Multimorphic is not funding development with customer pre-order money either. Gerry has been pretty great about that.

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.

Not every company uses the preorder model to fund their operations. I personally think it is a hugely risky way to fund your company, and I applaud companies like Spooky Pinball and Multimorphic for bootstrapping development themselves and not treating preorder money as general use cash flow.

Even if you manage to sell enough games to where your profit covers your development costs and you still have enough money left over to build every game, that means that, even if you 100% farm out production, you are essentially working for free for the entire lengthy process of getting those games built, tested, delivered, and supported during your warranty period.

Most of these companies are run by people who love to design pinball games, so there is even more incentive to drag out the "Fun" (paid) design and development part of the process, and put off the "not fun" (unpaid and probably underfunded) manufacturing part of the process. So what have we seen? Announcements of subsequent game titles to bring in new funding before the manufacturing process even begins. If game 2 revenues successfully fund game 1's manufacturing and game 2's development cost, that puts the company in an even worse position for game 2's manufacturing phase.

It is not a given that you can't develop a game without tapping into pre-order money. Spooky and multimorphic have shown that, while hard, it's possible, and that is essentially how all pinball companies began before the pinball Pyrite-rush that came after Jan 2011.

I think the hobby and industry will get back to a much more stable existence when we, the customers, stop just accepting the pre-order funding model as the normal way to run a new pinball company.

Phil posted the full text of the communication, as well as a screen shot of that "offer".

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dp-usa-refund-still-want-the-game/page/22#post-2107341

https://img-f.pinside.com/201412/2107341/332384.png

The offer was (paraphrasing here):

"It seems unlikely you will find an american to take over DP-USA, so we feel it will be *easiest* if you just stay in charge of DP-USA, continue taking pre-order money until feb 1, 2015, Pay any invoices that we send you from said pre-order funds, and then after we build and deliver said games, only THEN we will dissolve DP-USA and let you out."

So that was the "Offer" Phil got on dec 4. Barry though Phil, a disgruntled partner who just wanted out, would accept staying on the hook for all the liability the company had created (and was continuing to create through Feb 1, 2015), and was fine leaving him in charge of the DP-USA funds for the duration. Because it was easier than letting him go and going through the process of removing him from the company.

Unless Phil doctored the email image we have, or there was some other offer on dec 4, or he was not truthful about Barry's first communication to him after all this started, we are left with the impression that Barry still thought this was a viable solution AFTER Phil started making good on his threat to go public with all the dirty laundry.

To me, he gave what I think was a very foolish "offer" and then called Phil's bluff when he found it unacceptable and issued his ultimatum. Then After Phil made good on his threat, Barry asked him to stop and reference that dec. 4 offer as still valid, despite the ample evidence that there is no way that would work anymore, if ever. The only thing that got Phil to stop was actually taking the action he wanted in the first place (as evidenced by corporate ownership changes occurring in wyoming or wherever they are incorporated), which means Barry made a very bad bet and lost.

I am not saying that Phil did something wise, or noble, or that what he did was good for himself, TBL pinball enthusiasts, or DP. There is plenty of reason to get mad at Phil and call what he did unprofessional and speculate on what this does to his future employment prospects etc, but Phil isn't currently asking any of us to hire him again.

DP IS currently asking us to give them money again, after showing extremely poor judgement in managing the money, if by nothing else than by thinking is was a viable option to still leave Phil with the keys to the kingdom, after he had quit, and even after he went public with his accusations.

Regardless of who's fault you think this is, to ignore the above because of enthusiasm for a rug and a name drop in an email is to ignore what is at the heart of the implosion here.

I think that is an odd conclusion to come to. I was mainly referring to things that don't appear to be disputed by either side. According to the documentation we have (mainly provided by one side) Phil said "Hey, I quit, take your company and assets" and Barry said, "Counter offer, why don't you just not quit, and keep doing what you are doing while we keep doing what we are doing, and then maybe you can quit later". That's not much of a counter offer when it is basically just saying "No" to something most of us think we all have the right to do: Quit.

Phil's argument is that he immediately let them know that their counter offer was ridiculous and continued to push for resolution, and those requests were essentially ignored until he made good on his ultimatum to go public. And then, the response was "Remember when we said "No" to your quitting? We really think you should do that and keep managing our USA funds." The evidence we have seen, unless it has been doctored, seems to support this.

That is not my definition of trying to mend things.

Oh I am not saying Phil didn't have valid reasons. I myself have been on the receiving end of business relationships where the other side had stopped talking to me and it was maddening. If my worldview had shifted because of a bad cancer diagnosis, I sure as hell wouldn't give a shit about professionalism after a certain point either.

I think my argument still stands, unless you believe a) Phil is out and out lying about everything AND b) fabricating the evidence.

1) We know Phil quit very publicly Nov. 1.
2) We know, thanks to the screenshot of the email, that Barry on Dec. 4 suggested he STILL maintain the funds and operations of DP-USA though the production of the games (while they continue to funnel pre-order money to the DP-USA account until Feb 1. 2015) Despite very publicly quitting Nov. 1. (That is the only evidence we have of Barry working towards a "solution".)
3) We know that, at least until yesterday, Phil was STILL in charge of DP-USA and all the DP-USA money.
4) We know that Phil very much wanted to get out.

Even if you think the rest of it is lies or exaggeration, unless you believe he fabricated the dec. 4 email, we KNOW that Barry's idea of resolving a situation with a partner who quit over a month earlier was to tell him "no, stay on until it's done, because we outvote you".

If you believe he fabricated the dec. 4 email, then I'm not sure any evidence would sway you.

I might, however, be able to sell you a very special "Go Team DP" custom rug from http://www.customlogorugstore.com but you'd have to pay upfront.

Oh absolutely. I think it is entirely possible that they could have been trying to work out some exit strategy for quite some time after dec. 4 with Phil, and he just neglected to mention that (this scenario would also require him to be willfully lying in other parts of his "Testimony", including his one sided text message screen shots, but still, it's possible).

But I think it is highly unlikely he fabricated the dec 4 email, and I think the language in that email is very clear about how Barry wanted to handle Phil's departure more than a month after he quit.

If you ignore everything else, that email clearly shows Barry saying his "compromise" is for Phil, who already quit, to stay on until production is completed on all pre-orders collected through Feb. 1, 2015. That lends a LOT of credibility to Phil's basic explanation for why he did what he did. He wanted out, they wouldn't take DP-USA back, he gave them an ultimatum, and then pulled the trigger. Since they have now, indeed, taken over DP-USA, it appears as if he got what he wanted at the end of this nasty game of chicken. I think they could have saved everyone a whole lot of heartache had they just done this back on dec. 4th instead of just saying "No".

You can allow for all sorts of he said she said crap in this story line, but that email , not Phil's interpretation of it but my reading of the actual verbage, tells me what I need to know about DP.

Perhaps their motivations were similar, they were all just good friends and just wanted everything to work out, but the fact remains that a month after a disgruntled partner quit in a very public manner, their immediate reaction was not to secure their customer's funds and the assets of DP-USA, but rather to insist that he un-quit and keep going and controlling the funds while they continued selling pre-orders and sending invoices. Because it was easier than dealing with it.

THAT is not confidence inspiring. The rest is just pinside sports.

It's Simple. BOP 2.0 money went into pile A, and TBL money went into pile B, but that's ok because it's all one company and it's up to Barry's discretion how his company spends the money because it's all one big corporate pot.

Now DP-USA funds are in pile B, and DP-BV's funds are in pile C. As we all know, refunds can only be issued from pile B, because if they issued refunds from pile C, then the lack of access to funds in pile A would suddenly be a Barry problem, and not a customer problem.

And if you think that it should be Barry's problem rather than the customer's problem, then you my friend are just not a true believer.

You can make that completely valid argument about Phil's actions, but you are completely discounting the actions by DP-BV and Barry in particular that people are having the most trouble with.

Regardless of how it came to light or who is at fault for this public fight, it is obvious that DP had/has a completely amateur-hour accounting set up that has lead to a complete inability to respond to customer inquiries about their money. Again, I have a friend who paid with a check and asked for a refund way before any of this began, and they have never been able to give her a straight answer.

Regardless of who's fault it is, DP is having a lot of customers asking them to make good on their promise that they can get a refund at any time. Dp is understandably in a difficult situation where they do not currently have access to a good chunk of their funds (and haven't had access to those funds for about a month.) Rather than take responsibility for the situation, they passed the buck. They could have said, "We are doing everything we can right now to re-secure the funds and will refund those who request as soon as possible" (even if that meant refunding from their other account until access to the DP-USA account was restored). Instead they said "Don't blame us, blame the other guy. Ask him for your money". they took something that is THEIR problem and made it the CUSTOMER/CREDITORS problem. That's the kind of shit you pull when you are filing for Bankruptcy, not when you are trying to get those same customers to trust you with their money all over again.

Regardless of how ethical you think the release of information is, there was enough actual evidence presented in this thread to reveal that DP-BV used EXTREMELY poor judgement in handling Phil's quitting. He quit very publicly Nov. 1, and as late as a month after the fact, on Dec. 4, they were still insisting that this disgruntled ex-partner stay in control of all of the US funds.

There is no need for conspiracy theories. You don't need to put forth wild speculation. Look at the facts we know, in addition to their only existing track record with the 4 year long BOP 2.0 project, and it is not unreasonable to have zero faith in this company's competency with the business side of things.

NO ONE is saying they did not accomplish something incredible with their prototypes, but the Dutch Defender Squad is holding their design skill and intense motivation up as evidence that they will be competent at running the business and taking the game through production. What a lot of us are saying is that we have solid evidence that, regardless of their obvious design and marketing competence, they clearly don't know what they are doing with the business side of things, and at the very least made a huge blunder with how they address the refund situation. You can legitimately think Phil is full of shit and his actions horrible and still come to this conclusion.

You have valid reasons for looking at everything and still having faith in them. They definitely made a proof of concept that people want, and perhaps that will outweigh everything else in the end. But people have equally valid reasons, created entirely by DP themselves with no need for additional speculation, to conclude that they have blown all of their credibility as a company.

If you are still in on TBL, good for you, I hope it works out and you get your pin slightly earlier in the queue than you originally wanted, and you get to hold your head high as a True Believer™.

But for christ sake, quit shaming people who, for whatever reason, want DP to make good on their promise that they could get out at any time. No one forced DP to make that promise.

Does anyone believe that, even if DP had access to all the funds, they could make good on that promise to 100% of their customers if they all requested refunds? If the answer is no, then they should never have made that promise, and should have tied refunds to selling your spot in line.

Funding your company with pre-order money and 100% guaranteed refunds are incompatible concepts. Good intentions don't mean anything. If you couldn't make good on it, you shouldn't have made that promise. For an example of how to do it right, back when Multimorphic was taking pre-order deposits, ALL of the money remained untouched in an account, as they were serious about ensuring that customers were protected from risk. They never funded development with preorder money. Now they require zero money up front to reserve your game.

As for their handling of Phil and the money he locked them out of, I put the blame on them. Phil quit Nov 1 very publicly. He still had control of the money A MONTH LATER when he locked them out. And their solution to the problem, as we saw in that Dec 3rd email, was just to insist he stay on and continue to manage that money and pay the bills from it.

Then when people requested their refunds, instead of taking ownership of a problem they allowed to happen (By not securing the funds when Phil quit AND spending preorder money on development, ensuring they couldn't refund everyone) they made it their customers' problem. What needed to happen was assurances that ALL refund requests would be met as soon as THEY remedied the situation with Phil, and that they were devoting all energies to get it remedied as soon as possible with ample communication. Instead, people got emails saying they were sending refund requests to Phil, thus turning their corporate infighting into the customer's problem. And god forbid you paid with a method other than Paypal, because they seem to have zero accounting for where any of that money went.

There is no reason to shame people for not supporting pinball because they no longer have confidence in the company. They definitely got hit with an unexpected crisis, but their handling of that crisis alone is enough for reasonable people to no longer trust them with their money. In addition to that, plenty has happened in the industry to discredit the entire pre-order funded business model. Soberly assessing those facts doesn't mean these people aren't supporting the hobby. This is the pinball business, not a church. Good feelings and a shared desire for a game to exist is not enough to actually will a game into existence at the end of a production line.

I fully believe that should DP be able to survive this, get people refunded who want refunds, and find a way to finance the rest of development the hard way, they will have a very viable business model selling these games. Despite all of their missteps, SO MANY people in this thread, even their biggest vocal critics, want the game to exist, and a large chunk of those want to buy it. If the business plan was solid and the game would be profitable at $9k, I think the demonstrable demand would be more than enough to ensure the game gets made somehow or another, like Roger Sharpe said. If they can't survive refunding everyone, that's nobody's fault but their own, and certainly not the fault of the customers.

(Seriously, if you guys want to support innovation in pinball, go put your name on the list for a P3 at www.multimorphic.com. A healthy list of supporters helps them secure third party financing, and not 1 cent is due before the game enters production. If it starts production and you still aren't convinced it is right for you, you don't have to do a thing, your order is automatically cancelled with zero penalty 15 days after non-payment.

Or go buy an AMH from spooky and pay for the game, not development. Supporting pinball doesn't have to mean risking your money as an interest-free loan. Investors get equity in exchange for risk. The pre-order model passes that risk onto customers without costing the company any equity. Please stop spreading the myth that that is the only way non-stern pinball can be made. I just gave you 2 examples to the contrary. It's harder, but it is the right way to do things.)

Perhaps "shaming" was too strong a word, but the point still stands that a common tactic on this thread has been to question people's devotion to the hobby because they wanted money back. I think that argument tactic is bullshit. I do not believe the tactic is actually causing anyone to reconsider.

I understand the sentiment that those not invested in the platform shouldn't contribute to discussing this affair, however I respectfully disagree. Ask DP to make an owners only blog like JPOP if you feel only their input is valid. I think this ordeal, which is having repercussions throughout the hobby, is exactly the kind of thing to be discussed by everyone.

I also understand not liking the mentioning other manufacturers in threads like these. But, like I said, the intent was to show actual examples of pinball being developed by non-stern entities while not relying on pre-order money. It isn't to say "this game sucks, those games rule". It is to say "there is another way to do this, and in the case of multimorphic, there is a way to support new non-stern pinball development without risking any money. In the case of Spooky, development is done, you are just buying a game. In a discussion about whether or not new pinball design would be possible without the pre-order model, I think it is entirely germane. I have heard numerous times that nothing would be possible without the Pro-Order business model. These were my examples otherwise.

I never intended to convince people who were enthusiastic about TBL to abandon it and switch their allegiances to another mfg, and I never thought anyone was that impressionable. I tried very hard not to be classless, I apologize if I failed in that endeavor.

_{Post edited by Sjsilver: making it grammar gooder.}

A lot of stuff came to light because of Phil's public airing of grievances, but you don't have to believe almost anything he said to find big issues with DP as a company. Their response to a partner leaving the company and their money management choices, all of which we have evidence of without Phil's claims, give people plenty of reasons to question their business practices. Even if you think EVERYTHING Phil said was a lie, you can just look at how things were handled and find enough to be legitimately troubled.

As far as the license goes, I think there has been plenty of misreadings of what Phil actually said. His grievance list was a retelling of his frustrations throughout the process with Barry and Jaap, not a list of everything that was currently wrong with TBL. Plenty of people read comments about John Goodman and misinterpreted it to mean they might not be able to use him at all, when in reality what was stated is that they couldn't use him beyond the pre-approved set of assets that they already had. In fact the Backglass had already been approved, and what was left was the voice call-outs and a few things on the playfield.

It was Phil's opinion that they were pissing off universal and were risking the license needlessly, and that opinion was not shared by Roger Sharpe after he stepped in. I chalk that up to the difference in experience level between the two of them when it comes to the licensing process, nothing more malicious than that. But I suppose you can also chalk it up to lies on Phil's side if you want. One thing that Roger said over and over again is that so much of the license issues up to that point had been handled very well, and unless you are just firmly in the "Phil is the devil" camp, you have to give him credit for that since he was their license mediator up until he quit.

So I half agree with you, people were getting a wrong idea from a misreading of what Phil said, and he did nothing to correct those misreadings. If people are still worried about the license, they shouldn't, because THAT is what they are hiring Roger Sharpe to take care of, and he has put his well earned reputation on the line in publicly insisting everything is under control.

But saying that the lack of confidence in the company is just mass hysteria because everyone blindly trusts the one sided ravings of a disgruntled ex partner is being willfully obtuse about all of the other things we have seen with our own eyes. You are perfectly fine to view their response and handling of the entire situation to be of no concern, but it's also completely valid to have those things shake your confidence in the company.

The big upside to all of this is that everyone WANTS DP to make TBL's and to be able to play them. Many just are no longer willing to take the risk of financing them. It's not a terrible place for them to be. They somehow managed to self finance plenty of the development up to this point, They just need to make it to production and they can start selling them like crazy. It's not a terrible place to be, as long as they are able to refund everyone who asks like they promised.

Yes. The last update was a form letter saying, "It's Phil's fault. We hope he honors your request." This is exactly the kind of language they should have used to take ownership of the internal corporate infighting, and make it their problem, not the customers'. Even if they didn't have a solution just yet, this was the path they needed to take from the beginning. But, better late than never. It really is a good sign for DP that they are now on the right track.

Exactly. To me the second half of the newsletter sounds like they have been listening too much to the True Believers™ on this thread and they have a warped sense of where they actually stand. Now is not the time to antagonize those who are legitimately spooked by their handling of this crisis or the crisis itself. There are still a lot of questions outstanding, and thus still pushing for 3rd installment right now seems tone deaf to those concerns.

I get that you want to reward those who never left, but drawing a line in the sand at this point seems foolish. The people who were staying in weren't going anywhere, and you could have always rewarded them later in a non-antagonizing way. I think the "Pay your 3rd installment or you aren't an achiever" tactic is far more likely to antagonize than to get people back on board.

Again, EVERYBODY want's them to succeed, but many need more convincing that their business management is in order before risking their pre-order money again. With the DP-USA funds still yet to be secured, and other liquidity questions still on the table, it's a bad time to be doubling down on that payment deadline. People WILL give them a pass when they miss their April shipping deadline, but they will be much less inclined to do so if they hold firm to this payment deadline in the middle of an unresolved crisis.

Pinballslave, I get that you really see DP as the victims and Phil as the evil instigator that is entirely to blame for this whole situation, but I don't think you are helping DP at all. You keep making up motives that reinforce your preconceived narrative that Phil is the evil one here, but those scenarios don't make sense to most of the people who have read everything Phil said, looked at the actual evidence he presented, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, saw how DP was set up as a business and how they reacted to the crisis.

Like Aurich said, Phil did what he did, all the info is out there for people to judge, as well as their reaction to the crisis. If lots of enthusiastic TBL fans look at this company, see that they had a major partner quit nov 1., see that he still had control of a large portion of the money a month later, see that on Dec. 3rd they kept insisting that this obviously disgruntled partner just unquit and keep managing the US company and funds and pay the bills, then it is completely understandable for them to start questioning the wisdom of their business practices. If they request refunds because their money absolutely appears to be in jeopardy with the current state of the split company, and the first response is "We'll forward your request to the other guy, good luck", it's understandable for the customers to be pissed at DP for making their corporate infighting the customer's problem to resolve. If their next response, while finally taking ownership of their corporate infighting, is holding firm to payment deadlines while the US funds are STILL not in their possession and many questions are still outstanding, people are justified in calling bullshit.

The difference between the previous paragraph and most of the bullshit you spew in your crusade to convince everyone that Phil is evil is that the above is based on factual evidence that exists in the verifiable public record, and has nothing to do with wild speculation. Your theories about Phil's true motives are irrelevant and quite frankly as bad as the worst speculation about the state of the license (much of which misread what Phil actually said). In your attempt to stick up for your friends, you are making up shit about a guy who is battling stage 4 cancer with NOTHING to back it up.

And for the record, the only person who seems to keep bringing up the licensing issues is you with your straw man arguments. You were absolutely right that people were blowing things out of proportion in the heat of the crisis, but DP, in one of their very good business moves that they deserve credit for, promptly addressed those issues by hiring one of the best in the business to address it. As far as I can tell, everyone is calm about the licensing issues now, except the strawmen in your arguments.

Just please, keep defending DP, but stick to facts. You should be rewarded for sticking with them throughout everything, as should others, but you need to drop the strawman arguments and for christ-sake, keep statements about a stage 4 cancer victim factual, and better yet, drop the whole crusade entirely because nobody cares about blame anymore. Right now the issue is that the company says it is working towards resolutions, but STILL has a lot of unanswered questions and STILL doesn't have control of the money. Once they resolve the outstanding problems with the company, they then have to work on rebuilding the trust they lost with how they managed this crisis.

Again, blame is for children. This is adults dealing with $9000 (and $2000) pre-paid products. The crisis happened. It exposed legitimate questions about liquidity and company leadership. While they adequately answered the licensing issues, many feel their response to those other questions thus far have been inadequate. The customers who have those questions are not the enemy. Opinions are fine, facts are better, speculation is worthless.

Again with the Appeal to Authority fallacy. Someone petition DP to make an secret owners only club forum so that Hwawonyu won't ever have to listen to unworthy opinions.

Ah, the "You're just Jealous" argument as well, stated 3 different ways no less. I will instead petition my daughter's elementary school to create a forum for you. It can be as exclusive as you want.

For the record, I would love to buy a BOP 2.0 once it is an actual product. I would love to buy a TBL one day, again, when it is an actual product. I have friends who are waiting for refunds. I have tried to be very fair and factual with anything that I have posted. I have had people reference one of my posts as a reason they stopped panicking and wanted to wait it out and see how DP handled it. I feel plenty justified to participate in this discussion. Sure, we have all seen threads where uninterested parties show up just to yell "This game sucks" over and over again, but I think that is a false equivocation with what I have been saying. If you have a problem with anything specific that I have claimed, call me out on it, and we can have a discussion.

Well then address those specific negative comments towards DP. Defend them against what is actually being said. Made up motives doesn't "Balance" things, it just comes across as juvenile.

I just don't understand this. What do motivations have to do with anything? Most people aren't questioning DP's motives, they are talking about their actions, asking questions and expressing their opinion that those questions have been inadequately answered.

I agree with the question, but I can think of no reason why that would justify leaving the funds in Phil's control and suggesting he keep it in his control a month after he publicly quit. If I had to guess a motive, I would give them the benefit of the doubt and jsut say that they were all friends and jsut wanted everything to work out, but that doesn't mean I think it was a wise business move with customer's money. If anything, your theory that Phil mucked everything up makes me think it was an even worse business move not to get it away form him sooner. But my point is that the Why doesn't really matter, we can't judge people's unknowable motivations only their actual actions.

Phil said a lot about his view on how they were treating the license restrictions over the course of the entire development cycle. He then stated that he thought that their current actions (taking a game to shows before they reached the appropriate approval state) was jeopardizing the license. EVERYTHING HE SAID about the license can be reasonably assumed to be his honest opinion of where it stood based on his interpretation of the restrictions. Roger Sharpe disagreed with his interpretation of where the license, AND THAT IS FINE. It doesn't mean that he was lying, it most likely means that it was a difference of professional opinion. But fine, go with your theory that he was just out to sabatoge them. Well that didn't work in regards to the license because their replacement of Phil with Roger Sharpe in that department is viewed as an upgrade by virtually everyone. Most people who have been paying attention think the license is being managed now by an excellent professional with a stellar reputation. It's a non issue now, but you keep bringing it up to support your theories of Bad Phil motives.

The problem is you aren't addressing any of the problems people actually have with DP. Find someone doing what you are doing, making up wild allegations about DP's motives, and I will be right there with you calling that ridiculous. But if you have specific problems with the issues we are raising about their business practices that we have witnessed during and in response to this crisis, then talk about those. Defend their actions, don't make up bullshit motives to assign blame.

I don't think anyone should STFU, but I do think we should keep it relevant to what matters. I agree that there has been a lot of juvenile stuff on these forums like any other, but I disagree that the correct response is more of the same.

In the middle of the crisis, people were getting info on the fly, and of course it is tempting to speculate. Lots did on both sides as we were slowly getting a clearer picture of what was going on. But it's been 2 weeks since the airing of grievances, we now have plenty of actual facts to assess, and it seems counter productive to keep playing the blame game still.

I think most people in this forum want DP to succeed. I think they are making good progress in how they are adjusting their response. Some things were flawless, like the immediate hiring of Roger Sharpe. Others I think they still need to improve on. It's good that they have defenders as well as critics, and they need to listen to both as long as it is constructive. I hope I have been constructive with my airing of concerns at least.

What Phil Said, after he started issuing refunds:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dp-usa-refund-still-want-the-game?tq&tu=phil-DP-usa

Any response from barry was quoted by others. I am not going to search through 30 pages to find and link to them. In short, Roger Sharpe has been hired to handle the license, some CPA dude is taking over the DP-USA account supposedly, the January Payments were due, and all refund requests made after Phil's initial refund spree are still outstanding awaiting resolution to the DP-USA mess.

Yeah, if you are assuming that Curtis_playfield is giving you a thumbs down because she (it's a she) is one of the DP defender squad, you haven't been keeping up. She's been very vocal about how shitty their response was to her refund request that came BEFORE all this blew up, and especially after which has been a lot of passing the buck and stonewalling.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people on this thread who will down vote any and every post that is negative in any way towards DP, but CP isn't one of them.

Yeah I don't know how many times I have to say this, but you can 100% chalk up the differences between Phil's assessment of the license issues and Roger's assessment of the license issues to differences of professional opinion, and probably experience.

1) We know DP was making and showing unapproved stuff.
2) We know the letter of the license agreement doesn't allow this (Hence the giant sticker covering the section that was blacked out in the promo video and the blacked out kahlua. If they were following the letter of the license, these would have been covered up every time the games were shown.)
3) We know that Phil thought these instances of ignoring the license restrictions, as well as past licensing experiences that phil outlined (backed up by the frustrated email from universal) made Phil worried that these continued actions were putting the license into jeopardy (I know some people claim to have theories about ulterior motives by Phil, but I see no credible evidence that he wasn't genuinely concerned about this.)
4) We know that Roger took a look at all of the outstanding license issues, and their decision to show the game publicly, and he felt that, based on his experience, the license was just fine.
5) We know that Roger has now advised them that it's fine to show the game publicly, but that they just need to cover up the unapproved stuff, and that Universal has signed off on this. (again, you could say that DP is lying here, just like you can say that Phil was lying, but I find no reason to disbelieve them.)

Phil said a lot of stuff, but the simplest explanation for all of the hub-bub about the license issues is that he had a different, yet still honest, interpretation of the situation than DP and ultimately Roger had. Yes they were breaking the letter of the law, but it wasn't, in the end, as big of a deal as Phil thought it was, and now they are following the letter of the law.

Again, the questions about the current state of the license were answered when Roger took DP on as a client and put his reputation on the line by saying "Everything is fine." They are still working stuff out, and some of the stuff people saw previously in person might not make it into the final game. And for whatever reason, they didn't listen to phil but are now listening to Roger, and the license is fine, and probably always was. That doesn't mean Phil was a liar, it just means that he probably was being a little too over-worried about that aspect of the business.

The license is a non-issue. There is still plenty of doubt around the other financial issues of the company, and they have yet to really address those. They have to meet those refund requests, and hopefully the people who stay in will prevent immediate default while they figure out another financial way to make it to the finish line, where the money will most definitely come flooding back.

I can't speak to the legality of this tactic, but I am fairly sure it's safe to say that holding half paid customers' money hostage is a terrible strategy for getting them to pay the full amount later. I don't see how they make it to April without issuing those requested refunds. Just try telling an already pissed off community that your anytime refund promise was essentially a load of BS and see how well that flies. People can be somewhat forgiving when unforseen circumstances cause you delays in making good on your promise. That all evaporates when you specifically outline a strategy of ignoring your previous promises.

To be fair, you did call them a fart-box of a company. That's totally worse than how they treated you over the last few months. You totally deserve to be blacklisted. Maybe now you'll finally get that t-shirt, but it will say "I'm the real fart-box" and they will get the last laugh.

_{Post edited by Sjsilver: inside joke between Curtis and I, folks. I'm being facetious.}