TBD: To Be Determined

We need to wait and see if one of the present pre-order entitities fails to deliver games and/or refunds. That would be the biggest scandal, but hopefully never happens.
In my opinion, around 5 years is the time where one should assume the product will never be delivered.

If this whole TBL saga continues to play out the way it is, it's gotta be in the Top 3.

Thread is here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/nucore

Talk about the lawsuit resumes here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/nucore/page/3#post-2072356

And the proverbial crap hits the fan here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/nucore/page/7#post-2085161

astro games and Black Sheep Squadron

I think the word 'Scandal ' should be used only if customers have lost money
Did anyone loose money on Wayne's MM remake?

Summary in a nutshell:

Pinball 2000 machines require a specific motherboard to operate. Without one, your game is a paperweight. Nucore allows you to run your game with any modern PC.

Nucore is taken off the market years ago for reasons we don't fully know. It will supposedly be coming back. People with broken Pin2k games start getting impatient, owners of working games get nervous about keeping their games running.

Pinbox is released claiming to be a Nucore replacement. Rejoice.

The makers of Nucore, Big Guys Pinball, determine that Pinbox is Nucore with the hardware dongle stripped away.

BGP figures out who released Pinbox. Lawsuit ensues. Claims of copyright infringement.

A developer from the QEMU project, the foundation upon which Nucore is built, arrives and claims that in actuality, Nucore infringes on QEMU's copyright.

Pot meet kettle? Who knows? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!

i think there's less than a dozen people in the world who care about the PPS coin mech thing, half of whom didn't even buy a MMR and just used it as a thing to advance their own anti-remake agenda. there certainly were a ton of pinside posts about it, but in terms of scandal, it is extremely low grade. a coin mech costs $10. hardly compares to the real scandals where people were losing thousands.

Google is your friend. Embrace it.

2-3-4-5 Versions of a game....."LE" sometimes meaning nothing more than a fancy paint job

Kinda makes me scratch my head when an LE is made and then there are dozen's of Mods made and it always goes like this "This part was made for this area, and should have been here from the beginning" sheesh

WHHHHHATEEEEEVVVVVAAAAAA

One: that was my apron.

Two: the Bumper fiasco was pretty darn bad. Horrific actually.

JPop, DP, Predator etc could all still crash or could all deliver and their delay or poor communication will be forgotten by most. We will know soon.

Some of these -including this one especially are not in the least bit scandals.

Wayno and the MM failure was the all time worst by the way.

Firefly was great; Arrested Development was sublime.

Gottlieb sys1
parts could not be found to repair motherboards soon after production

Walking Dead premium version announced "late"

I hate it when I predict the future. See the post when this machine was announced.

Sean

I have a sneaky feeling that happened before OP was involved in pinball, and therefore dleant count. Don't forget he was also accepting pre-orders for CC at the same time.

Twd thing irritates me! I'm very happy sterns making money, but this is just after they announced that there would be no more premiums..only le's and pros. If I were someone that purchased a twdle for the features I'd be flat out furious!!!! And at the least be writing them a nasty email about how the duped me for an extra thousand bucks

I agree. MMR coin-mech-gate was about how PPS made a claim about their customer base after they announced MMR would ship without the mechs and then refused to support that claim. It was more how they handled (or not) a self-inflicted communication issue than any thing else. Not a scandal, just an inability to deal with a bump in the road.

I would just put PPS in the "new pin manufacturer who can't provide accurate forecasting on promised game and/or doesn't just shoot straight about some potentially bad news" scandal that JJP and just about every boutique maker has been in at one point or another.

The "scandal" is that many of the manufacturers are afraid that many on Pinside can't handle the truth. The only one that gets a pass from me is Spooky. Everyone else is or was a member of this club in 2014.

Change title to "biggest scandal of 2014" and add a poll... Unsure though if the 9-choice limit will be sufficient.

Allow an option to change votes until Dec 31, because this seems like a hot topic

The first 70 years of the hobby. Which was before there was an active collector community.

If having a pinball machine in your home was outlawed, we'd have a lot less drama in the hobby.

croc hunter - 2 proto type machines made but Australia Zoo told none were made.

That's from the cover of the movie, nymphomaniac.

Can't believe you guys didn't add the croc hunter pin. Added it for you in the list.

Chicago Coin copying Gottlieb game designs and releasing them as their own (1960's / 1970's).

Manufacturers releasing games where hundreds of replays are possible to attempt to beat anti-gambling laws.

The surprise of Tron LE nib buyers when they got a single coin chute with machine. SURPRISE! Says Stern, even though matrix said nothing about it and clearly showed the LE and Pro with dual coin slots.

Cost cutting bom says Stern. Too bad.

PPS=Pinball Ponzi Scheme

ouch

You should change this to:

Biggest Public Pinball "Scandal" of All Time

There are sooooo many things that Pinside doesn't know about that have gone down over the years.

Most of the complaints seem to revolve around paying upfront for games. People hear about their "dream theme" and immediately are eager to send their money.

Imagine if this were the sales pitch:

"My dearest pinball comrade, we need your help. We are in the process of making a greta game of the unicorn which is of most appeal to players of the ball of pin. In return for your check of 20,000 we will be most grateful and would bestow upon you an edition that is limited of the game, a refund of 50,000 and a shirt made of the letter T. Our legal parliament says the game will of the value of 10,000 by the holiday with the X in it. I am anxious to wait for your reply."

People would laugh and ignore it.

This was a rumor from Expo that was taken out of context. Was never the case and it was not "announced". Gary did say that they were done making ACDC Premiums I believe.

All that and no hitler reaction video?

Don't know if this is a good suggestion or not, but would it be possible to have a link for each of the OP "scandals", I know they can each be googled or searched but having a link to each one, in one place would be pretty handy for anyone who hasn't heard of a partial scandal/story or for anyone who wants to catch up on the latest of any or all of them.

Transformers LE - they got everyone pumped with Gomez's video of a transforming transformer and we were pumped for the LE vs. the Pro. We got a megatron that did not shoot the balls, no transforming toy and an air ball kit to install. Three versions of LE and so it began. If you spoke about in on their FB page you were banned for life. Well done Stern social dept.

Carl vs. Patty J.

pinmike tries to "steal" pins from silverman after silverman declines to risk picking them up due to gang activity in that particular area. aka the bottom boys thread.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-best-ad-i-have-ever-seen

at this particular time, that was the most drama in a pinside thread i ever saw.

Scandal? or remote possibility?

Un fulfilled preorders morph into digital ebola stemming from an email anomaly in which mysterious code appears everytime a lie is told in a message response from a manufacturer.

*Cue head munching pinball cabs roaming Chicago looking for pin designers to consume for power ups*

Ok, Jaws theme being built by new company, since Stern waited too long.

Send payments in full for preorder to: p.o. Box 101, My Town, USA.

Info and hand puppets tba @ a later date.

image-912.jpg

Whenever i'm in Chicago catching up on pinside pinball scandals; I only eat genuine Garrett's popcorn!

1418572437970.jpg

I did. My refund was less because of the difference in exchange rates when I got my refund.

So you literally paid money for absolutely nothing. I wonder how many others.

Yes. I agreed to the lower amount because it took so long to even get a refund at all. I was waiting for months after getting excuses from Wayne about why it was taking so long, my credit card company said they could not help because of how much time elapsed between the purchase and claim, so when he told me it would be less because of the difference in exchange rates, I agreed to take the loss.

Ahhhhh... My bad, I just remember the masses talking about it. Thanks for the clarification

These look like controversies rather than scandals and for those who have been around the hobby longer than 24 months how about:

Ball bearings vs. Pinballs
The joys of petroleum distillates
MPE vs. PATZ
Superauctions worse than Hitler?
Clay takes his ball and goes home.
RGP tries to go Ferguson all over a young Pinside and gets a beatdown.

Not pinball, but arcade folks will be familiar with the RAM controls saga.

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=172867

I can't think of a similar parts scandal for Pinball.