Let's see here. I have lots to say, having bought from a bunch of these companies for years (including dispatch, pre-tengoku), and then selling almost all of it after the LRG shiren thing. I'm not a master, but I hope maybe my insight/observations about limprint could help ease people here/wonder why this happened/what could happen. Sorry for the incoming ramble/reply wall.
Yeah a month ago they boasted about how PS4 chained echoes and a ton of CEs got in their warehouse all at once and they're eager to ship them out, but nothing has been sent since then despite proof that they are indeed real CEs being shown. Slawomir Mionskowski is just a stubborn asshole, really, and the reason you aren't getting your refund even with that first email is because they always do this, stall as long as possible unless the EU legally forces them to do something. I'd not be shocked if the flood of CEs were because Germany made him get off his ass and make *something* to show for the absurd delays, which he blamed on cardboard sleeve quality this entire time. Hopefully your legal threat works and you get something out of it... I will note a funny aside, but a month ago I vented on my bluesky about how FPG is still pretty darn scammy and how SLG isn't honest either, and this guy who's a mutual of mine replied to me trying to guilt me into feeling bad for SLG/FPG because "people there work really hard and they aren't scamming, it's not on purpose!" then when I pushed back on the FPG bit the dude got a bit more sheepish and dodged my questions, acting weirdly defensive about them literally refund dodging and scamming many indie devs who are on the record as saying such.Steven wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2024 2:13 pm This reminds me that those assholes at Worst Press Games STILL have not refunded my Ginga Force + Natsuki Chronicles even though they said they'd refund me. I emailed them a few weeks ago after emailing them a few weeks before that. I wonder if I should threaten them with legal action or something. That might be mildly interesting.
Ah, why not. I just emailed them again to tell them that I'll take legal action. Hopefully that makes them stop being completely incompetent.
I then get a tip from a source of mine a few days later showing that dude was deadass the cofounder of SLG, though doesn't seem to work there anymore. When asked about it he erased all the posts he made related to FPG. Guess some people will be simps to the end, huh. Kinda makes me surprised but also realize a bit why some in the industry will stubbornly defend their friends to the end even when it's clear they fumble the bag.
Yeah this is the weird part to me; I don't know if he worked on OG Tomb Raider or not but he was in the industry back then so all it could have been was them using credits for the OG release, or just asking him if he had anything they could use for the release and he gave a few things/info.DoomsDave wrote: ↑Wed Oct 02, 2024 6:12 amwait a min... this mfer is still in the industry and getting paid? says he worked on 2 recent games, gimmick special edition and tomb raider.. wtfprophetic wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2024 3:39 am Who wants to edit this bio:
https://www.mobygames.com/person/41372/brian-schorr/
unless his work was done years ago, city connection does not get a pass for letting him work on their shit after all of this. They are the ones who licensed him the games and they're still working with him.
Gimmick though is definitely due to CC having a relationship with him and either it was before he went ghost or due to his cofounder Taiki (who works for CC now) reaching out. Jaleco was working on a sunsoft collection in 2019 after all, so it'd make sense if the relationship/contribution was a leftover from that period.
I don't remember if he was one of the old staff that got patched into Pac Man World's remake credits but it wouldn't shock me if so on that, too.
This is where I feel most inclined to reply, on the whole limprint model in general. Short and to the point, I do feel the model is on the way out the door and LRG is partly why.hamfighterx wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2024 7:18 pmIn LRG's defense, they have built a reputation of actually delivering products with hundreds of games getting orders successfully fulfilled. And the actual games are just fine, even though I completely agree that most of the extras with their limited/collector/special editions are just junk. LRG has had its issues, in particular some pretty sketchy situations that seem to come up more when they do games that aren't your standard current consoles (the 3DO "D" CD-R fiasco, the PC physical Shiren the Wanderer with no physical CD, etc.). However, I have bought dozens of games from them over the years, generally Switch standard cart-only editions, and I have full confidence they will get delivered.cj iwakura wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2024 2:27 amLimited Run aren't exactly saints lately either. They continue to produce """"limited"""" editions with junk bonuses that no one really asked for at exorbitant just to jack up the resell market, probably why one of the founders left.
(Not to mention it often takes a year+, if you're lucky...)
But at least the product does eventually arrive, albeit at extremely dicey quality. (Like the Ground Zero Texas script that was literally the size of my palm.)
LRG also seems to care to try to actively improve things. Last year they announced some revamps to streamline their production/planning processes and have a more focused schedule, in order to reduce time from orders closing to shipping. That truly does appear to have made a difference: for almost everything I've ordered from them in the past year, they are now noticeably more accurate at shipping in roughly the same order the pre-order windows closed, in a fairly reasonable timeline that is pretty consistently about 3-5 months (to the US) after orders ended for standard edition Switch games and pretty close to their estimated ship dates (which sometimes do get adjusted, but not by a crazy amount of time). They've also improved their website order tracking, and regularly send email updates on orders in progress. It's an actual significant improvement from past years where sometimes an order would ship 4 months after orders closed, sometimes it would be 9, occasionally over a year, and with no good updates/communication (and even then, they always eventually got it out the door - clearly not the same as the troubling situations from companies like Dispatch, First Press, or Strictly Limited).
Time needed for LE/collector editions with extra stuff, or "unusual" platforms may vary a bit more. For example, their Shantae Advance GBA cart was delayed longer than expected - but even in that case, LRG has been pretty transparent about updates and it's still expected to ship in January (well under year from when orders closed in April 2024) as opposed to their original October estimate. In years past, that would just be considered normal range and they probably wouldn't have even sent an update on the delay. And LRG communicated that change in plans clearly via an unprompted email, they aren't being evasive like Strictly Limited.
I'm not trying to be a shill for LRG or anything, but it's worth highlighting that they obviously try to run a legitimate business, so their image gets tarnished by the frauds who are also in the limited print space. There are other companies that also do a good job: PixelHeart and Red Art Games are very consistent, Fangamer is rock solid, etc.
Yes, I will agree that as of recently LRG has gotten a better grip at standard edition timeframes and seem to have finally mitigated the shipping queue hell they had in 2023, so that's good. CEs are still being made with cheaper and cheaper components though, and with tons of stuff being put out it'll be inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. But they also instigated the whole thing after it worked well for Vblank, and since a bit before embracer, they were beginning to work with bigger and bigger companies like Konami that could have easily put some of the games out in other regions physically, but just instead throw them to LRG instead.
Nowadays? Barely any indies or any obscure indies, mostly just bigger third party stuff now. Frickin Ubisoft doesn't need a LRG release for their games. When the market for physicals is getting to the point those companies rely on outfits like LRG to put out physicals, it makes me a bit worried more will just use them as the means to dump their physical releases, and then when they stop selling due to the limprint bubble deflating, they'll just kill physical altogether. It seems to me that most of LRG's games are being made at MOQ now and that's why a lot of them get shipped faster than ever as standards, since if stuff barely exceeds 5K, why print more? just make them ahead of time so people get them quicker. (though that also means the garbage lolipop chainsaw remake is already in printing before being fixed, which lol, lmao) I still don't think the FOMO based marketing for their other stuff is a good idea though, and while open preorders is a better system, it's pretty clear LRG found their niche of people obsessed with plastic junk bonuses to the point they'll deal with pretty poor QC in the process.
As for the other limprints? A lot of them came up seemingly to get that LRG hotness when they were on fire in 2017/2018. A lot of sales were done then and a bunch of limprints would sell out of some edition quickly, especially if it had a bunch of bonuses. I think before the allure wore off/people got tighter wallets, this is what made the strictly/FPGs of the world hang on for a while, and why they never went to open preorders. Why of that system when you can consistently sell out of in-hand stuff?
The problem was in 2019 when people sorta became overwhelmed by all the physicals from everywhere, including non limprints from SE Asia and whatnot, so eventually you just had to pick something and full-setting wasn't viable as much as it originally seemed. So a lot of people backed off and just bought their favorites. These companies like SLG/DG/FPG which had a fixed amount of copies, oops, now had a dusty pile of unsold units that clearly led to none of them being financially viable. And with a lot of them not even printing the full order of games, yeah I can see why a bunch of them are still stalling/not bothering to fully make their SKUs, because having a lot of in-hand product will just drain your company wallets like mad. So many unsold Life of Pixel or The First Tree copies didn't help SLG, tons of unsold Shadow Bug and Castle of Heart didn't help FPG, and tons of unsold Soldam turbofucked Dispatch.
Why? Because those were mostly at retail, since Dispatch I assume thought they could get a lot more $$$ by having their games be at more places, which uh, early in the switch life might have helped a bit, but I assure you the average family coming into Target won't know what the fuck a soldam or penguin war is. The online collector will, but overproducing those games no doubt was the nail in the coffin even before DG sold the three physicals in limbo on their web store. I still find it funny that Brian's CE for Game Tengoku was LRG's CE but with a fucking vinyl thrown in. Did he even know how long it took for those to get made before pandemic? Certainly not, and that just shows how some companies like his were in it to cash in on a hot new trend that now has largely fizzled out.
Limprints will limp along until either physical dies, Switch 2 maybe provides a miracle revival to the format, or until they just go retail/online order only where they make a single batch and that's all the company puts out. For LRG they couldn't do that anymore as their games sold out so absurdly fast it wasn't even funny, but SLG and FPG never had a thing sell out in minutes, and neither did Dispatch, so... We'll have to see.
Dispatch as we know it though is long dead, and the main thing i just want outta it is for CC or Clear River to publish Game Tengoku physically themselves. That would help ease the wound a bit. I'd recommend buying it on PS4, but so many discs with bugged DLC are out there to the point I can't advise that as practical...
razor blades