Holy moly, never realised you hadn't been paid Aurich, hope that gets sorted ASAP and you get some new enthusiasm for the work.

Dude, I was in the same boat. I took the bastard to an industrial tribunal for similar reasons. Personally I would edit that and be more vague, as it doesn't really help anyone right now. Just hoping all the best for you guys in the future.

Booted out by the investors, read the first post!

That distant whirring sound is the backpedalling Whysnow is currently doing

Aye, I don't blame people for requesting refunds, as is their right to do. But after having experienced his 'management' first hand, Andy leaving the company can only be seen as a good thing.

Aurich has said he is to be paid a percentage of shipped machines, not a flat fee. As machines haven't 'shipped', then he isn't due to receive money yet. I know it sounds trite, but that's the agreement they had. His reasons for going radio silent were due to the mismanagement from Andy, not the lack of payment. That's not to say others have had to wait for payment owed to them, however.

Look at the damn crowd funded Stern book not shipping, fuck stop giving these companies money!

You are really comparing apples to oranges here. A kickstarter for a book takes many magnitudes orders less work than setting up a company, getting a design team, designing a table, designing parts etc etc. Seeing as 90% of the work to get Alien into mass production is done, I don't think that the last 10% is going to be such a massive issue. You have to remember that Andy had ZERO experience with running a company that manufactured anything. The fact that he is gone is the best news Alien pre-orderers have had for a while.

[double post]

EDIT: haha you just downvoted a post with nothing in it?

Not a new investor. Current investor group had enough and forced Andy out of the company, presumably to get someone in there who knows what they are doing to start up production properly.

I believe the email was sent out end of September/early october, saying that production was starting and to pay up in full. Roughly the same time Hydrofoils UK popped up:
https://twitter.com/HeighwayPinball/status/784719874140540928
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10370844

Alright, might be time for you guys to knock it off and take it to PM/separate therad. This is a HP thread, not a 'I like this game and you don't' thread.

The sad part is, on more than one occasion ex-employees came forward to try and warn people what was going on, only to be labelled 'sh*t stirrers' or 'people trying to take down his company':

Remember these?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.pinball/dLymIc1UHB8/wsGLo5SDBgAJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.games.pinball/heighway%7Csort:relevance/rec.games.pinball/suzzpuosLHE/pNKJkyzZBAAJ

These were the warning signs that he had no idea how to handle employees, which is why so many good people left HP over the years.

Here's an example of how clueless he was when it came to mass production. When someone pointed out in one of their videos they seemed to using hand tools only on the assembly line and why weren't they using power tools, he came out with this nugget:
http://i.imgur.com/0AsCe6r.png

I'd say that if your employees are ruining playfields, then the issue lies in the training, not with the tools being used.

Edited to add: Hindsight is always 20/20

And all this has exactly *what* to do with HP? You've been asked once already guys, take it somewhere else.

Seriously, give it a rest. Go play your Alien.

Jesus do you even read what you write or is it some kind of 'infinite monkeys at typewriters' thing? I'm getting nauseous from all the spinning around you are doing.

The latest financials show 26k in the bank. This explains the 30-60 day wait people were told on refunds.

Yeah pretty unbelievable that no one on the design team or the assemblers thought to use nylock nuts on that. I'm guessing that they were used on FTH, so why not Alien? Poor staff training and the rush to get them built?

That's true, but should that money be yours? If their pockets are as deep as they say they are, refund those that want out, let them spend the time and money sorting out the niggles and relaunch with a fully working, ready to buy machine.

Aurich, the company doesn't have any money right now, as shown by the financials posted last week. 28K in the bank, so refunds or no refunds, they just don't have the money, period. The whole point is that the investors know this and are prepared to put more money in to see this through to the end.

I feel that a greater factor in the email 'encouraging' people not to refund is probably the new Star Wars announcement, not what is left in the company bank account right now.

From what I remember, it's something in the region of 175 preorders, with about 180k GBP commited but not yet collected.

After what happened with Bumper Actions 1, 2 & 3 Toads, I can see why you'd think that. I don't think it's going to play out like that in this case though.

Everyone will make their own call, and we'll see what happens.

Quite.

Actions speak louder than words and it appears that pinsider patience is wearing a bit thin.

From what I gather, the FTH CPU is ARM based, whereas the Alien CPU is x86, both run some form of Linux. To get FTH running on the x86 CPU wouldn't be too hard, but again it's development time that might be better off spent doing something else.

Right now they don't sell playfield kits, no one is buying FTH, so there's no real financial incentive to get FTH running on the x86 board.

Let's see:
Heighway Leisure Limited, dissolved
Modeinput Limited, dissolved
Leamington Go-Ball Ltd, dissolved
A1-Boss Limited (as company secretary), dissolved
Andrew Heighway Racing Ltd, dissolved
A1 Shopping Malls Ltd (as company secretary), dissolved
Twenty Twenty International Limited, dissolved
Cross Atlantic Marketing Limited, dissolved
Heighway Pinball Limited, still trading...

EDIT:
Mr68's post is here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/alien-pinball-official-game-thread/page/141#post-3301083