Embezzlement in Catalyst

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 6:24 am

Gelare wrote:Nope, not that either. Think dumber. Much dumber. These folks envy tapeworms for their mental faculties.

That's a trait shared by a lot of "official" product-pushing forums. It starts with "you can't say mean things about the product" and goes downhill from there.

Bull · Post by **Bull** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:08 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Recall that Bull decided that the best way to help Shadowrun through this crisis was to take on more duties for Catalyst Game Labs, working closer with Loren Coleman.

Just to clarify, since I know you like facts. I applied for the Moderator position almost a month before I knew anything about the embezzlement. I accepted the position the same day you leaked the story (Which was also the first time I had heard any of what was going on).

I don't agree with it what happened at CGL, I don't think it was right, and I don't know if what they're doing is the best course of action, or even a good one.

I just know I have the chance to help create for Shadowrun. The rest of it, to me, is noise. I'll do what I can, for as long as I can, and simply hope that if things go south for CGL, I'll have the opportunity to do more down the line.

Will my actions help CGL any? Likely not, especially since my duties are Missions, which is barely even self sustaining, let alone a money making enterprise. It's more of a promotional tool than anything else. But declining the position wouldn't have helped anything either.

Bull

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:11 am

How unfortunate. Amongst Bull's many talents is the ability to screw up BBCode.

-Username17

Bull · Post by **Bull** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:12 am

FrankTrollman wrote:How unfortunate. Amongst Bull's many talents is the ability to screw up BBCode.

-Username17

It's one of my many Godlike abilities

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:34 am

FrankTrollman wrote:How unfortunate. Amongst Bull's many talents is the ability to screw up BBCode.

I know you hate each other, but would you mind keeping your insults on-topic? Attacking someone for their posting proficiency should be beneath you (or anyone). It also implies that you can not find something else that is wrong with Bull.

That said ... Bull:
Of course the situation with CGL stinks. But an way you look at it, helping them in any way, shape or form at this point seems wrong. Coleman stole close to a million backs. That much is for sure. Those same dollars are of course missing at catalyst. The other owners seem unwilling to press charges. Key personnel and freelancers have already left.

If you want to do what is right, you need to consider the various parties. Coleman needs to be held accountable for his theft. Helping CGL does not do that. The freelancers should get their money. Helping CGL does not do that. The fans should get their books. It is at best arguable whether helping CGL does that. By helping CGL, even if it is only promotion, you directly fund a thief. You also implicitly endorse his actions.

You might have a point if there were some hope of salvaging CGL and thereby Shadowrun. But CGL is under water so deep I can not see how they can recover. And Shadowrun is a license that is going to go back to the license holder soon. I have much better hopes of getting new Shadowrun books from companies not yet existing than from CGL. So both the right and the selfish thing to do is not support CGL any more. Don't buy, don't promote, publicly state you do not endorse them and hope for the best.

By helping them, not only do you directly help a thief, you also run the risk of dragging out the inevitable, CGL getting the license again, then folding, and keeping the license in limbo for another year or two, while the freelancers find something else to do or write for. Not only would that mean no Shadowrun books for years, it would also destroy the Shadowrun continuity.

So while I think Frank is often overly abrasive, I think his reasoning is entirely correct. CGL must go down, in hopes of a brighter future. Perhaps we can even get a company that pays it's freelancers on time (shocking concept, I know).

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:40 am

Bah. Insulting someone for their posting style? That's all the fireworks we're gonna get?

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:41 am

Quoting from dumpshock:

But when I do, I usually (but not always) stay focused on the argument itself rather than the person. ... Not so for that shifty, conniving little man. Despite what his adoring sycophants of the month might think.

In all honesty, if the primary shadowrun forums are encouraging the theft and robbery of underpaid, poor authors who are struggling to make a living, and the fanbase is not only OK with, but also encouraging this, I hope the game dies.

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:50 am

Also, I just want to be ranty for once, and say how much I completely fucking hate people. So fucking much. Not only do we have pro-thievery liars like Bull, but these jackasses on Dumpshock are derailing the discussion of how one of the female game designers is being stolen from by posting vaguely sexual-harassy topics going on and on about how "hot" she is. Way to fucking go, fucktards. How much more can you prove the gamers in general are sexist, moronic asswipes? It doesn't matter if a woman is being used to do work, not paid, and then forced out of her job by being asked to do unethical practices - lets go on and on about how sexy we think her stomach is!

Grah. Just fucknuts grah.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:03 am

Anyone see the irony of a Dumpshock admin having to come over here to continue his discussion with Frank after they banned him from their own forum?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:05 am

DragonChild wrote:Quoting from dumpshock:

But when I do, I usually (but not always) stay focused on the argument itself rather than the person. ... Not so for that shifty, conniving little man. Despite what his adoring sycophants of the month might think.

Yeah... I genuinely don't even know what that's about. Apparently I pissed in Doc Funkenstein's cheerios at some point, but I don't even remember what I did to set him off. You'll note that basically his entire contribution has been to come in and flame me periodically. If he got one warning for every such post, or even one warning every thread he posted such insults in, he'd be permabanned as well (there are seven threads that he has poured his off-topic hate tirades against me, just on the embezzlement situation). That he isn't, and indeed is still posting at all shows that the priorities over there are precisely as fucked up, mean spirited, and blatantly partisan as you could imagine.

In all honesty, if the primary shadowrun forums are encouraging the theft and robbery of underpaid, poor authors who are struggling to make a living, and the fanbase is not only OK with, but also encouraging this, I hope the game dies.

Dumpshock is not an official forum. It's just the largest forum. And yeah, it is actually run by and for people who have time and time again proved themselves to be the very worst that the fandom has to offer. But it's actually a relatively small group.

I don't hope the game dies. But I do hope dumpshock dies. For precisely the reasons you give. If it's permissible, even encouraged to sexually harass people for the explicit purpose of trying to derail discussions on how to properly provide recompense for people who have been stolen from, that forum is sick with hate filled cancer. And yeah, it should go away.

The hope of course is that the next company makes an official board. A board where the moderators can be easily talked to. Where they don't send their crazed edicts down from no-reply accounts. And where they don't openly encourage people to use insults, sexual harassment, and off-topic board spam to silence discussion of serious issues. And if that happens, then Dumpshock will dwindle to the spite-filled rump it was supposed to be. A place where people like Bull and Fist can keep the sandbox to themselves, confident that atheists, mathematicians, and girls won't get cooties on their precious sand-headed discussions.

-Username17

K · Post by K » Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:23 pm

Where are these sexually harassing threads? I couldn't find them.

Not because I want to comment on them, but because I like the idea of hot gamer girls as much as any dude.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:57 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The hope of course is that the next company makes an official board. A board where the moderators can be easily talked to. Where they don't send their crazed edicts down from no-reply accounts. And where they don't openly encourage people to use insults, sexual harassment, and off-topic board spam to silence discussion of serious issues.

Right! Like the official Wizards of the Coast forums!

...

wait...

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:46 pm

DragonChild wrote:How much more can you prove the gamers in general are sexist, moronic asswipes? It doesn't matter if a woman is being used to do work, not paid, and then forced out of her job by being asked to do unethical practices - lets go on and on about how sexy we think her stomach is!

Pics now, and so on.

FrankTrollman wrote:The hope of course is that the next company makes an official board. A board where the moderators can be easily talked to. Where they don't send their crazed edicts down from no-reply accounts. And where they don't openly encourage people to use insults, sexual harassment, and off-topic board spam to silence discussion of serious issues.

The holy grail for us all. TGD should just become its own LLC and then we can officially publish all sorts of things, and we'll just swear at idiots who complain (but not ban them, of course).

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 12:56 am

Reading some of the links...

...Thank goodness we have an honest group of admins/moderators here.

As near as I can tell, FBMF's "Terms of Service" seems to consist of "Don't do shit which causes trouble for me."

Which is a lot more honest than some multipoint code of conduct or rules which, it turns out, don't mean jack because the mods/admins have all the wiggle room they want to discuss, say, calendars and derail threads.

Seriously, Bull, guys like you and Green Dragon over at the old D&D Wiki piss me off to no end. Wait, you mean the rules don't actually mean what they say, when it's convenient for you? The hypocrisy you display...yearrrgh.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 2:37 am

K wrote:Where are these sexually harassing threads? I couldn't find them.

Not because I want to comment on them, but because I like the idea of hot gamer girls as much as any dude.

Hallelujah!

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 2:38 am

Gelare wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:The hope of course is that the next company makes an official board. A board where the moderators can be easily talked to. Where they don't send their crazed edicts down from no-reply accounts. And where they don't openly encourage people to use insults, sexual harassment, and off-topic board spam to silence discussion of serious issues.
Right! Like the official Wizards of the Coast forums!

...

wait...

The WoTC official forums do not exist.

Well, they did. But right now I don't even know how the thing work anymore.

the_taken · Post by **the_taken** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 4:09 am

It's weird, the old D20 modern forum never changed, but everything else just completely changed.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:03 am

Bull wrote:Just to clarify, since I know you like facts. I applied for the Moderator position almost a month before I knew anything about the embezzlement. I accepted the position the same day you leaked the story (Which was also the first time I had heard any of what was going on).

I don't agree with it what happened at CGL, I don't think it was right, and I don't know if what they're doing is the best course of action, or even a good one.

I just know I have the chance to help create for Shadowrun. The rest of it, to me, is noise. I'll do what I can, for as long as I can, and simply hope that if things go south for CGL, I'll have the opportunity to do more down the line.

Will my actions help CGL any? Likely not, especially since my duties are Missions, which is barely even self sustaining, let alone a money making enterprise. It's more of a promotional tool than anything else. But declining the position wouldn't have helped anything either.

Many of you have probably gone back and looked at some of he source material on Dumpshock and realized that this is all factually wrong. Bull gets his facts wrong fairly frequently. Like, basically every time he posts anything that is supposed to be factual. I would be tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one in particular, but it's part of a larger pattern of misrepresentation so large that I can only assume that Bull is a habitual liar at this point.

Bull of course, has been a moderator for years. Using the wayback machine, we can watch him throw a temper tantrum and give me a warning and temporary account suspension for being helpful and supportive on a D&D thread in the general gaming section. That was back in 2008, so his claim to have become a moderator anywhere close to the current crisis is horse shit.

What he is presumably talking about, and what he will doubtless claim he always meant now that he has been called on it, is that he became Mission Coodinator almost a month before he knew anything about the embezzlement. That's still false, but it's closer to the truth. To get a number like that, you have to make the incredibly disingenuous claim that Bull didn't "know" anything about it until the Randall Bills letter was leaked. In short, he's claiming that he didn't know anything after he had been told most of the details. That it was only once he got an actual (if insane) apology from one of the people responsible that he actually "knew" anything.

But here's the thing: Bull's "facts" are always wrong. It's a pattern. He came out and said on RPG.net that I had never signed a contract Catalyst because I had been fired before Catalyst took over. He also said that I had done one piece for FanPro and one piece or Catalyst, having taken advantage of the new people at the new company who didn't know what a flaming asshole I was. Both of these statements are factually incorrect, and Bull knew they were factually incorrect. If not before he made the first claim, then certainly before he made the second.

So when he comes out and says that he started doing virtually unpaid promotional work for a company that is run by a known thief, and then gets his facts all wrong to make it look like he didn't know what he was getting into - that's not really unusual. For Bull.

-Username17

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 6:02 am

Heh, you just had to say that he's not banned from RPG.net for me to realize he has nothing relevant to say.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 7:15 am

NOW things are getting interesting.

*gets popcorn*

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 6:33 pm

The Vigilante wrote:Frank,
Do you think I will see my copy of SR4LE ? Or should I press for a refund ?

Sorry I missed this in all the excitement.

Here's the deal: the Limited Editions exist. They were printed and they were shipped. There is no reason that they should not be in peoples' hands already.

They have been locked in customs for some time. More than a week. There is now open speculation as to what the fuck has happened to them. Theories include "IMR is flagged by the FBI" and "IMR is flagged by Homeland Security" and "IMR has lost its business license" and "IMR has had inventory seized by the IRS." As you can surmise, most of the speculation tends to run towards the "Loren Coleman is in trouble with the government" what with all the stealing and the fact that the government isn't releasing a shipping container full of Catalyst stuff.

But here's the deal: I don't see how it would be possible for you to get a refund from anyone. Catalyst doesn't have "money" right now. If you pressed for a refund, you'd be a small creditor in a long line.

But I sure as hell would not pre-order anything from them right now. Or direct order for that matter. If it's not a physical object in the inventory of some third party, I wouldn't even try to purchase it.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 7:13 pm

Where are you finding out that they're locked in customs?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 7:29 pm

virgileso wrote:Where are you finding out that they're locked in customs?

Same place I find out the rest of this stuff. "Trusted Sources." Sorry, journalistic integrity, I seriously won't tell tell you.

I try to sift through it all and cut fact from fiction. So I label the wild speculation as to why they are locked in customs as wild speculation. I genuinely don't know.

But yes, in general I think I've been playing Rashoman pretty well during this crisis. I would say my biggest single mistake was putting the data together that WildFire (Cthulhutech) and Posthuman Studios (Eclipse Phase) were both owed back royalties, and were both severing their connection to Catalyst Game Labs and finding new publishers, and that WildFire was specifically leaving Catalyst because of the non-payment issue to conclude that Posthuman Studios was leaving Catalyst because of the nonpayment. I have since been told by Rob Boyle that Posthuman Studios is leaving Catalyst and they aren't being paid all their royalties. And that those two events are not causally linked, at least in that direction. There are of course, many reasons to bail on Catalyst at this time, and I have been assured that I was wrong when I attested that failure to pay contractual royalty payments was the primary motivation for doing so.

It is important to remember during all of this that I am not an extremist here. I am not the person most angry with Catalyst or Loren Coleman. There are people substantially more anti-Loren than me. Phil DeLuca was ranting about sex crimes. In public forums. If there is a rational center of this hurricane of deceit, it's not the dumpshock mods, it's me.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 4:52 am

Question: even if Mormon man gets his way and Catalyst all say "Yeah, it's okay" and nobody feels like pressing charges, given Loren Coleman actually did steal a lot of money, can the police charge/arrest him anyway?

I'm a bit fuzzy on law, after all. It seems a whole bunch of things rely on the victim pressing charges, but it'd be nice if he was arrested despite all his buddies deciding that stealing is actually okay.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:04 am

It's apparently a tax issue unless the person in question repays the funds within the same tax year, so he could be in deep for that. Otherwise, the company has to go after him for him to get burned.