What pisses me off even more about Deeproot is all of the PPP money that you and I gave them that they won't have to pay back 
(Topic ID: 203700)
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Quoted from snakesnsparklers:What pisses me off even more about Deeproot is all of the PPP money that you and I gave them that they won't have to pay back
Really - one I doubt they won't have to pay some back but millions of businesses and hardly a thing you can call a business got money from the govt. during COVID. The government was making it rain cash and still is, I am sure some African fraud ring that got the millions from the unemployment they stole over multiple states deserved it more then DR. Or the lobbyists, law firms, churches, supposedly Tom Brady received a PPP loan for his business, Planned Parenthood, some other celebs, many larger businesses when it was intended for small businesses.
Sure DR has a dubious business plan but any loser could get cash from the govt because of COVID.
Everyone should be pissed at the govt that they gave so little care and scrutiny to the money dumped on state / local govt's and every business many little impacted.
The fool would be the person who did not apply and try.
Quoted from benheck:The answer to ALL these questions is the same - JPOP.
I wonder how much $$$$ he fleeced from RM.
Quoted from Roostking:I wonder how much $$$$ he fleeced from RM.
A lot considering he got most of the Zidware monkeys off his back, collected a ~$72k/yr salary for a few years, and a six figure Starbucks gift card.
If there was any progress they'd be showing us. Like Kevin and the pile of skulls in his mom's kitchen. Here's my time-line guess:
1) Runway money blown out by being 2 years late
2) No takers for their pitch deck
3) RAZA sales suck = money shut off
4) Skeleton crew (JPOP, Bowden, etc) maybe Robert's own money?
5) PPP hail Mary pass.
6) Working on exit strategy that won't bruise ego/get them sued.
Quoted from frolic:This most recent deadline was only to update people. They could have said anything and spun it any way they wanted. And yet it was completely missed... again.
They haven't missed the update deadline. Today is after the July 4th weekend. Tomorrow is too. As is the day after that. And so on.
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:They haven't missed the update deadline. Today is after the July 4th weekend. Tomorrow is too. As is the day after that. And so on.
Deeproot has always been at war with Eurasia.
RIP deeproot, we hardly knew ye...
I think IMHO the absolute end is only mere days away, and I say this because any company, no matter what, if you are in it to actually sell a product, the number one thing you need in hand is the product... the actual "what you intend to sell" and I do not accept the PinBar addled prototype as any kind of "what you intend to sell" positive indicator.
If they were really serious about selling more than 120 RAZAs, they would have put out a more polished machine prior to opening the order lines. They didn't, and so the polished turd the super six saw was only a half assed attempt of generating FOMO and it fell flat. If it were run by a reasonable person and not RM, I think deep root would have rolled up the carpets and slunk off quietly into the night already.
But RM's ego and desire to not loose face with his investment buddies has got him treading water long enough to churn and stir it up and muddy them so they don't and can't see that the real reason dr failed was all on him and his misguided devotion to JPop, and was him just trying to create something to brag about.
If his investor friends (who are probably pinball ignorant) ever stumbled upon Pinside, this may never have gotten to this level of insanity and stupidity, OR they did stumble onto Pinside and that cemented the fact that the jig was up, and the news was out.
But either way, wouldn't a company that wanted to continue past RAZA and produce a second glorious title (Go get 'em "Food Truck"!) wouldn't they have already moved on past the marketing flop of RAZA in terms of PR and marketing? Yet Crickets... nothing.
Ding dong Deep Root is dead
Which old root?
The deepest root!
Ding dong the Deep ol' Root is dead!
It's gone where the goblins go,
below below below, yo ho
Lets open up and sing and ring the bells out
Ding-dong's the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low
Let them know the Deepest Root is dead!
As coroner I must admit, I've thoroughly examined it
And it's not only merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead.
Then this is a day of independence for all the pinheads
And their descendants
Yes, let the joyous news be spread
The wicked old deep root at last is dead!
Songs now too ! And I thought the haiku earlier in the thread was interesting.
TWIP is reaching out to Deeproot to see what's up. Will there be a response ?
I tend to think the end is near too - or it has been for quite awhile.
Wouldn't be surprised if there was trouble paying their lease or something and they had to vacate the building. Might have a little to do with the extended silence - but it's just a guess. Will there be a new tenant in that space in the next month or two ? Are they still there ? Who knows. But it won't end well and for all we know it really has been all done for quite awhile less an exit strategy to save face and egos.
It's more than just the overdue update promise(s). It's the half-baked excuses of past updates and the radio silence. This is customer abuse plain and simple.
I know Yelobird doesn't want my sympathy but right now I feel horrible for him and all of the Pre-order/Zidware people.
Quoted from Mr68:It's more than just the overdue update promise(s). It's the half-baked excuses of past updates and the radio silence. This is customer abuse plain and simple.
I know Yelobird doesn't want my sympathy but right now I feel horrible for him and all of the Pre-order/Zidware people.
Meh - they had multiple opportunities and instead each time picked "let it ride!" - They just think the upside is still there. No empathy from me anymore when they picked gambling over pain avoidance.
I've seen this game play out before.
The next update:
"To be able to raise money for the pre-order backers, we must unfortunately sell what few games we have made on Amazon for a premium and use that money to make the pre-orders. This is an unfortunately turn of events, but the only possible solution."
Yes, this actually happened, and very few still got their items.
My guess is Robert continues DR as a "think tank"... Basically a way to keep his geezer crew on the clock (especially golden boy John who hasn't quite reached early SS age yet)
He may even pull a John and offer this crack team of has-beens "for free" to any company that fulfills the RAZA obligations.
On the plus side he will probably refund deposits to the new money buyers. As for the old, tough luck.
"George! Stop everything!"
"What is it Jody?"
"If we agree to build a gaudy remake of Cyclone we could gain access to deeproot's ENTIRE LINEUP!"
"Whoah. Like what?"
"Are you sitting down? You ready for this?..... MACHINE AGE"
"I'm calling Gary. Time to cancel all the licenses in the pipeline, DEEPROOT IS GOLD!"
Food Truck might work better than that bank of microwave ovens in the lunchroom at the real pinball company 
A real Food Truck ...
This is stretching from ‘ugly’ to brutal real quick.
I can’t even read the pre-order thread anymore.
Part of the dr employment pitch is every employee gets their own toilet, a personal microwave, and use of the company Crayola box
"We have day-care, just not what you think"
Laval, QC
Quoted from clempo:I keep coming back to this thread hoping to see an explosion in the number of posts indicating actual news, but nada. Just more posts like this one. Carry on folks.
It’s not like DR is giving much to go on.
Quoted from clempo:I keep coming back to this thread hoping to see an explosion in the number of posts indicating actual news, but nada. Just more posts like this one. Carry on folks.
We will, no doubt, carry this on for years. This is one for the ages.
Quoted from clempo:I keep coming back to this thread hoping to see an explosion in the number of posts indicating actual news, but nada. Just more posts like this one. Carry on folks.
I was doing the same. As much as I love Ben Heck posts, I have to quit cold turkey. SDTM.
Quoted from benheck:If there was any progress they'd be showing us. Like Kevin and the pile of skulls in his mom's kitchen. Here's my time-line guess:
1) Runway money blown out by being 2 years late
2) No takers for their pitch deck
3) RAZA sales suck = money shut off
4) Skeleton crew (JPOP, Bowden, etc) maybe Robert's own money?
5) PPP hail Mary pass.
6) Working on exit strategy that won't bruise ego/get them sued.
I dunno I think you all are looking way too deep into the "PPP" angle. Every business, nonprofit, etc anyone who has open doors and employees took PPP. Even if you didn't "need" it, you took it, because there was/is a ton of business uncertainty around the pandemic. Thinking its some sort of grift or lifeline I think is too generous.
This whole thing is so ridiculously like the 38 studios debacle and Curt Schilling; Curt believed for real if he could just keep the lights on long enough, eventually a bigger party would come by and 'buy' them out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios
It makes no sense to keep a skeleton staff around with no intention of building games, because if you decide to pack it in you'll most likely have burned through the refund money.
Quoted from Zablon:I've seen this game play out before.
The next update:
"To be able to raise money for the pre-order backers, we must unfortunately sell what few games we have made on Amazon for a premium and use that money to make the pre-orders. This is an unfortunately turn of events, but the only possible solution."
Yes, this actually happened, and very few still got their items.
Lol you talking about the "coolest"?
Quoted from Haymaker:Lol you talking about the "coolest"?
Yes, I was part of that shitshow. 
Quoted from Richthofen:It makes no sense to keep a skeleton staff around with no intention of building games, because if you decide to pack it in you'll most likely have burned through the refund money.
Eh. They didn't take in that much money with the preorders. Most people only put in $500-$1,000, and a lot of people had "store credit" as part of the Zidware settlement. Like they probably spend as much on one or two months of rent as what they pulled in with new pre-order money.
The preorder thing was always a red flag. They said they wouldn't do it for years, in retrospect they didn't even raise that much, and they didn't have enough faith in their own game to go ahead and order enough parts to get some units into arcades and dealer showrooms.
It's mind boggling that their FOMO sales window was a couple weeks, barely advertised anywhere (because who cares to write about it vs a nerdy blog talking about the last Marvel/Star Wars pinball), and came right after they made themselves look foolish to all the people who closely follow pinball and would actually be aware of the brief sales window.
Seriously, none of it makes a lick of sense. How could any sane person think that they would have sold more than a few dozen?
They only recently passed a thousand likes on their Facebook page, which has not been updated in several months. This is after years of them throwing money around to sponsor various pinball media and events to build up a brand that they lost all control over and seem disinterested in improving.
At best you have to hope they're shutting up to put their nose to the grindstone, but come on...
If they did live to another game release, they'd still be in the same shitty spot of no one really knowing what the brand is and the people who do are largely down on it.
Quoted from Mbecker:So if they pull the plug finally, I wonder where the protos will end up and if they’ll be worth more than the 25k magic girls when they first started trading hands.
I wonder how many are beyond the foam-core stage. It seems like they were working on animations more than playfields and mechanics.
Nordman quit because he couldn't get an engineer to work on his games. Maybe Oursler and Norris got a single game into prototype form?
edit: oh you meant the two or three hand built RAZAs. Who knows... I'm sure some people will get them and have a laugh with them considering the millions they cost to produce
Wasn't there something in the prior update about not contacting them?
I seem to remember that and found it odd.
Quoted from flynnibus:Meh - they had multiple opportunities and instead each time picked "let it ride!" - They just think the upside is still there. No empathy from me anymore when they picked gambling over pain avoidance.
Quoted from guitarded:When's the next Parking Lot Update?
Is that a dr slogan at this point? If so, you forgot the (TM) portion!
deeproot had said no more updates until after 4th of july weekend, they did not say there would be one that week, just that that they would not providing any until at least then. I am sure they were hoping that by now they would have a positive update to share. I would say the don't owe anyone an update, except for the fact they took deposits (despite saying they never would) and once you take peoples money, they are going to expect to be updated as thing progress.
FOMO only works if people actually fear missing out on something. Which either speaks volumes about RAZA or peoples belief in Robert and DR.
Did seem they indicated to someone in email or something that they would make an update last week, not sure if that was really from them or hearsay.
It would seem if games were on the line, a quick photo of that would quickly kill 75% of the negative noise (25% would want to pick part the inaccuracies of the image and after the Heighway fakes, would not blame them). But since we have not even see that it is hard to think production is underway. Not like the game is a secret that we can't see photos of it in production.
The UL thing was always BS, but if six months after you thought were going to be building games you are still not, really makes you wonder how clueless and incompetent Robert is. I've always felt we would see RAZA get made, if for no other reason than Robert's ego. But with each passing day harder and harder to seeing this playing out in a positive way.
Quoted from benheck:My guess is Robert continues DR as a "think tank"... Basically a way to keep his geezer crew on the clock (especially golden boy John who hasn't quite reached early SS age yet)
He may even pull a John and offer this crack team of has-beens "for free" to any company that fulfills the RAZA obligations.
On the plus side he will probably refund deposits to the new money buyers. As for the old, tough luck.
I guarantee you that any buyer would be responsible in writing for the feeding, care and vet appointment transportation of one JPOP.
Quoted from TreyBo69:Eh. They didn't take in that much money with the preorders. Most people only put in $500-$1,000, and a lot of people had "store credit" as part of the Zidware settlement. Like they probably spend as much on one or two months of rent as what they pulled in with new pre-order money.
The preorder thing was always a red flag. They said they wouldn't do it for years, in retrospect they didn't even raise that much, and they didn't have enough faith in their own game to go ahead and order enough parts to get some units into arcades and dealer showrooms.
The preorders was a very odd move. Maybe they took in $200k, but now they have 100 people very interested in getting their games in a timely manner. $200k is 1% of $20M spent and less if $30M has been spent to date.
Stories of Deeproot not paying suppliers and employees indicate they are conserving cash, right? If they were going to use preorder money to pay everyone what they are owed, they’d need more than $200k raised. Often the amount requested for preorder ends up being used specifically to buy the parts needed. I don’t think $1k is enough to buy all the parts needed for one game. So it wouldn’t have been expected to buy parts.
Alright time for broadway-ument. In the Producers, the conmen who collected money to produce their show, had no intention of putting on a good one, in fact they wanted it to fail so they could keep any unspent money. Did Robert start Deeproot with the intent of collecting/spending $20M in order to sell company for $25M before “producing” a single pin? If he did, he’s a moron.
Anyone else find it odd that Iceman is such a regular on this thread, does parking lot recon, and talks a lot about being a lawyer and Robert being a dumbass, yet he hasn't responded to multiple requests to pull the court cases for the active suit alleging DR isn't paying a contractor?
Quoted from iceman44:“Main guys still have jobs and working away on future titles”
“Stern has put a stranglehold on the supply chain. “
Iceman posted this in the other thread just a few hours ago. Looks like he's a shill for Deeproot.
I don't really care but I'm laughing at the irony of him falsely accusing me as being one many years ago for Jpop.
Quoted from Mr68:Iceman posted this in the other thread just a few hours ago. Looks like he's a shill for Deeproot.
I don't really care but I'm laughing at the irony of him accusing me as being one many years ago for Jpop.
Weird about the supply chain comment. We don't hear Spooky, PB, AP having supply chain issues. JJP apparently has a hard time sourcing washers tho.
Quoted from clempo:I keep coming back to this thread hoping to see an explosion in the number of posts indicating actual news, but nada. Just more posts like this one. Carry on folks.
Yes, once per page someone makes this post.
If you want to visit a thread discussing actual news about the production of an actual pinball machine, you really should just not come here any more.
This is all we've got for you. This is all we'll ever have for you.
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:Anyone else find it odd that Iceman is such a regular on this thread, does parking lot recon, and talks a lot about being a lawyer and Robert being a dumbass, yet he hasn't responded to multiple requests to pull the court cases for the active suit alleging DR isn't paying a contractor?
Lol. BJ, I’m not a litigator. I have no need to pull cases on the Bexar county system. And it’s just a breach of contract claim for non payment. Nothing more to it than that
I’d like to make up some more drama for you guys but you don’t need me for that.
Quoted from Mr68:Iceman posted this in the other thread just a few hours ago. Looks like he's a shill for Deeproot.
I don't really care but I'm laughing at the irony of him accusing me as being one many years ago for Jpop.
Everybody who throws out the lame "shill" slams has a history of shilling themselves. I call it the "Whysnow Rule."
I am curious as to why Stern's brutal stranglehold on the supply chain is only affecting Deep Root, and not the other 8 pinball machine manufacturers of various size who don't seem to be having any trouble.
Curious indeed!
Quoted from iceman44:Lol. BJ, I’m not a litigator. I have no need to pull cases on the Bexar county system. And it’s just a breach of contract claim for non payment. Nothing more to it than that
I’d like to make up some more drama for you guys but you don’t need me for that.
The only need would be to make my day, buddy!
Quoted from Mr68:I know Yelobird doesn't want my sympathy but right now I feel horrible for him and all of the Pre-order/Zidware people.
He (and presumably the other pre-order people) are right to not want our sympathy. They don't need it and they don't deserve it. They claim that they went into this with eyes wide open, knowing the risks. I have no reason to doubt them. So with that being the case, they get zero sympathy from me, which is not just the way they (rightfully) want it, it's the way it should be, based on all the obvious red flags.
Mitchell calling me a “shill” is a joke! I can’t see it other than it was quoted by someone.
I shilled the zero car observation on Friday and 4 car count the next week
Sympathy? For what? Lol. What is it you think you know?
Carry on. Not gonna say another word unless I pull a Mitchell and create a private FB group and share the details with pre order guys.
What did I say? Like a bunch of monkeys f ing football!
Quoted from CrazyLevi:I am curious as to why Stern's brutal stranglehold on the supply chain is only affecting Deep Root, and not the other 8 pinball machine manufacturers of various size who don't seem to be having any trouble.
Curious indeed!
Supply chain issues in this small industry are held close to the vest, like a hand in a card game. You don't want the other companies to know what cards you have or need, lest they take advantage of it.
I know ya'll consider Stern a monolith but compared to Apple, Samsung or Nintendo they're a lemonade stand. I'm sure they've had issues like everyone else.
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