What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

Our apologies for the lack of update last week, we were hard at work trying to find a solution to the current issues. Over the past month, we’ve been trying everything we can to resolve the situation with Bolloré. Last week, they refused our offer of a partial payment on their invoices to get deliveries going again. As a result, we had several emergency appointments with our lawyers and bank managers to see what our options were.

As we said in our previous updates, Bolloré’s service has put us in a desperate situation. As well as taking an unbelievably long time to deliver our Kickstarter projects, they’ve also caused us to miss several key sales periods such as Black Friday and Christmas. As they have the entirety of our stock in their warehouses (not just for Rallyman but for all of our other new releases), we’ve now been unable to sell any of our new products for over four months. We also cannot move forward with new Kickstarter projects whilst this one is still outstanding, as the current situation continues to cause a lot of damage to our reputation with our community.

All of this has been a catastrophic drain on our finances, which were already fragile due to huge increases in the cost of production and shipping. Although we of course knew that shipping invoices were coming and had already budgeted for it, we could not foresee just how badly their actions would derail our financial planning. It’s not that we do not want to pay, they have simply taken away our ability to do so.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, we found out last week that many of our distribution partners were going to be delaying their upcoming retail orders by at least 6 months due to the current economic situation.

With all of our revenue streams basically cut off at this point and no way to negotiate or pay the sums of money that are being demanded of us, the response from our lawyers and bank was categoric. We now have no options left but to shut Holy Grail Games down, effective immediately.

Concerning what this means for your pledges: they are currently sitting in Bolloré’s Montreal and Villabé warehouses. We are waiting to see if it will be possible for you to contact them directly (or vice versa) to arrange the shipping of your games. This will incur additional shipping charges but you will at least have a chance to receive your games. If they reply positively to this, we will post a new update with instructions.

HGG has now entered the bankruptcy process. In France, this follows some pretty strict protocols. We no longer have control of our remaining finances. These, along with the details of all our outstanding creditors (which includes KS backers) will be handed over to a liquidator. They are charged with contacting you to arrange the possibility of receiving a refund. Please note though that we have absolutely no control or visibility on when or how they will contact you, nor how much you will receive.

Although about 60% of pledges have been delivered to our EU and RoW backers, no pledges have been sent out at all in North America. We’re absolutely heartbroken that such a large number of you are not going to be able to get your pledges.

It goes without saying that this is not how we wanted this project to end, especially when it was so close to delivering, and after going through so many hardships. We know that this is going to be incredibly frustrating for all of you and that a large number of you will lose the money you pledged. For what it’s worth, we are deeply, deeply sorry.

Our small team of 5 has given their all over the past few years to get Rallyman, and our other games, out to our backers. Despite this, we will now all be losing our livelihoods, along with years of work. This is not said as an attempt to make you feel sorry for us, but rather to emphasize the following: please know that we did everything we could and explored every option possible to make this work. It was in our best interest to do so, not just in order to get your games to you, but also to keep our jobs. We are not abandoning the project and taking your money, we’re losing everything.

We do not yet know what is going to happen to Rallyman but it’s very likely that the rights will be picked up by another publisher/distributor. If so, we hope you’ll be able to play and enjoy it in the future.