To defend them though they are inexperienced, not incompetent. They may be able to produce these games, the issue is with their inability to understand the scope of the projects and the demand they put on themselves as soon as they take a dollar from someone.

Would be nice to see Stern become a manufacturer for projects like this. Allow people to pre order games designed by boutique designers and allow Stern to set cost, manage the money and production of these games. Stern is the only company with the manufacturing experience to help see these projects through.

Spooky is good too.

Who is sooky?

how much does she charge?

Hey, give it up for Spooky Pinball! Made a game with no drama, are shipping it to people, and the owners love it.

When was the last time you saw a "BEN HECK WHERE IS THE CODE?" thread?

yep, yep & yep

Absolutely. Hi my name is Jon and im a predator preorderer.

I hate to be so blunt, but I call 'em like I see 'em. Inexperience may be a major reason why they are incompetent, but they are incompetent nonetheless. The facts speak for themselves. When you take so much money from the community, it's about more than just bringing the game to fruition. You are responsible for money management, timelines, communication, etc ... If someone doesn't have the necessary skill set to run every aspect of the company, then they need to bring people on board who can.

To be fair though, he IS working on it after original release, just like Stern. Stern just shovels games out the door faster so there are more in the wild to update after the fact.

Lame question about Sookie--and if you have to ask...

Yeah, but it shipped "finished", he's just polishing it, fixing bugs, adding nice touches, etc.

If Stern did that I'd be stoked! I think it's fair to ship a game that all works, and then as people play it more, and it "settles in" to add some more features and easter eggs and little balance fixes. No one hates getting cool updates, they just hate when the game feels half assed before they come out.

Randy Newman - Gone Dead Train

I seriously think some people love to see folks lose their money and also see Skit-B crash and burn.

No doubt. Some people seem to get off on other's misfortunes. It's really pathetic.

fair enough. I will save the incompetence moniker if the project fails.

I don't know....I guess there are always a few twisted F'ks out there. I'm not involved (except that I'm active in this hobby) and I HATE that this is happening....and appears to be happening a lot! I wanted ALL of these "boutique" manufacturer's to be successful......that's good for the hobby.

What's happening here is VERY BAD for the hobby! That's why I and others keep checking in on these threads. People are getting F'd over.....many of them are in denial about it......it's not good.

we're taking this thread off topic.

Lol

I seriously think you're wrong. If you're inferring that the critics somehow take pleasure in SkitB's implosion here- I think you're missing the point.

I would suggest that its FAR MORE dangerous to the health of this hobby to "prop - up" and make excuses for bad business behavior (at best) or worse, fraudulent behavior. All that does is incentivize the next poorly-thought-out business plan to take flight and start collecting money.

By the way, folks here at pinside are partially to blame for the state of things....we are dong this stuff to ourselves! From JPOP to JJP to SkitB to DP to PPS to Stern... in their own ways- we've turned a blind eye to shitty business practices.

Why?

Because it would seem that even the most responsible people tend to lose their minds and are willing to stick their heads in the sand and eat shit if their "grail pin" is on the line.

Believe me, all this bullshit stops when BUYERS stop sending their money in. However, as long as people trip over themselves and "sell-out" Stern LE's the minute their announced- you can kiss complete-at-launch-software goodbye. And as long as people will prepay for these startups (and take on ALL the risk) then they will continue to be treated like dolts and unsecured creditors...

Predator, Magic Girl, RAZA, even MMR.... those were announced before the air let out. I don't think there will be a gold rush for crowd funding any longer.

JJP is smart to know that it's over and not do it again with JJP3.

Well its my opinion and Im going by the snarky comments some of these asshats post in this thread. I for one don't condone these poor business practices but that ship has sailed and if I knew then what I know now I would have never preordered but for some to claim this is somehow my or any of the other 249 peoples fault is very shortsighted and adds to the frustration.

+1

For as much as SkitB, JPOP and others "love pinball", it sure seems like they have done more damage than good at this point.

Maybe shipping games will help close the wound, but there is a permanent scar where the trust in startups used to be. It's a shame to think of how many honest, well implemented pinball startups there could have been.....

Yeah, I see they are delivering games and I do hope that Dutch comes around and starts building and delivering games as well.

He said "some people" and I agree with that. The remainder of your post was spot on. Thumbs up.

That is easy for *you* to say when your game is among the first ten sitting in pieces at their place. What about the other 240 people who ordered a Predator and would like to actually get one?

Until told otherwise, I am going to assume all 250 games will get built eventually.

IF there is something amiss with the project then I assume the other 240 will quickly get their cash back since it appears not much of their deposit money has been used for parts??? (we have seen parts for ~10 games at this stage?)

Surely you have believe that skitb had more costs than just the parts needed directly to build customers machines.

You HAVE been told otherwise, I saw the email that was sent to you two weeks ago myself where this "alias' person laid it all out in black and white for you. I mean literally... at that moment.. .you were more informed than nearly any other person on the planet. You of all people.

And you have disregarded that information, crossed your arms and said "I will believe it when I see it!".

On that day you got the email, you PM'd me here, and I told you had no idea what you were talking about. I was telling the truth! Just yesterday this same person finally DID email me, and in that email they forwarded on the whole thing that they sent you, including this part: "But, you are being approached so you can mentally prepare yourself first, before anybody else. To become the strong one in a sea of flailing people"

Come on man. Really... I know you are a sharp dude... I know you are. Come on.

There is no way that 240 of 250 get 100% back. You think they have not touched a dollar in all this time beyond what was needed for parts? Not a single cent? Sure, it's true, no-one knows how much if anything is left, but for you to say that 90% is left... come on... you think he paid for trips to expo and pinball events nationally with his own personal account?

Sure, but I assume their normal 9-5 is being used for start up and to deal with those costs for the most part. Aside from that their is some degree of profit built in for each game I would guess.

With only parts for 10 games at this stage the only large game specific costs would be the molds for ramps. Other things are purchased JIT, so unlikely they have a huge stockpile of parts that they have blown the cash on.

What costs do you think they have?

I appreciate that rational response. I know how much this project means to you. that aside, a lot runs through my mind, the first is how incredibly expensive it has to be to order parts for 10 games versus 250. I honestly couldn't say what percentage is gone but surely there is not enough left to complete all 250. Common sense dictates that. Additionally, I think it's a reach to assume all their overhead and R&D came from their 9to5 income.

I wish the cloak & dagger, private emails, etc would stop. Obviously whatever the contents of these emails are incendiary, so lets just get this over with.

Sorry Jared, but I have no reason to believe you or some 'annoymous' guy sending me (and others) an email with no evidence to actually back up the claims. Mr. A lost all credibility as soon as he set up a fake account to start sending unsolicited emails to people on the preorder list in hopes of actually starting a mass run on the bank. Similarly, you lost all credibility when you told me almost identical things as Mr. A last October but had no proof to back it up. You just can't make all sorts of claims without the proof, and if you actually had some sort of proof for over 6 months and choose not to share it then that may even be worse.

Since you are here, why don't you tell us all about your discussions at Expo with "an extremely well known person in the business of pinball"?
The story as you previous told it 6 months ago to me and several pinside mods started out something like "We were having drinks and expo, and he revealed to me that he had intimate knowledge that 20th Century Fox blah blah blah"
Serious question>>
Who is the extremely well know person that had the inside scoop on this info? This is pretty damming stuff for them to be claiming when they had nothing to back it up. If this is all true, then YOU knew it before everyone else it appears.

Oddly enough Mr. A seems to have all the same information you were spouting off since last October
>> You said to multiple people last october something to the effect of 'I know that several people over the last several days have contacted Fox licensing in Hollywood to check in on the pinball machine. Someone is going to get a response. If it's the bad one none of us want to be true, its going to be bad.'

Who are these mysterious people contacting Fox? You are obviously affiliated with the whole thing Jared, so better off to lay all your cards on the table now.

Either way the last chapter gets written, you unfortunately spent significant time involved in the process of trying to bring it all down.
You either had pertinent information, but did not do what was needed to make sure your fellow pinheads would be warned, or you infact have been part of whatever extra complications have caused a large roadblock on the project.

Might as well name names and be honest with all you have been part of...

Ok, there's been some trouble with Dutch Pinball (which seems to be solved now after a few months), but I'll bet that in the end their delay before delivering their first game will be way less than the ones JJP and Heighway have had. Both may be very understandable, but both were way too optimistic. Maybe that'll be the same for DP, but I think somehow that their delay (if any) will be way less.
Can I be sure? No. Am I confident? Yes.

And not mentioning Spooky is a shame indeed, but I guess you just forgot to mention that one and we don't disagree, right?

I kinda skimmed this thread but man, what another cluster-F in the jolly ol' land of pinball. I gotta say - I don't get why you're aiming your vitriol at Jared, or anyone for that matter who isn't Skit-B.

It's as simple as this:

-Skit-B said they'd make Predator pinball in 2012
-Skit-B took your money.
-It's 2015 & Predator pinball hasn't been made.
-Communication from Skit-B is terrible and does nothing but cause people to speculate and come up with their own conclusions based on the information available.

No one is to blame here except Skit-B. They're the one with the company making a licensed product. If it's f*cked, it's no one's fault but theirs. As a paying customer, aim your anger their way.

Amen brother. I'm as guilty as anybody. We all love pinball and I want to support people trying to bring more options to our hobby.

That said, none of this would have ever been a problem, for any of these guys, if they just simply communicated and told the truth. Why is that so hard? Pinheads are a very forgiving bunch.

The proof was in pubic for all to see man. Suddenly and without warning or explanation, all mentions, articles, photos and video of Predator Pinball are scrubbed from Skit-B's website and youtube channel. When confronted with the question of why, the response was "we are updating our website".

Come on man.

I don't want to bring down Skit-B, never have. I also have never called or emailed Fox, I swear to God.

I DO want this hobby as a whole to not be negatively affected by bad business practices (and that extends beyond Skit-B to several others). 2012-2014 saw unprecedented growth and interest in this hobby, and things going south with any numbers of new builders can set (us all) back a lot. Thats what must be avoided.

It's true, at Expo in 2014 I was told by someone in a high position within the pinball industry that they had personal knowledge that Skit-B did not maintain rights to the appropriate licenses, and never did. As alarming as this was to hear, it may have possibly been completely untrue and I was not going to get on pinside and sound alarms without being 100% sure, and even then its something that I really, really did not want to be at the center of. So I messaged people I know personally about it, and I also informed the admin staff here so they knew what I knew when I knew it... and I sat back to see what happened.

Context clues and coincidental occurrences and emails since them all have seemed to support the claim made to be at Expo14, but it was never "clear".

Then two weeks ago you message me asking about some email and Martin and PBN and I was really, really confused, as I told you. Weeks passed, and now just yesterday on the 1st I was sent a series of emails from this "group of people operating under an alias", one of which included the entirety of the email sent to you two weeks ago that prompted you to PM me then.

Suddenly, things became very, very clear. At least to me. This is all within the last 24 hours.

According to what both you, and I (and others) have been told, PBN is going to break the news once things are official and filed, and with PBN comes basically indisputable honesty and respect to his journalistic integrity. If Martin says it happened... it happened. And according to this mystery person, thats exactly what will happen within 1-14 days from now.

I never, ever wanted to bring Skit-B down, and if that's what happens, it will only be because they weren't telling the truth in the first place, a blame only they can accept.

I am not affiliated with the whole thing, I am not affiliated at all. I dont send emails to myself while I am dead asleep with my wife who has been with me non stop at the NICU the last 3 weeks. I don't have time for it, I swear to you.

It's beginning to sound like a feature film could be made of this whole story. Maybe a solid Predator license (if that's the problem) could be traded for the movie rights.

Either way, I think we're all very curious who these "certain parties" Kevin refers to really are.

He has said this repeatedly, people choose not to believe him. Which is their prerogative.

At this point, it's going to take finished games to convince the doubters.

People... get your money while you can... So crazy to me that there are those who have not done so.

You still are not answering whom this person is. You told me and others before, so why not state it publically here?

It just adds to the storyline.

Who is the magic man with all this inside scoop before everyone else?

I am not in on the preorder and haven't seen SkitB's latest emails, but given the $hit storm here over the last few days it sure doesn't sound like they included anything close to a direct statement that the license is 100% secure and production is proceeding. Of course some would not believe it, but it would certainly be reassuring to those in on the preorder (assuming it's true, of course).

That would be Kevin.

nah, all it would take is a copy of a signed legal agreement between skitb and fox... which has been asked for and not given...

This whole story is a classic example of "where there's smoke there's fire". Skit-b obviously knows the allegations, it would be easy for them to publicly deny them if untrue.

I don't know how it has worked in the past but it sounds like refunds are not being readily granted now (unless things have changed in the last few weeks):
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-pinside-skit-b-predator-discussion/page/17#post-2243241

So no need to rub salt in people's wounds.

Amen.

This 'problem' is only a major problem because Kevin demanded a $3000 deposit instead of the agreed upon $250 deposit. The $3000 deposit came with an assurance that the pins would be built in a timely manner. It was said the first pins in October 2014.

There is absltly no reason for Kevin to collect $3000 from everyone unless he was building pins very shortly.

We're now in March, and are fast approaching one year anniversary of the infamous demand letter where Kevin demanded $3000 or you were out of the project.

How is asking people to get their money back rubbing salt in their wounds? Obviously the ones that have requested it have done everything they can. I speak of the ones holding out for a happy ending.

You said "get your money while you can" and "so crazy" that some "have not done so." If refunds aren't being given, your advice might as well have included getting a time machine and heading back to a happier time when people could back out of this project at will. Not much help to anyone now. Hence the salt.

this is absolutely nuts. i hope whatever story this is that's gonna break happens before PAPA next week so we have something to talk about.

and before the pitchforks come out - i don't want anything to negatively impact the hobby, but it already has, and it blows.

Well, shit, you're right.

BUT, I didn't mean to single out the skitB people as being to blame, at least not anymore than ANY of the rest of us that have been supporting JJP, DP or Stern are to blame.

I was trying to make a bigger point about not holding these companies accountable.

Did NOT mean it to come off like rubbing sand in wounds here.