Three sides to every story, We have heard Phil's, I want to hear Barry/Jaaps' and then I will do my best to determine what I think the truth is (the third side to the story).

All we have right now is a bunch of folks running around making wild assumptions, theories or statements based on conjecture and not fact.

Lets be careful that we don't takes months of positive feelings about DP and in 48 hours burn those to the ground. Maybe this is the end of DP, but I doubt that. Lets try to just chill a little bit until we hear the other side of the story.

I agree Barry needs to speak up and he needs to do it soon. It sounds like he did send a note to VIPs, so he has not ignored this, but a more complete and thorough update is needed, but at the same time, it sounds like there is some other stuff going on with travel and Jaap's mother, so another 24 hours for them to respond is not outrageous.

ITIN are needed if you need to have a tax id and do not quality for a Social Security Number. Typically this means you have a need to be filing a US Tax return. I had to deal with this with a part time employee, but I am certainly no tax expert. I do not recall how fast that can be done.

Since Phil was an owner in the company, him announcing "I am leaving", certainly does not terminate his situation with the company and there may have been legal consequences of just shutting off his access to things. In addition, it is certainly expected that an owner who is looking to sell his share (whether for financial consideration or not), is going to have work through that transition and a variety of legal items. Now it certainly sounds like Phil has tried to initiate that (of course the type of legal entity and the corporate documents, would have some impact on this as well). Regardless, I still want to hear the other side of the story before I draw any conclusions on what is really going on.

I agree, with the exception that certainly cases of illegal activity things can spill over from a corporation to the corporate officers involved (or even employees). In most cases your personal wealth would not be impacted, unless it was created via fraudulent activities (e.g. while an extreme case look at Bernie Madoff and those involved in it with him, or who are now seeing their assets seized that were a direct result of that fraud).

Not sure why so many are willing to except 100% of what Phil has said as fact. It is clear he is working his agenda and at this point very few of his accusations can be proven true or accurate. I think the majority of folks here would agree that calling him a 'disgruntled employee' is an accurate description. I'm not saying there every thing he says is BS, but I am saying I'm taking all of it with a grain of salt.

Even showing money leaving a paypal account and moving between entities does not mean that anything illegal or unethical was done, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why it may have been done.

The hiring of Roger Sharpe did not happen in response to this weeks drama, it occurred when Phil indicated he no longer wanted to be involved. Clearly DP understood they needed someone to work the license issues, who understood it and universally it appears everyone agrees Roger is the right guy for that. This also shows the DP clearly wants to do things the right way.

Lets not forget that this is a new company, and like all new companies there are going to be some mis-steps. For those who were in and are now bailing, I don't get it. You knew when you decided to jump in, that it was not necessarily going to be smooth sailing -- there was plenty of examples of the new companies before them hitting rough seas. If you don't have the stomach for it, you should not have gotten onboard in the first place.

While I expect all of this will get resolved over the next couple of weeks, the bad thing is this will now slow the project down by at least that long as these guys are dealing with all of this, made so much worse by Phil's actions here on pinside.

My first point was not to get back on the bandwagon, but questioning those who jumped off. If you got in on in the first place, you should have known there would be some bumps in the road (see JJP, Skit-B), and at the first sign of trouble you jump off? Well, you probably should not have gotten on in the first place. I personally have not done pre-orders, since I am in the 'I want to play it first' camp. So, I guess I've not jumped on bandwagons, and it is certainly fair to call me out on accusing those of "weak stomaches", from someone sitting in the cheap seats.

Whether it was before or after Phil left, I don't know the exact timing, but I do know it was prior to last week. I would tend to think after Phil decided to leave, as hard to see them taking on that expense if they already had someone doing it. It is of course possible it was before and that contributed to Phil's leaving -- I don't know. Either way, it is clear that they recognized the importance of having someone working with the license holder who could be effective at doing so.

We don't know if there was or weren't we are getting Phil's presentation of the facts. Maybe it was discussed with him and he disagreed with doing it, does not mean it was wrong, but he still chose to throw it out here as 'theft' (at least I believe he made that accusation).

I have had many conversations with members of the DP team and heard about Roger being involved long before this past weekend, and as I think has been posted Roger was involved in other DP projects relative to licensing. I do not know if it occurred before or after Phil left, so I was not totally clear about that in my post. As I just wrote in another response, I would tend to think it was after, since taking on that extra expense when you already had someone doing it, does not make sense to me -- but I do not know the exact timing of it.

Well, we are here because Phil took action on his own and made a variety of accusations, which may or may not be true, but I am confident it is not the whole story. And there is certainly non conclusive evidence that DP was deliberately not doing the right thing. Regardless, I agree that it shows DP's resolve to keep moving forward, although I don't think there was much doubt about t hat.

I thought he had, but given my memory sucks I went back to look, and he did (see below), but to your point I'm sure it has been escalated through this massive thread . . .

Of course, this is one side of the story.

Right now instead of working on the game and working through Phil's transition, they are now also having to do damage control. The Phil transition, which certainly sounds like it was already having issues, is now only going to be more complicated given what has happened. DP may well be at fault for not working through this with Phil in a more timely manner. However, when a partner in a business wants out, it can be a fairly complex thing to deal with, especially depending on the corporate bylaws and structure. Given Phil's action, my gut tells me this is now more complicated then it was a week ago. I'm not saying it is going to add months to the timeline, but it will clearly have an impact.

we can talk about the first item another time. You are certainly welcome to call BS and would have plenty of support for that. And while I would agree the timing was not great on the NYC thing and to be honest I don't know the details on that event were. Obviously marketing and sales are still a key activity and not sure if they had to step into that event due to Phil leaving, and I certainly can't say if that event warranted them being away. Regardless, not sure why both Barry and Jaap and to be there. However, they may have other reasons to be in the States, relative to other issues, suppliers and possibly even trying to address the Dutch Pinball USA issues.

I guess I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt right now.

the games from expo never left the US, and I assume what they had there were those games. Obviously still an expense to get them there from Chicago (or wherever else they may have traveled to), but not as crazy if they brought them over.

Edibles, vaping? -- you young guys with your fancy new ways

These things should not be mutually exclusive. However, those involved in production and development should be working on production/development. Those responsible for marketing and sales, should be focused on that. Certainly unclear to me why both Jaap and Barry were in the US, but as I have said, they may have other reasons to be here, other then the sales/marketing event.

Based on my experience, DP will get a 'charge back' notification from AMEX and then has the option to challenge it. Typically this may be around whether nor not a customer got the product, etc. In this case, they really won't have any grounds for a challenge. The big downside that will come of this for DP, is they are likely going to lose the ability to take AMEX. AMEX has a very low tolerance for chargebacks, which they look at based on the percentage charged back relative to the total charged over a period of time. Since they probably did not get a ton of payments on AMEX charges, and a good chunk are now being charged back, they could lose that ability to take AMEX -- I do NOT know how this works with paypal.