Posing in front of his lunch.

Hey guys, got some updates:

First, if you can afford it and don't have Tom tickets, I'd really love to sell a few more of them. We are still unsure of any situations regarding pay outs - and in all honesty, even with the COVID-19 situation, it *still cost* $10k+ in immediate funds to cancel, so that's "fun." Anyway, I'd love to make the donation happen, so if you are in the position to purchase any of these, we'd really appreciate it. About 1/3rd of the Tom tickets have requested refunds, and we have only sold a couple since the cancellation. If you purchase a Tom ticket this year, we'll match your donation next year when we can hopefully afford to.

Second, if you are interested in the green event shirts or hoodies and nothing else, (see photo), you should think about ordering one of those soon.

Both of those can be purchased at https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/attend/

We intend to update our online store in the next few days with additional shirt designs (two of which I included in earlier posts), discounted merch from years past, and so on. It would really help to get a number of things sold. If you are looking at anything from the past, you may want to wait as we are working on nailing down everything that we're going to get in there, and we do intend to drop some prices.

One important note - due to how production is working right now (our production house is closed due to the pandemic), we anticipate that shipping for anything will not be until early June. We hope to do it sooner, but that's where we're looking right now.

Thanks! Stay safe everyone.

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Thank you for the updates! Definitely interested in one of the two designs you'd shown previously, and possibly the green one as well.

Glad you're hanging in there. I can't imagine the stress this has caused for you and many.

already ordered a shirt. seeing how shipping is free, June is fine by me.

I feel super lucky a previous job I held trained me in crisis management, and that training was apparently really good and helped a lot.

As I said when it was happening, it was personally really hard to take people who proclaim to like the show purposely doing things to undermine both myself and others publicly. There weren't many, but those people really stand out to me. Trying to poke fun of others dealing with a crisis is over a few lines in my head. The fact I've directly said that to those people and they opted to continue was even more frustrating. I guess you learn who your real friends are in crisis.

And, I guess that's the good thing. Excepting a few people, everyone else has been super understanding and supportive. And the people who were jerks aren't ones that support the show beyond buying a ticket, and aren't the ones who make it happen. Every vendor, sponsor, volunteer, or anyone else who plays any real role in the show has been exceedingly understanding, and has worked with us to an amazing extent.

And that's the thing that I keep trying to focus on. Ultimately, even with all this shutting down and disruption, it does come from the goal of doing the best we can for everyone. Even if we all got infected, the data shows that the majority of us would be okay. But, we've chose to take drastic measures to support the worldwide community, and I find value and reassurance in that.

Hey Dan is the hoodie design the same as the tee? And is it zip or pullover? Not much detail unfortunately...

There will be at least two other hoodies based on the designs I posted on the previous page, but the hoodie currently listed is the same design as the T. Odd that it doesn't have the photo appearing...

The two designs on the previous page will also have hoodies, as will a yet-to-be-revealed design from Tad Stones. We're just working on a tagline for that one now...

Cool. By other two...I'm assuming you mean the art shown in this post?
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/midwest-gaming-classic-mgc-2020-april-3-5/page/3#post-5527945

If so, will those be available as prints or just shirts? Love them, but I think I'd rather have those on my wall instead of on my belly.

Is it better to order green design now, and other stuff later, or wait and order all together?

Sorry if I missed this info somewhere.

Yup, those two. I believe that both of those artists will be doing those as prints, but we won't be directly.

The ordering stuff is sort of confusing because we're running two separate systems. If you're looking to get a green shirt or hoodie only, it makes sense to get it now. When they move to the "Shop", they will end up with a shipping cost which is a flat $7. We're planning to discount them to probably $15-18ish at that point in time, so they will go up $2-5.

However, if you're planning to get a green shirt and anything else, the shipping is flat, so you'll pay that $7 and it would be slightly cheaper.

I'm waiting on hopefully the final Tad Stones design tweaks, and then we're (well, I'm) raiding storage hopefully tonight to look for any other past merch that we can sell. With any luck, the "Shop" site will go live tomorrow.

Tom's tickets are the thing that will disappear, so that is the thing anyone who is thinking about should do!

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong spot but are there pics of the posters and other items listed online? I found the area to add stuff but just curious to see what poster looks like. I was planning to stock up on a few things for doing some giveaways later in the year.

Our site screws up the way the poster looks, so here is the actual image of it. The hoodie looks like the green shirt, but as a hoodie which is broken and I can't figure out what happened now.

Other items can be seen at https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/shop/

The shop page will update soon with a bunch of new shirts, actual photos of the Exit Loop game that is currently unavailable, label pins, and whatever else I can find at storage to sell

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The MGC Shop is now updated with a bunch of cool stuff and random goodies that we found from past years and whatnot. Buying anything would super help. VIG ticket holders will get their choice of one of the shirt designs this year.

I entertained myself with descriptions. Enjoy exploring this stuff. Some photos of newly listed stuff I hadn't had photos of before below!

https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/shop/

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I'd be just about done settling into the room right now, and would be heading down to grab some great BBQ.

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Nice updates..!

I think MGC has become cursed. Was the Wisconsin Center built on an ancient burial ground or the site of mental hospital or something?

Wow, still not over it.

Site of a mental hospital or is a mental hospital during MGC. I would vote the latter as a patient in need of increased voltage

MGC had an epidemic before. 2012. Patient Zero was Andrew Edgerton a former Spooky alum. Everyone urged him not to go but he did anyway.

So many people got sick that year, way worse than the usual "Con Crud". I know I haven't been as sick as that since. Lasted weeks.

It's sad MGC is closed but yeah, it only takes one infected to ruin the party for everyone.

What horrible luck for MGC. Best weather for MGC weekend in years.

Big bummer. We would have just shut off power and started load out.

Load out weather would have been beautiful yesterday...

Couldn't help myself, just bought one of the 2020 posters.

-Hans

A bunch of updates - if you got our emails or saw our social media, this is going to be pretty similar to what I put there yesterday. Going to write a separate little update in a different post after:

I hope everyone is doing as best as possible in these trying times. I wanted to provide you with an update about the refund process for the 2020 Midwest Gaming Classic, and ways that you can help the event if you have the means to. I apologize in advance for the length of this update, but we wanted to give you all the details we could.

On Refunds…

When we sent the initial communication about refunds on March 15th, we stated that we believed that refunds would be issued in 6-12 weeks, meaning by the end of April to the middle of June. This was due to the fact that it takes time for us to work with the groups we had contracted to recover our funds and officially shut down the show for 2020.

Unfortunately, while it seems like this should be an easy process, it is not. Adding to the complexity, I am no longer in contact with any of the sales people who had been working with us just five weeks ago. Because of this, working through contract details and recovering funding has taken even longer as we have to work with people that do not know anything about our situation.

In the meantime, we have applied for loans, but have not yet secured them. The banking system is similarly overwhelmed, and it is taking a long time to get replies to any inquires.

I want to be very clear that we have no doubt we will be able to pay everyone who requests a refund, but we are now less clear on that timeline as so much of it is out of our hands. As soon as we have a further update, we will share that.

If you are in the situation where you need the money sooner than later, we are using all money raised by merchandise sales as a pool to grant people who need refunds sooner than later those refunds. If your situation changes, please do contact me and we can expedite your refund. Please do this only if you really need it so we can ensure we have money for those who do.

Finally, if you have not done your ticket claim yet, please do so unless you intend to hold your ticket for the future. Instructions can be found at the MGC web site under the “Show has been canceled” link at the top of every page.

How To Help…

If you have the means right now to support us, it would be really huge. We updated the MGC Shop a couple weeks ago with a ton of new offerings, like the shirts above, special brand new designs from Dirty Donny, Brian Allen, and Tad Stones, some random stuff we found in our warehouse, and so on! We’ve also dropped prices on a number of things from the past.

Please be aware that if you purchase items from our shop, we expect a 1-2 month delay in shipping as our production facility cannot currently make or deliver any shirts to us. The good news is we’re able to take orders for colors we otherwise wouldn’t have tried to see if there is interest.

Many of these shirts will only be available during this period, and once we produce them certain designs will no longer be available, so if you can spare money for some MGC swag, definitely check it out by heading to https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/shop/

Another place you can go to that helps is if you’re looking for some retro games to play at home, Gary and I have run an online retro video game store for 20+ years called the GOAT Store – for Games Of All Types. In fact, the MGC exists because of it! We’re using any purchases made from the GOAT Store right now to also put into our pool for early refunds, so if you’re looking for a few games to pass the time, we’d love it if you’d check it out. Please note that the inventory for the GOAT Store is currently located at Gary’s house, so we are able to continue shipping, although it may take a few extra days to find everything and get it out. GOAT Store is located at https://www.goatstore.com

What’s Next…

I’m still working daily on wrapping things up from the 2020 show, but I also think that the MGC is there to build a community of gamers. In the upcoming days, I intend to use our social media platforms – specifically Facebook – to share some fun things about past shows, host some informal tournaments for everyone, and do our best to give you something positive to interact with if you venture onto social media.

A few not-as-official updates:

1) I posted some stuff on Facebook telling stories on the days of the show itself. They might have some interesting background from it if you want to watch me ramble for like an hour and half for a couple days in a row

2) As a couple people mentioned above, it only takes one infection to have a mass breakout at a show. Since it appears the virus was caught so easily through airline travel, and since many of our guests are regular airline travelers, I know more than a dozen people that believe they had it, including at least one that kept working not thinking it was more than a cold, but is now very concerned that they could have been spreading it. I also personally know two that have died from it, including a 24 year old. I have zero doubt canceling the show was the correct move.

3) The community has been awesome understanding what we have been going through. The haters seem to have gone away. While I'm very frustrated by some of the groups right now and roadblocks that are being put in front of us, communication like the above has been met with a ton of positivity, and I haven't always been sure if they will or not. It makes up for the people taunting me as it went down.

...and seriously, if you can spare some money to buy some merch or purchase some stuff at the GOAT Store, it would be huge. We've been basically matching the money coming in with the money we owe for people asking for expedited refunds, and while it's pretty clear merchandise won't be able to save the show alone - as cool as the shirt designs are, we're not going to sell 30,000+ shirts - it's giving us the room to breathe to be able to hold on at this worst point until we start to get answers. Links are:

https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/shop/

-or-

https://www.goatstore.com

I eagerly look forward to the hopefully relatively near future when we are able to start better discussing and planning for our next show. It's going to be one hell of an awesome thing, I promise

Just bought a shirt. Glad to help.

I've got a bunch of updates today about refunds, MGC 2021, and merchandise! I again apologize for the longer update here, but things often move together, and we want to keep you up to date with the information we have.

On Refunds...

Since our last communication, two major things just happened - we were approved for a small loan, and we have worked through the contract process with a number of groups, which had been holding up the fund recovery process.

Fund recovery does still take time, so agreements that we are preparing to sign will not mean we instantly have the money back, but we now have a rough idea of when it will come. Because of this, starting to refund claims based on the date ticket were ordered, starting with the oldest orders first.

We do not know when this process will finish, but are working as quickly as possible. We are going to continue to hold some funds for expedited refunds for anyone who finds themselves in need of money sooner than later. As always, please contact us via the email form on our web site if you need an expedited refund so we can take care of it for you.

Finally, as before, if you have not done your ticket claim and intend to receive a refund, please do so. Instructions can be found at the MGC Web site under the "Show has been canceled" link at the top of every page.

On MGC 2021...

As part of the above, we believe we have dates for the 2021 Midwest Gaming Classic - April 30 to May 2!

This is far earlier in the process than we would usually announce the dates - in fact, we are still working on a couple small contractual issues, so it isn't yet "official" - but we thought it was only fair to tell you now as so many people are holding their tickets for next year already.

At this point, we do NOT have hotel rooms pricing and availability, nor are we putting tickets on sale yet. We will make a more official announcement about the dates in the future, but we wanted you to know as soon as we could.

On Merchandise...

We are looking to produce and ship merchandise as well as VIG swag bags in the next few weeks and will keep people apprised of the situation as best we can.

The GOAT Store - the retro video game store that we also run - continues to ship items on a regular basis.

Again, if you have the means to support us either through merchandise purchase or retro game purchase through the GOAT Store, we would really appreciate it.

While we have been and continue to be certain we are able to refund money to anyone who asked, I cannot pretend that this situation isn't very trying for us as a company as the vast majority of our revenue is tied to the Midwest Gaming Classic.

Your support has allowed us to be able to expedite refunds for everyone who needed one immediately, and we are extremely grateful for that.

What's Next...

I'm hoping to have a bit more time again to post some fun stuff on social media again. Beyond that, we'll be putting the merchandise into production officially soon, and I'll be working to nail down contracts for next year as quickly as I can, while also recovering all of the money due for refunds.

As always, thank you so much for your support!

That’s great news; I was beyond excited to catch this years show, so I’ll keep that bottled up for ‘21. Thanks for everything you’re doing.