I believed we had a light at the end of the tunnel. With constant pressure and micro management on my end I cautiously believed we could get the project on a track towards completion.
It was at this time that Defiance stated that they would not produce any masters until they had finished a batch of models. They then informed us that the file format we had provided them, their choice, wasn’t going to work. This new format was already a replacement of the original format they said wouldn’t work, which again was their choice. Soon after this they started talking about “going back to the models from last October” It was at this time I knew we were going into a downward spiral of excuses and finger pointing.
Clearly we have a serious problem.
Get Another Production Company?
Last Friday I concluded that Defiance was completely unable to fulfill our needs and that I made a mistake in choosing them. Being noble and generous I would say that they truly felt like they could handle it, but the reality of the project – in addition to their own projects – was too much. There may well be other reasons.
I formally asked for our money back less the approved and agreed charges and after a weekend of badgering they told me on Monday that “We do not have the available cash on hand to return these funds at this time” and “We are gearing up here for our own releases to get new product to market and improve our cash flow.”
The Problem
And herein lies the problem: Defiance have not been able to produce the miniatures, but they are also unable to return the funds. And the funds are somewhat substantial.
Currently, we are reviewing all legal options, but I have very little faith that we will simply get this money back.
Torn Armor is effectively dead in the water.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Clearly our options are considerably broadened if Defiance returns our funds: Reaper Miniatures offered to help out, but without these funds allocated to the miniatures being able to fulfill on the miniatures is an impossibility.
The money lost is crippling, but it wasn’t everything and we can put the remaining funds to good use. Currently we are discussing offering partial refunds, creating the game-only tier (rules, maps, cards, units, dice) or simply staying in a holding pattern until there is news where our funds are returned, but this last option could honestly be something that dragged on for years and we are not a fan of that route.
This situation simply sucks.We have put in a lot of our own personal money into this, we created a dream and you – our incredible backers – were the best that anyone could have ever asked for. We all passionately worked together for the Kickstarter and I earned some good friends because of it, so to now be reduced to this a year later is utterly crushing.
I fought off this moment as long as I could, but I would not send out an update like this without firmly believing that we just ran into a brick wall.
Tl:dr
In a nutshell we have been screwed by our supplier and are now not able to fulfill this Kickstarter project. We are discussing all options at the moment, but do consider the miniatures portion of this project dead.
~ Natalya & the Torn World Team
Will I’m happy to see our friends at Reaper Miniatures have offered to help – have I mentioned lately how cool Reaper is? – Faden has stated she does “consider the miniatures portion of this project dead” which, in truth, is no doubt why a good 95% of backers paid their money; they wanted the minis! That’s like saying, “Yes friend, I know you paid me $60k for this sweet Audi but I’m afraid all I can now provide you with now are the floor mats…” You probably didn’t care about the floor mats in the first place.
I’m certainly not here to kick Faden and her team while they’re down as I’m pretty certain they had every intention of providing backers with exactly what they pitched. It’s unfortunate seemingly no backup plans were in place to take care of hurdles which would undoubtedly arise and, even more unfortunate, the Torn Armor team apparently were taken to the cleaners by Defiance. When it’s all said an done though once again we see a cautionary tale regarding crowd funding. When dealing with Kickstarter it really is like the carnival barker says, “Youse pays ya money, youse takes ya chances…”
By all means I’d love to see a successful resolution to the problems now plaguing Torn Armor as I always hate to see gamers ending up with empty wallets and nothing to show for it.
