funded Confrontation: Classic

[odinsgrandson]

16 hours ago, ced1106 said:

On Dakka, a poster is guessing that it's a Confrontation *supporter*, not SD who's behind it. 

 

Doesn't really make sense to shut down the project *after* funds have been collected, unless it's to use the funds for legal reasons instead of the project.

- It has been confirmed that this happened due to Stellar/Sans Detour.  Here's the Lumen's page on the claim (I found this through a poster on the LoS facebook page).  https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/16525981#

 

- The claim was issued on the 9th, so it is entirely possible that Stellar intended it to take down the Signum kickstarter before their own was finished (that actually would have been a worse move, in my opinon).

 

- It probably would have hurt the already struggling Confrontation Classic Kickstarter even more had this come out before the finish of the campaign.  Among Confrontation fans, Cadwallon is a controversial topic (some blame recasters for the failure of Confrontation Phoenix, while others were simply happy to be able to buy the minis).

[Auberon]

LoS has released an official statement on the matter. I can't post in that thread, but given that it's related I'll put it here.

 

https://ibb.co/im1U38

[odinsgrandson]

From the Signum statement, Stellar (SD) was fighting them about copyright violations, but hadn't let them know which minis were in violation.

I'm still not in a place where I think I can trust either of the companies involved here, but I'm still enthralled.

[cmorse]

33 minutes ago, odinsgrandson said:

From the Signum statement, Stellar (SD) was fighting them about copyright violations, but hadn't let them know which minis were in violation.

I'm still not in a place where I think I can trust either of the companies involved here, but I'm still enthralled.

 

That lack of trust is probably a good plan. Signum is claiming that they have nothing to do with the Cadwallon website beyond them being a retail outlet and it seems pretty unlikely that that is actually true.

[kristof65]

Hmm.  I wonder if SD/Stellar are/were somehow blaming the LoS KS for negatively affecting their own? 

Hmm.  I wonder if SD/Stellar are/were somehow blaming the LoS KS for negatively affecting their own? 

[Glamberry]

I'm not pulling my pledge for LoS quite yet but the whole thing isn't a good sign. I had to choose between LoS and Confrontation and LoS simply offered a better mid price range pledge (I pledged 135$, early bird core box). That's a financial commitment that I can make, 299$ was just a bit too high, even though the sculpts looked great and it included a lot. I could imagine a lot of people felt similar.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Glamberry

[cmorse]

10 hours ago, kristof65 said:

Hmm.  I wonder if SD/Stellar are/were somehow blaming the LoS KS for negatively affecting their own? 

Hmm.  I wonder if SD/Stellar are/were somehow blaming the LoS KS for negatively affecting their own? 

 

Maybe to a degree, but this has been on going since before either kickstarter began.

Edited May 20, 2018 by cmorse

[Clearman]

1 hour ago, cmorse said:

 

Maybe to a degree, but this has been on going since before either kickstarter began

 

I blame Napoleon. 

[Olaf the Stout]

On 5/19/2018 at 8:23 AM, odinsgrandson said:

 

 

You're being too polite.  With a bit "slump" in the middle of a campaign, the numbers are still mostly positive.  This campaign bled through the middle and finish of the campaign, finishing off well below their Day 1 total.

 

With most big campaigns, the finishing total is about three times the starting boost's total.  By that measure, this campaign should have ended at about two million Euroes (starting boost got them to 650k).

I do think it is really special the way that some backers want to try and make it sound like some amazing victory of a campaign.  I mean, the numbers for the last few hours were positive, but the final day still finished a thousand below zero.

 

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a successful Kickstarter with 22 out of the last 25 days being negative funding, including the last 13 days in a row of the campaign. That's impressively bad.

[cmorse]

6 hours ago, Clearman said:

 

I blame Napoleon. 

 

Was he the one who originally decided to name the project Legends of Cadwallon before the original round of C&D letters? Because that was probably a mistake if they wanted to avoid IP troubles.

[Darsc Zacal]

<<<VOICE OF MOD>>>

The Exo Mankind discussion has been moved to that kickstarters thread:

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/80721-exo-mankind-reborn-a-miniatures-boardgame-by-plast-craft-games/&amp;tab=comments#comment-1712138

 

Please keep the discussion here to the Confrontation kickstarter.

[odinsgrandson]

Thanks, mod.

21 hours ago, Olaf the Stout said:

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a successful Kickstarter with 22 out of the last 25 days being negative funding, including the last 13 days in a row of the campaign. That's impressively bad.

 

 

Quite a few backers thought that everything would be WAY better if they'd cancel and come back later.

Overall, it got its initial bump due to the Confrontation reputation, but started bleeding shortly after that.  It is the culmination of several factors.  Here's a quick summary of the red flags:

 

- The price is too good to be true.  Many backers estimated the cost of making molds for all the unique minis they're offering (they started by offering 178 unique sculpts- many of them quite a bit larger than a human).  Long story short- it looks like they're not raising enough funds to deliver on their kickstarter, and it is unlikely that they could even try to go with the sort of 'top tier PVC' that they're talking about.

 

- Sans Detour have never made minis before- so when they tell us that they can offer better prices than anyone else, many of us wonder if they're doing their math right.  If it were Reaper, I'd have just believed them.

- With funds dropping, they just unlocked everything as if they'd just hit 1.2 million.  So now they can produce even more minis for even less money.
 

- They offered a full resin tier at prices there looked like a net loss as well.

 

- They locked down their main pledge level to 4000 pledges (they only got about 1200 at the end), and insisted that no one will be allowed to upgrade from the $1 pledge after the campaign ends (this raised concerns that SD was planning on losing money on their core pledges and needed to keep them in check).

- Sans Detour decided to downplay and obfuscate their relationship with Stellar and Ludik.  Ludik is a retailer that's going out of business and happens to be owned by one of SD's partners and share SD's address.  Stellar is the company that is licensing the rights to Sans Detour- and happens to be owned by one of Sans Detour's partners.  They denied, downplayed and obfuscated the relationship between these companies.

It is just never a good sign for Kickstarter creators to not be honest about who they are.

- Poor communication with inadequate English skills exacerbated all of the above problems (updates didn't address concerns, or were just wonky).  They ultimately seemed unconcerned with the dropping numbers on their kickstarter.


-The result- Ultimately, almost HALF of the backers who stayed are pledging for $1 (that's 1100 $1 pledges)- many of the vocal ones have admitted that they just want to sit back and watch.  About 1200 backers pledged at the $300 level, 5 backers pledged for resin.

 

And one post mortem red flag:  Stellar/Sans Detour got the Legends of Signum kickstarter taken down, and might be gearing up for a legal battle to try and keep Signum down (there's bad blood there, because the Signum line started as a continuation of Confronation- originally "Legends of Cadwollon").

Edited May 21, 2018 by odinsgrandson

[Balgin Stondraeg]

2 hours ago, odinsgrandson said:

And one post mortem red flag:  Stellar/Sans Detour got the Legends of Signum kickstarter taken down, and might be gearing up for a legal battle to try and keep Signum down (there's bad blood there, because the Signum line started as a continuation of Confronation- originally "Legends of Cadwollon").

 

Probably their only chance to fund half those panic stretch goals they unlocked. well, that and the fact that they';re selling the master sculpts (not master casts) for all the Confrontation miniatures that didn't feature in the kickstarter campaign on the Stellar Licensing site for $700-$1,700 (with no mention of selling production rights). Selling off the master sculpts (not master casts) mean they won't be planning on reproducing any of these miniatures in the future. It all looks way too much like a quick cash grab to me.

[Grefven]

8 hours ago, Balgin Stondraeg said:

 

Probably their only chance to fund half those panic stretch goals they unlocked. well, that and the fact that they';re selling the master sculpts (not master casts) for all the Confrontation miniatures that didn't feature in the kickstarter campaign on the Stellar Licensing site for $700-$1,700 (with no mention of selling production rights). Selling off the master sculpts (not master casts) mean they won't be planning on reproducing any of these miniatures in the future. It all looks way too much like a quick cash grab to me.

 

On the other hand, they did sell the original master sculpt, but without the production right to it, which means that they can keep on casting those sculpts from their resin master until ad infinitum.

[Maledrakh]

for my part, I think the copyright claim against LoS is a rather petty and spurious strike, and it does not reflect well upon the SD / Stellar companies or the people running them. 

 

I do not forsee this going to court, because of the international aspect and the cost of actual legal action, and I don't think Stellar expects that either. 

 

Afaik the creators of LoS  have also downplayed /obfuscated who they are, expescially their links to Cadwallon, formerly recasters of confrontation miniatures, so they are not exactly sqeaky clean either. But as far as I can tell, they actually stopped selling recasts when informed by Stellar that Stellar had the IP and were going to relaunch Confrontation.

 

also afaik the LoS campaign featured their own stuff, no matter how similar to Confrontation they might be. 

 

 

Edited May 22, 2018 by Maledrakh