Let me start this off with a simple, direct statement. I hate people that intentionally try to take advantage of or scam others. I find it to be one of the lowest forms of ugly behavior. With that in mind, I've spent the past two weeks piecing bits of information together, forming a mosaic of scamming and shady behavior that makes me cross-eyed when I try to understand all of it. And, while much of this information has become common knowledge amongst the community over the past six months, I have made an attempt to add the smaller bits that may have gone unnoticed.
I don't know who Max Kovtun is, but I don't like him. Based on what I've seen, he's been at the core of several of the scam projects that this post will discuss. The first one that he tried of which I am aware, was an indiegogo campaign for a "Nuclear Energy Space Station." The pitch is filled with a bunch of buzz words. It was also complete bullshit. Check it out here.
His second project was a game called "Space Pioneer." Its Kickstarter campaign claimed to have cosmonauts and scientists involved in its development. Based on what I've seen, they dropped a bunch of names and posted pictures of people that are part of the scientific community and can be found through a Google search, but their actual involvement was questionable at best. At any rate, this project was clearly another scam from the get go. The Kickstarter contained stolen concept art. It once again, used a bunch of buzz words. The video had nothing to do with the game itself. The Kickstarter campaign failed. When that happened, Kovtun took to encouraging people to donate directly through Space Pioneer's website. The site seems functional on the main page, and I'm quite sure the Paypal donation links work, but clicking on the forums, or anything that would actually be relevant to the game itself, lead to nowhere or provide no real information whatsoever.
Now, we come to the project that brought all of this to the public eye and brought all of this garbage to my attention. Early last year, a team calling themselves West Games, who claimed to be made up of "core developers of the STALKER franchise," began a Kickstarter campaign for Areal, a spiritual successor to STALKER. The team/project was lead by Eugene Kim, a Ukrainian, yet the Kickstarter page said that it was based in Las Vegas. Interestingly enough, the campaign money was supposed to go to a man named Leonid Kovtun. That is just the tip of the iceberg. In order to make this go faster for you, the reader, allow me to quick-list off the veritable litany of bullshit that they pushed onto people. They are in no particular order.
*Their involvement in the STALKER series turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
*The initial version of the campaign page contained alpha footage of Stalker, although it was implied that it was footage of Areal.
*They set the goal at a measly 50k, despite the fact that they were supposedly creating a custom engine, and planned on releasing Areal on consoles.
*Once they were called on the fact that they hadn't shown anything original, they posted an update with screens of the Areal "prototype." Those screens turned out to be comprised of store-bought Unity assets. A whole map, in fact, from the Unity Apocalypse pack. All they did was make the billboard on the map say "Areal." That's all.
*Their first "gameplay footage" was, once again, store bought Unity assets.
*When the word "scam" started to circulate, West Games (Eugene Kim specifically), accused the press of being dishonest, posted personal information of Kickstarter backers in public areas, created fake Kickstaer accounts that spammed the comments section of their campaign (in order to troll or bury those that knew what was happening), and even claimed to receive a letter of support from Vladimir Putin.
*Eugene Kim performed a reddit AMA that was a complete disaster. Kim refused to answer basic questions about the project and the company, and the whole thing only reinforced the notion that something sketchy was happening. Several accounts that had been created that day seemed to be the majority of the positive feedback being directed at Kim.
*It didn't look like they were going to hit their goal, but at the last minute, a couple of backers contributed several thousand to push them over the edge.
*Thankfully, Kickstarter suspended the project, but West Games tried the same "fund us directly through our site" crap that was attempted with Space Pioneer.
*I'm sure I have forgotten a couple things.
Have you read enough yet? Is your skin crawling? Its not over yet. Late last year, a website was privately registered through Godaddy. World Wide Funder claims to be a crowd funding website similar to Kickstarter. And wouldn't you know it, Areal (now rebranded as STALKER: Apocalypse) and Space Pioneer (rebranded as Project Tool) are both on the site. Any money donated goes straight to the project owners. They don't need to meet their goals. Most of the links on the project pages, predictably, lead nowhere. At least one of the very limited assets shown on the STALKER: Apocalypse age comes standard with Unreal 4. Project Tool's campaign video is actually a video stolen from an indie film creator, which can be found here. The rest of the projects on the site are clearly scams. All written in the same broken English, one of the projects is for Counter-Strike 1.6 for Pete sake. Stolen Youtube videos, generic images found on the web, and complete nonsense make up the majority of the content on the site. They even keep pushing back the end dates of the funding campaigns on the projects.
So, let's piece it all together. The Kovtuns, Eugene Kim, and the people that are involved with them are scamming people out of their money by claiming to be working on projects that members of the gaming community would love to see. Everything they display as part of their projects is either stolen, or thrown together with the laziest of efforts possible. Every time one of their scams fails, they come up with something new. They are heartlessly preying on people's gullibility and passion for certain genres and intellectual properties. They are bad people. They are scumbags. And it makes me sick that there are people out there damaging the gaming community in such a way. To be fair, this entire situation has basically become a joke amongst most members of the gaming community, because almost everyone sees this for what it is. However, if even one dollar goes to these charlatans, then we have failed in stopping them. This points back to the importance of being an informed consumer. Now, people shouldn't NEED to lock their car doors, carry mace, or make sure they aren't being scammed when donating to a crowd-funded project, but the reality of the world we live in is that it is often necessary to take precautions in order to protect ourselves.
Hopefully the gaming community can come together and get their scam site (and all future scams of theirs) shut down. Until that time, spread the word. We need to stick together and protect each other. The members of the community are often at odds with one another. "This platform is better. This game sucks. You're a fanboy." However, we should be able to put all of our differences aside in these situations and work together to put a stop to this sort of thing. This behavior goes beyond gaming. Scams are something that threaten to affect everyone, every day. Whether its the old "Nigerian Prince" e-mail scam, or credit card fraud, we have to put a stop to it. The first step in halting this sort of behavior is paying attention, and noticing the little indicators that something is amiss. So, in the words of a great man, "Stay frosty and alert."
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