Well there's a whole heck of a lot more since the last post. Unfortunately, nothing I'd call great, especially from the FPG side of things.
It's been most of Q2 and barely a peep from FPG on the status of hardly any games at all. They shared a photo of a few CE items on their twitter, but that's it. Little else of note from them and they still haven't updated their release update pages since March, meaning a bunch of games still estimate a Q1 ship date lol
Another dev came forward about being unpaid! the dev of Psychotic Adventures Origins noted they're still waiting on FPG to pay em and FPG is having troubles getting the game through sony.
This game is from 2019, as another reminder. So that's 5+ years of not paying or updating the indie developer on the status of their game, and adds another one to the list of devs that got scammed.
I then heard from Reddit limprint circles several times this past month of people asking for refund requests kept getting ghosted (despite the company being in germany) or wanting to get Chained Echoes so I did a lot of digging with some sources and friends who had/have interest in buying their stuff, and well, made a huge
big investigatory article on it. I was hoping by now someone bigger would have spread the news and led to a conclusion that would have made this update post a lot easier to write, but it seems my tips will continue to go unanswered, so I'll share highlights here.
Basically, First Press Games has hardly ever sold out of any product whatsoever. Even their first, in-hand releases are still plentiful in stock and nowhere close to selling out because barely anyone bought them. This would explain why they slowed down on production, as barely any money came in to speak of. The only real exceptions are the ultra CE for Crimzon Clover (though this hardly had quantity to begin with) and all CEs for Chained Echoes, which is the game that would easily get them the most income if estimates are right. (and why it ended up being the only game they provided meaningful status updates for last year) Shopify sites are easy enough to poke at and see what's remaining, so one of my sources did that for their switch stuff, and got this rough estimate as of late May for their pre-CE games.
Yeah, low sales = low income = not enough to manufacture physicals, a tale as old as time really. But rather than be upfront about it or update customers/devs, the guy in charge of FPG,
Slawomir Mionskowski is very, very stubborn and has ghosted/dodged people, especially on the refund front for a long while now. This is illegal to do in Germany/EU in general due to consumer rights laws, yet the guy continues on doing it anyway. Someone on the Chained Echoes discord server got so desperate for a refund, that they managed to get his phone number, and contact him directly through that in order to get a refund, and the dude was very much a jerk the entire phone call and only caved once the caller threatened to report him
And honestly? the only success story to getting refunds from FPG that I hear of even now, is to threaten over support email to report them to Verbraucherzentrale, a German consumer agency. This has been the only thing that got people refunds in a timely manner, and due to how this guy is still dodging so many requests and screwing over devs, I even wrote up a guide in the article to actually file a refund report to these guys even if you're outside Germany.
https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/beschwerde is the site for those who don't want/need to read that though. It's very clear that like a ton of other Limited Print companies that haven't done hot lately, they won't be able to sustain themselves for long; but rather than be up front about that, they're just adamantly refusing to budge and have to pretty much be kicking and screaming to provide any sort of status update on 5 year old, overdue games to both customers and the indie devs who partnered with them with no pay to show for it.
Oddly enough, Chained Echoes seems to be the exception. People in the Chained Echoes server have been told by Deck13 staff that they already got paid and to not worry about it, and pretty much dismissed people who were unhappy with the partnership choice when the CE got announced. Even the game's solo creator recently
commented on the kickstarter his faith in FPG and linking to FPG's blog (more in a bit on that), which I personally find laughable honestly, but it seems that team being in Germany has a lot to do with it. Needless to say, people aren't happy with the partnership still.
So my writeup comes out, gains some small traction on reddit/bluesky... and just after months of no communication First Press starts a blog of status updates shortly afterward.
Except these get increasingly weird and don't make much sense, and all still dodge the obvious questions about the long time for the standard editions (were carts/discs even ordered? why are devs not paid yet? why the refund dodging and ghosting?) and focusing mostly on the CE (the components that would logically take years to make, but even then, not this long for some of the longest-in-the-works CEs), recently blaming the major delays on bad cardboard manufacturing for the Collector Edition boxes.
First, a
Chained Echoes status update, which is barely a status update and reads so corporate or boilerplate it pissed people off more than anything else. Interestingly, these early blogs had comments enabled for a time, but all with manual approvals to go through; only one comment to my knowledge was approved before they deleted it and closed the comment section down, and it was just a simple comment thanking FPG.
This keeps up with their trend of fully locking out outside communication and comments on every social media. If you wonder why they hide twitter replies or shut down facebook comments all the time, this is why. They don't like being told that people aren't happy with them, which is why I'm convinced the refund dodging is on purpose.
Then they put out
another status update implying the CEs were to ship out next week and was mainly held up by cardboard problems (AKA, the week that's ending just now). and continue to not mention the standard editions. I swear this was recently edited to make it more clear that they meant
preparations for shipping out CEs this week, rather than the CEs
actually shipping out this week, but they left the bit about the comment section that no longer exists still there, so...
But then this next update is the first that actually
feels like an update, and also a wild little ramble that makes no sense and includes veiled legal threats. It goes on again about cardboard going bad and how they're almost over that hill and the games totally will come out (while still ignoring developers, the standard editions, the refund dodging, the closing of outside contact, etc etc) and to just wait a bit longer. Then there's this fun gem:
However, we have also noticed an increase in libellous and defamatory posts on various platforms, also including leaking of personal information of our staff. We are fully prepared to take legal action, if necessary.
oh so these guys are willing to take legal action about people saying their company is breaking EU/German law but not pay the indie devs properly? This is the richest part to me and I can't tell if they mean the guy who got ahold of the CEO via phone number, or me for writing about it (and nobody but the CEO was even mentioned in the article by name and the only other person I was told of at the company, was a guy who'd be an intermediate for devs who no longer works for FPG anymore, so I think they literally just mean the CEO guy here), but if it's me,
then lmao, pay your devs
Anyhow before the big hyped "next week" update drops, the Goodboy Galaxy devs had enough and hired a legal counsel to press FPG directly on the status of their physicals (as they've also been ghosted, but i do not know if they've been paid or not yet). They're currently looking into it themselves as of now, and posted a
kickstarter update about it here that does way better of a job apologizing for something out of their control better than FPG ever could.
So with that legal pressure and a bunch of people annoyed with them, what was their huge, current update on the state of everything? Another
rambly post blaming it all on CE cardboard and continuing to not address any of the other major issues with their releases. Pretty much also reconfirming a lot of these games got delayed
yet again, even though that's obvious to anyone who looks at their ETA page and see a bunch of stuff slated for Q1 still even as we are
2 weeks away from Q3 2024.
So yeah, that's the big big mess with first press games lately. If you have anything preordered from them, I strongly advise following my guide or emailing FPG's support email threatening to report them to Verbraucherzentrale if they do not cancel your order and provide you with a refund. That's pretty much the only thing I got as it seems outside of Chained Echoes, (who seem to be in on this, if i may be frank, or at least very dismissive/non caring about their partner violating EU law in handling preorders for their game since they got paid already) nothing is remotely close to being actually done. All of this due to a guy insisting on "perfection" without realizing that to get to "perfection" there's a thing called transparency and honesty.
