Eurogamer
It was bound to happen sooner or later, but it seems Kickstarter might just have racked up its first significant gaming scam.
As reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, the project in question is a fantasy RPG project titledMythic: Gods & Men that launched last month asking for $80,000 in contributions.
The funding drive was cancelled by its creator - a mysterious outfit called Little Monster Productions - three days ago, with $4739 raised from 83 backers, following accusations that it was all just a scam.
The evidence? Posters on the Something Awful forums spotted that Little Monster had 'borrowed' character art and concept models from various design blogs and had copied and pasted its reward tiers directly from another Kickstarter for The Banner Saga, while images of its offices were lifted from the Burton Design Group's site.
Eyebrows were also raised at its rather unlikely assertions that its team included nine developers who had "left Activision / Blizzard in search of a better game creation environment" and that the game's "animations will be done via motion capture thanks to some friends at Disney/Pixar".
Not only that but the $80,000 total and planned May 2013 launch both seem very ambitious for a project of its purported scale.
Little Monster answered the accusations shortly prior to the game's cancellation but hasn't been heard from since.
"It seems we have been subjected to false claims of ownership right to our concepts," read a post on its Kickstarter forum page.
"The game itself is well in progress and is NOT a scam of any kind. Thank you for understanding. If you have any furthure [sic] questions please feel free to ask."
Kickstarter only transfers cash from pledges if a project is funded, so no backers will have been left out of pocket.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-01-fantasy-rpg-kickstarter-accused-of-scamming-plagiarism
