Even with delays, and the supreme lack of communication, Walsh is no Mark Jacobs when it comes to handling game development.
#CAMELOT UNCHAINED KICKSTARTER PROFESSIONAL#
Say what you will about some of the other crowdfunded games like Camelot Unchained and Star Citizen but by comparison to COE these look like professional studios. Though arguably, both of those games are further in delivering on their vision than where Chronicles of Elyria is after 6 years. We’ve seen this delusion is rampant with Kickstarted games from Dreamworld, to City of Titans. We could look at other projects where people were delusional to think that the minuscule funding from Kickstarter would be able to pull an entire MMORPG together. If I were to play devils advocate here, I would probably say that when CEO of Souldbound Studios, Jeromy Walsh, started this project, his ambitions were far ahead of his capabilities. In this particular case, the premise Walsh produces for the inclusion of NFTs – a starkly monetization heavy aspect of gaming – when Soulbound Studios failed to produce anything noteworthy after more than 5 years is ludicrous. Now, anyone who has frequented this site knows that, as someone who covers blockchain games regularly, I have a measured approach that doesn’t entirely dismiss these titles with prejudice. As “development” rolled on, Walsh moved out of creating Chronicles of Elyria as a valid product and instead moved into the utilization of Blockchain and NFTs as a way to leverage the crypto boom at the time. Sure, it’s not illegal to “change direction” but when you expect people to pay for a product and never deliver the product, that’s not reevaluating, that’s flat out deceiving them. Of course, by October of 2020, when the class action lawsuit rolled in, the defense for Soulbound Studios deemed that it was not illegal to change direction following a business reevaluation. Not only was Walsh unable to deliver on the original product, but the attempt to do so after more than 4 years “in development” wasn’t even attempted. Nothing tangible came of the game development wise, until a completely new title was revealed, Kingdoms of Elyria, which was a completely different standalone title. Later Wash attempted to clarify that he wasn’t completely shutting down, but by this time development had already ceased. There was a gross miscalculation, not just that the funds raised would fund further development, but that the game was nowhere near a reasonably playable state by March of 2020 when Soulbound stopped development and released their employees.ĭespite shutting down, Soulbound Studios LLC still picked up a PPP loan of more than 200K dollars to fund development just a month later for the 15 employees he claimed would continue working despite lack of funding. Before there was a game worth the 1.3 million in funds from backers and 7.7 million more that Walsh bilked from his fanbase on their website, the development shut down. Yet Walsh didn’t just fall short of completing the initial game. According to the Kickstarter campaign, the team weighed the risks and determined that the funding provided by backers and Walsh’s personal funds would be enough to pull the game through to launch. In many ways, the fault does lie at his feet. More appropriately than blaming crowdfunding, it makes far more sense to point the finger at Jeromy “Caspian” Walsh for the shortcomings of what Soulbound Studios has failed to accomplish.
Rehashing the entire saga of Chronicles of Elyria and the ineptitude of the team is not the purpose of this column. Whether it was misrepresenting the state of the game from the initial Kickstarter, or it was restarting development on a poor substitute for the initial game with Kingdoms of Elyria, the depths that Soulbound Studios went through to pull the wool over the eyes of their backers is mind blowing. See, in this particular situation, backers were misled from the beginning. This doesn’t even broach the fact that Kickstarter MMORPGs have a terrible track record of making their way to completion. Realistically, turning to a group of individuals, promising them a product with zero guarantee they will ever receive it already sounds like a losing investment. It's easy to disparage crowdfunding campaigns.
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