Greater harm.

Ill sell my RAZA spot for $5500.00 I'm in at $1000 more than that

I'll trade my $6500 RAZA spot for a nice pin worth around $5k

You keep showing up here, telling us we don't know what's going on, but we're never told what the hell IS going on.

You are one of the only people Jpop will even take calls from. So fine, you've got inside dirt, or at least whatever the latest fantasy he is peddling to you. The proof is in the pudding, and 7 months ago you were talking "near complete" games, and last month you talked about playing it, then we saw it with paper ramps.

John has created this situation by gross mismanagement, fueled by people like yourself that tell him how incredible this all is and enabled his avoidance of REAL issues, like basic money and project management.

Now he's getting sued. Great for all of us

Oh the irony

Game over

Why?!?! He created this mess all by himself. Instead, I feel bad for the guys that bought into the whole "genius" crap. Believing they were going to get something never seen or done before in the world of pinball.

That ship is currently residing at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I check into this thread every few days and I'm amazed it still has some legs. I can't see it happening, but I hope you buyers eventually get your cheese.

index.jpg

Short of him winning the lotto, it's actually a huge gamble I'm taking hence the 50 cents on the dollar offer. If I thought it was a sure thing my offer would have been higher. It might pay off it might not.

Please leave troll, monkey. You're the one causing great harm, you said you played the games a few weeks ago just to get people's hope up. Real chick move.

Yeah & that logic is what prevented me from cancelling my check when I still had the opportunity to do so

Unbelievable. Were you of this opinion a month, hell, a week ago? Seems very disingenuous. Where's the other Oregonian with his, "only up from here" mantra.

Yeah, I've been vocal in here even though I'm not in on any of the games. But at least I'm not swinging my junk around pretending I know something and then not following up on it.

Frankly I'm glad someone finally brought suit against him. That's the first real progress this ponzi scheme has had in years.

To whom are you referring?

Well now that the suit is files that should have him pump the brakes on the ramps and going out west... New excuse for him to say it's not his fault

I'll venture a guess that he's got enough cash to keep up these shenanigans for years, yet far short of what would be needed to actually deliver. That is until the jpop'd start calling in the law to settle things.

The issue is he may be forced to file bankruptcy. I'm betting this will be his excuse to abandon ship. I think this whole thing is a lesson on how not to run a business. Just plain silly stupid at this point. I just do not see how any of us will get games.

Well hopefully this will speed the closure of this debacle. I can't help but feel bad for John's wife getting caught up in all this.

The problem is John's wife is listed as an officer of Zidware.

I am greatly disappointed where Jpop has left us all, and the fact is he bit off more than he could chew however they are people and as such I really don't believe some of these comments are really necessary or help the situation. This, I believe, was not malicious or purposeful so I will just stay positive and remind myself that both him and his wife are fellow pinheads and I'm almost certain things will be made clear soon.

My mistake. He's from Washington but has a ducks avatar. Sorry for the confusion.

What is this? Just an official complaint with Cook County? I see at the bottom that it says: "This data is not an official record of the Court or the Clerk and may not be represented as an official court record." So this is just a heads-up complaint and John needs to refund asap before sh*t hits the fan?

Oh, and Pdxmonkey, not sure why you're looking for attention. What do you have to gain from poking the bear? Thought you would have gotten the point from the last time you posted

That's just a disclaimer that if their online system shows erroneous data, it's not their fault and shouldn't be used as an "official" record.

The data is on lexisnexis, which is like a big aggregator for legal data. It's pretty accurate, but it's still data pulled from another source, so there is a potential for error/outdated data.

Speaking of "great harm" I can't wait to tell my wife about this situation (I'm toast) it's been nice knowing you guys

Man, keeping up with this thread is getting to be a full-time job for me. It's like being addicted to a soap opera and having to get caught up on it every day. Every time I come to my computer it seems there's like 30, 60, or 100 new posts to read. It goes without saying I hope for a happy outcome for all involved, but it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You can't take your eyes off it.

Amazing how long and protracted this all is. Definitely because us pinheads are slow to act and forgiving. That the first lawsuit dropped this week, years after the games were supposed to be delivered wouldn't have happened anywhere else. I don't know what the original MG date was, I just know RAZA (game #2) was originally Q4 2013, so Magic Girl would have been before that.

Obviously the lawsuit could have been avoided if money had been refunded, but John is now not delivering games AND not giving money back, so it's pretty cut & dry. That he drew a salary for as long as he did without delivering product is pretty rich.

Not sure how this is going to work with potential investors, who wants to buy a company with so much potential liability and bad customer faith?

I'm not defending John by any means but this point has been mentioned many times, has it been proven that John has taken a salary or is it just a conclusion some people have made based on their opinion of the situation?

Earlier in this thread, when iceman had spoken to John, John had told him he had stopped paying himself, but that was only recently, so he had been taking money the remaining time of the past 4 years.

From that we learned:

a) he had taken a salary, of what amount we don't know.

b) he had run out of money.

found the quote, or one of them anyways.

I'll just add, i'm sure whatever he has paid himself is less than paying rent for that 2nd shop, or any of the other waste that has gone on. But it's the optics of taking money for products you have not delivered that is bad.

frolic this is very typical of any business and or owners of that said business. Most think they are getting to the finish line and take salary till they wake up and see the runway has grown too short to get off the ground. Some realize this sooner than others however with the comments from Doug I am assuming he realized this roughly half a year ago.
The extra space and many other associated aspects are usually signed for a minimum of one year so if he only realized the runways too short 6 months ago when Dougie was there, he's pretty much stuck paying for those things till the end of their term. Taking business down usually takes far longer than taking it up unless it is done for you.

While I agree John f-ed up big time and lost people's hard earned money, and I appreciate how hard it is to earn a living let alone make sufficient money for these pins, and that money could have been saved, invested, used to buy a different pin, used for a vacation with the family, used to pay bills or college tuitions etc,, a thousand different things.

I'm not defending John but I do feel sorry for him and his family, looking at his FB page it appears he may have children himself. So I do hope it does not lead to great harm like jail like some have suggested.

I think he was out of his element, not trying to screw people and not trying to ruin his legacy. It was unfortunate for himself as well, it's almost likely he has some type of borderline personality. Like people that hoard or shopaholic. Not saying he's one of those but some type of personality disorder would not surprise me. Not excusing him, but there are some mitigating circumstances for sure. I bet if we had payed a small deposit and then waited and saw the final product if/when it was finished this would have gone more easily for all.

Sad result as far as I can tell, I'm still hoping he might pull a rabbit out of the magic hat. It's not over yet, but just looks bleak.

I think once you've hit the point where lawsuits have started, it's over. ....sad for all.

.

Unless there is a good plan in place, and all those who ordered get on the same page, I have a feeling SunKing could be right.

Most (if not all) full-time startup owners don't even take a salary - or at least nothing above living expenses - for years. So if John was paying himself *anything* substantial that's [another] very bad sign that he's been doing it all wrong.

If you can't not pay yourself a salary because of the mortgage, wife and kids, then don't start up in the first place.

Wow, just wow Ben if that was the case then there would be no America as you see it today. Most entrepreneurs have been broke and in debt all their lives until they strike it big. Not sure of your last sentence grammatically hard to comprehend?

Ben we are all right with you. The problem is/was this was not spelled out, still isn't.

The deal was x dollars for thus and such pin.

No talk of what the profits or salary would be.

I'd bet John never had a buisness plan spelling out time and money targets. I think he figured if Stern LE was $8k then his games should cost more since they were more custom made or special.

I slept on the floor of my office 20 years ago for 2 years as I started a previous business. Not something I would do today with a family, but those are the sacrifices you make.

I still don't even take a salary from my current business, I pay myself dividends from profits. Fortunately I deliver product to customers, so I actually generate a profit.

I haven't followed this entire thread but there seems to be little recently to suggest propose possible solutions.

I wonder if there's an opportunity in exploring having Farsight Studio's buy rights to produce Pinball Arcade versions of these games, maybe as an Non-Season extra purchase.

That would provide potential income enough to complete one machine a prototype. Then maybe some portion of sales could be part of the deal and could provide the funding needed to complete the customer's physical machines.

It would seem the exclusivity of the games lost in scenario would be better than the possibility of losing everything.

It would be complicated, but his current games on Pinball Arcade are some of the best. I know I'd enjoy seeing these digital.

Truth

I should have said "if you can't afford to live without a normal salary, don't do a full time startup"

Ah the good ol' days!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Yes agreed Ben some including me and frolic take zero cash to get business' up and going waiting for the payout at the back end. Unfortunately many people are not built this way and should always remain employees of a larger company with a guaranteed pay check . I believe this is the case here as people like jpop do not think along the lines of a true entrepreneur. We all know this now about jpop and hind sight is 20/20.

Like many posters and followers in this thread I have nothing at stake but damn, after reading every last 9000+ posts I find it very, very hard to feel sorry for this guy? His lack of business acumen and shortcomings aside, from what I can gather he's had numerous people reach out offering to help get his ducks in a row but he either denies the help or screws them over shortly thereafter. Hard to sympathize with someone as self destructive as this.

I think that is a good summary of my feelings; I like Jpop but he has gone out of his way to ruin himself it seems. Due to some personality disorder or just plain hubris is hard to tell... but it is what it is.

This would require code and video collateral to be complete, and a finished and complete cabinet and game to scan. I'm also not sure how easy it would be to port since its not based on any of the systems they have already ported. And the TZ license cost them $55k. I doubt John would get more than that, and it seems like his unfunded liabilities are much much greater than that amount.

Good idea, still a big hill to climb.

Or maybe we could start a "gofundme" campaign for him? I'm sure it will be successful

Don't give him any more money. It just seems to make things worse.