What's the most corrupt sector of the traditional game industry?

Probably that guy who used company funds to remodel his house, I think it was from L5R

That's catalyst games. Tanked Leviathans, gutted shadowrun, relegated battletech to even more of a redheaded stepchild, got lots of people fired, still has a high up position in the company.

Google it, shit's fucked up.

MTG.

FLGS employees often use machines in their backrooms to reseal booster packs after skimming all the best cards out of them.

I use those same crimp sealers at my work and I always wondered if it would be as easy as it seems...

They are taking minimal measures. There is no real obstacle to scamstarting once or twice, all they made it harder to do is spamscamstart. Meanwhile, Patreon is literally scamville.

The reason they aren't preventing their users from defrauding people is because they get a cut of the fraud money. If they put anti-fraud protections in place and the fraud stopped, they'd get less money.

Palladium Books, good ole Unca Kevvy stealing his way to retirement while his employees steal his retirement.

>Catalyst Games.

This is it. It shouldn't even be a question.

Yeah, kickstarter shit is fucked up, and the guy who runs Palladium certainly pulled some corrupt crap back in the late 90s and early 2000s, but the fact that the cheif financial guy for Catalyst stole $800,000 from the company, shattered every game line they owned badly enough that the company was subsisting on $5 PDFs and refusing to pay authors and freelancers, and STILL HAS HIS JOB is utterly indefensible.

In a just world, the company would have folded and their game lines been wiped out (Battletech specifically is entirely stolen from the Japanese; the mech designs from anime and the tabletop rules from another tabletop hex-based wargame in Japan).

Don't buy Catalyst product. Pirate everything. It's more justified even than costing a shit company like GW money, because Catalyst completely and utterly deserves it.

Probably a mixture of Kickstarter scams (legit scams, not angry khellposting) and Magic singles sellers with a particular shoutout to amateur resellers.

Star City Games.

If they had to be held to actual financial rules and standards, they'd be guilty of breaking an absolutely hilarious amount of laws.

This. Worst company in the industry.

>Battletech specifically is entirely stolen from the Japanese

Aaaaaaand you blew it. Most retarded thing in the thread, and I even agree with you about Loren Coleman.

>the game industry is just as corrupt as any other

I still wanted to dream...

why so wrong, user?

While Kickstarter is full of retarded scams, a lot of people don't understand what Kickstarter is actually for. Kickstarter projects are not promises of anything, they are literally just gambles or "investments". It says right on the site they have zero obligation to actually deliver anything. You give money to a Kickstarter because you're fine taking a risk on paying for something to see fruition that might not. That's the name of the game.

So Kickstarter uses a light hand on these things because they don't want to dictate what is or isn't feasible. Does something seem farfetched? Maybe, but if somebody wants to put effort into trying to make it, and people are willing to risk helping that idea financially, then Kickstarter wants to allow that to happen. The whole point of Kickstarter is to fund things that otherwise would be difficult to start up anyway.

Yes.

It's ok user.

Dreams are sweet because we wake from them.

Shh... there there now... cry on my shoulder

>When the writing sucks, it takes everything else down with it. It makes you scratch your head at how the mechanics fit into the world, it makes you double-check or homebrew shitty rules, and whenever there's shitty fluff it poisons the well for the rest of the setting.
Fucking this user

I was reading through a setting book by GRAmel which was filled with grammatical errors which kept having me trying to figure out what the fuck they were saying half of the time. Sucked too since the general idea of the book sounded cool.

because they're a little metal top hat

The players. Corruption only happens because people allow it. Everyone goes on about the corruption in the big fish in the tabletop scene yet everyday there are dozens of general threads about their products.

If you play their games, you support them. Do you think they give a shit if you pirate the books? No, they don't. Because you pirate it, you play it, you like it and then you go run your mouth off online and some dipshit goes ahead and buys their product anyway. If a company is big enough, pirating can actually bring them more money, especially when they have a good digital publishing service. A pdf costs nothing to make, after all.

So, no, the companies aren't to blame. You are. Stop playing the corporate games and support indies. Shit, just look online and you'll find literal thousands of quality indie games out there to play instead of the same old ten big shot games. But instead you just go back to the same old same old and this shit cycle of corruption never ends.

The broader answer is because it has value to them, but the more specific one is because you're playing monopoly

No Beerfest fans on the board tonight?

Paid shilling on Veeky Forums.

What wrong do they do?

Aside from Vargposting I don't feel like there's a whole lot of it here. I mean at the end of the day the place does exist to talk about games, and it's not surprising people that make them sometimes post here

...what did you promise?

There's a guy on /hc/ who claims the owners of Blacked pay people to post photos from different shoots as a shilling tactic.

Not really sure how effective it is in these days of siterips.

>vargposting
There's not a lot of it in the first place. On the other hand I'm sure GW and Disney people drop in here once in a while to make a general.

...

>mfw his wikipedia page (Loren L. Coleman, not Loren Coleman) doesn't make a single mention of this

every kickstarter i followed was a scam
whether intentional or not. maybe they couldnt deliver, maybe they got the funds and really felt like keeping it more, maybe they oversold too enthusiastically; maybe they intended to scam

But kickstarter people ask for funds and gives promises.
Patreon asks for monthly donations for continous content. You can stop at any time, and the promises are being delivered on schedule with your payment. I dont see scams there unless you count the bitter claims of someone who started off with content and slowly ran out of ideas while the fanbase was too lazy to back out early enough and paid for fluff content

Not paying writers and other creators on time or even at all seems like a distressingly common occurence. So every scumbag that does that gets my vote.

At least they're probably getting paid.

Unlike Catalyst writers.

No one is even going to mention China Forge? Literally selling counterfeit knockoffs of IP. On a similar note is the dodgy MTG reprints.

Catalyst Game Labs

Yeah, but there's also the vicious cycle of "no one wants to play anything but things people already know how to play" or "i don't want to learn a new system"

You act as if its every person's fault individually, but the ones that wanna use more interesting or well balanced systems are drowned out by the populous that just wants to wank off to their own fan-fic character in a DnD campaign or some shit.

Like i said, its a vicious cycle. one of trying to get into something different, and then realizing no one else cares, and going back to what has players.

No ones mentioning chinese knockoffs because they are chinese knockoffs. Their intent from the get go is to be corrupt as possible.

Its redundant.

Illegal, but they deliver when you pay them. Nobody paying them is going to cry about it.

I don't think it counts as corruption if you STARTED illegal. You need to have some legality/status before you can get into corruption.

Artificially inflating prices, buying at criminal rates, driving competitors out of business with shady practices, and all sorts of abusive and illegal business tactics.

Fucking this. Love me some Shadowrun but I refuse to spend a dime on those money embezzling cocksuckers at Catalyst.

The first two are perfectly legal. The last were never proven.

wait what? shadowrun is from catalyst? its so in-depth i'd never have thought that.

Only legal in the sense no one's brought a suit against them. In a more rigorous market, they'd never get away with the shit they do.

Courtney's rundown on the disgusting Shadowrun 5e situation does a good job of explaining why CGL and Loren Coleman in particular are disgusting pieces of shit.

hackslashmaster.blogspot.co.nz/2016/08/on-shadow-catalyst-part-i.html

>You act as if its every person's fault individually, but the ones that wanna use more interesting or well balanced systems are drowned out by the populous that just wants to wank off to their own fan-fic character in a DnD campaign or some shit.

By that logic, you shouldn't vote cause your individual vote means nothing.

>crtl-F for Paizo
>no mentions

Please. They're just incompetent. Paizo isn't even in the same league as Catalyst - hell, they aren't even in the same league as Palladium - when it comes to out-and-out corruption.

>dat part 3
Jesus fuck can Catalyst do anything right?

GW in near future, since new CEO entered into full "EA/Activision/Zenimax" madness with his dreams about total control over community behind trademarks wall

Nope

Marketting, but in some ways that's actually an advantage.

ITT: People who do not understand what "Corrupt sector" means.

Shadowrun.
The writers literally had to plan a heist to steal all the computers from the company office because so much money was being embezzled by the boss they couldn't get paychecks.

Well, assuming you're in America, yes. Our population is hilariously partisan to the point that you can reliably predict an election years before the campaign starts. Before people even know the candidates. A blue vote in Alabama and a red vote in New York are equally pointless, because you're drowned out by overwhelming and, in far too many cases, mindless support.

Indie games are pretty similar. You may want to play it, but you're in a community that overwhelmingly wants to play DnD. You can either change all of their minds, which is going to be so difficult and time consuming that it could take actual years, or leave and find a new group, which in the political analogy would be immigrating to a country where there are less people you disagree with.

The usual nerd rage about how shops are profiting from their hobbies.

>The writers literally had to plan a heist to steal all the computers from the company office

Uh, sauce? This sounds intersting

Is it really that difficult to get players to try new systems? My group grumps about it but so long as I run it they're always on board-- and the more games I've exposed them to the less they grumped about new ones.

Nah, GW is less corrupt as more as it is boorish and incredibly greedy- not a hallmark of virtue by any standard, but as far as I know nothing illegal. The closest they got to that was probably the Chapterhouse/Spot the Space Marine lawsuits.

Similarly though, has nobody mentioned how shitty Fantasy Flight is to it's employees? Like GW I don't know if it qualifies as outright corrupt, but considering how much money the company makes they could certainly afford to pay their employees more than minimum fucking wage.

>I'm sure GW and Disney people drop in here once in a while to make a general.
GW let their specialist games line die because they couldn't be bothered to do translations of their games. I sincerely doubt their operation would be so sophisticated as to use guerilla marketing and paid shills.

They don't even do market research.

"Indi" doesn't mean shit. Look at what video games have become. Every hipster faggot cums at the word "Steam" and Gabe is the super devil with his motorcycle and jar of marmalade compared to the petty shit Blizzard or Bioware does.

The problem is too for all these things it's an identity. Noone just says "I play games", they claim the label "gamer" to fit in and feel part of some super organism. So when you say the gaming industry is foul, they interpret it as you're saying they're foul.

It sounds simple enough, don't identify yourself with shit you do. Just cause I smoke cigars doesn't mean I have to defend the drug cartel which a lot of Mexican and Cuban tobacco companies are fronts for, just because I like coffee does not mean I defend Starbucks and honestly would love to see every single Starbucks burned or shot up.

But than I'm not some insecure faggot who has to attatch myself to something else to grant myself importance. I'm a human being. I have rights, the law protects those rights. Not well mind you, hence I get shat on online and mods get to do all the horrible crap they do in video games and off, but the fact is the self actualization of my person is what gives me integrity... not fucking games.

because BROZOUF
I mean, holy shit user, are your legs even OK

sucking some dick, mostly

>The closest they got to that was probably the Chapterhouse/Spot the Space Marine lawsuits.
>what Damnatus is
>what Chapter Master is
>what fucking BoLS is
>Similarly though, has nobody mentioned how shitty Fantasy Flight is to it's employees?
Because unlike GW they making good product.

One of GW shills were spotted in one WHFB/AoS threads (when they released dragon with down syndrome)

This seems like more effort than it's worth.

Why would you buy packs instead of singles? Also, this is one of many reasons why you ALWAYS take store credit over packs.

The only shady thing they did that I know of is that they purchased almost every dual land on the east coast before launching their Sunday Legacy Open series. But the argument could be made that this was just a sensible business decision for them, since they knew they would need extra dual land stock.

And their prices are inflated, but you don't have to buy from them. You can buy from Card Kingdom, TCGplayer, CFB, Cape Fear Games, Cool Stuff Inc, eBay even. To say nothing of local stores. There's a lot of competition in the market.

You gotta not get hyped when you back a Kickstarter. Realize the product will likely be beta quality. And look at who's making it and what they're promising.

For example, the Shadowrun video games had a great Kickstarter. They delivered on their promises and have made some great games. But they weren't going for anything super fancy, and they were being developed by people with lots of industry experience.

That's copyright, tho, user, not illegally dicking over employees.

>(Battletech specifically is entirely stolen from the Japanese; the mech designs from anime and the tabletop rules from another tabletop hex-based wargame in Japan).

Just take my (You) and read up on the actual lawsuit please

So people should ignore things they actually like the models/fluff/rules for and support things they don't like just because a smaller company makes it?

Also its outright absurd to expect the average person to invest the time and money needed to make even a small force so they can play every new game someone at the club wants to try. This is why its almost impossible to get people to play new games unless you invest all the money and effort yourself and pay for/build/paint at least two separate forces.

You don't have to invest several hundred dollars and dozens of hours of your time when you vote.

>not wanting to be a corruptor

Insider trading.

>(Battletech specifically is entirely stolen from the Japanese; the mech designs from anime and the tabletop rules from another tabletop hex-based wargame in Japan)

They licensed some designs, stole some others.
The problems aroe when they met bigger dicks in the form of Harmony Gold, who abused the retarded international policy of the US to steal the international rights to Macross from the parent company and bullied FASA out of them in court.
Both companies did some shady shit but with the lawsuit gun pointed in FASA's direction, they had to give up or lose everything.

The Japanese TT game I'd never heard of, though and I kind of doubt that would be the case.

We have leagues of corruption now?
Just how bad have things gotten?
I need to go back to cryo-sleep!

Luckily for them, your cardboard crack isn't legal tender. Your own fault for sticking with a hobby that's designed from the ground up to create market speculation and artificial scarcity.

>Nah, GW is less corrupt as more as it is boorish and incredibly greedy- not a hallmark of virtue by any standard
That's why I said "near future", Rountree direction pretty clear it's "there is no fun in not official by GW things", he will try to take total control over community and push back ETC, non-official resources, will send more money into shilling and to BoW and BoLS

>The Japanese TT game I'd never heard of, though and I kind of doubt that would be the case.

The Battle of Stanry is the game in question. Here's an image.

It's a hex-based wargame where you maneuver a Dougram using movement points (1 to enter a hex, 1 to change facing). You fire weapons using a periscope to determine whether a Dougram has cover. Once you've determined that, you have a base to-hit number that's positively modified by the attacker's movement, defender's movement, intervening terrain, and range. If you hit, you do a number of "points" of damage to one of several locations (arms, legs, torsos). If you go through the armor, you deal critical hit effects. Dougrams are destroyed by destroying their entire center torso, blowing up their engine, blowing off their cockpit, or detonating their ammo.

This is entirely different from Battletech, which is a hex-based wargame where you maneuver a Battlemech using movement points (1 to enter a hex, 1 to change facing). You fire weapons using a straight line from the firing hex to the target hex to determine whether a Mech has cover. Once you've determined that, you have a base to-hit number that's positively modified by the attacker's movement, defender's movement, intervening terrain, and range. If you hit, you do a number of "points" of damage to one of several locations (arms, legs, torsos). If you go through the armor, you deal critical hit effects. Mechs are destroyed by destroying their entire center torso, blowing up their engine, blowing off their cockpit, or detonating their ammo.

Now tell me again how the very core of Battletech isn't stolen entirely from better, Japanese, game designers.

Why, Journalism in gaming, of course. That's why I threaten rape and violence against any woman that comes near my hobby, to stop corruption you see.

As it is your solemn duty to do so. I tip my classy hat to you, sir.

>reliably predict an election years before the campaign starts
Erm, user, I-

I guess the Shadowrun LARP got out of hand...

Let's discuss this further on the top secret IRC channel!

I rest my case.
Fucking FASA was neck-deep in shit.

I take it at least the hilariously broken customization system is made by them or is that also borrowed from some poor sod's game.

>I rest my case.
>Fucking FASA was neck-deep in shit.

What's the best way to destroy the Battletech franchise and send a message to the industry, then? I'll admit that leaving some pipe bombs in their booth at Origins or GenCon and wiping the criminals out at the source sounds awful appealing.

Asmodee.

They're a big French board game publisher/investor group. They acquired something like 75% of the designer board publishers over the past few years. They've since proceeded to hike up prices and forbid online retailers from discounting too much off of MSRP.

Politics.

To be factually consistent, BattleDroids (Original Battletech) was more of a hodgepodge mix of their previous hex based games Combots and Battlestar Galactica with the Battle of Stanry which was handled by Twentieth Century Imports who worked with FASA. That's not to clear FASA in any way and most certainly doesn't make it ok but the whole development of Battletech and anything Macross or Dougram related in the U.S. is incredibly complicated and people have written 4 page document timelines of the whole thing.

Paizo isn't corrupt. They're just idiots.

/thread