Cryptozoic saves Kickstarter scam game

The Doom that came to Atlantic City, was an ironicly named game for a Kickstarter, since ultimately the story surrounding it became about the doom of the campaign itself. After over a year of development, the man controlling the money for the thing announced that the whole project had been shelved, since they'd run out of money – despite getting nearly five times the original goal in crowd funds. Understandably, people cried foul, especially since the head of the game's publisher, Erik Chevalier, moved house during that year thanks to some of that money – though in a recent story, we covered how he plans to somehow pay everyone back, one day.

Now though, to help save the game from its doom and to fulfil initial Kickstarter pledges, Cryptozoic, the company behind several card games based around TV shows and games, has announced it will be handling the property from now on, with initial concept creators Keith Baker and Lee Moyer, who it seems weren't involved with the money swindling.

“For Lee and I, the worst part of this is that people who put their faith in our game have been hurt by it,” said Baker while discussing the campaign fallout. “After the Kickstarter was cancelled, many people came forward with ideas to keep the game alive. But we didn’t want to pursue an option that would save Doom unless it would also get the game into the hands of the people who first supported it.”

Moyer and Baker have apparently been trying to get this game made for over a decade, but while it seemed like a Kickstarter along with publisher Forking Path would make that happen, endless delays and phony updates from the publisher saw the game languishing in no-man's land. It was initially supposed to be supplied to backers in November last year, but it was only a few days ago that Chevalier admitted that the game would never see the light of day.

“We were really shocked to hear the news about this last week” said Scott Gaeta Cryptozoic’s chief operating officer. “The game looked fantastic and I thought that we might be able to help, so I contacted Keith right away.  Keith and Lee told me that taking care of the Kickstarter backers was the most important thing to them and I couldn’t agree more. That’s why we are going to be fulfilling all of the Kickstarter game orders ourselves.”

The new game board showcased after the Cryptozoic announcement

“Our first priority is getting the game produced and in the hands of the Kickstarter backers,” said Gaeta. “We are already working with the factory and should have a date we can share in a few weeks. We are also going to be demoing the game at Gen Con and the upcoming Alliance Open House. This game is just too much fun not to make it available to gamers everywhere.”

Moyer did say via his blog though, that this wasn't Crytozoic taking over the campaign, as he put it, “the project was cancelled, and this is not a reward.” He still expects Chevalier to figure out how to refund the original backers, since he benefited from that money without fulfilling any reward tiers.

It will be interesting to see if any legal action emerges because of this underhanded tactics – Chevalier has certainly received several threats to that tune already.

KitGuru Says: It's great to hear that Cryptozoic are going out of their way to make the backers happy, that's a real classy move. Both Baker and Moyer were solid too, offering print and play versions to backers before they knew Cryptozoic would save the day.

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