crowdsourcing efforts they've done independently for Lemuria and two Northern Gun book have been filled in full.

Amen.
Note: the use of you is generalized and not directed at Armorlord (esp. As he seems to be one of the few with their heads screwed on straight)

I find it funny that the haters are complaining that entering into an investment with a higher innate risk than stocks (meaning ANY kickstarter) is NOW too high a risk.

Be interesting to see how these people deal with real investments.

One should not put coin into a slot machine and expect a payout (again referring to the kickstarter concept in general) even if it had paid out on the previous 100 spins. To assume a payout from a gamble and therefore be entitled to malign is childish.

The backers invested in an alternate mode of financially backing an idea and many not because of the love of the concept or a belief in its superiority and chance of success but because they wanted what the kickstarter backers were supposed to get.

The backers are basically taking on the same responsibility the hosts of shark tank do when they buy into or buy out a company. Except instead of potential value being in the form of revenue the backers were offered product. A shark doesn't hunt down the person if the concept they bought out fails. They don't go after the inventor because the producer the inventor chose fails to produce. It is a business loss. They pick themselves up and move on without throwing a tantrum. It was a business loss and that is what it seems many backers fail to understand. This was a failed business venture it wasn't fraud. Stop acting like entitled millennials (I deserve, you owe me) or Hollywood producers (you'll never work in this town again). You played you lost, get up and carry on.

And to certain idiots in line who'll likely never see this. Pally is in as much danger losing the RT license as they were the last time. Meaning PB was better off without it and produced more stuff during the license's absence. Technically with a larger fanbase they potentially lost more with the loss of the TMNT license which also didn't really seem to hurt them.

it is quite reasonable to be upset about the lack of communication, however. not that i agree with those that are out for blood for blood's sake; it's one thing to insist that you should be given what was promised you or a refund on the basis of that being the fair thing (though i find it quite unlikely that you'll be able to). it is another thing entirely to do so in an effort to destroy the company out of hatred.

but anyways, back to the main point, it isn't just that they didn't get what they wanted. it is that palladium lied to them about it for years, constantly stringing them on (when they communicated at all), that gives their backers a perfectly valid reason to be angry. the dragons might not go too crazy about a failed venture, but you can bet that they'd expect proper and honest communication.

truthfully, i wasn't even planning on taking a stance on the kickstarter thing, because i didn't invest (though if i had, i would have looked at the prices they were offering and had some serious doubts on their ability to keep that promise, because i know how much figurines cost for other games and the kickstarter prices seemed way too low to be financially viable unless those other guys are all making money hand over fist), but there is something i feel the need to be clear about in this thread.

as relating to the previous non-kickstarter fundraisers palladium has done... yes, they eventually finished the product and got it to their backers, but i wouldn't hold them up as examples of a reason not to worry. people got their books, but they got them waaaaaay late. i don't know the exact timeline, but i'm pretty sure at least one of the northern gun books was a year or more later than promised, and possibly both of them were.

practically speaking, my advice to anyone: if it isn't in stock right now, don't make any assumptions of when it will be.

i love palladium's products. but i'd have to be crazy to not notice the company's flaws, and producing stuff as quickly as they think they will is an area where palladium is absolutely horrendously awful. if you're wanting something on a specific timeframe, stick to what's in stock and you should be fine. if you want a book that they're working on... expect that you're going to have to wait, and ignore everything they say about when it will be done. i'm not saying you shouldn't pre-order, mind you... i'm just saying if you do, understand that the book that is "almost finished" may be months away, and you should be aware that you may be waiting for quite a while for it to arrive.

[jaymz]

Palladium owes refunds. No it is not an investment. It was money to be returned in product. The ToS this project was created and run under is very explicit in stating the company owes refunds. NOT product in kind. NOT "oops my bad sorry guys but Kickstarter is a risk". Refunds. The project was to create the game nothing more. NOT retail . CREATION.

John Cadice of ND publicly stated ND had ALL models done as well as factory time set aside and the plan was changed by someone else.

Kevin publicly admitted to using backer money to fund retail stock (which was NOT part of the campaign) to fund wave two which oddly enough had he NOT done that he MAY have had funds to at least get some of wave two done.

Kevin admitted to LYING for THREE YEARS about having the money to finish this project (which is oddly the same amount of time that ND was no longer involved) when they did not (I myself tried to warn people THEN about it as I had found out but was told there was no way I could know)

PB and crew may want us to believe how hard they worked on this but I know first hand how UNinvolved and UNinterested they were in the further development, support and evolution of this game leaving to people like me, Mike Arnold, and Peter Pidrak to do all the work in that regard NOT them.

WE got the FAQ done. WE did the revised official Blast Rule. WE put them in touch with GHQ and got the ball rolling and finished on conventional unit rules. WE pushed to get the wave two cards as well as paper minis done. ALL of which was only completed because we essentially had to harass Wayne and others at PB to GET IT DONE. (side note, Wayne STILL has the completed conventional forces rules in the format he wanted, which was ready to be released to the public since July 2015)

HG gave them a zero dollar renewal as well as putting them in touch with people who could have helped significantly with getting things done. THEY obviously did not take advantage of that. (This is per a HG rep at a recent convention when asked about PB, RRT, and the license)

For someone and a company that claimed to be working SO hard on RRT they did very little ACTUAL work. So spare me the excuses and blame shifting. This is ON KEVIN, and very little is on anyone else.

[Spinachcat]

HG gave them a zero dollar renewal as well as putting them in touch with people who could have helped significantly with getting things done. THEY obviously did not take advantage of that. (This is per a HG rep at a recent convention when asked about PB, RRT, and the license).

Is this a rumor or was this confirmed?

[jaymz]

It is what was relayed by a HG rep at a con as I already said. While second hand (from someone who is not one of the lawsuit people, is upset but has actually taken it all in relative stride compared to everyone else thus I lean towards believing it) even so, it doesn't change the REST of what I said which is all true.

[Armorlord]

John Cadice of ND publicly stated ND had ALL models done as well as factory time set aside and the plan was changed by someone else.

Models in a format that subsequently did not work with the factory ND selected.

Kevin publicly admitted to using backer money to fund retail stock (which was NOT part of the campaign) to fund wave two which oddly enough had he NOT done that he MAY have had funds to at least get some of wave two done.

Done on Ninja Division's recommendations when it seemed they did not have the funds to create Wave 2.

HG gave them a zero dollar renewal as well as putting them in touch with people who could have helped significantly with getting things done. THEY obviously did not take advantage of that. (This is per a HG rep at a recent convention when asked about PB, RRT, and the license)

That might explain the license continuing as long as it had, and the people PB talked to that turned down helping them that they were put in touch with, but according to public statements regarding the recent loss of license, it was pulled. Which I can't blame HG for, PB wasn't able to recover in a reasonable timeframe and there are multiple companies expressing interest in doing more with the license. Hell, I chatted with two different ones at PAX Unplugged alone, one already licensed for board games.

For someone and a company that claimed to be working SO hard on RRT they did very little ACTUAL work. So spare me the excuses and blame shifting. This is ON KEVIN, and very little is on anyone else.

Honestly, this is mostly on Ninja Division, every single error, misstep, miscalculation links back to decisions ND made or recommendations ND made. They made a mess and left Palladium to sit in a project they expected to have very little hand in when ND approached them with it.
Followed by the manufacturer in China obviously taking them for a ride, and Palladium being too foolish and inexperienced to see it. Had them pay to retool their manufacturing tools at a quick shanzhai factory that deals with multiple companies? Holy crap they were probably laughing all the way to the bank.
The blame I place on Palladium is being foolish, followed by being stubborn. They walked blindly into a minefield they had no familiarity and the one guiding them was nearly as blind and had only looked successful at that point because they'd successfully funded a few things (which later had issues as well), with a factory likely laughing at all of them. Someone should have questioned the increasing madness of saying they had to completely recreate the files (and charge for that) and retool the whole line (and bill for that). Palladium should have jumped ship six months in instead of riding the ship into the sea, but they stubbornly kept on it, because ultimately they are more fans than business people. A trait I admire in them up until bad business decisions bite them again.

In practical terms, the only difference this really makes is that three years ago, they might have been able to afford the shipping for replacement rewards. Between factory and shipping costs, refund was never a possibility once that train started rolling. Only if they realized the quagmire they were entering before it got that far would there have been funds. Palladium went in blind, took bad advice, and kept stubbornly pushing forward in the hope it could recover. That's on them. Part of me feels like I'm being harsh because they meant well, but the other part of me notes that this was a business deal with large sums of money, they shouldn't have trusted anyone and brought on people that knew what the hell they were getting into to double-check both partners' work. For that, I am disappointed in them.

[jaymz]

Actually no. There is every indication the reason the files didn't work was because the factory was changed. Ie changes made by someone other than nd. Unless you are saying nd doesn't know what files the factories they use need?

Also Kevin never once said nd recommended to buy retail stock...ever. He has admitted he decided to do that.

Every indication is people of authority over nd countermanded their recommendations.

Also none of this speaks to the fact pb was never hands on in this games support beyond "oh hey here's a few sprues of minis". It was people like me, mike, and Peter making them do things.

As for feeling left in the wind by nd that to is on Kevin. Read the damn contract. Gaming isn't a hobby business anymore it's a business. If there was wrongdoing by nd you damn well know he would be publicly declaring a jihad lawsuit against them much he dud to trion and they only had a similar name/concept with no other similarities to rifts.

Now you believe what ever the hell you want if that helps you believe Kevin et al hold little blame in this but I know better, have called out crap like this for years to be told I don't know what I'm talking about only to proven I was right every damn time.

[Supergyro]

Honestly, this is mostly on Ninja Division, every single error, misstep, miscalculation links back to decisions ND made or recommendations ND made.

Minor problem with this reading.

A quick review of Robotech tactics in comparison with the plethora of other mini games out there (including Ninja Division's) finds some epic differences. For example, I can't think of a single case of another mini game where that size mini has more than 5 parts, and Robotech tactics decided to make their minis 20 or even 25 parts. It's hard to think Ninja Division was behind decisions like this.

However watching Kevin's defense of this decision reveals Kevin in classic 'It's not a problem because I tell you it's not a problem and I'm going to blame you for seeing it as a problem instead of actually thinking it's a problem, and we're doing it all for the fans anyway' form. Watching Kevin do that to the kickstarter backers makes it hard to believe he was *not* also doing that to the folks at Ninja division.

Major problem with this reading.

Ninja Division has successfully made made mini games, they continue to do so, and it's hard to think just this once they completely forgot how to do this.

[wilycoyote]

I am not getting into the blame game (well not that much) as Jaymz and Forar have put the case as well if not better than I could, but would remark on the splitting of waves and the purchase of Retail stock.These must have been signed off by Kevin and Kevin alone, albeit people will have had input. He has been in business for over thirty years and must have known splitting the waves would incur extra costs, even a complete novice would have run a profit and loss exercise to see what monies were left beforehand and if it was actually the best way to proceeed. Note despite what is being claimed now, he explicity stated that PB (and ND not sure how that would be enforced) would at the extra postage costs. The decision to go for massive retail sales make it is plain as plain can be that he always thinking made a grab for money for PB and not perhaps acting in the best interests of the backers. This was not a worthy effort to recover monies for wave 2, but to the contrary a blatant move to accrue monies for PB from funds that would and should have paid for wave 2.

of course, this is retail product which Palladium has sold over the intervening years and which they have pocketed.

Anyway back to the assertion that Kickstarter is a gamble or investment, it is not. Kickstarter, is a binding contract between one party who agrees to issue specific rewards in exchange for money from the other party and if unsucessfuk in their endevour to refund sad monies. This "contract " is further confirmed by the Terms of Use we (and Palladium) agreed to when we backed via Kickstarter. There is an argument about what constitutes a proper refund but offering exchanges heavily weighted in favour of Palladium, as well as being absolutely discrimatory against non US backers (personally Palladium wanted me to pay them another $100 plus on top of the $200+ they owed me, it was not happenning.

Bottom line is that this failed because of one major crucial decision and that was to send $500k on retail stock in the forlorn expectation that this would be sold to not only refund the Kickstarter funds it was taken from but also feather the PB nest. That money would have ben enough to produce wave 2, if as was stated by Kevin himself that production followed straight after wave 1 was produced

[Armorlord]

Also Kevin never once said nd recommended to buy retail stock...ever. He has admitted he decided to do that.

No, he specifically said that it was Ninja Division's plan with the split and sell in the February 27th update, and that PB was initially against the idea but ultimately were convinced by their reasoning.

I thought it was always obvious that this was a holding action to try and build up funds to continue it. Traditional business reasoning in trying to keep a positive face on being to avoid negative news in fear of it hurting the sales they would need to keep it going. Sadly, between growing negative feelings and the fact that Palladium didn't have a clue on how to handle or sell to a completely different market when it was left in their hands, it didn't catch on as they had hoped.
Personally, I feel that in the era of crowdfunding that it would be better to admit funding issues and seek more from the crowd, but that runs counter to how a lot of people think about these things.

From what I've seen and read, PB kept going with ND's recommendations beyond what I would have considered reasonable. That they were still involved at all at the Wave split stage baffles me to learn from that update.

I completely agree that PB should have read the contact better, they walked into this in the naive expectation that their only involvement was approvals and some rules input, and were completely blindsided as a result of that failure.

Lack of experience, understanding, and preparation is why they've needed fan support, and the dream wouldn't have made it as far as it did without your help. You and I both know they didn't have understanding of what they were involved in outside of that dedicated cadre. And for that, I thank you and the others, the game wouldn't be as far along as it is without your support.

As for Rift, that was normal trademark protection, US law requires that rightsholders file suit and fight anything similar or they effectively just lose their rights. And it was amazingly close in concept and name, and even so effects. If they didn't fight it, Trion would have been within their rights at that point to fight someone if they tried to put out an official Rifts MMO.
Completely different scenario.

Ninja Division has successfully made made mini games, they continue to do so, and it's hard to think just this once they completely forgot how to do this.

At that point in time, they had not successfully fulfilled on a project. They had successfully funded popular projects. They learned a lot from it, and certainly had better business sense to have escape clauses and NDAs built into their contract. They've had some setbacks of their own in that period, but they've built up well, distanced themselves from RTT, and stick to cards and simpler SD figures/miniatures.

There is an argument about what constitutes a proper refund but offering exchanges heavily weighted in favour of Palladium, as well as being absolutely discrimatory against non US backers (personally Palladium wanted me to pay them another $100 plus on top of the $200+ they owed me, it was not happenning.

It wasn't discriminatory, that is how much shipping is now. I mean, one should be able to look at that and see how badly the shipping cost changes torpedoed the budget for this project. I don't know where you get weighted in their favor, the math worked out the same as it did for the rewards and items originally. They offered equivalency based off the original discounted rates, and I saw that as very fair and reasonable.

[SithFitz]

I'm from the UK, I put money into the kickstarter, not a massive amount but enough for the game and a few extras. I would have been happy to accept extra wave 1 stuff in place of my wave 2 stuff. However with the costs of shipping this made it totally unviable for me. Now I'm not one of the people that thinks Palladium should burn for this but I'm also definately not one of those that keeps defending their actions, I do think they should be issuing refunds to people who didn't have the extra wave 1 stuff. It seems odd that ND managed to run several successful kickstarters and have continued to do so despite making such a hash of the RRT one, this to me suggests that the issue didn't come from ND after all. It seems to me that Palladium is the one having the problems here and seems to be looking to blame someone for them. Also it has semed to me that if you are not a US backer then you are second class as far as Palladium is concerned, there have been some issues on this subject ranging from the high cost of postage for the extra wave 1 items in place of wave 2 (despite the fact that we already paid for postage initially) to Palladium selling things to do with the game to people in the US before anyone else got their stuff from the Kickstarter, which they very specifically promised not to do. All the convention exclusives have been released only in the US with nothing offered to the rest of the world (as far as I know) or only offered from Palladium themselves at ridiculous shipping costs. I've bought other stuff from you guys out in the colonies on a number of occasions and it's not cost me half of what we're being told. I am annoyed by this attitude as enough of the money for the Kickstarter had to come from outside the US to make it an option to sell to the rest of the world.

[dulsi]

WE got the FAQ done. WE did the revised official Blast Rule. WE put them in touch with GHQ and got the ball rolling and finished on conventional unit rules. WE pushed to get the wave two cards as well as paper minis done. ALL of which was only completed because we essentially had to harass Wayne and others at PB to GET IT DONE. (side note, Wayne STILL has the completed conventional forces rules in the format he wanted, which was ready to be released to the public since July 2015)

That's disappointing to hear but not exactly surprising to me. I stopped buying anything from Palladium after deciding After the Bomb II was too much of a mess to run. I understood that AtB wasn't a big seller and not going to get much attention but the Errata thread excited me. Then the thread sat without any response. Despite the fact that it seems clear they will never produce an errata for AtB, the thread is sticked in the forums. I would have hoped that newer games they were still trying to sell would have better support but alas that seems to not be the case.

[wilycoyote]

Armorlord, I reread your original reply to Jaymz, I was perplexed by your statement that it was Ninja Divsion that approached Palladium with this project. In fact the idea was first proposed by John Paulson (Paulson Models) but it was William Roche who really set out the case to Palladium and it was on this they acted. In their own update they state that when they costed the idea it was out of their reach but William suggested kickstarter as the means. Ninja Divsion were sub contracted for design of models and rules (albeit their rules were rejected and rewritten by Carmen). ND then took over the set up and running of the kickstarter itself. So this was a Palladium project and they had the final say so and it was they (Kevin) who signed off on expenditure. So not a firm foundation to start an argument with.

The splitting of the waves was doable (Palladium explicitly stated they would eat the extra costs) and referring to their own pie chart there were evidently more than enough funds left to complete wave 2 at that point if the sole intention was to complete the Kickstarter- the contract for manufacture had already been agreed (Palladium's updates from around the date confirm this - their own figures left around $500k plus.

As I keep stating the issue was that the gross over expenditure on Retail product took away funds fromwave 2 funds were not subsequently available. better people than me worked out (albeit it's tablecloth math) that Palladium asked for 17500 plus core boxes , while only needing around 6000 to fulfil backer needs. If their figures are to be taken as correct, they spent over $750k manufacturing and importing wave 1, so as a proportion some $500k went on this retail overspend. This was simply done to allow Palladium to accrue hard cash for themselves and not for the benefit of the backers - the kickstarter was there to produce the product not to subsidise retail sales. The key crucial nail that shut the coffin

I still believe the Refund Exchange was discrimatory on many levels. First of all to all backers. Remember when the scheme was announced enough goods were supposed to have been ringfenced to cover ALL backer requests, this has obviously not been done as non backers have reported receiving goods not now available to backers. secondly, after making their offer at KS prices (slight discount) Palladium then offer3d the same goods to retail buyers at a 40% discount, where is this fair. If they were able to make that reduction why was this not given as an option to backers first? You know the answer Palladium were trying to take actual cash for product - product incidently they had not paid for as it was funded via our monies.

As for overseas backers (such as myself) the exchange program was even more skewed. If I was in Boston and accepted my postage would only be around $11, the same refund was quoted to me as $100 shipping, plus I was responsible for import taxes on top. Yes that is the cost to ship but it hardly treats all backers equally. Whereas if, as should be my due because of the broken contract bewteen us, we were both to receive a cash refund, we would both get $200, that is the same amount for the same debt owed, fairer and equitable

I have one final question for you, as you seem determined to lay all the blame at the feet of Ninja Division, what happenned post Wave 1 when they fulfilled their contract and walked away? For the next nearly four years Kevin stated that monies were available and 2014/15/16/17 was to be the year of Robotech. The touted new books, remember Ghost Fleet and the Scenario book from two plus years ago - silly me I thought that that was their core business. Rememeber that it is three years and counting since Wayne infamously promised a full status upddate on all models. Shall I continue to list the catalogue of failures, broken promises, outright laziness and let us be very frank a certain amount of dishonesty towards the backers that PB have shown for the years since wave 1? Where has all the money from Retail sales gone? All of this when ND were not around , so who are you blaming for that if not Kevin and PB, surely not the backers?

You need to put your sunglasses on and see the truth (you have seen They Live?) Palladium are the ones who screwed this up and for all the copious verbiage and excuses they have put down on paper the truth is in plain sight ony if you want to look at it properly

[Myrrhibis]

Have they repaid their backers for not being able to create the product that was prepaiid for?

I just want to know, because i am considering prepayig for some products for a friend who still loves PBs rpgs, but all this has made me doubt that PB will be able to deliver and if they do not that I will get my money back

They gave us a remaining reward value credit that we were able to put toward available product at the same discount as the original project rewards, which was still a better value than buying from the store front.
Also, it was a kickstarter project with another company involved as well, not a traditional preorder.

As for regular preorders, they don't charge for those until the product is shipping out, so no issues there.
Though anything other than a Rifter is likely to take awhile to come out.

There's never been issues with purchases of in-stock product.

Also, the crowdsourcing efforts they've done independently for Lemuria and two Northern Gun book have been filled in full.

True, but even those were quite delayed. Hell, the NG2 book was implied to be all-but-finished when NG1 released, but it took nearly another 18 months to see that.

The *only* reason I partook of the NG1&2 Insiders, was because at the time, that was going to be the only way to get PDF format, & as someone who as of this year has been buying & playing PB product lines for 30 years... I just didn't/don't have the shelf room I did in my youth.

Between those delays, the RTT KS debacle, and now even the hardly-ever-late Rifter now running 2 issues behind timeline...

Color me skeptical. Enough that this year's Rifter sub (when my sub from last year hasn't even played out), is likely the last time I prepay for PB product.

(edited b/c apparently autocorrect hated me during initial posting)

[Pepsi Jedi]

Have they repaid their backers for not being able to create the product that was prepaiid for?

I just want to know, because i am considering prepayig for some products for a friend who still loves PBs rpgs, but all this has made me doubt that PB will be able to deliver and if they do not that I will get my money back

They gave us a remaining reward value credit that we were able to put toward available product at the same discount as the original project rewards, which was still a better value than buying from the store front.
Also, it was a kickstarter project with another company involved as well, not a traditional preorder.

As for regular preorders, they don't charge for those until the product is shipping out, so no issues there.
Though anything other than a Rifter is likely to take awhile to come out.

There's never been issues with purchases of in-stock product.

Also, the crowdsourcing efforts they've done independently for Lemuria and two Northern Gun book have been filled in full.

True, but even those were quite delayed. Hell, the NVM book was implied to be all-but-finished when NG1 released, but it took nearly another 18 months to see that.

The *only* reason I partook of the NG1&2 Insiders, was because at the time, that was going to be the only way to get PDF format, & as sok done who as of this year has been buying & playing PB product lines for 30 years... I just didn't/don't have the shelf room I did in my youth.

Between those delays, the RTT KS debacle, and now even the hardly-ever-late Rifter now running 2 issues behind timeline...

Color me skeptical. Enough that this year's Rifter sub (when my sub from last year hasn't even played out), is likely the last time I prepay for PB product.

Addressing the last bit... I got another year of the Rifter, and frankly I'm pretty worried about it. It's not a small amount of money and..... well with the RTT fallout. I'm worried I may be offered "Old rifters to fullfill my subscription" or something at some point.
(Meaning I'm worried they'll decide to stop the rifter and just offer me back issues, or that Palladium entirely may go down due to the RTT(If the class action goes through) and I'll be offered back issues or nothing)

I re-upped on my Rifter right before the RTT final stroke (Like 2 days??)) and was like "Ohhhh boy."

I still want the rifter. I hope it continues on, but there is a good amount of trepidation with it now.

[wilycoyote]

Jyst a tidbit, but in answering the consumer ptrotection Sevice in North Carolina, Kevin for the first time officially admits to buying as much wave one material as possible, The aim to sell this to enable the production of wave 2. Nowhere is there any mention of ND being involved in this crucial decision, which is the root cuse of the financial meltdown.

Note this admission shows that kevin took the monies earmarked and available to complete on wave 2 and thereby the project , instead made a deliberate choice to go after retail sales, it an obvious move to garner immediate monies for palladium books , in the hope the sales would be good enough to also fund the production of wave 2.

Simply put, he put the wellbeing of the Palladium finances before the fulfillment of his contract withthe backers to complete RTT.

Question, although it is obvious that there were thousands of core boxes still in the warehouse when time was called, in the three intervening years sales were made, what happenned to those monies? They are not declared in the pie chart PB supplied , regarding Kickstarter expenditure as any form of additional revenue and therefore I can only assume were accrued to the PB official accounts and if not still there , were used for non RTT material,. Just a little bit underhand one might say?

[maasenstodt]

...in answering the consumer ptrotection Sevice in North Carolina, Kevin for the first time officially admits to buying as much wave one material as possible, The aim to sell this to enable the production of wave 2....

Note this admission shows that kevin took the monies earmarked and available to complete on wave 2 and thereby the project , instead made a deliberate choice to go after retail sales, it an obvious move to garner immediate monies for palladium books , in the hope the sales would be good enough to also fund the production of wave 2...

Simply put, he put the wellbeing of the Palladium finances before the fulfillment of his contract withthe backers to complete RTT.

If true, that's incredibly disappointing.

I'm not going to throw away the scores of Palladium books that I have on my shelves, but I honestly feel unsettled about having bought several new Palladium books a few months back. Unless this gets cleared up, I'm not sure I'll be buying anything new from Palladium going forward.

[Armorlord]

...in answering the consumer ptrotection Sevice in North Carolina, Kevin for the first time officially admits to buying as much wave one material as possible, The aim to sell this to enable the production of wave 2....

Note this admission shows that kevin took the monies earmarked and available to complete on wave 2 and thereby the project , instead made a deliberate choice to go after retail sales, it an obvious move to garner immediate monies for palladium books , in the hope the sales would be good enough to also fund the production of wave 2...

Simply put, he put the wellbeing of the Palladium finances before the fulfillment of his contract withthe backers to complete RTT.

If true, that's incredibly disappointing.

I'm not going to throw away the scores of Palladium books that I have on my shelves, but I honestly feel unsettled about having bought several new Palladium books a few months back. Unless this gets cleared up, I'm not sure I'll be buying anything new from Palladium going forward.

The only part that's known to be true is that they produced Wave 1 hoping to be able to make enough to fund Wave 2. The same thing stated in the 2/27 update, it is not a hidden admission squeezed out by CPS. Where it diverges from known facts is imagining it is some scheme to make money for themselves, which has not been shown anywhere. The information we've been presented is that Wave 2 couldn't been done on the available funds, and the hope was that retail sales would generate enough profit to enable Wave 2 production.
The "where did the retail funds go" accusation forgets all the updates we've had with continuing development of the models and working at getting manufacturing ready. That stuff doesn't happen for free. This has not been stated directly, but does stand to reason.

Armorlord, I reread your original reply to Jaymz, I was perplexed by your statement that it was Ninja Divsion that approached Palladium with this project. In fact the idea was first proposed by John Paulson (Paulson Models) but it was William Roche who really set out the case to Palladium and it was on this they acted. In their own update they state that when they costed the idea it was out of their reach but William suggested kickstarter as the means. Ninja Divsion were sub contracted for design of models and rules (albeit their rules were rejected and rewritten by Carmen). ND then took over the set up and running of the kickstarter itself. So this was a Palladium project and they had the final say so and it was they (Kevin) who signed off on expenditure. So not a firm foundation to start an argument with.

By official account they were approached by someone (presumably Paulson) and didn't jump in then, and were later approached by someone that brought in Ninja Division which they did go for, which the idea sold to them was these other people doing all the work and PB handling approvals and HG. Whomever William Roche is, Google can't seem to find mention of him and this project, but he sounds like the unnamed person that put Ninja Division with Palladium.
My mistake might be in assuming the person selling one company's services to another would have been affiliated with said company. That a third party sold two different companies on this venture would actually explain how the communication and expectation disconnect occured as badly as it did between them. Which does paint Ninja Division in a better light in my mind.
That doesn't change the statement that it was Ninja Division that convinced them to go with the Wave 1/2 plan. However, I don't hold that decision against either of them. In hindsight, there are things I wish they did differently, but the logic at the time seems a reasonable choice to make to keep funding development, though one based on optimistic expectations.
From there we go back to my previous complaint with the lack of anyone actually experienced in the industry advising on what reasonable expectations might be. They were trying to break into the wargaming market, which neither have done. Ninja Division at least has had success with board games and card games, but even they haven't broken into the sort of wargaming RTT was trying to be.


I feel like some people are actually trying to see villainy in the actions in this Kickstarter, where mainly it looks like a mundane series of business decisions and bad luck. Hell, if shipping prices didn't skyrocket, there's a good chance we would have seen the full line, even with the other missteps.

I feel like we need an example of another failed successful Kickstarter project that went down a similar path: Mighty No. 9
Wildly popular, funded extremely well. Development costs for trying to do all the platforms they unlocked as stretch goals absolutely destroyed their budget projections. They pushed ahead and got out a result that fell short of expectations also hoping to fund their remaining rewards with retail sales, also without communicating that openly. Cut to a couple years later and they finally send out undersized half-assed versions of the rest of the rewards. It was like the 7-layer nachos of disappointment. They technically got things out, but failed on quality at every level.

Contrasting the two, I am way happier with what product came out of this Kickstarter and much happier with the quality of the rewards, even if I got more of some and less of others. I wish No. 9 had decided to split off some of the platforms as a second wave instead of compromising the quality. The way I see it, if the budget wasn't there to setup production for the Wave 2 product, the only way they might've done it at that point would have been to aim lower on quality, and that is something that I would have held against them.

[Supergyro]

That doesn't change the statement that it was Ninja Division that convinced them to go with the Wave 1/2 plan. However, I don't hold that decision against either of them.

The unfortunate result of that however gives a 100% clear picture.

They overprinted Wave 1 material in the hopes of using sales from that to fund wave 2 (According to Kevin Simbeida). This is arguably a shady move in the first place. The resulting income money was however not sufficient to fund wave 2 (According to Kevin Simbeida)....

However, the resulting income money is *not zero*, and upon the ending of the project, it should have been used to give those who backed the wave 2 rewards an accounting of the funds *and* the sales that were supposed to get more funds.... and to give them as much of a refund as could have been performed.

This is what 'dealing in good faith' would have looked like.

Without that accounting and refund, all Palladium has done is essentially attempted to launder hundreds of thousands of backer dollars so that they can keep them without keeping their explicit promises to the backers.

Every dollar of income from the "Robotech Fire Sale" is included in this.

Palladium didn't pay to produce those sets, the *kickstarter backers* did, the money from the sales of those sets should rightfully go back to *the kickstarter backers*.

[jaymz]

You know...I wrote out 3 lengthy posts but erased them all. I can only bring so much food and water to a starving and dehydrated person who will not partake before I stop.

To those who truly believe the blame is not mostly Kevin's, enjoy your Kool-aid. *sigh*

[Pepsi Jedi]

I have to say that trying to put the blame on another company is bad form. The parent company makes all the calls. At the end of the day any praise lands on them, as well as any fault.

Had palladium done astoundingly well with this, people wouldn't be here going 'Wait wait wait. Palladium didn't do anything. It was all Ninja division's suggestions". At the very most it would have been "In conjunction with ND's advice. LOOK HOW AWESOME WE DID! YEAAAH!" Which for the record, is how it went for the most part. ND was treated like..... advisors... For the first part. Then weren't mentioned at all for years.

To do the opposite when it was a total train-wreck, and try and put the blame on someone else is bad form indeed. It's called "Throwing someone under the bus"

Even if ND gave advice (And I'm not seeing where they were instrumental in all the things claimed above), but even if ND DID Give advice.... that's all it was.

Advice. It's on palladium to make the call. For good or ill. A person or company can't sit back botch things up and then point to the side and go "They told me to do it".

Palladium had to sign off on each and every one of those actions. ND didn't "DO" anything. Even if they -did- give ----hoooooorrrrible----- advice... It's STILL on Palladium, if they followed it.

[The Beast]

I have to say that trying to put the blame on another company is bad form. The parent company makes all the calls. At the end of the day any praise lands on them, as well as any fault.

Had palladium done astoundingly well with this, people wouldn't be here going 'Wait wait wait. Palladium didn't do anything. It was all Ninja division's suggestions". At the very most it would have been "In conjunction with ND's advice. LOOK HOW AWESOME WE DID! YEAAAH!" Which for the record, is how it went for the most part. ND was treated like..... advisors... For the first part. Then weren't mentioned at all for years.

To do the opposite when it was a total train-wreck, and try and put the blame on someone else is bad form indeed. It's called "Throwing someone under the bus"

Even if ND gave advice (And I'm not seeing where they were instrumental in all the things claimed above), but even if ND DID Give advice.... that's all it was.

Advice. It's on palladium to make the call. For good or ill. A person or company can't sit back botch things up and then point to the side and go "They told me to do it".

Palladium had to sign off on each and every one of those actions. ND didn't "DO" anything. Even if they -did- give ----hoooooorrrrible----- advice... It's STILL on Palladium, if they followed it.

You know...I wrote out 3 lengthy posts but erased them all. I can only bring so much food and water to a starving and dehydrated person who will not partake before I stop.

To those who truly believe the blame is not mostly Kevin's, enjoy your Kool-aid. *sigh*

[wilycoyote]

Armorlord, your loyalty to Palladium and Kevin are laudable but you are stull refusing to see and accept what is in plain sight.

ND were subcontracted to develop the models and advise on their manufacture, they also then were drawn into the running of the kickstarter but then that was it. post manufacture Palladium would handle shipping etc. ND did not have the final say on how the funds were to be spent, that was the role of PB and thereby kevin himself.

What cannot be disputed is that after fees Palladium were left with just over $1.3 million to complete the project, this was the sole purpose to which these monies were pledged to them by backers in goofd faith, accepting tPB's offer and so forming a contract between them.

The decision to split waves one and two in itself did not cause this project to fail, , monies were available to produce all of the models and cover delivery but,,,,,,

Palladium (and thereby Kevin) made a critical decision to spend those monies that should have been earmarked for wave 2 (and its delivery) on additional product intended for retail sale. Efffectiveluy this resulting in three times the backer requirement being produced , costing the funds an unneeded $500-$600k. The only reason that these additional 11k units were produced was to enavle Palladium to sellthem at retai and if then plan had gone as they wished they would have benefitted by some $400k while refunding the Kickstrter in full and so moving onto wave 2.

Obviously poor sales scupperred this, left PB holding thousands of units of unwanted stock that effectively destroyed the chance of wave 2 dead.

Not true, Kevin himself has just now admitted to producing as much wave one material as they could to the North Carolina Consumer Protecion Agency.

Interesting, to not ethat he himself quotes similar costs for procing wave one after this over production , suggesting a simiar retail run was hoped for in the event wave 2 ever was produced.

This is the key point of failure and immediately he signe dthe contract to start production and paid, Kevin must have been well aware that he had blown all of the money . yet when he has been cer of tweaking the product. Not a lie as such, but what he forgot to mention was that all the money to produce wave 2 was sat in boxes gathering dust in his ware house.

As pointed out even more signicantly istaht all these retail sales (including the RRT exchange and firesale) ave not been refunded to the Kickstarter pot, but have gone into the PB books. This is my issue, palladium have taken my money and will noyt give it back, but to add to this they have purchased stock with that money and blatantly enriched themselves.

Palladium have got this so wrong on so many levels, it is so breathtaking and still they think they can walk away with clean hands and do nothing to repair the losses of their customers, shamefull

[Armorlord]

Advice. It's on palladium to make the call. For good or ill. A person or company can't sit back botch things up and then point to the side and go "They told me to do it".

Palladium had to sign off on each and every one of those actions. ND didn't "DO" anything. Even if they -did- give ----hoooooorrrrible----- advice... It's STILL on Palladium, if they followed it.

This we agree on. I primarily get in a twist about some other people trying to pretend this was all some master plan or fraud, it gets way under my skin when some people talk like it was all some grand plot. So I keep pointing to PB following business guidance that was provided to them as a counter to those trying to build a fiction of Palladium as a mustache twirling villain.

I do wish to we could see ND's contract one day, the amount of NDA built in that leaves PB barely mentioning them while they were still being an active participant in decisions years after I thought they were out of the picture entirely after running away from the kickstarter really makes me really curious what sort of hooks they still have in the project. However, unless I hear otherwise, I would still think PB had final veto.

Armorlord, your loyalty to Palladium and Kevin are laudable but you are stull refusing to see and accept what is in plain sight.

And I believe your impression of what is in plain sight is shadowed in the view that there was malice or fraud involved here.

There are no earmarks, we funded an effort to bring a product to market, with rewards for doing so. They got the core product out and we got the rewards that went with them, and the rest went into losses for bad decisions, shipping changes, development costs, and a lack of popularity. In short, your average Kickstarter failure, but we at least had a partial success in that some product was produced and rewards filled.

As for where retail funds went, I believe they went into the development that we saw reported during this timeframe. As we've seen throughout this process, that has been a major money sink for this project.
There is no indication or evidence that those funds went to anything else but RTT.

In short:
I think the manufacturer took everyone for a ride.
I think Ninja Division gave poor advice and guidance.
I think Palladium Books was stubborn, foolish, and naive.

My fondness for Palladium may make it easier for me to see good intentions behind their choices, but I feel the scenario some have proposed with words like fraud and laundering are not grounded in facts, and are instead rooted in those persons' own negative feelings causing them to reach for conclusions that are not supported, and I find it dishonest for people to push that narrative as if it were fact.

[jaymz]

I do not think intentional fraud or otherwise but I still point the majority at Kevin. Why? Based on things I know and have been told by those who are in a position to know things. That's why. So you'll forgive me when people like yourself repeatedly try to lessen the blame on who it belongs with.

[zyanitevp]

Jyst a tidbit, but in answering the consumer ptrotection Sevice in North Carolina, Kevin for the first time officially admits to buying as much wave one material as possible, The aim to sell this to enable the production of wave 2. Nowhere is there any mention of ND being involved in this crucial decision, which is the root cuse of the financial meltdown.

Note this admission shows that kevin took the monies earmarked and available to complete on wave 2 and thereby the project , instead made a deliberate choice to go after retail sales, it an obvious move to garner immediate monies for palladium books , in the hope the sales would be good enough to also fund the production of wave 2.

Where can this be found?

[jaymz]

Removed

[Supergyro]

As for where retail funds went, I believe they went into the development that we saw reported during this timeframe. As we've seen throughout this process, that has been a major money sink for this project.
There is no indication or evidence that those funds went to anything else but RTT.

If the above is true, then every dollar obtained in the RTT fire sale from sales of Wave 1 product remains unspent (because since the project was discontinued in February, there of course would be zero development after that point and thus zero cost for that development).

Do you honestly think Palladium is sitting on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of money they can not legally spend? If so, why do you think they're not refunding the backers since per your statement, this would be the only *reasonable* thing they would be able to do with that money?

Also, where do you think the money from the *other* retail sales went? We know it didn't go to manufacturing anything. When you say it went into 'development'... what exactly do you mean? Who exactly do you think was getting paid and for what were they getting paid to do? Whomever it was, Palladium paid them for four years to do almost nothing. Pretty sweet if Kevin Simbeida was on that payroll. Do you think he was? How do you feel about Scott Gibbons being on that payroll? All evidence suggests he was brought on with the job of 'snowjob the backers until the clock runs out'. Do you feel money spent on him was money "spent in good faith"?

There's either a proverbial "sack of money" in Palladium to the tune of at least 100,000$ that Palladium can not legally touch, or they laundered the money, folded it into their operations, and are now trying to scurry away with money that's not truly theirs. Which option do you think it most likely?

Because there is no 3rd option.

[Shark_Force]

third option could be "they already legitimately spent more than they could ever hope in a million years to be able to recover from the fire sale on this", theoretically. is that what happened? i have no idea. none at all. i don't have any information suggesting one way or the other if that's true. i expect that is the sort of thing the courts will sort out, since it seems that's where it's going (and without that, we would likely never know for certain - one thing i will agree on regardless of how this whole thing shakes out is that palladium has been far too reluctant to communicate anything, in spite of their constant insistence that they are going to improve in that regard).

[Firesped]

my ire at ND is that they took no risk to learn to properly run kickstarters, over promised RRT by not leaving a future for growth during the Macross Saga. Profited both financially and gained the experince they needed to run their future kickstarters and business at PB expense.

sources I have told me, Palladium DID use the ND factory. Also the wave split advice came from ND. Also the advice to make as much wave 1 as possible to pay for wave 2.

ND produced models but did not produce tooling, this was the file incompatibility they talk about. Another thing learned at PB expense.

This is my deductions but when PB ran out of money in January of 2015. ND shut down Cipher Studios to get out of their contract at the end of February. 2 days later we got the final update with 3d model designs. Then all information went dark as PB prepared for the Open House and we finally got the big summer update that explained some context of what went wrong but still did not fill in all the gaps.

Harmony Gold was far too involved in the approval process and forced tooling to be retooled, eating away at the funds.

PB should have generated the paper figures by the original release date for the game and put out working rules with them so that the kickstarter players could have all play tested the game and fixed the many issues with it.

Shipping costs is just something that was learned by everyone. Noone includes shipping in the cost now on kickstarters.

Failure at retail is likely due to the advent of single piece pre painted game model that came out at the time with Xwing and Star Trek. Much bigger fan bases. Buy the game piece and put it on the table games.

They should not have put all the eggs in one basket. All the free stuff/low cost models we were due, ultimately killed this.

PB is still at fault for not releasing support material that was generated for the game. Conventional rules, advanced rules and Scenario books that were finished. Not sure where advanced rules were at.

There is too much risk for making games using IP that is not yours, when someone else has to approve it. Ultimately Harmony Gold themselves should have released the miniature game with someone making it for them. However that would have likely failed unless it was Wizkids at the time.

This said, PB should steer clear of Kickstarters. If they want to put out miniatures for their IP, shapeways is likely their best bet. It likely will not be cheap but they would make money off the designs and not have to deal with manufacturing or shipping at all. This said, only for IP they own.

Ultimately it will be up to the courts to decide if the backers who still want to push for the refunds manage to get anything together before SoL. The question here is if the backers who traded in for wave 1 will still push for their refund depending on how the court determines the Kickstarter ToS. The newer ToS allows for what PB did with the wave 1 exchange, the older one, I would call it grey area.

[Supergyro]

third option could be "they already legitimately spent more than they could ever hope in a million years to be able to recover from the fire sale on this",.

The idea they went into so much debt printing phase 1 that subsequent sales and fire sale has only resulted in breaking even is absurd.

We don't know how much was gained from the sales, but we do know it was greater than zero dollars, we do know there were zero manufacturing and shipping expenses after the sales, and we do know absolutely zero accounting has been made for that money.

So, again.... can someone explain where that money is and exactly why that shouldn't be used to refund backers?

[Shark_Force]

third option could be "they already legitimately spent more than they could ever hope in a million years to be able to recover from the fire sale on this",.

The idea they went into so much debt printing phase 1 that subsequent sales and fire sale has only resulted in breaking even is absurd.

We don't know how much was gained from the sales, but we do know it was greater than zero dollars, we do know there were zero manufacturing and shipping expenses after the sales, and we do know absolutely zero accounting has been made for that money.

So, again.... can someone explain where that money is and exactly why that shouldn't be used to refund backers?

absurd how?

everyone, and i mean *everyone* else i have ever seen selling miniatures and making money at it has prices 2-3 times as high as what the kickstarter was offering, sometimes more, for smaller and significantly less complicated models. and most of them don't have to pay anyone else for the IP, and presumably don't have to deal with massive screwups every single time (though their prices most likely do allow for screwups on occasion, in this case there was only one occasion and if PB is telling the truth, many screwups).

so unless i'm supposed to assume that everyone else is making a 100-200% profit margin or better, and yet there isn't a stampede of businesses trying to get a cut of that action for some unfathomable reason, it appears to me that palladium was offering goods at a price that was far too low. unsurprisingly, you don't make a lot of money selling things for substantially less than the cost to produce them, so if the problem was that palladium didn't properly understand what they were doing and made a bunch of mistakes, it is not unreasonable at all to presume that the money, from the kickstarter as well as later sales, is all gone and then some.

now again, i don't know if that's true; i don't know what their costs were, i don't know what the screwups were or how much they cost, but like i said: when i saw the price tag way back in the day, my immediate thought was that it was way too good to be true. if it was possible to make reasonable money selling miniatures at that price, everyone else in the industry would be stupid rich, and there would be a million new businesses desperately trying to get into the market so they could also get stupid rich.

[Morgan Vening]

now again, i don't know if that's true; i don't know what their costs were, i don't know what the screwups were or how much they cost, but like i said: when i saw the price tag way back in the day, my immediate thought was that it was way too good to be true. if it was possible to make reasonable money selling miniatures at that price, everyone else in the industry would be stupid rich, and there would be a million new businesses desperately trying to get into the market so they could also get stupid rich.

We don't know the details, because Palladium are not providing them. But we can make some informed speculation.

We know that there were 17,502 cores produced.
About ~7000 backer bags.
And 4,608 Spartan/Phalanx boxes. Even if we estimate the Spa/Pha and Artillery as double the content of the remainder, that puts it at about 18,432 Expansion Boxes.

We know that PB claim to have spent ~$1.583M on this project.
38% on Manufacturing = ~$600K
14% on Shipping = ~$220K, less the $150K Palladium claimed for backer shipping = ~$70K

So we have the number of boxes, and the amount spent.

Even if you account for the backer bags being the equivalent of Cores, and account for 6 Expansion Boxes being the equivalent of a Core, that gets you a grand total of ~27,500 cores, that means that PB paid approximately $24 per core, which isn't out of the realm with what I've seen others claim as costs. Meaning even at wholesale and discount prices and even the fire sale prices, there's still a profit margin inherent.

The problem some people have, is that apparently according to a response to a State Attorney General, Palladium paid for this, including the retail contribution, with Kickstarter funds. And all those costs were done, before retail commenced. Meaning all profit from any retail or wholesale sales, should have gone back into the Kickstarter funds account. Kevin says that the money ran out years ago, but what happened to all the money from retail sales?

It seems that money, instead of being used to partially refund backers, is being claimed to have been spent on the development of Wave 2, despite Wave 2 by Kevin's own words, not being able to be accomplished.

I have a Kickstarter message (as do others) that explicitly states that "If the time should ever come that Palladium Books cannot fulfill the terms of our Kickstarter project, we will of course offer refunds, as we would be required to do by Kickstarter.". Granted, my situation is different to most, but at what point did they know they could NOT fulfill the terms of the project, knowing the failure point costs ahead, and bypass that.

They seem to be arguing a catch-22. They'll offer refunds if they can't complete, but they'll drain all resources from the project beyond that point, so they're incapable of giving refunds.

I agree with some statements above that some of this information is speculative, and some doesn't have much information to go on. But there's more than enough to ask questions, and Palladium are the only ones in a position to do so. And Kevin is on record as saying they DO have that information. Their refusal to give those details to the backers speaks volumes.

[Shark_Force]

again, nobody sells miniatures for the price they were offering in the kickstarter unless they're desperate to get rid of stock. it doesn't happen. if 24 dollars a box is the estimated cost of manufacturing (and i don't know enough about the industry to know if it is), then it is leaving out a ton of other costs that are not manufacturing but which need to be factored into the final product, because otherwise everyone who is in the miniatures industry would be filthy stinking rich, and everyone who isn't would be trying to get into it because those profit margins would make every other kind of business look bad.

i'm also going to have to say that i'm pretty suspicious of some of the other claims that have been made, like PB getting the license for free. now, i could *maybe* believe "we'll give you a short-term license and allow you to pay at the end of that time instead of the beginning", but free? sounds about as likely as if my boss were to ask me to work for free for a month. i *might* consider reduced pay with the expectation that i will get everything i am owed a bit later, or even to delay my entire pay for a while (delay, not forfeit), but not a chance in hell would i work for free no matter how much i like my boss, and yet the claim has been made that harmony gold was just so generous and kind they let PB have the license for free and everyone seems to expect we should take that at face value. like hell they did. they're a for-profit corporation. they exist to make money, not to give away their product free of charge.

now again, i don't know one way or the other. maybe palladium really did try to pull some financial shenanigans, I certainly don't have any inside information proving they didn't, nor do i have an in-depth knowledge of the industry. but "we screwed up and lost a ton of money doing it" is really not all that improbable. it happens quite frequently, in every industry. there's a reason we have a saying "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity", and the simple fact is that it is very believable that this whole mess was caused by people making stupid mistakes. mistakes like not looking at the price point of every other miniature company on the market and realizing you're expecting to make money while undercutting them massively in an already highly competitive market with small profit margins. mistakes like expecting all of your product is going to magically sell as fast as you can produce it, forgetting about storage costs or transportation costs, expecting that costs will never rise, expecting that your project will go flawlessly and everything will be on schedule and you'll be able to use the money from that to fund the next step, mistakes like assuming economies of scale are much better than they actually are, and so forth. right now there are several companies all insisting they're completely 100% for sure not even the tiniest bit to blame. i cannot see any reason at all that we should presume that everyone *except* palladium is being 100% honest about everything when we don't have all the information in hand.

[Morgan Vening]

again, nobody sells miniatures for the price they were offering in the kickstarter unless they're desperate to get rid of stock. it doesn't happen. if 24 dollars a box is the estimated cost of manufacturing (and i don't know enough about the industry to know if it is), then it is leaving out a ton of other costs that are not manufacturing but which need to be factored into the final product, because otherwise everyone who is in the miniatures industry would be filthy stinking rich, and everyone who isn't would be trying to get into it because those profit margins would make every other kind of business look bad.

I'm not sure you understand that this is actually a pretty common valuation. The standard rule of thumb for most things not sold in mass volume (and I'm talking in the thousands, if not tens/hundreds of units, well outside the scope of this project), is cost x2 is your wholesale price, and wholesale x2 is your retail price. Which puts the ~$24 smack in the middle for this being a $100 MSRP game.

Yes, there are other costs involved, like development, and advertising, warehousing, and labor with regards getting it to wholesalers, and that's normally what takes a chunk out of the 25% of MSRP you get. The latter two are the parts borne by Palladium, with the former two borne by backers.

The reason companies don't make the mint off these things that you think they do, is twofold. One, the market for the most part is relatively stable and niche. There's not a lot of "untapped potential". There's only so many gamers to market to, and there's only so many games those gamers will buy. Doubling the number of games isn't going to double the number of sales to gamers. It's going to halve the number of sales (conceptually) of each game to gamers. A general maxim in gaming appears to be that 5000 copies of a game is a success, 10,000 is a hit.

The other is that there are operating costs and risks that can mitigate things. Normal procedure require that money be sourced (either through loans, or operating capital), then manufacturing be done, then depending on the vagaries of the market. Which means if the market simply doesn't want your product, you're in a crapload of debt, and have a lot of stock that sits unused. This project ended with the latter, but the debt currently owed isn't due to lack of demand, but incompletion of an in-demand product that wasn't made. That the retail aspect seems to have cratered seems to be more about the followon public demand, and there are many reasons to speculate as to why, but purely price/volume doesn't appear to be one of them.

Now, if a company direct sales at retail (example, company webstore), they make significantly more profit per sale, but often this is a relatively small percentage of sales. The internet has opened things up significantly, but there's still a large portion of the market that won't spend $100+shipping on a game unseen, but will do so at their local store where the shipping has already been absorbed into the $100, and they get to see it in play.

There's plenty of capacity for profit in the gaming industry (else it wouldn't exist), but the profits after all costs aren't extraordinary (or there'd be more capital investment). But the numbers I've calculated on the numbers we've been given, don't seem particularly out of the norm. Which makes the failure of this project all the more befuddling.

Take a look at several other Kickstarters, and you'll see that while some do fail (often before funding completes), others do much more with less. Unless Palladium do a much more detailed breakdown of expenses, I'll remain convinced that they had the funding needed to complete this project. I do think that they needed significantly more than what they initially sought (trying to do this on the original $70K ask would have been difficult), but they got significantly more than that, and economies of scale look like it was more than sufficient.

I can't explain why PB couldn't get it done, but it doesn't look like it was a lack of funding. I'm unsure what the policy is with naming other companies, but at least one competitor on Kickstarter was able to produce more models (slightly smaller but comparable), for 1/5 the backers, with 1/10th the funding. They didn't avoid complete controversy, but it was successful enough that they did a followup project, and are in the process of a third. Feel free to PM me for a name, if you want to check it out, but there are a lot of examples out there.

[Shark_Force]

i don't think companies make a mint off of selling miniatures. that's my whole damned point.

which means that when you suddenly run into a ton of problems, there goes the already-slim profit margin (made even slimmer by selling your product at an absurdly low price). which means you can't afford to make a bunch of stupid mistakes, and palladium has indicated that they made some pretty big stupid mistakes (and those mistakes were all at the beginning of this mess... i'd bet they've made a whole bunch more since then). now, that doesn't mean that they haven't done anything wrong or illegal. but it seems like everyone is screaming bloody murder about how evil and bad palladium is (when they have no real history of being horrible people, and a long history of less than brilliant business decisions and particularly at being god-awful mindbogglingly bad at estimating how much it will take to complete projects) and assuming that every time anyone who is not palladium that had a hand in this project is being perfectly honest about having done everything imaginable to help this project along and could not have possibly done anything less.

the more plausible explanation until we get some solid evidence otherwise is that palladium has done more or less exactly what they've done numerous times over the past few decades: they thought they could get something done easily with little to no investment in time, effort, resources, etc, and it turns out they couldn't (which bloody well shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, and yet strangely enough still seems to be a surprise to a lot of people).

i mean seriously, we're talking about the company that year after year remains convinced they'll complete 24 books in a single year when they have a really obvious pattern of not even averaging half of that amount in a year over and over and over (and if i wasn't including rifters, which require significantly less editing and writing on the part of palladium staff, it would be more like not even a quarter). you really think they couldn't have made a mistake about how hard it would be to finish wave 2, started on it, and then ran out of money when it wasn't even close to completion and they had nothing of value to show for it? heck, i wouldn't be the tiniest bit surprised if they had thrown good money after bad on trying to complete the project, thinking they would have the whole problem figured out "next month at the latest".

[Forar]

The lies are were (personally) I hit a larger snag.

Even IF I believed that PB had done their full faith best effort to get this done (I don't, but let's go with that for the sake of discussion), and perhaps even threw piles of their own money into this (again, purely for debate's sake), that doesn't change the fact they lied to us backers. For years. At the time there were plenty of doubts, and in retrospect we now have hundreds of updates and Newsletters singing the glories of how things are going fine, everything is fine, sure there are some snags but they're just trimming the parts count, getting quotes, and more quotes, quotes on parts counts to trim the quotes of the parts count, etc.

This went on for years. Plural. If they legit realized they were in this deep, if they produced wave 1 and it took the lion's share of what they had, then they should've been easily able to see that doing twice as many models with the same or less money was going to be a problem, if not impossible. And yet they kept up the charade in 2015, and 2016, and 2017, and I suspect they would have kept at it into 2018 if they hadn't hit the brick wall of losing the license.

IF they were indeed "working like demons", and on constant conference calls, and getting quotes by the bushel (Dozens? Hundreds?), and pouring vast sums of their own money into the project, maybe they should've shared a little more than empty platitudes about "2015/2016/2017 is the year of Robotech!"

Palladium Books proclaiming that they'll reach the distant reaches of the universe and failing to clear atmosphere? Yeah, sure, not surprising. They've been doing so to fans for years, sure. But it's different to promise that books will be released when no money has changed hands (and it is my understanding from previous exchanges that they don't charge until a book is ready to ship), it is another to take ~1.5 million dollars from over 5,000 people, deliver roughly 2/3 (by figure count) or 1/3 (by figure type) to people, spend 3 more years claiming that everything is fine, to abruptly change their tune.

What, when Scott came onboard did they think that he'd magically get those infantry figures and SDF-1 bases that he showed off in the updates done for loose change and pocket lint? From June 20th 2017 to December 27th 2017, it was all about progress. Yes, he noted that there were snags and challenges, but it was never assessed as 'we are on the verge of failure', until he went abruptly silent for two months (about the actual campaign) only to have this all come to a crashing end in late February of this year.

If they were having that much trouble, maybe they should've treated us like adults and shared some of that, rather than going silent on actual details for up to an entire year at a time (it became a running gag to have an 'annual proof of life' update).

[The Beast]

The lies are were (personally) I hit a larger snag.

Even IF I believed that PB had done their full faith best effort to get this done (I don't, but let's go with that for the sake of discussion), and perhaps even threw piles of their own money into this (again, purely for debate's sake), that doesn't change the fact they lied to us backers. For years. At the time there were plenty of doubts, and in retrospect we now have hundreds of updates and Newsletters singing the glories of how things are going fine, everything is fine, sure there are some snags but they're just trimming the parts count, getting quotes, and more quotes, quotes on parts counts to trim the quotes of the parts count, etc.

This went on for years. Plural. If they legit realized they were in this deep, if they produced wave 1 and it took the lion's share of what they had, then they should've been easily able to see that doing twice as many models with the same or less money was going to be a problem, if not impossible. And yet they kept up the charade in 2015, and 2016, and 2017, and I suspect they would have kept at it into 2018 if they hadn't hit the brick wall of losing the license.

IF they were indeed "working like demons", and on constant conference calls, and getting quotes by the bushel (Dozens? Hundreds?), and pouring vast sums of their own money into the project, maybe they should've shared a little more than empty platitudes about "2015/2016/2017 is the year of Robotech!"

Palladium Books proclaiming that they'll reach the distant reaches of the universe and failing to clear atmosphere? Yeah, sure, not surprising. They've been doing so to fans for years, sure. But it's different to promise that books will be released when no money has changed hands (and it is my understanding from previous exchanges that they don't charge until a book is ready to ship), it is another to take ~1.5 million dollars from over 5,000 people, deliver roughly 2/3 (by figure count) or 1/3 (by figure type) to people, spend 3 more years claiming that everything is fine, to abruptly change their tune.

What, when Scott came onboard did they think that he'd magically get those infantry figures and SDF-1 bases that he showed off in the updates done for loose change and pocket lint? From June 20th 2017 to December 27th 2017, it was all about progress. Yes, he noted that there were snags and challenges, but it was never assessed as 'we are on the verge of failure', until he went abruptly silent for two months (about the actual campaign) only to have this all come to a crashing end in late February of this year.

If they were having that much trouble, maybe they should've treated us like adults and shared some of that, rather than going silent on actual details for up to an entire year at a time (it became a running gag to have an 'annual proof of life' update).

This is pretty much my feelings on this whole debacle. I think Palladium alienated (at the very least) a lot more people with their lies, updates that never really said much of anything, and the complete farce of a refund offered to the backers than Palladium would have had they been honest with the backers about what was going on with RTT. It's one thing to try and fail at something. That happens every day. Sensible people understand that. What infuriates people is when they're lied to.

[Shark_Force]

The lies are were (personally) I hit a larger snag.

Even IF I believed that PB had done their full faith best effort to get this done (I don't, but let's go with that for the sake of discussion), and perhaps even threw piles of their own money into this (again, purely for debate's sake), that doesn't change the fact they lied to us backers. For years. At the time there were plenty of doubts, and in retrospect we now have hundreds of updates and Newsletters singing the glories of how things are going fine, everything is fine, sure there are some snags but they're just trimming the parts count, getting quotes, and more quotes, quotes on parts counts to trim the quotes of the parts count, etc.

This went on for years. Plural. If they legit realized they were in this deep, if they produced wave 1 and it took the lion's share of what they had, then they should've been easily able to see that doing twice as many models with the same or less money was going to be a problem, if not impossible. And yet they kept up the charade in 2015, and 2016, and 2017, and I suspect they would have kept at it into 2018 if they hadn't hit the brick wall of losing the license.

IF they were indeed "working like demons", and on constant conference calls, and getting quotes by the bushel (Dozens? Hundreds?), and pouring vast sums of their own money into the project, maybe they should've shared a little more than empty platitudes about "2015/2016/2017 is the year of Robotech!"

Palladium Books proclaiming that they'll reach the distant reaches of the universe and failing to clear atmosphere? Yeah, sure, not surprising. They've been doing so to fans for years, sure. But it's different to promise that books will be released when no money has changed hands (and it is my understanding from previous exchanges that they don't charge until a book is ready to ship), it is another to take ~1.5 million dollars from over 5,000 people, deliver roughly 2/3 (by figure count) or 1/3 (by figure type) to people, spend 3 more years claiming that everything is fine, to abruptly change their tune.

What, when Scott came onboard did they think that he'd magically get those infantry figures and SDF-1 bases that he showed off in the updates done for loose change and pocket lint? From June 20th 2017 to December 27th 2017, it was all about progress. Yes, he noted that there were snags and challenges, but it was never assessed as 'we are on the verge of failure', until he went abruptly silent for two months (about the actual campaign) only to have this all come to a crashing end in late February of this year.

If they were having that much trouble, maybe they should've treated us like adults and shared some of that, rather than going silent on actual details for up to an entire year at a time (it became a running gag to have an 'annual proof of life' update).

oh, definitely. as i've said, all backers are 100% justified in being angry about how palladium communicated this. on that end, it has been a complete and utter train wreck, and they really should have done so much better at that. frankly, as investors, they *owed* you all better than that. and i don't blame anyone for feeling like they deserve a refund or being unsatisfied with the offer of replacement product that palladium made. you have every right to seek a full refund.

i just disagree with the attitude that palladium must be guilty of every possible crime, and the calls for revenge to destroy the company, especially when they immediately accept the statements by every other involved party as the gospel truth that those other people never in any way could possibly have had anything to do with the project failing.

trying to get what you were promised (in this case, a refund) is seeking justice, which i think is entirely reasonable. i'm not sure you'll be able to get your money back, because as i said, *my* best guess at what happened is repeated colossal screwups (probably some of them shared by other people involved, though in the end the people who made the final decisions bear the brunt of the responsibility) that resulted in all the money being gone and nothing to show for it, but the cause is just, even if it could result in PB going into bankruptcy.

but the assumption of guilt without knowing all the facts? the calls for revenge, the hate, the desire to destroy something that they've decided is at fault without knowing all the facts because they're angry and want to hurt someone or something in retaliation? i have all kinds of problems with that.

[wilycoyote]

Agreed we are not party to all the facts and so can never be 100% sure but there are some things that are undeniable

The kickstarter project had one single goal. to design and manufacture all of the pieces offered and pledged for. Although it might be a complicated prpcess the end result was to be singular and all efforts should have been directed towards it.

None is disputing that a large portion of the kickstarter funding was expended on the additiobnal wave 1 core/exansion boxes. presumably these were intended for retail sale. Now stop, at this point these extra wave 1 items used up a substantial amount of available monies, so much indeed that Palladium have told us that this used up what was left. Okay, let us step back to the sole project objective, if thsi had been what was intended this exttra wave 1 manufacturing was superflous and not needed, thereby the funds would still be retained and available for wave 2.

Note we have had a estimate of costs for wave 2 at prices either inflated by the following tears or by the expectation of another overrun for retail - specualtion only.

So my contention is that this one decision is the key one that led to failure and the inexcusable charade that PB carried on for the next three plus years.

Again I can only conjecture, but if the real intention for splitting the waves was to enable this "retail" run, only possible if wave two was put on hold, then the action is even more inexcusable. Did noone at PB (or anyone else sitting in) think to run a profit and loss assessment, just how many boxes had to be sold at retail to recover the monies for kickstarter, nevermind go to PB themselves

Of course the question remains as to what actually happenned to these extra retail funds, nowhere in the pie chart or Scott's subsequent explanation are these added to the funds available, who has them or if not on what were they spent?

I agree that ND failed with regard to the files, but if they were the key decision makers for the above then I would have certainly expected Kevin/PB to have stated that in clear, unequivocal terms, afterall they did blame ND somewhat for leaving them to handle shipping and were happy to point out how "crappy" they found ND's ruleset, so much so that they asked Carmen to rewrite. Sikence sometimes says more than words.

The exchange is over and now PB have to consider making proper cash refunds to the remaining bcakers. even if onlly at thereir own ;pw valuation of goods owed UNtil that point their reputation will remain at the bottom and there are many who will be on;y to happy to keep it there.