A month ago, Ouya called on gamers and developers to Kickstart exclusive games for the console. Under the rules of Ouya's promotion, the company pledged to match any user-funded games between $50,000 and $250,000, and so far two games have reached their goal. There's a problem though: both games are alleged to be scams.
The game Gridiron Thunder, to date, has raised $78,229, surpassing its goal by over $3,000. When Joystiq announced the news, one reader decided something was wrong. With just 125 backers, most on reasonably low tiers, reader "louiedog" calculated 17 backers had individually contributed over $4,000 to the project. Joystiq then discovered via Kickstarter tracker Kicktraq that the majority of the funding came on four days, where it appears round pledges totaling $10,000 and $25,000 were made.
Kicktraq chart showing daily pledges for Gridiron Thunder
It's also alleged that another game, Elementary, My Dear Holmes!, is also suspect. Although there are no strange large donations, Fanboys Anonymous looked into some of the project's mystery backers, discovering they included "celebrities such as Iron Chef's Cat Cora, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and, most heinously, a woman who has been reported as missing since 2011."
It's too early to condemn either game, but Fanboys Anonymous is calling for Ouya and Kickstarter to look into both of the Kickstarters. In response to Joystiq's request for comment on the allegations, Ouya told the site that it "couldn't be more excited to see [the team behind Gridiron Thunder] bring their game along with their supportive community to Ouya."
Thanks, nikescar!
Comments
Sad.
By sajdx1 on 08.28.13 7:46am
Personally, I’m kind of glad this is happening. I want the Ouya to succeed, I really do, but their marketers have proven inept at their jobs and harebrained schemes like this are just going to run the company into the ground. Between this impossible/impractical incentive to indies, the wasting of funds to provide Ouyas to all attendees of the VMAs, the fact that some original kickstarter backers still have not received all that they were promised, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Ouya folks care more about attracting big-name titles and celebrity status than the indies who were supposed to be the focus of the console in the first place.
Hopefully the failure of this farce of a fund will send a strong message that they need to reexamine their priorities and fire their entire marketing department.
By SandMagnum on 08.28.13 9:22am
I 100% agree with your complaints on Ouya’s marketers, but it’s more likely the project makers are the scammers here. If they put up enough money, Ouya will basically double it for them, and when they don’t deliver, they give back refunds to themselvs and the handful or legit backers and write-off the rest of their expenses from Ouya’s portion. Or hell, they take the money, come up with a shit game to fulfill their contractual obligations and pocket the remainder.
We’ve known Ouya has paid for exclusivity agreements before, so why would they go through the trouble of setting any of these campaigns up to win (especially through two different scamming techniques)? I don’t think anyone nefarious enough on the Ouya side would see the Gridiron Thunder game and think they could realistically get NFL licensing, something EA has had with an iron fist for years.
By neshcom on 08.28.13 11:31am
I’m not saying Ouya had anything to do with the “success” of these kickstarters, just that this was a bad idea to begin with. They should have known that setting the bar so high and demanding exclusivity would not result in much success and only work to attract the scammers. The money from this fund would have been put to better use funding a bunch of smaller projects in-house, bringing in talented, recognized indie devs like Jonathan Blow, Terry Cavanagh, or Derek Yu (not saying them in particular, they’ve probably got their own projects to work on, but you can see what I’m getting at). It just seemed like they were involving kickstarter because it is the new buzzword.
By SandMagnum on 08.29.13 12:03pm
where they supposed to get a plug for that? I watched the vma’s (albeit without commercial so maybe they got commercial airtime i didnt see) and i didnt hear one mention of the ouya by anyone lol.
By Samborino on 08.28.13 12:18pm
Ouya’s a failure. Give it a rest.
By HumanEvan on 08.28.13 11:39am
Have a system where money changes hands, someone will exploit it.
By MrScuttlebottoms on 08.28.13 7:51am
Yeah I’ve noticed that this happens kinda often on Kickstarter. If it doesn’t look like the goal will be met (i.e. they won’t receive any of the funding), then the page owner will flood their campaign with high dollar contributions from their own bank accounts.
I’m sick of this Ouya bullshit. Wait 3 more months for Apple to do it right. Can’t wait!
By mattkicksass on 08.28.13 8:28am
Whenever there is an article related to Oyua, I always wonder how do they pronounce it. Is it pronounced “O’yeah” or is it “O-Yoo-Yaah”?
By Salman Ali on 08.28.13 8:04am
I’ve been pronouncing it “Ooh, yah”
By proxeh on 08.28.13 8:17am
Ouya (not “Oyua”) rhymes with “booyah”.
By iaoth on 08.28.13 8:18am
By Kangal on 08.28.13 10:13am
Ooh-yah
By twreckx on 08.28.13 8:21am
Ya….. Ouya says between 50k-250k they will double it, so the company decides to make it right at or around the minimum requirements. Then throws in their own money to get just above the mark and cash in that check. I don’t doubt they plan on making the game I think they just wanted to get that extra paycheck.
By cylemmulo on 08.28.13 8:13am
I’m starting to wonder if OUYA isn’t in on it too. Either that or they are totally incompetent, their twitter feed is hilarious
By t-mon on 08.28.13 8:39am
They are incompetent, I think they have shown it very clearly.
By Strabo on 08.28.13 9:00am
Fanboys Anonymous wrote a good article, but for those curious and looking for more detail, most of the sleuthing was actually done over on the SA forums (and the Kickstarter comments themselves):
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375982935/elementary-my-dear-holmes/comments?cursor=4089844#comment-4089843
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3532967&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=556#post418817877
By Nikola Tesla on 08.28.13 8:20am
Members on the NeoGaf forums did some of their own work too.
By nikescar on 08.28.13 8:50am
Use this info to solve the missing person case!
By joel.gautraud on 08.28.13 9:02am
Please tell me you’re joking.
Do you think a fake donation is going to find a missing person? Unlikely.
By Julie2aT on 08.28.13 9:18am
But what if it’s not fake? Trace that credit card!
By joel.gautraud on 08.28.13 3:12pm
“We don’t really know who they are, what they do, where they live – but they are all awesome people. They backed our campaign, and we are truly, truly grateful for that. "
By owlboy on 08.29.13 6:15pm
I’m a fan of OUYA but their marketing, messaging, and public relations are a joke. They’ve got the beginnings of something good, maybe great, but it’s like they’re trying to inexplicably sabotage themselves.
By jm9843 on 08.28.13 9:45am
This shows how badly kickstarter needs more powerful analysis tools. A tool for picking out odd data would be very useful.
By XavierMidnight on 08.28.13 10:22am
Binford’s law?
By joel.gautraud on 08.28.13 3:14pm