6: Siege – First Thoughts

Over the last few years on Brainwaves we have covered the slow and steady decline of the company Mythic Games. You may have clicked on this article expecting what the title promised, but that’s not what you are getting. Instead I am here to hopefully leave you better informed on the company behind this game and why you should never give them any of your money.

The Email

Let me explain why I am doing this. As we reported in the most recent episode of Brainwaves, Mythic Games sent out an email to a bunch of reviewers about receiving copies of Rainbow Six: Siege. The email was sent in such a way that every recipient could see all the addresses it had been sent to. That is the first red flag and a likely GDPR violation. I am sharing that email below, with the addresses cropped out of course. This was shared to me by a fellow reviewer, I was not on the email list.

Now I hope that reading that email sent the same alarm bells ringing for you as it did for me. You would think that any reviewer getting this email would spend some time googling what the company means by “is nearing the end of delivery to backers, which is a relief and a source of pride for us despite the context that we know is quite hostile to us.” A few seconds googling and the second result, in google for me, is a reddit thread entitled “Mythic Games and it’s complete and utter failure to uphold it’s promises”. Grammar issues aside, you get my point: it is incredibly simple to figure out something is amiss.

This email has been discussed amongst reviewers and on the facebook group Board Game Reviewers and Media, which I am a member of. My friend Richard Simpson from We’re Not Wizards posted a thread there asking whether or not you would take on the game given the history of the company and the way it has treated backers. The hand wringing amongst my fellow reviewers about maybe covering the game left me pretty angry and sad. One of the admins of the group eventually popped into the thread and said ‘This is not a group to name and shame’ . That’s a facebook group for “Reviewers and Media” not allowing those Reviewers and Media to openly discuss bad actors in the sector. Good job.

To give you some background to the reviews you might see I offer the below information so you can make up your own mind on Mythic Games. I will update it from time to time with new information as it comes to light and put those updates in a changelog at the bottom of the piece. I provide links to various articles covering the company, the casts we have covered them on, all the projects still oustanding, and some thoughts on the role of Kickstarter in this scandal.

Boardgamewire Articles

Reports from Boardgamewire on Rainbow Six and Mythic’s woes in chronological order. I would summarise these for you but the headlines sort of speak for themselves. Boardgamewire is a source of news I trust and they are not sensationalising the situation.

Brainwaves Casts

Below are all the casts that have featured Mythic Games controversies. You will also find links in each cast to news digests that are the written notes for the casts that should give you the information you are looking for. Most of the casts linked will have time stamps on your podcast player so you can skip to the relevant story.

Undelivered Projects

Here are links to all the projects that Mythic are still to deliver along with funding amounts and any additional information I felt was relevant. Mythic Games is run by Benoit Vogt and Leonidas Vesperini, the latter being quoted in some of the articles above. The “About Us” page for the company still lists some of the games that have now gone to other companies as well as touting the triumphs of partially, or fully, undelivered projects.

Monsterpocalypse

This game was originally funded in 2019 for $1,310,177. Last update was March 31st 2023. Best I know this is their oldest undelivered project.

Hel: The Last Saga

The game was originally funded on May 26th, 2020 for $2,215,842. The game has now transferred ownership to CMON. CMON also bought the rights to Anastyr, listed below. CMON said of the projects in an update

“Upon careful evaluation of both titles, we have concluded that neither HEL: The Last Saga nor Anastyr are currently ready for publication in their current state and will require substantial effort to complete them. “

Link to the update that transferred ownership

Anastyr

The game was originally funded on May 6th, 2022 for $1,079,682. The project is now in the hands of CMON as mentioned above.

Rainbow Six: Siege

Finally the project that got me writing this in the first place. Although some backers have received their copies by the looks of the comments, some have not. The project funded on the 21st of July, 2021 for $1,541,463. They then asked up to $129 from each backer depending on their pledge to get the games finished. I do not know the final amount raised.

Darkest Dungeon – First Thoughts

One of my friends was caught up in the Darkest Dungeon debacle but finally got their copy. Darkest Dungeon backers have been asked for extra funding twice over the course of delivery and the project is still not complete. I thought it was important to get my thoughts out about it so I wrote this First Thoughts piece. This is just after one play and I talk about some of the odd design choices I felt Mythic had made. I have played the computer game a bit.

Kickstarter

As you have likely noticed by now Mythic have had several campaigns undelivered while continuing to run new ones. How can this happen you might ask? Doesn’t Kickstarter have a policy against such things? Well, yes and no. I link you to their support page about running multiple campaigns.

Can I run more than one project at once?

In this article they say this

..we do allow experienced creators in good standing to launch and manage a certain number of projects back to back, within and depending on the category they have experience in on the site. We consider a creator to be “experienced” once they have completely fulfilled at least four projects.

Below this they clarify what they mean by ‘good standing’

A creator is considered to be in good standing when they have demonstrated they can abide by Our Rules and Community Guidelines, present their projects honestly and clearly, and fulfill their campaigns to a high standard. This means maintaining regular, open, and honest communication with backers and delivering rewards as promised.

Do you think Mythic qualifies for that? I certainly don’t. Kickstarter claims that creators not in “good standing” will lose their ability to run multiple overlapping projects. This does not seem to have been the case with Mythic. I have reached out to Kickstarter for comment on this and will update here when, or if, I hear back.

In researching this piece I also realised that the game had taken some funding through Gamefound!

Update 30/6/24

I still haven’t heard back from Kickstarter but Gamefound were actually pretty sharp in replying to me. I received these emails over the 20th and 21st of May. They said this:

Thanks for reaching out. We appreciate your commitment to promoting accountability and transparency in the crowdfunding community.

The projects you mentioned, including Monsterpocalypse, were handled as part of our PMv1 (Pledge Manager version 1) system. These projects were not used to raise additional funds but were rather tools to facilitate the delivery of already funded projects.

Our policy, as outlined here, applies to first-time creators starting their second project on our platform. This means that new creators must fully deliver their first project on Gamefound before launching another. For Mythic Games, we have only hosted one actual campaign, which was thoroughly reviewed and approved by our compliance department following a comprehensive evaluation process.

At Gamefound, we are committed to protecting our backers. We have implemented several measures to ensure better safety, including comprehensive project reviews, continuous monitoring, and a dedicated compliance team to oversee all campaigns. Our goal is to maintain the highest standards of trust and reliability in the crowdfunding community.

We understand the importance of these matters to your audience. We hope this clarifies our position and the steps we are taking to uphold our platform’s integrity.

Basically the projects shown on Gamefound are when they were still the backend to a lot of Kickstarter campaigns. I established that the project that this was the case for was called Rise of the Necromancers. I asked how Gamefound felt about the project given the current state of Mythic and the undelivered nature of the game. I received this in reply.

We always aim to bring projects to our platform that will deliver as promised. We have a thorough onboarding process to make sure backers get the best board games through crowdfunding. Our goal is to create a reliable space for both backers and creators, reducing the risk of unsuccessful campaigns.

However, despite our best efforts, sometimes things happen that we can’t foresee or control. We do everything we can to prevent these situations.

I thought these were not bad replies at all. I’ll update again when/if I hear back from Kickstarter.

Don’t look now

I hope this has helped leave you more informed about Mythic Games. There are thousands of games that come out every year that are not attached to a company with the history and reputation of Mythic. I would strongly urge you to support any of them instead. As I said at the top, I will update this article with any further news about Mythic as time marches on.

I am not one of those people that think it’s realistic to know everything about every product you buy. It is too much to expect that of every consumer. However I do expect it of anyone creating consumer facing content with a company such as Mythic Games. Mythic’s screw ups have been large, public, and reported in many places. At this point if you are a reviewer unaware of what they have been up to, especially if you were part of the email chain I shared at the top of the piece, you are just wilfully ignoring the immense harm this company has done to its backers.

Whatever sort of ‘content creator’ you are you have a responsibility to your audience. If you are willing to ignore the practices of a company like Mythic just so you can get a free game you need to take a long hard look at yourself and ask what you have become. It just simply isn’t worth the cost.

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