Why I've Never Hated CMON....And All The Reasons Some Do

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Ok ok....we've talked about this. Sort of. But let's really dive into it, let's go through the entire conversation of why some don't like CMON, and why I disagree and none of it has mattered to me.

TimeStamps:
0:00:00 - Introduction
0:00:35 - Some Background
0:02:20 - People Don't Care As Much As You Think They Do

The Laundry List of CMON's Sins
0:07:40 - The Laundry List of CMON's Sins
0:08:08 - Why Is CMON Even On Kickstarter?
0:08:30 - Their Games Are Always Late
0:08:55 - Their Shipping Estimates Are Off
0:09:40 - They Like To Give Bad News After The Fact
0:10:35 - They Took Extra Money On Trudvang
0:11:15 - Their Games Lack Substance
0:11:33 - They Keep Milking That Zombicide Train
0:11:48 - They Engage In Predatory Marketing
0:12:58 - Their Games Aren't Even Playtested Or Balanced
0:13:16 - They Don't Care About You

0:13:31 - A Brief Intermission

Why I Don't Care About Those
0:14:00- Why I Don't Care That They Are On Kickstarter
0:16:29 - Why I Don't Care That Their Games Are Always Late
0:17:45 - Why I'm Disappointed That They Like To Give Bad News After The Fact
0:20:00 - Why I Don't Care That They Took Extra Money On Trudvang
0:22:24 - Why I Don't Believe That Their Games Lack Substance
0:23:05 - Why I Don't Care That They Keep Milking That Zombicide Train
0:24:42 - Why I Don't Care About The Escalation Of Costs
0:26:05 - Why I Don't Care That Their Games Aren't Even Playtested Or Balanced

0:27:00 - They Care, Then Engage
0:28:45 - Don't Ruin Everyone Else's Fun
0:29:50 - I Like Their Games
0:30:13 - They Give You A Reason To Back
0:31:10 - Can We Agree It's Irrational?
0:35:00 - That's Why I Like CMON
0:36:21 - The Video Should Have Ended Here

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[willbaker]

I don’t hate Cmon. I’ve backed 22 of their games including their very first one. For me it’s the shipping increase in their latest campaign and their lack of communication as to say we don’t care. Because of that not only will I not back anymore of their games I’m not going to back anything else until the shipping issues are resolved around the world. Also I would point out the folks who didn’t comment or went ahead and paid their shipping to think they didn’t care, that’s a mistake. I went ahead and paid. But I won’t be back. I’m a bit of a normie and I rarely comment at all during a Kickstarter. So to compare the comments I think is not a good metric. Keep doing the videos.

[ellyari]

I agreed with you before the last year or so. The quality for some of the stuff they delivered in the last year had lots of quality issues.

Then, there's the marvel united shipping issues and their attempt at avoiding it by drafting some dumb legal agreement people needed to sign off on for Marvel United Zombies (Newsflash- if the game comes damaged its either due to bad packing or because the delivery company fucked up. If the delivery company fucked up, you as a business should be insured. If youre not insured it doesn't mean you don't need to replace or refund or somehow recompensate backers, it just means that instead of insurance taking care of it you have to do it on your own dime.) There's the VAT debacle, there's the norwegian shipping debacle where CMON decided they simply wouldn't shit to norway no matter what the charges are because they couldn't be arsed to find a new logistics partner since their previous one went bankrupt. I mean they have outdone themselves time and time again, especially if its anything outside of the US, they have been immensely disrespectful and inept.

And the worst, the absolute worst of all of them has been the marvel zombies shipping escapade which as bad as its been for the USA has been signficantly worse around the globe. For example Macau shippers have to pay 340 USD to get the all in, yes thats the macau in china about 100km away from Guangzhou where I believe CMON is producing some of their games. HK on the other hand, literally next door to Macau pays 180 for the same shipping. Then there's the tripling to quadrupling of prices across the board in the EU outside of Germany - unheard of in any company so far.

But the worst part, apart from the downright comical and illogical shipping prices, is the fact that they did not somehow predict this. This means that either 9 months ago when prices were 12% higher they made a 'conservative' estimate of shipping lowering 50%, or they simply couldn't face the fact that if they put anything near the real price of shipping during the KS they'd have half or less of the revenues they did make. Its misrepresentation, its lying, and its downright tricking consumers into spending 10% of whatever they pledged for with no economic changes since then that would account for it.

I've never seen a company fuck up shipping this bad, even COD which came in at the start of the shipping crisis and had to renegage on shipping only went up 80-100% not 300-400%. Its either extreme ineptitude or outright maliciousness and is utterly inexcusable regardless of it was a 50 KS campaign company or a 1st campaign company.

You and others have criticized LMS for asking 15 for black rose wars for satyr box shipping- I would beg CMON to take just 15 bucks to make up for their ineptitude. You've criticized some companies for sneakily delivering to retailers before backers - what does that make CMON making 2 wave shipping inexcusably expensive? From what I see, CMON does have a history of lying, misrepresenting and utterly dishonest behaviour especially in recent times which have marked them as a company that people need to be warned against regardless of how distasteful it might be.

And this is all without even mentioning their communication problem, which is the standard big corpo "stay quiet til they forget." TBH I don't see that working anymore.

[DF-wept]

I don’t “hate” CMON. I’ve just vowed to stop giving them my money based on my experiences with them. Both are us are going to be just fine lol. I don’t believe in cancelling, just voting with my dollars. If CMON is happy with 8800 of 29000 customers being upset and they are comfortable with that ratio, good on them. A ratio like that at my business would cause me to re-evaluate my business model, not defend it. But that’s just me.

[rigo]

For me the biggest issue it's about the communication, it would be really great to see CMON saying something about the "controversy" instead of watching content creators  addressing the issues and "taking sides" using their own platform to influences their audiences. Because their audiences, for the most part, are going to agree, with theirs creators' opinion, because they are engaged with them and value their opinions and perspectives, and as any controversial topic, this is a good topic to discuss to get views for the creators, comments, likes and dislikes.

At the end of the day, CMON  should be the one explaining these things, and "defending themselves", being silenced feels like they don't really care about their customers, and being such a niche community it just does not help at all, instead of bringing people together and enjoying the games, the main topic shifts to their behavior.

[mrsuitcase]

You don't know if it looks bad, or it is bad? Well, it IS bad. That's like a contractor quoting you $10000 for a job in January, and taking a $7500 deposit. Then in April, telling you they need $7500 more. Why? Because material prices went up last year. "but... you quoted me in January of THIS year! And every other contractor in January quoted roughly the same as you did?! What's going on?"... and they respond with "well, if you don't like it, I'll refund you everything but $750, because, you know, I've got to pay my bank $325 in processing fees"... "what about the rest?"... "uh.. Just make your pick!"

[iansutton]

We'll agree to disagree on the overall picture and I certainly will not back their games. I see a broad enough range of issues you've mentioned here re: CMON, that it comes across as contempt for customers. Individual issues taken in isolation that might be defensible, but put together, and when the market they operate in (KS) demands some major trust, that's now well past the point I would entrust my money to them.

You disagree and the trust isn't broken for you. That's cool and I hope you continue to enjoy their games.

[aaronmarsee]

Every time I watch one of your videos I am amazed at your honesty. Thank you so much for your honesty about everything. Thank you for everything you do.

[justinvenable]

I think there's a subset of people that want CMON to do better than they are, because they want to like the company as much as the games. I don't know if the iteration of zombicide is going to be a problem, but it will reach a plateau and then die off eventually. I think I wouldn't have backed without the Marvel skin. And I think I also wouldn't back a second Marvel one. That's before the wrinkle of the high shipping prices. Board games have longevity that video games don't. That's why you can sell the older ones and get (some) of your money back.

[kaastargaming]

Question 25:03 - What do you mean prices will go up. Say for example if I back preorder from The Dead Keep. It says 160€ ... except from VAT which is 25% for me and shipping of 21€ ... what could make the price go up?

[alexisfougeres]

I dont care that they are on kickstarter. I care that kickstarter somehow circumvent a lot of consummer law. You should be able to get a full refund including that kickstarter fee. I suspect that it wouldnt hold water in court if someone had the money/energy to fight it. You dont get to run a storefront, write on that storefront that it is not a storefront and then not respect the rules that other storefront have to respect

[ChadHensley]

This is a great video! I'm sure people will disagree but you readily acknowledged the complaints and produced solid reasoning. Sure you could have gone into more detail but the video would have been hours long. I have so much more to say but I realized that I was just putting what you said in different words with my own perspective and experience supporting what you have already said. Thanks for being candid!

[MoATH]

Lol, I like the auto flow talking, it’s nice to see such a thing in a YouTube video, very personal and transparent and child-like (in a good sense). Also, I like that you like seeing things from different angles and sharing that.

[JMJM]

with Marvel United, they made a AAA Marvel board game that lets you play as frickin' Alpha Flight, or Marrow, or any number of other deep cuts! Characters you're simply never going to see in Marvel Champions or whatever, because outside of one gazillion stretch goals it simply doesn't make sense. will always be thankful to them for that.

[rko]

Everything else other than the bad news after campaign ends is acceptable to me.
It like the housing situation in my state. Ppl paid 500k for a house, then after 6mths got an extra bill of 50k for "opps sorry, increase in cost so we need to charge you. Or you can forfeit your 50K deposit to cancel the build".

[shachna]

My biggest counterpoint to how CMON runs things is Leder Games. That's why I own almost every Leder Game and haven't ever backed a CMON game.

[SennyBnk]

I cannot quite agree about the fact that CMON doesn't support the previous Zombicide lines. They are constantly releasing some extra missions to each of titles, making the longevity of them much longer. Of course - you need to have most of the expansions in collection to fully utilise them, but hey - they still remember about the Green Plague or Black Horde for example :)

[pvaughan]

I really, really needed this video today. Thank you for keeping it real.

[peterrustemeyer]

I treat CMON as "70% miniatures, 30% games", meaning: it is totally fine to just buy the game to get the miniatures (for other tabletop war games or just to paint them). Sometimes a game of theirs is actually pretty good, often it's kind of meh, but the miniatures are always great.

[jeffhiatt]

I am fortunate in that the typical game that CMON produces is not the kind of game that I or my wife like, so i am not all that invested in the CMON good / bad argument. I suspect they could reduce most / eliminate some of the issues they face if they JUST communicated promptly and transparently. But they dont, and as such, they invite the backlash and frankly, they deserve it, as its critical to communicate and set expectations. They could fix it. its not rocket science.

[stacie_everdell]

Came back a second time to watch from 40:22 on because I needed a good laugh today! :D