zach is selling one as we speak here

If anyone is serious they’d say the guy never intended to scam or give anyone the shaft. In the end, though, that’s exactly what he did (e.g., saying games were “on the line”). Best intentions or not, when he knew the end was coming he tried to squeeze as much juice out of his enterprise (e.g., “send full payment now”) to cut his own loses before making it as difficult as he could for anyone to try and recoup what he wrongfully claimed was his (e.g., loading equipment onto a truck, going AWOL, shuttering any webpages on the company).

I wonder how much money he collected at the end and then took out of the business with him after calling for full payment on games.

Marty and Damien, please leave the community and never come back!!!!

Is Marty still doing podcasts?

I'm an old dude 53 years and total nastagia for me... I have not read through this thread , I have not followed this effort for years, I'm happy someone tried. I like these ,"old games". Sorry if folks got screwed.

That's assuming any of that is actually left. Did the liquidator offer a list?

My guess would be that anything of value (tools and game parts) was already removed. I would also guess that the stuff left behind probably included raw materials such as wood stock, metal stock, cardboard, packing materials, worktables, chairs, and basic office supplies. Anything that wasn't worth the time & effort to move and store somewhere else.

They didn't offer a list, but made it clear that, at this point in time, there aren't any physical or intangible assets of Haggis Pinball Pty Ltd of value which are saleable.

Lots of Value in that Budget Truck

Which points to.. what?

I think everyone blames Damien first. I think you knew that.

yeah, i get that. but by saying “first” you’re highlighting my point. it's the receiving line of blame towards people who were fooled, and in the dark, just like the rest of us, that’s being concocted and perpetuated by the know it all’s in this thread, that’s got me shaking my head. And probably part of why they’re doing it is they can’t find the guy who’s actually to blame.

Everything is gone. The servers are gone if you wanted to purchase the intellectual property rights to: the cabinet designs, parts specifications, logo, website, playfield design, or software.

Damian left absolutely nothing for the creditors to be able to recover debts with.

Haggis pinball also has a charge on the Personal Properties Security Register for his raw materials (I posted it earlier in this thread). If he paid his trade creditors on time, this wouldn't exist. Even the wood and plastic isn't available to make deposit payers, or pinball dealers partially whole

Makes sense. By all accounts there were multiple large trucks parked outside in those last few days. One usually doesn’t need all that just to take the contents of their office.

The actions of Damien and Marty and their eloquent business exit strategy that we've all witnessed clearly shows they were in it for the dollar, and the love of pinball and the community were a long distant 2nd.
Bit tired of hearing this "someone tried" crap. They owe good people their earnings, or a pinball. The latter is no longer possible.

Exactly. They cleaned the place out; lock, stock and barrel.

Even lower than Robert Mueller, Andrew Heighway & John Popadiuk....at least when they folded, then interested parties could buy their parts and intellectual property, so that money could go back to creditors

We haven't seen a Final Round podcast since June 1st. I suspect they are on a "break" for now.

I don't blame Marty, it wasn't his company. He does have to be sensitive about things going forward if he keeps podcasting. I suspect he won't be back which is too bad because I enjoyed the Final Round.

Jeff lost money also - he had a deposit on a Centaur.

Really i heard he was the only one who actually received his

No one in North America got a Centaur

Who owned the one at TPF?

yes they did

If anyone got a Centaur that wasn’t a prototype for a distributor then that is criminal they got that ahead of paid up Fathom buyers. Absolutely abhorrent.

Hot take: At this point, I don't care if they paid or not. Creditors aren't gonna get shit. Buyers aren't gonna get shit. Distros who are out of their money aren't gonna get shit. Paid in full, or paid zero dollars, I do not care either way if Nitro wants to keep the game.

More than likely the difference is those guys didn’t create shelters for it all… while damien likely put very little into the actual company itself. Leases, self dealing, people using personal assets, etc…. Keeps a legal entity thin, and shields losses.

Remember even the pinball bros did this to extract the IP out of HWP when they gave it a second chance… moved all the primary IP and assets to their own self owned entity and then ‘sold’ stuff to hwp in small increments to give them some chance to continue… while protecting anything they felt would be worth keeping post collapse.

Any copyright or game assets of value are likely tied up with PPS conditions too. Likely the only digital assets of real interest are for spare parts replacements for the community.

Nope. One prototype was delivered to Nitro and shown at Texas. That's it.

Surely you know Canada is in North America...

Could just tag the people who have the Centaur revisited listed in their collections in this thread. I guess some people list the machines before they actually get them. But one way to solve this disagreement.

Theres no disagreement. If we're giving some benefit of the doubt, then Kool maybe is saying no production games made it to North America, but no production games made it anywhere. Theres maybe 2-4 Centaur prototypes in existence, and thats it, thats all the Haggis Centaurs. One is currently in North America. No point in contacting centaur owners from the pinside list, they didn't get games.

Oh God, Damien looks so much like a caricature of me that I HAVE to post this.

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I believe this was the Haggis mission statement when they established the company.

I am not a lawyer, and I am not Australian and definitely not an Australian lawyer but, in the US, the corporate veil can be pierced if fiduciary responsibilities are not upheld by the company directors. This appears to be the case in Australia as well.

https://lawpath.com.au/blog/corporate-veil-can-pierced

From what can be ascertained from public documents:the registration of industrial equipment and the website were always in the name of hartsco pty ltd, not haggis pinball pty ltd

I'd call this 'a Pty party'.

Open door policy is commendable, but wouldn't it be simpler in a situation like this to make a single public statement, as opposed to potentially a hundred individual calls and emails? Feels like a rug sweep.

Nitro was the Canadian distributor for Haggis

The thing is… failing isn’t enough. I mean jpop is the easiest example here… not just failure but gross incompetence. Yet he has been able to basically get away.

Structuring for insulation isn’t illegal either. There are lots of ways to limit exposure while still staying above the line. The self dealing and private companies make it easier for you to do it in the dark. Sad thing is he’ll probably get writeoffs for the failed pinball company’s defaults to his other entities.

Not always. Depending on the laws where the company was incorporated. Under capitalization can pierce the corporate veil. It takes lawyers to go after these sorts of things. But it's probably time consuming and the legal fees probably are going to offset any legal judgement which is why it rarely happens. But, again, it depends on jurisdiction.

Yes, I know. We all know. We're trying to do the geological math that you laid out where somehow Nitro has a Centaur Revisited but at the same time, according to you, nobody in North America got a Centaur.

Point still remains the same. Even though there is stuff that seems obvious mismanagement.. and would seem like an obvious slam dunk way to say 'this will never stand'... it's no means an assured thing. I mean Zidware's business plan wasn't just under capitalized, it was not even a viable business. The man probably never made a single clean transaction in the life of the business... yet it survived not only bankruptcy court, but allowing him to transfer those ill gotten assets to another party... and to have those assets sold AGAIN in yet another bankruptcy. And that was with domestic customers not only interested in pursuit, but actively suing the guy and company.

They got a win against JPOP personally, but he filed for bankruptcy and had transferred the IP to deeproot FOR HIS OWN PERSONAL GAIN (paying for his defense). It took 7 years.. and at the end of the day the customers ended up getting a few storage units worth of left over junk as settlement.

7 years, with domestic litigants, and friendly lawyer on the deal.. against a guy with very little.
Here, we have international customers, probably less customers involved, with probably less money, and against a guy we already have hints of trusts and other shields being raised.

Look at Deeproot where the scale is tens of millions... and way more deception... and we can only hope criminal law will catch up to Robert. Civil has deflated to meh. How much money from customers do we really think was lost with Haggis? 100k? 200k? I would struggle to see even that much.. but would love to hear otherwise.

No, as most people are prone to post here their dislike for Planetary but will never call Rick up to file said complaint. Seen post like this before and Rick has posted that no one has ever called him with any complaints. This also allows for Rick to go on and think that there's no quality issues with any product he licensed.

Oh, for sure. Which makes it a slam dunk to offer up the phone number in lieu of a press release.

Well...I at least knew it was north of America, some people speak French, and everything is super expensive

I have called and spoke on the phone in regards to Mirco and his crap products. Nothing came of this at all. Rick had some good ideas to potentially assist with customers receiving poor quality PF's... but nothing changes. While I appreciated the conversation - it was a waste of my time in the end.

It's not according to me - did you watch the unboxing? It was a one off prototype shipped up to show at Texas unless you think Tommy and Zach are lying?

LOL. Given my recent trips to Chicago, Florida and upstate NY I'd say things are generally more expensive in the US these days.

Further muddying the waters... prototypes and samples for marketing imported to the country are not meant to be sold. They are usually handled under tariff and tax reasons differently when importing and doing your accounting. (because their presence is temporary...)

If the game was sold to Nitro as a demo piece.. even if built as a prototype, it's legal and tax definition changes. Since it would be intended to stay in the country indefinitely for Nitro... since they claim to own it.. it's no longer a sample or company prototype, but in fact a regular finished good. One that Nitro could have treated as a sample/demo piece for their own accounting purposes for inventory, taxes, etc.

All water under the bridge now... but for all intents... if it was sold to Nitro to own.. it's just the same as a finished good... just one built maybe to a spec different from later (never realized) versions.

One of my old bosses used to have the saying "Justice isn't cheap" whenever he had a client complain about the fee estimate to engage in a proposed litigation.

flynnibus makes some good points. It takes considerable resources to pursue someone in this situation, even if they had clear breaches of their fiduciary duties as a director, or breaches of the Corporations Act, or engaged in fraudulent behaviour.

If you’re a business, you’d better be in it to make money. Otherwise, you won’t be in business for long.