It was kinda weird when Centaur got announced and most people were saying WTF, this is clearly a ponzi scheme now but he was wearing the haggis hat and drooling all over the game. If thats his worst crime though, meh...whatever. I mean the game did look cool, but yeah I probably wouldn't have been marking out so much about it but no big foul if you ask me.

There's a litany of PPS approved vendors that make pure garbage and even have been known to scam people. Classic Arcades is a good example of that. PPS really just cares that somebody is paying for the license to make stuff and that is the end of it sadly.

Yeah that's the cynical short-term take but long term, why trust any new Planetary / small manufacturer partnership?

Bummer man. I hate that approach for this community.

Unlike HWP though - there was a lot more people trying to shout down the doubters with Haggis. HWP was the first one that people turned off their brains because they had shipped a game... same thing happened with Haggis to a degree.. people felt confident because at least some product had shipped. With Dutch people believed because they had a fully playing prototype. Hopefully the buyers in this hobby will continue to learn that making pinball isn't just about getting 'one done'. "One" of anything is never profitable for a company, and no company runs forever in the red.

The take away everyone needs to focus on here is INFORMATION IS POWER.

Entities struggling NEED secrecy to keep people from running away.

Every company is going to make promises - but buyers in this hobby will never know if promises are being kept if they can't share their experiences and findings with each other. Sharing verifiable data is the #1 empowering things we can do to help each other.

With Haggis the kill sign was when they repeatedly did not ship games on time after taking final payments. It's that kind of information that helps keep buyers from blindly getting sucked in further. Buyers can make their own decision to continue or not... but having information from sources BESIDES the vendor themselves helps them make informed decisions.

Sure there is always some level of noise from detractors or people who are clueless parroting stuff... but to be informed buyers you need information besides just the vendor's promises. You must vet those promises and make assessments from the outside as well.

Not a single one of these failures has been out of the blue. Not a single one of these failures has been without incredibly risky or concerning choices that were exposed and criticized... yet many continue to believe 'this one will be different' somehow like a religious belief. Having faith is fine... but it's when people attack information because it goes counter to their HOPES that the community loses and individuals doom themselves to be victims of their own stubbornness.

It does suck. But also I guess it does supply parts that for a long time were basically impossible to get. I'm sure its hard to police all of it too. At the same time though, if you even so much as start toying with the idea of something that could infringe on the IP even if its as something as simple as adding 2 lines of code to make non ghosting B/W LED roms, you'll hear from Rick really quick. Theres some stuff thats blatantly bad and theres zero excuse for the quality, but other stuff it gets into a lot bigger gray area. I can imagine after a while you kind of have to lean toward leniency or else you're going to just be stepping on peoples toes all day every day. Theres really no perfect answer. One thing is certain though, assuming theres zero or even little risk on something simply because somebody obtained a license is a fool's errand and I don't think thats mutually exclusive to PPS or pinball.

This simply isn't true. There were plenty of signs of risk. This was a guy who launched the company WITH THE CLEAR MESSAGE he was going to source as much as possible locally... that was going to redesign the wheel... that was doing it himself... who admittedly was new to pinball and had no history of it or manufacturing. FFS the guy had a vlog documenting the whole journey!

It was plainly obvious from the videos that their ambitions did not line up with their abilities. From their factory setup, to their production goals... all these things were called out at the time. Yet the people that don't understand these things, but just want to be excited, refuse that insight.

That journey matches nothing like Barrels of Fun. Barrels of Fun of course had its own risks to buy into... but to even put them in the same conversation as a garage startup like Haggis is completely irresponsible.

Let’s see if Robbins and teolis have another podcast. Will be interesting.

You are... horribly informed.

Because you have it wrong... This is not a manufacturing partner relationship.

This is a "I bought the license to control these properties and I'm selling people the ability to make their own products in return for fees and royalties"

PPS isn't subcontracting games to be built - They are selling the access to their properties for people to build their own games.

Investing in startup companies is risky. If someone went into this and wasn't mentally prepared to lose their entire deposit then they didn't understand what they were doing.

Well in a fair defense... they weren't 'investing in startup companies' - they thought they were just buying a product.

But caveat emptor too - you gotta be an informed buyer.

Remember we have countless people who also got scammed buying from fake internet pinball retailers because of blind faith and lack of critical thinking.

I like how I got down voted from 3 people on calling this company D E A D 4 months ago.

really who!?

That was kind of my (admittedly obscure) point. Buying a product is when you give money to a company and they give you the product. This practice of sending in non-refundable deposits to small companies isn't really buying anything, it is giving them cash in hopes you may get something out of it someday.

Somehow, not Gilligan.

I get the mechanics of that relationship for sure. to expand my thinking a bit, I think it's a terrible way for PPS to manage these assets.

put enough of these things together (haggis going under, cgc production delays, questionable build quality on 2.0 kits) and it starts to have an impact on the PPS brand and the "bally/williams pinball remakes" brand moving forward as the market for these specific products are the same people who end up being most impacted by PPS having low standards. no one is forcing PPS to do business with any of these manufacturers, so on some level there's an implied endorsement even if it only amounts to a financial transaction.

hypothetically if I were a startup pinball manufacturer, going down the remake route with PPS becomes less appealing if it means I have to add "combating the negative associations of past remake failures" to the list of obstacles to overcome.

I did not get it

That's not how it is sold to consumers. Deposits are not kickstarters. Nonrefundable deposit doesn't mean you might not get anything back at all.

I'm sorry, bud. This whole thing sucks.

No worries man. Not your fault at all.

Nope. Good guys wouldn't have taken money for games they knew or thought that wouldn't build. It's clear they were taking money from future titles /deposits to pay for existing orders

Lessons learned for a lot of people here, including the distributors who thought they couldn't lose after the Covid surge, and decided to shill for a company with a vague plan and outrageous deposit structure...and the "game pass?"...cmon

The power of exclusivity.

People aren't going to flock to PPS - They are going to flock to WMS/BLY and PPS is the gatekeeper. They don't have to be liked to stay the gatekeeper, and PPS's reputation isn't going to rewrite history when it comes to the appeal of the WMS/BLY titles.

What is hurt is the credibility that being a licensed project brings to the table... but look at the market... people want their goodies, they don't care of it's official licensed or not. It only matters these days because PPS actively pursues sellers who don't license through them.

Yeah the "game series pass" was brazen and hilarious but again...even those who will admit to buying it seem to have a good humor about it despite the money they threw in the crapper. It's just a batshit insane idea.

Uh yeah, we'll see about that.

PPS Is your only line of defense for ANY of those remakes, they don't need to worry about optics like that because it costs them pennies to maintain, they either sell licenses and make a buck or continue about their day. If someone wants the license bad enough they're going to try and get it, otherwise, it will continue to collect dust.

PPS is not surviving off of selling these licenses. There is no financial "risk" involved.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Flynnibus

I am not saying that people were told they were "investing" in anything by anyone, all you are doing is arguing semantics.

There are now multiple examples going back years of people losing money on small pinball startups because of corruption, incompetence or just general difficulties in starting and running any kind of company.

It doesn't matter how something was "sold to consumers" or what technically "nonrefundable deposit" means or doesn't mean, sending cash to these companies should be treated as a significant risk of a 100% loss, just as if you were investing. If someone isn't comfortable with that possibility they should ignore FOMO, YOLO and keep their money in the bank.

Please correct me. I must have missed something.

That probably sounds snarky. But I'm being serious.

Even in the simpliest form... just watch is dedicated Damien interview.

He challenges him with the difficult questions... like why did you stop posting videos, where are you really with production, etc. This isn't some hype fest.. nor is it some kiss up session like Pinball Profile. He's not attacking him, but he's posing the harder questions and letting him answer.

Then look at the video when Haggis finally posted the fathom games ready to ship...

This is not a kiss up video - almost half the video is criticism of what they showed and their progress so far

Look, I have no loyality or fanfair for Cary Hardy... but trying to paint him as some Haggis shill or hypeman is ridiculous.. and these 'kinda somewhat based on something' non-sense claims takes a life of its own and gets repeated as if fact.. and it's garbage. It needs to stop.

flynnibus

You seem to have followed up closely Haggis debacle, purely as a case study of how not to run a pinball business, is there somewhere reading material about questionable choices they have made?

You mention manufacturing locally, other examples? Did he also decide to manufacture his own playfield or other key components?

Cheers

Change of gears here but does anyone have any educated guesses on what PPS will do going forward regarding remaking the Bally classics?

CGC would be the only manufacture who makes sense at this point.

PPS won't do. You need another company to buy the license rights from PPS so they could build them.

LTG : )

they're slow enough making games people actually want

Haggis was already about to start scratching the bottom of the barrel for classic Bally's that fetch a high modern price. It's Fathom, Centaur, maybe EBD...then what...Paragon? Medusa? Viking? Games that you can usually get at $4k-5k or so in great shape. It's dead

Someone would have better luck making the three or so super desired classic Sterns at this point.

Indeed but do you expect PPS to pitch the classics remakes to a different manufacturer?

Thank you. Appreciate the thorough reply.

Im usually pretty good at figuring out double negatives but this sentence features three or four. Impressive.

No it doesn’t

See: the last page. Unless you know something we don't, I don't think PPS is pitching them persay, just sitting on them.

No matter what someone might think, that doesn't mean you can't still interpret the meaning that the OP might be suggesting about not getting something from a non-refundable deposit.

Usually people approach PPS about projects, not the other way around.

You'd think PPS would have to dupe some poor sap into burning his financial life & sanity to the ground, but no, people willingly approach them and ask to get into the pinball manufacturing business.

I think you have that reversed. A manufacturer would have to approach them.

LTG : )

We go through this with every implosion.. It's not that simple.

Setting up a company, taking payments, employing yourself and others, and then closing up shop without delivering the products is not fraud in itself. It's called a failed business. Trying and failing is not a crime in itself. Failing to meet your deadlines is not a crime in itself. People all tried to scream the same about JPOP because he paid himself for so long w/o delivering as promised, etc. They are allowed to pay themselves.. even when failing.

The most egregious issue is trading while insolvent... because that has implications in bankruptcy and liabilities but even that is challenging to get to stick, let alone motivating someone to actually pursue to conclusion in the bankruptcy... let alone any criminal claims of fraud.

Mark my words... no one but the government is going to make any such efforts stick.. and its only if the government is out enough back taxes or subsidy dollars to care. Probably not.

Clearly Haggis was a valid design and manufacturing company. Clearly they were in the actual business of producing product. They had in fact produced Centaur product as well, and probably can easily demonstrate it was a viable product to produce. But their runway to continue to operate and when one decides to not take on new obligations is a fuzzy area. Maybe they had an investor at the time that was lined up to help cover the gap? We don't know... we don't know what his finance sources or outlook were... so its not too sound to really claim with certainty of what the fiscial picture was at xyz date.

We can only refer to what they demonstrated externally... and what we know it normally takes to operate a similar business.

I don't invest in collecting the history as an article.. some other ambitious author can do that. I know others have done videos on heighway, dutch, jpop, etc.. but most are problematic enough that I've never saved any of them as great things to refer people to.

My commentary is more based on my own professional and life experience vs comparing to some source material. Tho pinside and rgp are great references as the subjects usually submit their own material and it's persisted and searchable for future reference. It's just some journeys are so long.. like JPOP.. or take so many twists and turns... like JPOP, DP, dutch, that you really would have to spend a ton of time to document it at all.

Love you all.. but not that much. Maybe that will be someone's kickstarter or pateron

Well said. No one knows anything.

If Damien had even released a basic statement explaining what happened it would probably done a world of good for his reputation. They way he has gone radio silent is where I think most of the anger is coming from, rightfully so.

I think the lesson here is that so long as you're not pre-paying for those orgies, you don't have to give up the dream just yet.

I have ZERO respect for Haggis and its outfit. They know better than to treat people like this…

Marty and Teolis have had a rather cavalier approach to mocking pinball collectors that want information… or that dare judge a company. And I get it. There are some crazy a-holes in this hobby.

But this kind of treatment of customers is obscene. Not talking about is hugely damaging to people’s wallets. Haggis should be ashamed of itself.

At the minimum they should have reached out to all affected parties and told them the truth. All they’re doing now is running and hiding - money’s probably long gone.

Have the guts to be honest and open, Marty and Haggis. This is terrible. This doesn’t just impact you, it impacts a lot of folks who just threw money away on product orders with you.

Classless all the way