Valley/Radiant Games -- Up Front Fiasco

boardgamegeek.com/thread/941553/what-doe...-for-up-front/page/1

For those of you who have been following the Up Front project on Kickstarter, this stuff is getting pretty entertaining. I also had no idea that BGG supposedly banned Phil Sauer. Not all that surprising, I suppose.

Oh, evidently it was one of the "de facto" bans/suspensions for an extended period. How cute.

interesting thread. I don't really understand the legal system in the UK, never mind US so i can't really take an educated view of whats going on.

Whilst i quite like the two valley games prints i have (Titan and Hannibal) they do seem to be a very badly run company. Both of those games had a level of fiasco associated with them.

Wow...lots of stuff on there that I don't think anyone knew Valley was sitting on. Verrater/Meurterer, Age of Renaissance, Big City, Extrablatt, Princes of the Renaissance...

Think they had some of those up for 'order' or coming soon on a very early website. Definitely Big City at least, supposedly with wooden bits or something.

Yeah they had talked about doing Big City a while back but it just kind of died out. Not sure what happened with it. I'm glad I have Titan and Hannibal, but I think that'll be the extent of my purchases from them. I await the future MayDay fiasco that I'm sure is en route.

Can someone give me a short summary of what the fuck is going on there?

Valley Games is (likely) a shady company that has defaulted on many loans made from Phil Sauer (Axiom on BGG). He's brought "them" to court many times and won multiple judgments already, leading to the alleged shell game with their assets under the corporate name Radiant Games, who is publishing the reprint of Up Front through Kickstarter.

Only problem is that they never paid their judgments that Sauer won (100k+) and will likely have just taken everyone's money on the Kickstarter campaign to publish Up Front under false pretense. Phil is making the argument that they were doing all of this intentionally to avoid payment, which seems quite possible.

Phil had become increasingly vocal against them on BGG even as BGG moderators (I'm assuming here) moved evidential threads over to the basically defunct Radiant gaming forums. Phil and others became increasingly irate leading to Phil have a de facto "ban" placed on him.

Shit is basically hitting the fan because some of the war game regulars are bringing up and reviewing some of the documents filed in Dallas.

Woodall wrote: Yeah they had talked about doing Big City a while back but it just kind of died out. Not sure what happened with it. I'm glad I have Titan and Hannibal, but I think that'll be the extent of my purchases from them. I await the future MayDay fiasco that I'm sure is en route.

Big City was up on their website either for pre-order or as "pre-order coming soon" for a *long* time. I picked up a used copy off the BGG marketplace shortly after the original announcement from Valley about it, which cratered the prices for a while.

Come to think of it... I think Knizia filed suit against them as well last year. I had completely forgot about that.

Hahah... Torben Sherwood of Valley Games is editing the Radiant wiki page to try and distinguish Up Front more towards Radiant. Evidently not knowing that it tracks all the edits? Who in the hell would do this during legal proceedings?

Schweig! wrote: Can someone give me a short summary of what the fuck is going on there?

People are behaving shamefully in a very small, very interconnected community where their reputations are more valuable than their assets.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote: People are behaving shamefully in a very small, very interconnected community where their reputations are more valuable than their assets.

You said this about Mayday Games, too. If past experience has taught us anything about this community, it's that they couldn't give a damn if you set fire to an orphaned puppy as long as you dangle in front of their noses that sweet, sweet carrot of a board game.

S'what happens when people lack any self discipline. I have great hopes that humans will be able to consider something and reject it again.

Bullwinkle wrote: . . . as long as you dangle in front of their noses that sweet, sweet carrot of a board game.

That has been the most amazing part of this whole fiasco. There's people saying that the guy that's owed a quarter-mil should shut his mouth and get out of the way so their $40 pre-pay will be safe. I've owned dogs with more self-control.

I'd appreciate it if you'd quit rehashing my complete lack of faith in the human race. It's equally depressing reheated.

S.

In the people's defense, your dogs can't work the internet to get into the echo chamber.

If I hadn't lost my give-a-shit many moons ago, I'd totally do a MayDay-style investigational piece on it.