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However, something sorta dawned on me thinking about this project. If they decide to pull this (it's been looking likely with how bad they're attempting to control the narrative on their product), I wonder what consumer laws, if any, would protect those who "pre-ordered" through them. A pre-order is not the same as an investment, or backing a crowdfunding campaign, at least in legal terms. Pre-ordering means buying a presumably real product before it gets released, while investing in, or "backing", a crowdfunding campaign for a product at the end is simply a risky investment (one of the reasons Kickstarter and IndieGogo scammers can be a slippery bunch sometimes). So if you pre-order a product from a company based in the US, and that product turns out to be complete vaporware, there surely has to be legal recourse for this. I'm not an expert in consumer protection and fraud laws, so I really would like to know if this technicality amounts to really anything.

While Kickstarter and Indiegogo like to say "this isn't a pre-order" as sort of a way to help cover their butts when something goes wrong, the situation with the Polymega and (for example) the Chameleon are pretty much the same. In both cases you are pre-ordering, and the Polymega guys structured their pre-order as a crowdfunding event complete with thresholds, rewards levels, and everything you'd see at Kickstarter (minus even the smallest amount of accountability). As far as the law is concerned, I don't think crowdfunding (as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo define it) is really any different than the pre-order set up for the Polymega. In none of those cases is there an "investment". Real investments have a different set of laws. In the pre-order or Kickstarter case, the person pre-ordering/pledging isn't getting ownership in the company. They are getting specific promises (the "rewards"). Every time someone running a scam tries the "this was an investment" defense, a judge will immediately shut it down with "where's your profit-sharing agreement?". Nope, in all these cases these are pre-orders as far as consumer law is concerned. So you can sue them, and the government could go after them for fraud. In most cases, unless we're talking millions of dollars and tens of thousands of people scammed, the government generally won't bother because fraud is really tough to prove. They have to show they intended to defraud, and the best defense to that is "we didn't know what we were doing". So the very thing that should tip you off that this is a scam (the people involved lack the ability to deliver what they promise) is their best defense. Unless there are emails between people saying "yeah, we're totally going to scam these people" it's hard to prove they intended to defraud people. It takes a lot of time and resources to put together a criminal case (remember the high burden of proof the government has), so for something as small as this or the average Kickstarter, the government won't bother. You could sue them in Civil Court, but that again is problematic because that costs you personally money to hire a lawyer and investigate. There are class action lawsuits, but those cost even more money and most lawyers would see the number of people scammed (2,000) the relatively low amount of money ($500,000) and say it's not a good gamble. Now if one of the people involved was rich, they might try to go after them for punitive damages but someone with enough personal money to be worth suing probably wouldn't run a scam this small or would be smart enough to have their money unreachable from a US judgement. And that doesn't even get into the problem that it's hard to sue someone individually for the promise the "company" made. All these scammers set up an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation). If you get a judgement, it's against the company's assets not the individuals who set up the company. But the company only has the assets from the scam (in this case the $500,000 they raised) MINUS any expenses they incurred. Those expenses can be R&D, advertising, and employee salaries. So if the top officers of the company have as part of the LLC salaries that are (for instance) $150,000 a year, three of them could effectively eat up all the money they collected and still have about $100K to pay everyone else for the year, the creation of those fancy CGI renders, the "prototypes", trips to gaming shows, etc.. Then if people did sue the LLC, the books will show that the LLC has no money (or is even in debt) and therefore any judgement to return your money is worthless. "Youcan't get blood from a turnip". And because the corporation limits the liability (LLC, get it?) of those who created it, you can't touch their personal assets unless you can prove an intentional fraud in the creation of the LLC. So, yeah, if you "pre-ordered" this thing, your only hope right now is to go for a chargeback on your credit card before that window closes. But if you believe they still will deliver this magic machine (and are just being conspicuously silent for dramatic effect) , "Good Luck!" I guess?

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And because the corporation limits the liability (LLC, get it?) of those who created it, you can't touch their personal assets unless you can prove an intentional fraud in the creation of the LLC. So, yeah, if you "pre-ordered" this thing, your only hope right now is to go for a chargeback on your credit card before that window closes. But if you believe they still will deliver this magic machine (and are just being conspicuously silent for dramatic effect), "Good Luck!" I guess?

 

Playmaji isn't an LLC, though, it's an Incorporated company (Inc.). This means that while the people who formed it are separate legal entities from the company as far as the law is concerned, much like a LLC; the major difference is that shareholders, investors and creditors can assume full control of a company from the owners if a judge sees fit to do so (this is to the best of my understanding, again not a legal expert here). I agree with the rest of what you said, as it does boil down to: "If you have doubts about the Polymega, do a chargeback now so you don't regret it later." However, since Playmaji doesn't have the full liability protections of a limited liability company, if the angel investors or any creditors lose patience over the lack of progress and come a-knockin', they can still be taken to court by them proof of fraud or not.

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Playmaji isn't an LLC, though, it's an Incorporated company (Inc.). This means that while the people who formed it are separate legal entities from the company as far as the law is concerned, much like a LLC; the major difference is that shareholders, investors and creditors can assume full control of a company from the owners if a judge sees fit to do so (this is to the best of my understanding, again not a legal expert here). I agree with the rest of what you said, as it does boil down to: "If you have doubts about the Polymega, do a chargeback now so you don't regret it later." However, since Playmaji doesn't have the full liability protections of a limited liability company, if the angel investors or any creditors lose patience over the lack of progress and come a-knockin', they can still be taken to court by them proof of fraud or not.

Thank you for the correction. Do we know if there really are "angel investors"? When I've heard them mentioned, I immediately thought of Mike Kennedy's claims about not needing Kickstarter money because of some last minute (apparently invisible) rich business partner. It's the kind of story along the lines of some douche in high school saying "I have a supermodel girlfriend. She lives in Canada. That's why you never see her.".

Edited by atm94404
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Thank you for the correction. Do we know if there really are "angel investors"? When I've heard them mentioned, I immediately thought of Mike Kennedy's claims about not needing Kickstarter money because of some last minute (apparently invisible) rich business partner. It's the kind of story along the lines of some douche in high school saying "I have a supermodel girlfriend. She lives in Canada. That's why you never see her.".

I don't think it's ever been 100% confirmed, but people in the know seemed to indicate it was more likely than not. Plus, it was right after that Playmaji started picking up extra talent, seeking office rentals, and securing various IP from other companies. It doesn't prove they had angel investors, but I see no reason to doubt that particular statement.

 

Also noteworthy is the dialing back of physical media support in favor of their digital storefront, and the absolutely constipated obsession with patents and ROM support... which (IMO) reeks of someone who has no idea what retrogaming is like trying to protect their "investment". Again, proves nothing, but does mesh well with suspicions.

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This was from E3, so it's almost 9 months old. And before the bait and switch. Nothing to see here.

 

Um... That's IndieCade, not E3, which was in October; that's still before the almost complete radio silence, but after the bait-n-switch. I haven't watched beyond the first 90 seconds, but it sounds like Bernal is either not giving answers about things beyond broad strokes or is spouting outright bullshit (EG: he says that the proper HD resolution to scale most of the retro consoles up is 1080p, not 720p like what has already been established for a proper 3x upscale from the 240p resolution that old TVs, and thus the vast majority of retro games, had for native video output). I doubt that there will be anything of substance spoken by Bernal that he hasn't already claimed, as I am not going to sit through twelve minutes of this improvisational, guerrilla styled interview in the middle of a crowd of people, with the audio quality to match.

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Um... That's IndieCade, not E3, which was in October; that's still before the almost complete radio silence, but after the bait-n-switch.

Listen to him starting around 8:50 minutes. He said they still had not asked anyone for a single dime from the public, and it sounds like he says preorders should start within the next 3 months (the audio of him talking is hard to hear clearly throughout parts of the video). The preorder went live in mid/late Sept.

 

Earlier in the video, he was asked about adding Saturn support. He would not commit to it. Yet in mid/late Sept was when they showed off the fake Saturn footage.

 

I also thought I heard him say right around the 10 minute mark "... one of the things we are announcing here at E3 ...". But again, sometimes it's hard to clearly hear what he is saying in this video. Also shortly before that I saw someone with an E3 2018 backpack standing behind him.

 

I could be wrong if I'm not hearing what they are saying correctly, but this seems to be from before October.

Edited by nick3092
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"Progress update" in March... for a console that ships April 1st. Someone needs to call these assholes out.

 

I wonder if they started to get some chargebacks from people. I mean, anyone Googling "Polymega" would realize that the only traffic about the Polymega for the last several months is negative as people speculate the reasons for the complete silence after "we'll have proof videos posted very soon" months ago. I would say it was clever to use a contest so they could give an update without saying anything at all about the Polymega's (lack of) progress. I would say it was clever except the Vega+ scammers did the same thing:

https://youtu.be/UkvOlE8qDB0?t=805

 

All those nice, respectable names involved with the contest almost seem like testimonials when placed on the same page as the Polymega. I wonder if the people running the contest did any research into the Polymega when they accepted the "honor" of having its contests winners featured on a "special playlist"? I mean, its not even the top prize as far as the contest holders are concerned. It's sort of in the "and a year's supply of Turtle Wax" grab bag of prizes. Anybody want to clue in the contest holders about whom they've climbed into bed with?

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Well, I was trying to do that, but...

 

(as if that would prevent me from viewing their tweets from another browser where I'm not logged in)

 

I still find it a damn wonder I am not blocked by Polymega on Twitter, maybe they're hoping I'll go away on my own (reality check: ain't happening, Bryan). I saw at least one other person that got banned for daring to question the logic of announcing a NES homebrew contest instead of a genuine progress update. I tempted fate by directly telling this person that I still haven't been banned for some reason, and promptly decided to make a similar response to Polymega's Twitter. In fact, I made a good half dozen of them.

 

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So in this latest non-important update to Playmaji and the Polymega saga, we saw the announcement for a NES homebrew contest hosted by an actual Kickstarter success (NESmaker) taking priority over an update on production progress, the promise of said update sometime within a month before a supposed release, a roundabout confirmation that they're making the contest a priority with the type of prizes only fit for a for_exposure.txt tweet, banning someone for daring to question this contest existing when we're not even sure the grand prize (the very console they're supposedly working on) even exist with its current specs, and Bernal and Co. telling customers they can't go on social media for five minutes with at least a proof-of-life update, and the nonsensical logic that their silence and avoidance of social media is only a good thing because it proves they're working oh so hard on this console, they swear it.

 

Getting back to this contest and the somewhat throwaway mention of the fine folks over at @for_exposure.txt: am I the only one who feels like this contest is a roundabout way for Polymega to bolster their online catalog of games since I doubt that their online store will really have that many titles to choose from? Or, at the very least, a way to prepare some promotional materials to show the hardware around if and when it goes to be shown off at conventions again? I mean, it could be my scammer paranoia getting the best of me, but it appears to me that this contest is a vague attempt at cross-promotional mutual benefaction between Polymega and NESmaker than a fun little contest to get those retro enthusiasts' creative juices flowing.

 

While the contest clearly states in its FAQ that contest participants do keep the rights to game, they can still use it to showcase their products at conventions.

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Something tells me that Mr. Bernal knows the console isn't launching on April the 1st and is wanting something without a previous existing license to show off at future conventions. Polymega's tweets said the contest is time sensitive, and while I didn't understand why when I wrote my reply, now I think I get it. The contest page notes a submission deadline of March 10th, with the top prized submissions being shown off at NESmaker's booth at upcoming retro gaming conventions such as SXSW and GDC. That grand prize, though; the winner might be better off attempting to find a Phantom Entertainment console.

Edited by DurradonXylles
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