Fraud in the mod world: The Atharon Conspiracy

[Insano]

For some days has Atharon announced that they'd been approached by a fake compagny (actually a group of specialised frauds) that attampted to make Atharon a commercial game, but keep all the money for themselves. ModDB made a report on this story, in cooperation with the mod leader Pål Trefall and some other team members which have been a member since the beginning. A short summary with some quotes from the report:

This is the story of a fictitious man directing a fictitious company in the creation of a real game. Joshua Alejandro Jacobo, the pseudonym for a group of experienced fraudsters, recruited a significant number of modders between May and November 2005 for unpaid work on Realms of Valhallon: Age of Campaigns, purportedly a free Half-Life 2 mod.
Nog zeer onschuldig, Niet wetend dat ze in werkelijkheid fraudeurs waren. Er waren zogezegd al enkele professionele gamedevelopers gecontacteerd. ("Deus Ex’s Harvey Smith, Big Huge Games’ Michael Gates, Daniel Gilbert from NovaLogic and Richard Cooke, who has worked on a variety of big-name games.")

It didn't take long until money got involved.

[17:12] <Joshua^Director> Alright, we're going to go over some of the changes happening with the project
[17:12] <Joshua^Director> Most basically, in one way or another the project is becoming commercial
[17:12] <Joshua^Director> That means that we'll be turning a profit on campaigns

The Atharon team didn't have a clue.

The team, and it must be said the gang themselves, had worked so hard and so well that it had become more profitable to pay each division for its work and form a legitimate company than to take the goods and run.
The move meant big changes, as you might expect. There was now money at stake and a new milestone system was introduced to regulate its flow: each milestone, such as a complete set of team models, was worth a set amount of money. 60% of each packet would go to the division lead, and the rest was to be shared out between the other modders working within it. Sixty percent may seem like a large amount, especially sixty percent of several hundred dollars each time, but as Jacobo warned during the meeting “it [would] be normal for the lead to do most of the work”.

The frauds realised they would gain more profit if they went legal.

But they started to ask enormous amounts of work:

This extra workload was largely because of the increasingly impossible demands placed on the team, not to mention Jacobo’s consistently high standards. The final coding budget included twenty-one engine and game-level milestones, and was expected within a year with a negotiated four to five hours of work per day from each coder. In comparison to a full-time development job this might not seem like much, but was a good deal more work than any of the team had bargained for when signing up. “We can't work on this 7 hours a day”, Pål despaired at one point during a chat with Jacobo.

Similar demands were made for the other divisions, and Matt Taylor recalls the expectation of “an army” of six normal mapped and textured models a month from his modelling group.

On 14 November 2005, the truth got out.

However, no money would ever change hands. Before any of the milestones could be completed, and fortunately before any of the contracts sent to the team could be signed, the deception was revealed.

Dystopia and Troy: Divine Playground had been approached too.

Now the mod goes under the name of Atharon: Armistice's End. There's new media on the official site.

The original report at ModDB:

* http://features.moddb.com/251/the-at...iracy/?fpage=0
* http://features.moddb.com/251/the-at...iracy/?fpage=1
* http://features.moddb.com/251/the-at...iracy/?fpage=2
* http://features.moddb.com/251/the-at...iracy/?fpage=3

 

[63]

Never heard of it.