Fraud or Fail? The Day of Dragons Story

Day of Dragons is a game that has been dragged through the mud for multiple years regarding the crowdfunding methods which resulted in over $530,000 raised for what people called an asset flip. Asset flip being the term used for when someone buys pre-made assets from a marketplace and throws them together with very little effort for the sole purpose to raise money or hoodwink people into believing the game is more legit than it is. The result was over a year of back and forth between content creators, communities for and against the project and the sole developer referred to as "Jao". Legal threats, DMCA claims and 2 years later, this is the result.

Other kickstarter to court videos:

Thanks for watching.

Videos I used for reference and clips below:
IGP:
SidAlpha:
IcyCaress:
Anthomnia:

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#mmorpg #dayofdragons #kickstarter

[graciliraptor]

"Aren't those dragons store bought assets?"
Reply: *ITS NOT A SCAM*

[patnichols]

I love how they threatened copyright infringement, while at the same time, deliberately using a Night Fury, a Saphira, and a few other very obvious copyright infringements on well-known dragons from fantasy video games, books and movies.

[alchsg]

As an indie dev, I can tell this never started as a scam but absolutely turned into one. 300k for dragon models....bruh, that's a house you bought not some custom 3d models.

[jamul_cos]

"why would I spend 2 years of my life to scam people" is something a scammer would say

[EmberQuill]

It's absolutely wild that Jao mocked IcyCaress's "ripoff" game for having less complicated code. That's actually a point in IcyCaress's favor. Achieving the same result with what looks like less than half of the code just shows that either IcyCaress is a prodigy or Jao is a complete amateur who really should have hired another dev with the money he raised.

[fiendish]

Imagine having a legal case so WEAK that youtube won't entertain your DMCA. That's a big achievement

[Darkoriax]

…the first real “hold up” moment for me in this video was when the person was proposing DLC for an UNRELEASED GAME.
That’s not only really risky on their part, but it just sounds super-suspicious.

[Airyllish]

As a former moderator of that Discord back during the days of Big Drama, my favourite memories are Jao gaslighting his entire staff team - telling his mods they weren't doing a good enough job, constantly going over the head of his community manager, never talking to his team and instigating fights himself and then demanding they pick up the pieces, constantly making himself a victim when he was told to stop being an actual abusive boss. Fun times!

A lot of people like to say the game isn't a "scam" because "uwu but he's devewoping the game uwu he's making the dwagons uwu he's hiwing all these people uwu" but they seem to happily neglect the fact the entire Discord has become a literal cult where the loudest defenders always get rewarded with mod or admin positions, and are allowed to be vitriolic and abusive to anybody with a concern without any fear of reprimand. Meanwhile Jao brags about how his game is going to be the "WoW killer" and has so much ego that rather than properly version his updates, he calls them shit like J.A.O because he needs you to know how he's the boss and how he's cool and also he's definitely a victim and did nothing wrong ever, don't you believe the nasty little YouTube liars.

Then again what can you expect from a man who puts YandereDev on a pedestal and treats him like a role model?

[Tempest-jcme]

They had me at 12:08
That interviewer knew exactly what questions to ask, and them getting standoffish was all I needed to hear
"The truth does not mind being questioned, a lie does no want to be challenged"

[H-Town-Sean]

Ah, the famous children's film "How To Scam A Dragon"

[realAlpha]

when a developer reacts so hostile against someone sho asked a few questions it has to be a scam

[purplehaze]

I love how the first response to a concern regarding whether or not the dragons were store-bought was "It's not a scam" as if that had anything to do with the question asked. Just saying, denying something nobody asked is a common sign of lying in the presence of paranoia. Maybe there's some additional context that prompted that being the first thing he said, but knowing what we do, I doubt it.

[Fyreflyte]

Considering the lack of gameplay, it's interesting that Steam reviews rate this so highly. I took a few minutes to dig into those and found that the vast majority (~90%) of the positive reviews consisted of a single vague line of praise and were posted from accounts with a Steam level of 1 and just a few games owned. While this in itself is not solid proof of anything, it does bear the hallmarks of review boosting. Makes one wonder if some of that 500k wasn't spent there...

[cripplettv]

When he said 'Legitimate concern' to that woman, I died of laughter. My man said 'come back when you are legitimately concerned' after they literally ask him legitimately what his goal is.

[UnityGuy]

As a game developer this "developer" really just spat in the face of all of us trying to make a career out of passion. Would have gotten away with $12, 000 if it didn't blow up awesome video.

[Cloodden]

The typical "I am sorry, but who are you?" to try and undermine the other party sais enough.

[homemacai]

As a solo indie developer, this reeks of an absolute scam.

[mobius]

It’s probably a mixture of ego, inexperience and a scam.

On the flip side, it does show that there’s an interest in such a game. Maybe something a major developer might be more interested in doing

[thenerdbeast]

Either this is a scam or the most unprofessional project I have ever seen, run by an incredibly immature developer.

[mana]

Honestly, I'd love a MMO that allows you to play as Dragons, Centaurs and whatnot. Not many MMO companies go outside the usual Human, Human 2, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, Dark Elf.. etc.