Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game – Shipping surcharge

[redscopeParticipant 2711xp 3]

So as someone who backed this kickstarter I am stuck in a difficult position if I should pay or not.

For a while now we had been asking Mythic games what was happening with shipping given the issues other companies had. It should be noted that before we get into this debate the game is 2 YEARS LATE. Pointing out if they had delivered on time they would not be in the mess then again not a single Mythic game has managed to deliver on time so nobody is shocked.

Up to this point we had heard nothing in fact the June update was finally Wave 1 (It was all suppose to be delivered in one go) was in completed on the way to warehouse no mention of any shipping issues. This last updated is “we got your stuff in a warehouse ready to go”. You just cannot have it until you pay the extra shipping. What is worse is how unclear it is if you dont pay. They say it “may” ship in wave two, well what is the MAY bit ? Will you not ship it at all ? Do we lose everything ? Will you hold it until we do pay ? Is it BLACKMAIL, well it sure as hell feels like it. Telling us you have the stuff but now your not going to ship until we pay up. If they had done this before it was in the warehouse it least may not have quite felt like it was blackmail.

Lets get into the costs I paid 330 dollars for the largest box because I was fan of the PC Game and the models look great for the game. I already paid and eye watering 65 dollars just for shipping. Not going to lie at the time I thought that was a lot for shipping . They now want an additional 46 dollars so the total shipping is 111 dollars and frankly we dont know if that is to ship wave one and two or just wave one.

But think about it 111 dollars to ship a 330 pound game. This is 33% of the costs for this is just to ship it to me. That is bloody nuts how does it cost 33% of the cost just to ship it ? Well it is not just shipping. Shipping Cost have risen about 25% to 33% of the unit costs. Mythics shipping cost rise is 70% so double that. Even by the shortfall they claim if everyone in my pledge pays the extra it would cover far more then they claim is short. So why are they asking for more ?

Because it is not just shipping, it is the additional costs of production, the fact they are 2 years late, the fact rules on VAT charging has changed because the EU closed the loop hole. Most of this is a  direct cause of the delay and them low balling the costs at the time. It is not just Mythic that have done this most companies are the same, they are late, so costs over run.

The worse part of this is the only thing they have said sorry for is the late shipping of the game. At no point in the update they gave is anything included to say they are sorry for the additional charges they have come begging to us for.

Here is the interesting aspect. The current kickstarter they did Anastyr was a bit of flop it raised 1 million but they had expected another 5-7 million. If they had done that they could have used that to pay off this game and move forward. However now the company is in real trouble. Think about they have a staff of 30, they have 5-6 games still in production they need to make and ship, they have nearly 2 years of costs still to cover. It simply does not add up how the 1 million for Anastyr is going to cover its development costs for the next year. They claimed all they needed was 200,000 for the kickstarter to go ahead. What rubbish is that ? It would not cover the staff costs for a year let alone the production costs.

This is the problem with kickstarters in general. It has made some great games but the business side just makes no sense. Companies are low balling the actual costs involved so they meet the target or look amazing when the fund in 24 hours but it is not based on reality. If you went to a bank with the type of business plan they would not lend them the money.

So why should we ? Kickstarters are based on little more than hope not details plans.

So now what do I do ? If I dont pay the future is uncertain I could risk the 330 I already invested. If I do pay what stops them coming back and asking for more in the wave 2 items. If I dont pay does Mythic actually have enough money to even stay afloat long enought to deliver wave 2 ? That is how serious this is for the company.

 

 

[pagan8thParticipant 10745xp 0]

Sounds like you have a better grasp on the realities of running a business than mythic do @redscope.

One time when I had doubts about a kickstarter being delivered was Rail Raiders Infinite by Soda Pop Miniatures… and I was right to doubt them… some backers still haven’t received the product despite it going to retail.

I pestered them for a refund and I was one of the lucky ones that got my money back. That was only a $50 pledge.

If I was in your shoes… I’d be pestering mythic for my money back…

Black List Miniatures is asking the same for it’s Fantasy Series One… they are asking for donations to pay for shipping that start at $30 and go all the way up to $125. For that ‘donation’ you get a larger sum put towards a future kickstarter project by them. Although I’m happy with the pledge that I have received (UK got the goods some time ago)… there were so many delays and problems with delivery that I’d never trust them with my money again.

One more thing to consider… if you went into a high street store, or visited a website selling goods and they had put the wrong price on an item they are obliged to sell that item to you at that price. Some years back I think Argos priced a TV on the website at about a tenth of the price and it was several hours before they realised the mistake… far as I recall… they had to deliver.

[phaidknott 7023xp 1]

Alas part of the problem is, “is a kickstarter project needing investment to get off the ground, or is the creator using the platform as a storefront?”.

 

This causes so many woes with the kickstarter platform. Over the years backers have got used to seeing it as a discount/pre-order store with little or no risk (as many companies have successfully run multiple projects on the platform over the years). Then sometimes previously successful companies go under without sending the backers anything at all (I remember probably MERCS 2.0 being a good example here). And sometimes things change from what was promised during the campaign, to something different when the backer got things in their hands (the Occulus Rift was a classic example here where the motion tracking was removed from the headset to needing “base stations” with wires and USB sockets everywhere).

 

I feel that perhaps the whole kickstarter bubble has burst somewhat from what it used to be where gamers would literally throw money at a project featuring nice miniature renders but not even having the rules developed yet (Mythic themselves have been guilty on this count previously). Volumes are less, and thus so are profit margins.

 

Things with kickstarters aren’t as reliable as they probably were say five years ago on the gaming front, and I would say expect more of the same to happen with future projects from different companies. It may feel like the game is being held at a ransom by the creators, but then you’ve also got the possibility of a large number of backers not paying (or delaying paying) and the company folding (with stock on the shelves they can not move, and storage also costs money in the interim).

 

I would say however that the distribution companies after raking in massive (and unexpected) profits due to the whole CoVid thingy have been charging through the roof this past year (and even racking up the prices again in the last few months due to “fuel pricing”). Container prices/international shipping have quadrupled from what they used to be pre-pandemic, basically everyone (well the larger multinationals) along the whole chain of supply is making more profits (because they can).

 

You can blame the creator for “bad planning” perhaps, but at the end of the day it’s either they continue to operate with a profit or they go under. If you want the product (and future support) then backers will have to “invest” more (that the nature of the beast with kickstarters). But again it’s also hard for the backers to know if the project creators are running on a tight budget with a project vs using the platform as a “pre-order shop” (where they can put money down knowing it’s unlikely that things will change. Although sometimes the space between the campaign and the estimated delivery date can be a goodish indicator of that).

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

Your game is printed, it’s yours, and it’s currently stored in China. If you are unable to pay this contribution immediately, we will store your game for as long as possible.

Something smells funny about this. I don’t know about other countries, but here in the UK your agreement is with the seller of the item, not the manufacturer. If I bought a faulty hoover from Currys, I take it back to Currys – they are responsible for reimbursing, for selling an item that is not fit for purpose.

So if I’ve paid a board game company for a board game and they fail to deliver the board game, they are responsible for reimbursing the item that was not delivered. Same goes for, let’s say, Amazon (in the UK). They take the money and pass the order on to their fulfillers. If the order is not fulfilled, it’s Amazon, not the trader that is on the hook to return the money. Amazon have tried this wheeze a couple of times in recent years and both times, when pressed, they had to refund me for items I hadn’t received (the first time they claimed it was a “goodwill” gesture and the second time were reluctant to hand the money back – when I demonstrated that they were in breach of UK trading law, they *did* refund the full payment for goods not received).

This idea that “it’s your game and look, it’s over there” is a pretty shitty take.

My guess is that Mantic knows this. They’re a UK company and bound by UK law. They’ve taken money. They need to produce the goods for the price they offered them for sale at (in UK law, they make an offer for sale, during which time they can change the price, but once a sale has been agreed, a contract is entered into and they’re contractually obliged to honour that price – something the car showroom I once worked at learned to their cost, when someone mis-advertised a £12k car at £1200 !)

I understand the position Mantic find themselves in, and can sympathise.

But I doubt that “that game stuck in a port in China is yours, you’d better fund getting it to the UK” would hold any water legally. And it’s a really crappy way to (mis)represent what’s going on. All those board games stuck in China? They belong to Mantic.

Which makes you wonder why they even put that in there. For me, any goodwill evaporates immediately with that kind of veiled threat.

[phaidknott 7023xp 1]

I’m afraid under the terms and conditions of a kickstarter UK retail laws do not apply (by backing a project on the kickstarter page you are bound by the terms and conditions that kickstarter operate under). A project creator if a project fails only has to show kickstarter that they made a “credible” attempt to fufill the project to the backers. The few projects where a legal challenge was made by backers were where a creator made little or no attempt to fulfil the project (or basically they ran off with the money). If I remember right one successful challenge was made against a Confrontation project trying to restart the IP a few years ago by a French company.

 

But basically as other here have said only pledge what you can afford to lose on kickstarter, as there is no guarantee you will receive things as planned (which happens in business outside of kickstarter on a regular basis).

[limburger 21672xp 0]

@phaidknott if I look at the many projects I’ve backed and the risk … it has been effectively 0. (or minimal).
I’m pretty sure I’ve got over a hundred projects on my profile and only a very very small percentage completely failed after reaching the finish line.
It’s hard not to get complacent when you’ve got stats like that to back up your gut feeling.

The problem (IMHO) is that the low-entry of many kickstarters makes it easy for people to buy into projects when they should not.
I’ve seen (too) many comments from the 1$-level backers that say something like : I can’t afford it now, but when the pledgemanager becomes available I will …
That to me always sounds like an addict claiming that he isn’t addicted and he’ll go clean next time. I’m often tempted to tell those people to just wait for retail instead of risking their precious resources on a crowdfunded project no matter how good it looks.

@redscope the overfunding of projects is a real problem … it makes them appear more successful than they are.

When I discovered kickstarter a few years ago the idea of ‘stretchgoals’ was new, now it’s become standard.

And I think it is rather silly and should be seen as a warning sign for projects with initial estimates that are too low to be realistic.

@blinky465 you are absolutely right. *if* kickstarters were webshops then that sentence about ‘your game’ being ready would have been legally correct. There’s still caveats that could stop them from shipping the game to you (I suspect bankruptcy would throw a big spanner in the works) but … kickstarters aren’t (yet) considered in the same legal framework as webshops.

There’s the additional problem that kickstarter is US-based .. so would likely follow US laws, but then I’m no lawyer so don’t know how international law would work and if it could be solved on a global level. (heck … we can’t even agree on global trade agreements without backdoor shenanigans and some fairly twisted lobbying ..). I wonder how we has backers could ever organize into something that would make lawmakers stand up and listen.

//

Biggest issue is that Kickstarter & co have no reason to fix any problems, because they need/want the money as badly as the creators of those projects do (they take a fairly large cut … which may be the real reason why shipping costs are often moved to the pledgemanager … ). The companies involved have no real need to fix any problems either.

I wouldn’t be surprised if kickstarter introduced features for a second funding period.
They did something similar once projects started ‘over funding’ by introducing the stretch goal concept in a more platform/creator friendly manner …

I know I’m preaching to the choir, but I can’t emphasize enough that kickstarters aren’t webshops with 100% delivery satisfaction.  Better spend your money on tiny webshops that can ship your goodies today. Heck, if you’re anything like me you probably have more than a few unfinished projects that could need a bit of your time (and money), so no need to add even more to your pile of opportunity if you can help it 😉

[tankkommanderParticipant 6411xp 0]

This is the big problem with crowdfunding. It is in most respects used as a pre-order system, but offers none of the usual consumer protection. The legislation needs to catch up.

It will be interesting to see if a company like Mythic can pivot away from the mountain of plastic mega projects and move to a model where they do have to make good games for retail. Given the track record of some mediocre games, delays, and rules fixes, they may not have the skills to survive without KS. Time will tell.

Sorry to hear folks who risk losing money on this debacle. My one experience with Mythic was the original JoA KS and I got a refund. Cost me the KS fees, but glad I got out seeing how the game turned out.

[slayerofworldsParticipant 3449xp 1]

The problem is people just exploding into chaos at the slightest sign of problems or things not going as expected.  Mythic dropped another update, which was obvious that they would and all people had to do was chill out and wait and see.

 

Mythic- What if I couldn’t pay?

We just wanted to clear up the confusion about the August 1st cut off, which is now pushed out to August 7th. If you make your contribution before then, your Wave 1 products will head out in the first containers booked to ship. If you contribute AFTER this date, then your Wave 1 products will be on the next container leaving China, we anticipate sending over several rounds of containers throughout the year.

If you are unable to make a contribution you DO NOT forfeit your game, we’ll store your Wave 1 products, and do our utmost to take advantage of any other opportunities to get your products in containers to our distribution hubs. We will keep looking for opportunities and keep you updated. If we find a definitive opportunity, we will tell you all immediately.

We remain open to any suggestions, our goal being to deliver to all our backers. ”

All people had to do was wait and be patient.

[blinky465 17027xp 1]

….if you’re anything like me you probably have more than a few unfinished projects that could need a bit of your time (and money), so no need to add even more to your pile of opportunity if you can help it

Most sensible contribution to this discussion so far 😉

[tankkommanderParticipant 6411xp 0]

“All people had to do was wait and be patient.” is both insulting and wrong.

People have waited. The project delivery being late is the root cause of the shipping cost increase. This is 100% on Mythic.

And holding games in a warehouse in China with a ‘possible’ shipping date in future is simply non-delivery of the product to those that have already paid.

You are, of course, free to keep drinking the Mythic kool-aid. Given that the company is signalling money problems how long do you think those games will be stored before any creditors come looking for them as assets?

[limburger 21672xp 1]

@tankkommander the only projects that manage to be ‘on time’ tend to be the ones that really only needed to get stuff made.
No one is perfect at estimating time for non-repetitive tasks in non-repetitive projects … and if they are then they probably are good at predicting lottery winners as well.

We knew that the game was not finished when we got on board.
We knew there was still a lot of work to be done.

The extra stretchgoals were not helping, which is why I dislike the concept as too often companies will add stuff that’s not even in prototype stage … thereby only making estimates of total time needed even harder.
And we all knew that all of the production was done by 3rd parties.
I’d like to see you try and co-ordinate planning of outsiders that have bigger and more important customers to take care of than your tiny one million dollar project …

Deadlines only ever work for things that are 100% predictable in nature.
Everyone who has ever made plans to do things knows that when you’ve got Quality, Budget and Time to manage you can only ever do 2 out of those 3.

This is not ‘drinking the koolaid’ … this is being realistic in what planning can do, *especially* whenever a 3rd party is involved.

[redscopeParticipant 2711xp 2]

@slayerofworlds It did not explode in Choas. The game is 2 YEARS LATE the customer base have been very patient in waiting for Mythic to deliver it. This issue with the shipping was brewing for months. People kept asking Mythic about it because we feared something like this was coming. Mythic said nothing the update in June was everything is on track the products would soon be in the warehouse.

So to do a u-turn in the next update to say your goods are here and you need to pay more now to get it. How did they expect people to react to that ? Certainly when they did not say sorry for it, or made it clear what happens if you dont pay. I am sit it here with 330 dollars on the line being asked to pay more or risk losing it that is not a great position to put a cusomer in.

@limburger You right in the sense most projects over run. However Mythic dates for delivery are not even ball park accurate. It is not just this project it is all the projects that are late even before COVID. They present this product in the kickstarter in an far more advanced state than the reality. They set a date for deliver that at the time they where still in the design phase.

What Mythic did rather than focus on the project that was late and throw more resources at it to finish it quicker was move on and release 5 more large kickstarters. All with over bloated content  spreading those resources even thinner across more projects.

They have come unstuck with Anastyr because a lot of the customers who back previous projects they have not delivered yet said enough is enough. They lost that trust because it does not feel like they are focused in making your game 2 years later they are more concerned with the next project and doing the marketing for that.

The kickstarter is a lie. They cannot make Anastyr  for 200,000 they know that we know that even 1 million will see them lose money over it making just 5,500 copies. They wont deliver by Jul 2023 and they knew this as well. They have 5 other projects to get through the factory and out the door the schedule does not allow for them to make it on time and they knew this setting up the kickstarter.

They created the problems trying to spin to many plates in the air, bloating the staff and costs with large projects and long over runs. They lost focus on making games instead focused on making kickstarter campaigns.

[limburger 21672xp 0]

@redscope I suspect that they were late in informing us as backers because even they believed their own version reality …
As such I’d argue that they were not misleading us, because they were already misleading themselves.

We all know the “just one more turn/one more hour/one more thing” bit when playing (video)games.
In planning/production tunnel vision can create much of the same ‘just one more day …’ type of thinking.
The only fix for this is to have outsiders point out the cold hard truth.

I didn’t back Anastyr simply because I just didn’t like the game itself.
I do agree that 200k was too low a target for a game of that nature to be done.
I blame the very nature of the “funded in x minutes” messaging has tempted far too many creators to set a budget that is too low to be realistic while using stretchgoals as a means to actually get to a more realistic target.

The ‘fix’ for this would be a breakdown of time/budget/personell …
It’s “easy” for software/digital projects as you don’t need to budget for materials :

= pick minimum wage

= count the number of people listed on the project

= months until deadline

Basic math tends to show that a 50k budget project is unrealistic, unless there’s just one team member doing everything in one year. So 200k would be a 4-8 man team at 25k-50k salary (exclusing operating costs and material … ) with a deadline set at 12 months from funding. This effectively means that you need a source of money (either retail or web-based) that helps fund operations.

As such I’d argue that we shouldn’t blame companies, but also look at us as backers to see if we really did our job at analyzing if the project could work with the given parameters. Complaining that a project fails after funding without doing even basic math to prove it can be done is kind of silly IMHO. It’s like buying a lottery ticket and then complaining that you didn’t win the jackpot … You know that your chances are ridiculously small before you do.

 

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 1]

> As such I’d argue that we shouldn’t blame companies, but also look at us as backers to see if we really did our job at analyzing if the project could work with the given parameters.

Now there’s an understatement. Not once have I seen a KS backer ask for sources of funding before pledging, not to mention how much shipping is subsidized. My poster child concern is outside funding. *We* already know that the funding goal can’t be trusted, and we know even less if the project is relying on funds from outside the project. That’s why I now yellow-flag (should have done it much earlier in hindsight) any project whose creator doesn’t already have an evergreen (usually retail) product — which sorta defeats the spirit of crowdfunding. Also importantly is the mysterious “investor” that some projects have and others don’t — backers are pretty much never told during funding. Investors can foul the project by not actually providing promised funds (eg. Fairy Tale Battle Royale), or having too much control over a project (some boardgame even had a Board of Directors).

Can’t wait for that fume-free 3D printer.

[pagan8thParticipant 10745xp 0]

I’ve only ever funded games on ks… so I’m curious if other project types are subject to same problems as the gaming ones…

Anyone had experience of non-game kickstarters?

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