Sandy Petersen has Changed the Terms of Your Interest-Free Loan to Him

I think at this point that the Cthulhu wars people will improbably get their stuff (eventually), but PG have a ton of later Kickstarters that feel like deeply lost causes as of now huh.

Yeah, that's insane that they have a bunch in the queue.

Can’t these people get a real job and use their pay to move a container or two?

Sagrilarus wrote: Can’t these people get a real job and use their pay to move a container or two?

Why would they pay for something with their money when there are so many suckers customers willing to pay with their own?

This is really the core of the problem. They don’t actually feel obligated to the people that paid them. They constantly use money that was given to them for one thing to do other things, include pay their own (probably quite high) salaries that have never been reduced in financial difficulties and pay their personal expenses. It’s not a coincidence that the company suddenly ran out of money while Arthur was on vacation, or that they magically found the funds to create two new games after the second round of shipping money was sent, followed by Sandy’s dream trip to Europe (with a stop at a convention to legitimize the company paying for it).

I’m one of the suckers that paid for Dunwich to help get everyone their stuff. I’m not giving them anymore money.

They are charging sales tax to people who are giving them more shipping money. They are collecting money for pallets they already shipped. They are telling people that their stuff is on one pallet and then it turns out it’s on a different one. This is just a scam to get more money from us to pay their own living costs.

n815e wrote: They constantly use money that was given to them for one thing to do other things, include pay their own (probably quite high) salaries that have never been reduced in financial difficulties and pay their personal expenses.

These people - they're not here to offer you a gift. They are here to sell you something! I know, because I bought it once! These are not people of God. They're entertainers, performers, charlatans! When the end of times come, are we to believe that these phony fakers will be called to the Kingdom of Heaven?

*raids Peterson compound*

Hah!

I don’t want it to seem like I don’t think anyone should be paid (or paid well) for their work.

But these guys make sure they are paid well for no work. And where you see other companies in similar situations, where the people take pay cuts, or just get jobs, to try to make sure that they are able to deliver, these guys don’t. Instead, they just keep coming up with new ways to get you to pay for them to do nothing, to pay for their vacations, to pay their personal expenses (Arthur bragged about using company funds to buy all his personal games).

I’m more upset that people are continuing to support them through their obvious scams than I am at the prospect that they wasted all the money and I may not see any products.

Petersen should announce a new and amazing kickstarter game so blatantly bogus that it will fund all the legitimate games and credulous techbros and obsessive gamers will only have themselves to blame for kickstarting it. Maybe a collectible bitcoin game called Vaporware Wars.

I hate to say it but he could make bank with My Little Cthulhu Wars.

ChristopherMD wrote: I hate to say it but he could make bank with My Little Cthulhu Wars.

Ha, I still have a My Little Cthulhu action figure from like 20 years ago at home:

Regarding this show of shit, I do think everyone will eventually get there CW OS4 products. But I think that's it for PG, let's take a quick look at the big projects they still have outstanding:

Hyperspace: $609k
Eternal Adversary: $150k
Glorantha reprint/expansion: $250k
Dinosaur 1944: $187k
Plant Apocalypse reprint: $491k

Without bothering to do the math, that's over $1.5 million in product they still need to deliver from money they no longer have. When you factor in their pledge manager take, they've likely taken in over $2 million and pissed it all away. The only one of those games that has had any work done was Hyperspace, and TBF it may be close to done with pre-manufacturing work, but they still lack any money to produce it. Their solution: Terror Paths! (and I think some new D&D supplement) They're going make a few 10s of thousands on that, best case. The writing is on the wall, it's just how far do they limp along before creditors catch up with their pride. Best case some publisher decides to hoover up all their games along with the debts and produces them, but I can't see anyone interested in anything other than Cthulhu Wars.

And I struggle to think how anyone could be more tone deaf than Arthur Petersen. I don't want to hear about how you're off for a week on vacation with your family right after asking us to pay for shipping after you already told us you got all the money you needed for shipping only to later clarify that you really just meant freight charges... Seriously, I've met the guy personally, there's no malice here, just genuine incompetence. It's kind of mind boggling how out of touch they've become...

That list of projects with no money in them is giving me anxiety just looking at it.

This is the structure of a Ponzi scheme.

Cranberries wrote: This is the structure of a Ponzi scheme.

Dude is a fucking scumbag.

Neither of them shows up to face customers anymore. They have some volunteer doing it.

From the This Seems Way Too Good to Actually Be True files:

Arthur announced this morning that they found a "fan" who is willing to cover the entire tab for shipping. Consequently, the fulfillment center will now be shipping out seven pallets/day and they expect everything to have departed the warehouse by the end of July and that everyone should have their stuff by mid-August. Of course, he also says they're shipping with UPS who are about to go on strike, so... He also states that anyone who contributed to their shipping scheme will be fully refunded(!)

He follows that flabbergasting announcement with a hint about "BIG NEWS" happening for Petersen Games that will impact their operations, including all of the Kickstarters they have backed up. The likely answer is that the "fan" and the "BIG NEWS" are the same thing: they've found an investor who is crazy enough to get involved with them and they're using their buy-in to finish the Cthulhu Wars shipping and move their other projects forward.

So... great? I mean, I feel sorry for the person that decided to buy in, but it's certainly true that PG's stuff sells instantly, so it does seem like a guaranteed margin IF they can actually have someone with a mild knowledge of logistics and accounting to run those two essential aspects. Meanwhile, it seems like the long wait for the people keeping the place in business will finally be over (he says, utterly doubting that statement.)