BattleTech: Mercenaries – CGL does a shipping booboo? Internet rages!

[dawfyddParticipant 11991xp 0]

2-3 weeks for manufacturing to be complete makes me think it’ll be more like mid-November by the time the stock is at the hubs. Assuming problems are minimal at Customs.
At least though it is a big, substantial update that actually gives everyone information about where the project stands. If they’d had this level of coms say once a month or every couple of weeks, folks would be a lot less salty. 20 SKU shortages though is pretty effing bad though.

[sundancer 43036xp 2]

Yeah, at that size of a project/KS a “news round up” of that proportion every 4 weeks would have been what I would have expected.

But yet here we are.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6428xp 1]

I was thinking it couldn’t really get much worse…until the latest update 🙂

20 items short stocked, but won’t actually reveal what they are.

Now trying to get replacements made and shipped during the pre-christmas period.

Not much hope of seeing anything delivered before Q1 2025.

And some red flags which raise concerns that this will ever be delivered. CGL now has multiple unfulfilled KS projects, is also due to start new KS for an RPG. It isn’t like we have seen certain other companies fail under similar circumstances.

 

[grantinvanman 2215xp 0]

Wow, this just keeps going and going – and not in a positive way.

@tankkommander you’re right; when these kind of issues pile up, companies are like a big legal Ponzi scheme, and will eventually collapse. Last one out, turn off the lights…

[tankkommanderParticipant 6428xp 1]

Distributors will not want dead stock sitting in a warehouse, especially before christmas. So expect the next update to be ‘we are really sorry but due to legal agreement (we won’t show you) we have HAD to allow stock to go to retailers before all of the backers get their stuff’.

 

[limburger 21754xp 1]

They mentioned some sort of challenge coin as being ‘not in stock’ and gave backers an option to contact QML to have it refunded instead.

Of all the dumb things they’ve done that’s another one to add to the list.

Meanwhile we got FreeLeague telling backers of one of their campaigns that due to a mistake they were short on a specific item and they’re simply refunding folk affected unless they indicate that they want to wait the x amount of time for it to be shipped.

Scale75 having issues shipping the airbrushes … they told us it was because they were having financial issues which meant they were being extra frugal when paying for stuff which ended up affecting their delivery of their kickstarter. It’s not nice to hear these things, but … at least they had the guts to admit that they had made mistakes and were fixing it. (of course some backers being the *beeps* they are they start shouting ‘scam’ and ‘fraud’ so even with this info in hand but that kind of negative attitude can’t ever be fixed … )

With this kickstarter all I’m seeing is one miscommunication after another with no real attempt at fixing anything.

I suspect the existing fan base of Battletech is buying enough product for them to survive this mishandling of the kickstarter ?

Any other company would be dead in the water by now.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6428xp 1]

CGL are due to start at least 2 new KS projects (Frost Punk RPG and Voltron RPG), whilst having multiple undelivered KS projects. And they constantly use the excuse that they are a small company with only a few staff.

 

 

[limburger 21754xp 1]

The only way a ‘small company with minimal staff’ could (successfully) run multiple kickstarters is to hand off control the moment things were shipping to backers …

multiple projects in various stages of completion using 3rd party resources is a massive headache for the best teams.

CGL is not what I’d describe as a ‘good team’.

Part of this may simply be the result of delays forcing projects closer than they would have been under ideal circumstances, but even that should have been partially predicted as a ‘worst case scenario’ by any competent company.

Everything in this kickstarter reads like this is baby’s first kickstarter managed by an unpaid intern.

The sheer volume in product and backers isn’t making this easy, but one would think that you wouldn’t even dare to manage a second kickstarter with a team as overburdened as this one is.

I’m afraid that the backers of those other kickstarters are in for an even worse fate …

Anyone got eyes on those kickstarters ? I doubt non-backers will have any info 🙁

[dawfyddParticipant 11991xp 1]

I’ve seen that backers of Leviathans have been receiving stock. Not sure how fulfillment is going otherwise.
And no clue as to how Centurion is going

[jamescutts 6929xp 1]

I’m not too concerned about CGL starting other Kickstarters, their team should have the capacity, BattleTech is now well into the fulfilment stage and the designers can’t help with that area. The majority of what they do is outsourced and contracted, even their comms is, and their production is handled by a well know large player, I forget the name. The BattleTech Kickstarter is now just a giant logistics game, it will deliver but with the slow pace of the juggernaut it is.

I’m disappointed its taken them from July to late September to start production of shorted items though, taking the better part of 3 month to identify shortages seems excessive, even with their excuses of attending shows and illness etc. I was expecting we may get it by Christmas, I’d be pretty amazed if we do now, their 3 week production run seem ambitious though I believe it may be correct given its a known contractor who wouldn’t agree to it if they couldn’t, however I can’t see the shipping happening very quickly, even if they airfreight it straight from production I’d expect that to be several more weeks with customs checks and the like, that puts us in early November at the earliest realistically we may, may see some stuff ship end of November early December but I’m not that hopeful.

I can’t think of good reasons why they haven’t published the list of shorted items, given they say they apply to the majority of RoW orders I can only think its a key item, and one that’s possibly a bit embarrassing for them or a supplier, maybe Salvage Boxes, The Big Mini or a core box? Or it may be they don’t want to trigger a wave of people saying don’t include it, which would be wishful thinking on their part i think given we constantly ask when?

Where have you seen Leviathans backers getting their pledges @dawfydd? I wasn’t aware the tooling had even entered production. I’ve played a few games recently but that has been with the old stuff from 10 years ago.

 

[dawfyddParticipant 11991xp 1]

@jamescutts I’m sure I saw some folks on FB posting pictures of big Leviathans deliveries. I could be wrong though…..

[tankkommanderParticipant 6428xp 1]

The last Leviathans update (on the KS page) was 20th August. Nothing has shipped. Apparently they said (not on KS) that they ‘expect to fulfil at the end of this year’. Somehow I doubt that, but we shall see. Nothing has been delivered yet (other than some pdf’s).

The over complexity was all down to CGL. The production and distribution mess, the missing items, all down to CGL. The lack of honest communication, all down to CGL.

[jamescutts 6929xp 1]

I has been off doing some internet detective work, this is unverified but felt worth sharing:

A US FLGS is expected by CGL to be missing 4x IS Assault forcepacks, 4 Clan Direct Fire forcepacks, 12x (!!!) IS Recon forcepacks when delivered

That would suggest to me the shortages are way way more serious that CGL have been letting on, but have you seen their new Voltron Kickstarter 😀

[sundancer 43036xp 1]

wasn’t there a policy at Kickstarter that you only could launch a new one when the previous one has been fulfilled?

[jamescutts 6929xp 0]

There was back in the day but I think they changed it, I’m sure the games category now allows multiple to be active

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