No doubt! I haven't checked this thread in a few weeks and amazingly there is still no progress to report.

not to beat a dead horse, but in August he said he was 75% done, and in October he said there would be a big reveal at Expo, then in November he said there would be a BIG reveal the first week of January.

Maybe he's using the old Russian calendar?

When Peter the Great became tsar, the Russians were using a calendar that was largely Julian but that was also based on Byzantine influences. That meant that the start of the calendar year was 1 September and not 1 January. That also meant that the years were numbered from the creation of earth and not the birth of Christ.

Presumably he can't. He's been spending your money working on games for years, how could he refund everyone? If he has that kind of cash still lying around why take deposits in the first place?

More to the point, is he behind on other financial commitments to vendors and 3rd party contractors as the rumors suggest? That would be a serious red flag.

At this point, I would demand a set of financials from Zidware LLC and have them audited, focusing on certification of the cash deposits - regardless if it is allowed in the contract/agreement. Verify the cash flow.

These sites are worthless without a timetable and production schedule as part of the reveal. Just more smoke.

what is the status of the accounting and timelines are the only things that matter to me right now.

We can't get distracted with the shiny things. This is what needs to be addressed. Urgently.

ditracted-by-shiny-things.jpg

he not going to divulge his financial standings....why would he? even with threats why would he...if theres nothing there theres nothing there....if he spent raza money towards mg developement cause its the same platform and all in the same wheel house of development he will have burned it all...

my gut says he will show the bling...then try to find other ways to make u the money to complete production of the development....in that case your a year or two out still from financial extra backing to actual production...plus making up to vendors he owes money to nd hoping they still deal with them...unless hes found others

He's going to roll out his new guy, he's going to roll out the prototype working game when the final parts come in in the next few weeks, then he's going to increase mg numbers and get a influx of 450k (20x17k). Then he's going to keep tweaking the game and drag it out a lot longer... Chad k building games? Great adding stuff ok.. He's going to ignore any requests of his financial infustructure. And there will still be no timeline. All this fails if he doesn't get more money from us

Who is Chad K?

I agree we need to take a stand, but I cannot image John would disclose his books. If I were him I wouldn't, even if they were in order. On this scale, I just can't imagine a company opening up it's accounting to customers. We are his metaphoric bank, but John is not publicly traded and (as far as I know) we are not entitled to the legal rights and stipulations of real banks.

I think it is more realistic to force him into disclosing what is actually developed and what is actually left to develop. I could also see pinning him down to a specific timeline, divulgence of the resources that he's aggregated to get there (as opposed to the treadmill he's been on for years), and consequences if he cannot meet agreed upon milestones.

I'm just saying he will blind u with these things and stretch it out even longer.. Please don't be blinded by these things. Timelines are needed financials are needed

Who would be dumb enough to give him $17k right now?

Chad Keller, a high end restorer in St. Louis.

Maybe JPop is scanning the news for recent lottery winners. There's gotta be one or two suckers remaining, right?

John (Zidware) is publicly traded?

He has a waiting list from people I know I've heard of a few waiting

doesnt mean they will fork over the money at this point!

Although I feel for ya, if pinball and buying some high dollar toys was more important than planning ahead to even have 5% down for a house, you have bigger issues completely unrelated to the current sad state of affairs. I mean, if you had the game, you still wouldnt have the money to put down, so why even buy a toy if you had any notion of buying a house.

It's not a one way ticket. There were "out" clauses in the contract. It was an 18 month gamble that was made almost 4 years ago. Maybe the guy was single but in the last 4 years met a woman, got married and had 3 kids. Lots of things happen in that amount of time. This was never supposed to last this long so why is john still holding him to his end of the breached contract.

Also if he actually had the game he could have put it up for sale and liquidated to cash relatively quickly.

Dont feel bad I just checked and the responses had been 1k since last check.....still nothing.

He could have sold his other 3 games. Either way.... Hes not on trial, but you said it, he gambled and lost. Gamblers normally dont get much sympathy...

Edit: wrong thread!

Blame the victim not the guy that fucked him out of money and breached the contract. Got it.

Don't judge, do you know him personally and his financial situation? The point is Jpop is in breach of the contract made 3-4 years ago and the guy wants his money back since there is no game. Do you care if he wants to burn the money once he get refunded.

So you came to this thread to crap on buyers involved?

If John was not in breach of contract, he would have shipped a pin by now, and we'd be able to sell it. Also john has effectively eliminated our ability to sell our spots because he won't reveal anything.

No one will buy my spot or Redeyes spot and we have no actual pin to sell. If we have no pin, John has no reason to keep our money.

john was supposed to be shipping games by end of 2013. He's not even close to that date and he has not communicated why.

Redeyes wants his pin or his money, John can't have it both ways he wants the money and still non-delivery of pin.

He'll never open his books, but I would demand some answers to:

-What will it cost to build/BOM the games
-Where will this money come from to build them

-Demonstrate a functioning plan about how this will execute

It's also possible he wasn't planning on buying a new house but his and his wife's dream house came up for sale unexpectedly. Three years with an uncertain end in site is a long time to have that cash tied up.
How can you even justify Jpop is in the right to keep people's money at this point?

No, actually I didn't, but face it, if you have $8,000 or whatever tied up into this vaporware of a pin and that is what is keeping him from putting a mere 5% down on a house its not too hard to see it was a poor financial decision from the get go. Seriously, unless you have $$$ coming out of your ass, you should not be trying to buy a non existent pin from a company that has NEVER built a pin previously. Like gambling and the stock market, this is not something you do unless you can afford to lose it.

Anyway, this is derailing the thread and I hope everyone gets their money back and thats the last post on this subject I'll make. Go ahead downvote me, what are we in highschool! GAF.

Ok, one more. Im am not justifying that. What Im saying its kind of silly to put so much money into a TOY that is not even promised for another 18 months when he cant even come up with 5% for a house without that TOY money.

Of course everyone should get there game or money back..

Time and place for everything. If you cant tell this is not the time and the place for that discussion you were just raised wrong so its probably not your fault that you are behaving the way you are.
Now go kick someone thats tripped and is laying on the ground.

Don't bother with that, plenty of opporutnity for smoke, mirrors, and redirection. Find out how much cash he has in the bank or escrow, and his current libabilities.

The problem I see going forward assuming John gets his shit together and gets things cooled down with the owners is, who will be willing to send him more cash? At this point it's hard to imagine the RAZA guys sending him final payment and I assume he will need that cash to complete the games. I think the only way most of will send more cash is when are games are ready to ship. Hopefully John has another funding source besides his owners because that well is dry at this point!

I know what you are saying but you need to realize the guy isn't Miss Cleo.
things come up in life unexpectedly.
Since I got in on raza I've been diagnosed and beat cancer. What if I had needed the money for medical reasons? Would you sit there saying that I valued a pin more than my health? I had no idea I would have needed money for medical bills when I decided to send in my money for jpops fiasco. Luckily I didn't need the money otherwise I would have been shit out of luck.
We don't always know the whole story.

Regarding Jpop, he made a promise in the contract to build a pin in a timely manner (his words) and we were expecting 14-20 months (contract). I didn't make up the timeline John did, we are already at 34 months and still not even a prototype.

This has absolutely nothing to do with taking sides with "jpoop the scammer". Please turn off your mass media programming device that makes you think in terms of white and black dichotomies. Just because one guy made a bad financial gamble, it doesn't mean the other guy is more right or more wrong.

All the Captain Hindsights in this thread can GTFO.

What Redeyes does to earn his money or how he chooses to spend it is no ones business but his. If we are going to Internet Audit someone make it JPOP.

_{Post edited by ChrisVW: SadSack is right. edited to remove finger pointing.}

Just goes to show how out of touch John is, he's an egomaniac.

If I were in John's position, I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror if I had started this shitstorm. No one else is responsible, not Ben, not Redeys no one but John.

Besides, this is not investing in a stock or gambling at a casino, this is buying a product. If the product is not delivered it is a breach of contract, I posted that definition a while ago.

This will hopefully not come off as being captain hindight-ish, but watching this thread has cause me to to make some different conclusions to some events of the past few years.

Ben being removed from BHZA seems to me like a way to get his name off the project literally. It was explained it was due to "customer demand" or something similar at the time. I thought it might have been due to them parting ways near that time. This seemed more probable than a bunch of people wanting to retheme the game they had already decided to pay for.

Now it seems like it could have just as easily been away to for Ben to get out, and did not want his name associated with this project (he has more inside knowledge than anyone else I would imagine on the true state of Zidware, at least of a year or two ago).

Also with JPop being given second class treatment at shows over the last two years. He shows up, and apparently is not even invited to give talks or whatever. It seemed like he had to fight for a spot at last year's expo? Were the show organizers aware of "this or that" and did not want their show associated with him? Or did he not have it together enough to get invited to the show? And this is coming from someone who thinks the one time I did see him speak at a show, it was one of the best if not THE best pinball seminars I have seen.

Funny look back at first page of this thread, was supposed to be a celebration of Jpop. He burned through a lot of good will in 7 months.

Yes I had forgotten Ice was the one who started this thread, to discuss "positive" news only. Positive news is being disussed, but posititive in terms of closing in on JPoP to DEMAND answers, come hell or high water.

Ben already chimed in on this thread.

The turning point was expo, no question. That was 10 months after the only deadline RAZA ever had, it was way late, and all we got (and still get) are empty cabinets to look at.

Not to mention "the lebowski effect", the dutch demonstrated a fully playable prototype in far less time than John has been working. It exposed John's work methods as being unnecessarily wasteful (a gazillion revisions of everything).

Not to mention Hobbit playable, full throttle playable, and all the homebrew stuff playable.

I am sure this is part of the truth as well. IF there was zero pressure on Ben's part to get his name off this project, it is a good example of one of my favorite motto's: It is better to be lucky than good.

So many times in my life i have had fortune smile upon me. Often I have helped "make my own luck" but sometimes things just work out in ways better than you would have expected.

John made great games when he had a support staff around him to do the mechanical work, and a management team above him making sure the project moved forward. It's clear to me he is over his head, and really has no idea what it takes to make a pinball machine - and his pride won't let him bring someone in who could save his ass.

I don't figure he'll ever actually finish a game, unless someone else does it for him. Good luck to you guys who have given him money. I think you'll need it.