$116,684 Taken, 4 years Developed, No game delivered, Developers Vanished

This is the story about Oath, a project appearing on Kickstarter in April of 2019. Raising over 110 thousand dollars and showing only a handful of concept art images, gifs and a few minutes of trailer gameplay before causing an independent studio they hired to close down, threatening lawsuits and false DMCA take down requests on content creators and going radio silent for well over a year.

Other kickstarter to court videos:

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#scam #mmorpg #gaming

[battlehotdog]

this just sucks for the game studio they scammed for 5 weeks of work without payments. and the audacity to copyright strike the grass that they dont own is just hilarious.

[MrPhyxsyus]

Oh no! A kickstarter mmo that wasn't released and ended up being a scam? Imagine my shock!

[Paul-zhjp]

man, i feel for ocean spark. i'm a freelancer and have had the same thing happen to me, though not quite as bad. i set a rule for myself to never work more than a week (maybe 2) without payment from a client. no matter how promising the gig is, you just can't do that. i hope they have that in every future contract

[joshs]

I feel so bad for Ocean Spark. When you're a tiny company, yes, a single payment can make the difference between keeping things running and declaring bankruptcy. Seems like they were going to do a good job and fully uphold their end of the contract. The whole grass thing is insane. Artists use references, that's how it works. It was a super tiny mistake. Ocean Spark spent weeks of hard work under the assumption that they would be payed. Instead they lost everything. The only thing they did wrong was continue to work without receiving payment for longer than they should have. Being too trusting basically. Payment deadlines are important.

[dashdash]

People don't realize that 100k$ for an MMO of that size is absolute peanuts. Anyone expecting some kind of AAA MMO out of 100k$ is just delusional.

[FinalFinale]

10:15 Thank you for mentioning the mistake as a commonality. I talked with artists/designers back in university and using other people's code is a very common way to practice/learn/refresh tasks. I don't understand why people on the internet are clinging onto this fact and claiming it to be plagiarism.

[snazzydrew]

There's something to be said for how easily people can be convinced by a trailer.

[acronen]

Sounds like Ethan and Stephen have the proper background, and experience to join the Earth 2 team now though.

[colossusrayzu]

I knew and had met the Ocean Spark team, they visited our college and later my University, they were close friends with my tutors as ex students and as soon as I saw the claims I knew it to be false, the team there are passionate about games and environment art, it sucks to see a small studio I knew fairly closely just shot down due to one bad contract, they were forced to shut down their studio and close their social medias else getting jobs elsewhere in the games industry would be impossible (or so they were told) I can confirm they have managed to find work at other games companies in the UK I don't know exactly where but I was told (by my tutor I think) they had managed to find work and they were now fine. (thankfully)

[fealubryne]

I know a lot of these throwaway game companies like to use pre-made assets for trailers, but it sends up huge red flags to see a game presented in one style (really stylized bordering on cartoonty) only to show concept art in an entirely different style (far less cartoony, more "badass" designs). Even if it was legit, feels like yanking the rug out from under anyone who backed for a specific art style.

[SquishyTheVampire]

Tip for artists: never continue working for someone who hasn't paid you what was agreed upon. Giving people the benefit of the doubt will more than likely screw you over. Even if that person truly has good intentions, cover your own ass first. Set up a system where you receive a percentage of the amount owed (non refundable), then release the product when you receive the rest of the payment. That way both sides are somewhat protected. If the buyer doesn't like the product, they didn't have to pay full price and they dont get the product. If the seller isn't receiving what is owed, they don't face a complete loss in funds.

[shyrory]

I remember asking discord in 2018 to verify my discord channel of an mmorpg I had made with no budget over 9 years now and released in 2017. They said it wasn't up to their standards for a verified game server. Meanwhile, Oath that has one trailer and a successful Kickstarter but no game was verified.

[MisterNightfish]

I'm glad everything I backed on kickstarter released and turned out to be good, but I'm quite picky. All of the projects I back are done by people that have good track records and now make niche games that would not get AAA funding. I doubt I would ever back an MMO, but for indie games I think crowdfunding is a great thing and many of my favorite games would not exist without it.

[onesilverleaf]

Bruh, this guy is epic with his breakdowns and details, I still remember Cryy's video and it was so disgusting to see OceanSpark get fucked over for no apparent reason. Rage inducing to say the least.

[simonmalicek]

I think problem is that you can just slap few assets in UE4 together with their network code and say "we go this far, but we run out of money" in court. The court would see a game that's half working, has rendering, assets etc. so they will probably think they tried and just run out of money. It will be another boomer moment.

[KaelinGoff]

Ocean spark has my sympathies. Getting railed by non payment when you're responsible for employees and thier families is just the worst.

[erqey]

Kickstarters have really demonstrated to me that the saying "there's a sucker born every minute" is completely true and if anything, an understatement.

[Olzme]

These deep dives into these scam MMOs should become a series.

[BigfryTV]

awe man, I remember this game. I fucking knew it wasn't gonna work out, but I do like that Prompt style combat. RIP Wildstar

[NaZtRdAmUs]

pump and dump mmorpgs seem to be all the rage these days.