Quoted from boo32:I remember posts about Phil being the guy who was pushing people to make the pre-payment at expo. He has now admitted that he knew at that time that the product he was displaying, which was not marked subject to license approval, was not fully licensed. I think it is now too late for him to take the high road and say that he tried to get dp to do things the right way. He tried to get them to do it "the right way" and when they wouldn't, he went along with it and personally sold the product and took pre-order money for it. He and dp were probably both hoping that things would work out and getting in the pre-order money would help things work out, but it still smells like fraud.
I think it's not as nefarious as that. I don't think that is proof that Phil made a conscious decision to abandon his morals and defraud his customers. I think he has been recounting a long string of incidents where DP went too far and he still reeled them back in while working to release a legit product. His list of infractions is not a tally of everything that is currently wrong with TBL, but instead his evidence of a pattern of negligence that he has been working to to correct but is no longer willing to as he has had enough after they apparently began "lying" to get around his oversight, and just doing what they want, regardless of license restrictions. I think at Expo he was frustrated, but still thought the damage was not so bad that they couldn't still fix it. I haven't yet heard any claims about sales pitches he made at expo that he explicitly knew were not true.
I think the things we know, according to Phil are:
1) They repeatedly made designs contrary to the license restrictions, and were pissing off universal.
2) Most of those issues eventually got resolved, including the backglass, except that they continued to flaunt the restrictions by showing up in Chicago with Kahlua and Time in the game, unapproved playfield art in general, and apparently unapproved voice call-outs. Additional infractions happened at DPO, which was the last straw for Phil.
3) Phil states that all of the voice call-outs are unapproved, but that doesn't mean that some or most of them won't be. It's just another example of showing disregard for the restriction against showing unapproved assets publicly.
4) The play field is unapproved, but insider reports from Barry state that removing things like the gun, the pot leaf, the disembodied legs, kahlua etc will likely get it approved.
5) Phil also said that there was no approval for any advertising at the time that he left. It is unclear if he is saying that none of the advertising he over saw for the previous year was approved, or any advertising going forward, but I found this one to be odd. Especially because he used a Goodman voice call-out specifically in at least one of those stellar videos.
6) Phil states that all the money from BOP 2.0 was gone, and that he covered a significant portion of the overspending costs. It is unclear how much preorder money was spent, and on what.
7) It appears as though the main split happened, again according to Phil, because of Barry and Jaap no longer heeding his advice w/r/t marketing and following the licensing restrictions, and they began lying to him repeatedly.
8.) He wants no liability with a company he feels is taking huge unecessary risks with the license and people's preorder money, and his requests have been ignored. Barry claims he put the burden on Phil to find someone else to take over DP USA. Obviously Phil feels this is Barry's responsibility.
In summary, Phil raises legitimate concerns over whether DP's cavalier attitude towards the license restrictions will risk getting the license pulled. Since he appears to have been the middle man W/R/T the license, it seems even more risky to flaunt the restrictions after his exit. JJP has always been very careful not to show unapproved stuff, so that reads as a real concern. The cab artwork appears to be approved, no one is claiming the music licenses are not valid, but the call outs are in question as well as the playfield art. The only concerns with Goodman are the use of any assets or depictions outside the narrow set of assets they have approval for. This is a big concern with call outs, and his playfield image, but the backglass is done.
It's obvious that DP will have their side of Phil's role in the company and why the split occurred, but in addition to that they need to address his accusations of the money handling(especially for BOP 2.0) and the status of the license issues. Unless they verify that everything they have shown and continue to show in public have been approved, I think buyers will need further assurances that showing unapproved artwork and assets poses no risk to the license. The current state of unapproved assets could be very close to being resolved with minor fixes, similar to what Phil described he worked out in the past, but that will all be moot if they get the license pulled for repeatedly showing unapproved stuff in public while collecting preorder money for it. Also this very big, very public explosion between the principles could motivate universal to find a reason to pull the license as well. Regardless of who you put the blame on for that one, it would be very prudent for DP to make sure they follow extremely closely to the letter of the law going forward.