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Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)

Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.

× For those who like to push chits.

Valley Games is run by dim witted, sleezy crooks

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08 Apr 2013 19:33 #149895 by flim_flam
For those that haven't been following the Up Front Kickstarter debacle a real doozy landed today. The full evidence against Valley Games or Radiant or whatever the fuck they are called now.

www.boardgamegeek.com/article/11932433#11932433

For those without the stomach to read to whole thing, they are essentially defrauding a creditor by creating a shell company. They are caught backdating documents of their shell corporation and asking their warehouse to move inventory around so it can't be seized. They have been caught trying to shovel away cash before it can be found in corporate accounts.

Class A sleezy bidness folks, here.
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08 Apr 2013 19:45 #149899 by Erik Twice
This looks shitty as fuck. Now I wonder: What will happen to the rights to games like Titan, Liberté or The Republic of Rome?

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08 Apr 2013 20:08 #149903 by Rliyen
And I especially love the fact that the RG defenders have taken to the hinterlands since the facts have come out, rather than acknowledge that they were wrong.

Schadenfreude Pie... It's damn tasty.
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08 Apr 2013 20:23 #149905 by repoman

Erik Twice wrote: This looks shitty as fuck. Now I wonder: What will happen to the rights to games like Titan, Liberté or The Republic of Rome?


Doesn't matter because I got my copy of Republic of Rome last week thanks to your post on "What Boardgames Have You Been Playing", and I already own Hannibal.

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08 Apr 2013 20:25 #149907 by repoman
It does make me damn glad I didn't help kickstart Up Front.
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08 Apr 2013 21:01 #149909 by scissors
I am glad I acquired the original up front by chance. and picked up big city years ago at a sale. just sold RoR but Titan and Hannibal are keepers.

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08 Apr 2013 21:08 #149910 by MattFantastic

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08 Apr 2013 21:24 #149915 by wadenels
I've been following this in sort of a morbid curiosity kind of way. Here's a pretty nice "the story so far" type of post if you just want to catch up a bit.
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08 Apr 2013 21:36 #149919 by Bull Nakano
These are some sloppy criminals.

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09 Apr 2013 00:07 #149927 by Msample

wadenels wrote: I've been following this in sort of a morbid curiosity kind of way. Here's a pretty nice "the story so far" type of post if you just want to catch up a bit.


That's some Smoking Gun shit right there.

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09 Apr 2013 00:33 #149928 by ChristopherMD
Isn't this the company where people were bitching about Hannibal pre-order extras (some kind of figurines I think) that sucked? Followed by other issues with games they released. And people actually gave them Kickstarter money? I remember when they announced a bunch of great reprints when they first showed up then didn't release most of them. Recall some P### issues early on too. Seems like they've had a track record of shitness and lies.

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09 Apr 2013 00:44 #149929 by gversace
Well, their production of the D-Day Dice kickstarter was top notch. Excellent components, and great stretch goals, including a very nice canvas bag that was delivered only a couple months late, which is basically early by kickstarter standards. Granted, if you were a "line for life" backer, you might now be screwed, but the value they provided in the original package was awesome. Game isn't bad, either.

Hannibal was also well done, except for the (relatively minor) board error. Once you got past the mold issue with Titan, it was also well done.

That said, if they don't have any rebuttal to the evidence in that filing, they're horrible, sleazy business people. Shame, really, because I would have liked them publish Up Front.

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09 Apr 2013 00:57 - 09 Apr 2013 01:18 #149931 by Dogmatix
Track record of shite, yes. I think the Big Lies (at least to the general consumer public) are a newer wrinkle, though.

No offense to Flim, but both sites get a new thread every time someone hears about the story for the first time. First one I read was maybe 6(?) months ago and Phil Sauer was already heaving live rounds in public spaces--I was clearly late to the party even then. So, that said, since this is the 4th thread or so around the Fort [which only puts it around 2,000 behind BGG], has anything actually new cropped on this? I just can't bring myself to wade through another round of internet pitchforks and torches (regardless of how well-deserved they might be) if nothing much has changed beyond yet more documentation of perfidy [nothing new there since Sauer has long quit lobbing ranging rounds in favor of Fire For Effect for months now].

So, is everyone still pretending that moral outrage is sufficient to pierce the veil on the LLC and that Phil Sauer will ever see a nickel? It's usually not, so he likely won't (and, in a cruel and entertaining twist of fate, Up Front and Airborne in My Pocket probably *will* go to print and 2/3rds of the outraged commentors across all game sites will buy one or both of those games. Phil Sauer, of course, likely still won't see a nickel. Neither will Knizia, for that matter for all the sleazy bullshit. If they can't get over the legal hurdles that surround and protect any LLC (even bad ones), it doesn't matter how outraged consumers are (or how much a company might deserve it based on the utterly-divorced-from-actual-law "common sense" factor).

I'd also offer the following for possible perspective on the overall value and impact of game consumers' internet rage: Mayday Games has continued in business and even producing new stuff frequently enough and they have a stellar--and possibly unblemished--track-record of lying, cheating, *and* producing really shitty products. Since most of their products seem to be aimed at the card-sleeving & game-pimping crowd, you'd think the mass of "informed regulars" at The World's Largest Boardgame Website & Its Less Famous But Better at Sensible Outrage Grow'd Up Blog Cousin would have driven that fucker off to die under a rock. Even a SuperflyPete fuzed to "Nuke" and dropped Danger Close wasn't more than an interesting, if momentary, sideshow. Valley Radiant will likely survive in some form.

My bet is that folks should be watching for a 3rd LLC with a couple of altogether unknown names on the masthead who "buy" the rights to AiMP, Up Front and whatever else Rik and Torben (or whomever from the original VG crew lingers on) have hidden in the back of the closet. Radiant/Valley go completely under and Phil gets $.001 on the dollar out of the remnants. (If Phil Sauer were to, e.g., go after the IP for AiMP or UpFront and then *doesn't* immediately produce them, he'll just be the next target for internet pitchforks--except the hate will be exponentially beyond what Valley/Radiant got. A Woman Scorned ain't got nothing on An Internet Warrior Betrayed By His Cause du Jour.)
Last edit: 09 Apr 2013 01:18 by Dogmatix.
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09 Apr 2013 01:23 #149932 by Sevej
Seems that VG outdid Mayday. Yes, Mayday lies, deliver sleazy products, but I don't think they ever borrow money and does not deliver.

The document is pretty damning, at least in my eyes. There are some outright illegal stuff like backdating, and fishy stuff proved by interview with PSI's president that VG and RG stores the exact same stuff, with the same SKU, only with different banks to which transfers from the profit are made.

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09 Apr 2013 01:52 #149936 by Dogmatix

Sevej wrote: Seems that VG outdid Mayday. Yes, Mayday lies, deliver sleazy products, but I don't think they ever borrow money and does not deliver.

The document is pretty damning, at least in my eyes. There are some outright illegal stuff like backdating, and fishy stuff proved by interview with PSI's president that VG and RG stores the exact same stuff, with the same SKU, only with different banks to which transfers from the profit are made.


Should be interesting to see if that's going to be sufficient. As I mentioned in a previous thread, running up debt, dumping the company, and forming a new LLC with all the same bodies, inventory, and practices is incredibly common in the nightclub industry. Same, as Sag noted, with home-building (which I should have known as that's precisely what happened with the builder of the development in which I live--and every single house has had problems traceable directly to shoddy materials or poor construction practices. No one, however, has ever been able to do anything about it because the builder's company declared bankruptcy and simply vanished...until it reformed 2 days later as a new and thus untouchable LLC to start working on another development project.
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