Chronicles of Elyria: Indie Developer Soulbound Studios closes shop, fails to deliver after $8 millions USD in crowdfunding

8 million dollars? It's a combination of Runescape, and skyrim style game… which in theory sounds good. But 8 million for that? Wonder how much they took to compensate themselves.

However star citizen best con job in history, 288 million for 5 to 6 years of development. The entire approach is a con job, begging for money, for an idealistic game that never arrives or under performs. Its become a get rich quick path for the disreputable.

bruh I could deliver for a fraction of that inside of 2-3 years max.

Curious to see all they built. I just left a game company that blew through money like crazy as well. Focus on the wrong things in the wrong priorities. Worked on a game where you are a shark. Day one they focused on how the shark will move on land. Money goes quick.

Just to clarify something, guys: nothing was delivered. They allegedly had “a lot done” and “pretty advanced gameplay”, but that's all hearsay and now Jeromy closed doors of Soulbound Studios with vague blame and promise of possible future endeavours.

dpadam450 said:
Worked on a game where you are a shark. Day one they focused on how the shark will move on land.

That's hilarious! Seriously hilarious!

@Tom Sloper Yup, and it was on a 10 month dev cycle. The 9th month they then tried to cram in all combative AI along with 8 boss battles and 3 epic boss battles. Priorities. But it is coming out soon.

Can I have a mere 10k of that 8mil to found my tiny indie project? No? Okay.

Who wants to bet he finds more suckers, millions more in funds, and never completes the new game? After this time, they should be able to retire to an island… that they own… when no work is released, very sceptical, they should have handed the project over to other people.

It's an odd concept to me, give people money to make a game, that they then charge you for. Honestly i don't believe in the crowd source system. The latest robbery, star citizen, axanar, it's a long history of abuse with no results. They already took in money, why have results?

@launcher111 you're right: there are certainly things that need to be refined and adjusted because the crowdfunding model of overhyping games while under delivering has been way too prevalent in the industry over the last decade.

That being said, taking someone's money before making a game is regularly called “investing” and is nothing novel or specific to crowdfunding. In the case of crowdfunding, it just displaces risk onto a larger group of “investors” theoretically more willing or able to bear that risk.

In terms of Jeromy though, I doubt he ever finds a way to redeem himself, as he doesn't seem to see how the blame rests on him, and because of that, he'll always find a litteral army of ex-backers who feel flouted by him and will stand in his way to try and prevent any future such endeavour to happen again.

With investors, you have time tables, and the threat of being sued into oblivion. With crowd sourcing no such constraints mean anything, you simply beg for more money and extend the time line. The other pathway is people build a game, and finance the game themselves.

The real approach needed is to build a franchise which can sustain itself, not narrowly look at games, or movies, but form a group with the same project, able to promote each others project. Without the fear of lawyers coming after you on fan projects.

@Launcher111 Talking about Star Citizen, there is a reason why new backers are joining by ten thousands every quarter: because results are tangible. It is incredible how an handful of guys pretend there is no results while a million plus backers do support the game more every year. Despite 10's of click-bait articles, prophecies of doom (proven false every single year) and crowdfunding model that many never touch, whatever the project.

Current Alpha (with bugs, server crash and not all gameplay implemented) do have more packed features than triple-A made by publishers. The robbery since decades is from publishers and their copy/paste sequel.

Weird twist and astonishing turnabout again yesterday in this saga that keeps on giving; a real storm!

After stating on March 26th via his official Twitter that the studio was closing:

… and a few days after Xsolla, their payment-processing solution, while getting swamped in refund requests, told us:

Jeromy had the nerve to send an email to all backers and Kickstarter page saying, in essence, that they were still forging ahead on the path of making the game, many developers now working voluntarily on the game:

Today, the Washington State's Attorney General in person, along with Rep. Derek Kilmer, hosting a Facebook Live event, confirmed that suspicious crowdfunding campaigns have been prosecuted by the State in the past, and will be investigated and appropriate actions will be taken in the future:

As of today, the AG office has received over 240 consumer complaints in the last 2 weeks, the most ever in such a short period of time, and currently the #1 consumer matter opened with their office:

During the Facebook Live, the AG reminded us that any and all consumer, even if they weren't personally impacted by a given suspected scam or case, can file a consumer complaint against the offending party to further the case. If you would like to assist us in mnaking us this is getting investigated, please file a complaint:

https://fortress.wa.gov/atg/formhandler/ago/ComplaintForm.aspx

Soulbound Studios
11811 NE 1st St Ste B202
Bellevue, WA 98005-3033
(425) 295-2530
contact@SoulboundStudios.com

The AGO has also confirmed to us that any non-US citizen can still file a complaint as Soulbound Studios is a Washington-state based business; to do so, you can use your country's consulate in the USA or WA state as your address.

For more info, help, or a place to vent visit the official CoE Class Action Discord Server: https://discord.gg/PaVjjmM

Thanks to all!

Star citizen is a con job with all due respect. They set a timetable of 2 years, has it been 5 or 6 years? Money isn't the problem, they keep talking about building a game that should have been completed 3 years ago. To put things in perspective they could have paid over 560 developers half a million dollars each over 5 years to complete the game. That budget is roughly the same amount as a star wars movie.

I will ask you this question… how much more development time do they need? 2 or 3 years. 4 or 5 more years? How much more money do they need to finish the game?

Launcher111 said:

Star citizen is a con job with all due respect. They set a timetable of 2 years, has it been 5 or 6 years? Money isn't the problem, they keep talking about building a game that should have been completed 3 years ago.

I will ask you this question… how much more development time do they need? 2 or 3 years. 4 or 5 more years? How much more money do they need to finish the game?

I'll say this. Large scale games have a lot of overhead and even at that need a lot of people in general. To have a team of really good engineers you are talking about 100K+ in salary, not including benefits, employee tax, etc. So 20 engineers for 1 year is already about 2 Million bucks. Likely need more than 20 artists as well, but 20 artists about 2 Million as well. You can't make a huge AAA hit in 2 years, so that was just a lie. So it is really only a con-job in the sense that they said 2 years. Money isn't magically going to build a game either. Likely star citizen expanded past their core? No familiar with their updates, but people reach too far instead of getting an alpha build, they likely try to build 100 features at once.

@Launcher111 Why talking about respect when clearly you have no clue about what you are talking about. Gamedev means something. It imply that somehow you are familiar with basics understanding of game development and finance.

The proven con are those multi-billions $ per year publishers releasing copy-paste of same games over decades.

Meanwhile CIG do deliver an Alpha MMO and build a triple-A solo (SQ42) with beta in sight.

2014 was an estimated date for a product that was basically a refresh version of Wing Commander. Then it switched to two triple-A mid-20014, validated and supported since then by more new backers…. but some individual, right here in a gamedev dedicated site ask why it can't be done in 2 or 3 years starting from scratch.

Clearly those leaving such comments are not the ones I would hire to drive a project, unless they are highly talented as artist or code writers! With all my respect as well

Meanwhile, if you WON'T STAND for that kind of shenanighans, how it hurts the indie gamedev market and crowdfunding, there are means to get our voices heard through the Washington State Attorney General, whom has already successfully prosecuted one such crowdfunding scam.

Whether or not you were a backer of Chronicles of Elyria, as the AG explained during a Facebook Live with Rep. Derek Kilmer yesterday, you can file a complaint to their office in order to further our chances that this will be fully investigated.

To file a complaint with the Washington Attorney General: https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint

Use the following address for SBS:

Soulbound Studios
11811 NE 1st St Ste B202
Bellevue, WA 98005-3033
(425) 295-2530
contact@SoulboundStudios.com

YOU CAN PLACE A COMPLAINT EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE UNITED STATES!

To do so, use your consulate address and phone number and note in the description your country and address for them to reference. If you have questions on how to do this, please poke us on Discord.

Thanks! Together we can make a difference and force Jeromy Walsh and Soulbound Studios to come clean.

Here is my problem with the star citizen defense, they started it with a polished video of the ships and all the rest. They had the 3d models, the core concept was nailed down in the first presentation 6 years ago. It was a well thought out presentation explaining the MMO, they sold insurance on ships already designed, given stats, they even had the ships named.

If the goal is to make an advanced version of eve… they failed, my understanding is the game continues to crash, you wont be keeping progress from playing. No one can answer when will the game finally launch? They can add patches and extras into the game, but at some point the game needs to begin.

Of course the major game companies make junk and merely switch the names and avatars. I have my own thread on how they are hacks destroying franchises.

This will likely be in the top 3 most expensive video game ever built. With the time and money spent it better be flawless…

No one can answer when will the game finally launch?

Well, a quick google shows that Star Citizen is owned by a game designer and a film/game executive. Any companies not owned by software engineers seem to have issues. Remember Curt Shilling (baseball player) and his company 38 studios. You need disciplined people that understand software. Games are software.

dpadam450 said:

No one can answer when will the game finally launch?

Well, a quick google shows that Star Citizen is owned by a game designer and a film/game executive. Any companies not owned by software engineers seem to have issues. Remember Curt Shilling (baseball player) and his company 38 studios. You need disciplined people that understand software. Games are software.

Not wrong, I think you do need someone that has intimate understanding of software engineering, but they also need to be strong leaders and people's manager to effectively have a team going.

In the case in point here, clearly Jeromy Walsh's background was rather technical w/ some designer skillset (D&D experience?) but that didn't prevent them to hit a hard wall and fail producing anything.

With that in mind, I think some management skills are more important than technical ones as a leader, no matter the industry… althought that may be truer for larger/more complex businesses than indie/startups where your top guy necessarily need to wear a couple different hats concurrently in order to be efficient.