Did Zoe Quinn Defraud Kickstarter Backers?

Yesterday the internet started blowing up at Chuck Tingle, the silly erotica author who we all know from his ridiculous book titles. At the beginning of 2017, he partnered with Zoe Quinn to make a video game based on his book series. They did this on Kickstarter and raised about $85,000. All looked okay for the first year of waiting… but curiously, updates stopped coming to backers at January 2018.

Customers started to ask Chuck Tingle what gives.

Bizarrely, Tingle started to lash out at fans, sending weird all caps rants that he has nothing to do with any video game and that they shouldn’t be bothering him.

But if that’s the case, what happened with this kickstarter? There is documentation online where Quinn asks Tingle if she can make the game, he says yes, and the kickstarter’s theme looks very in line with his properties. It’s all very odd.

There must have been substantive pressure put on Quinn by Tingle and fans from this because she eventually addressed the matter by making a rambling tweet thread about it:

Tl;dr: still working on it, just slower because I ran out of money a long time ago and had to get day job(s). also I have been working on ways to bring on some assistance with finishing it. also don’t yell at Chuck about it – shipping the game is on me.

— ℤoë “Haute Topic” ℚuinn (@UnburntWitch) August 30, 2018

This is the interesting tweet, in which Quinn admits she blew through all the money on the kickstarter. She doesn’t elaborate how, and why it would cause such a problem when it vastly exceeded the goal. Didn’t she know how much it would cost to make this? It’s very odd, and the game itself didn’t look to have much depth to it or appear to be something that would take all that much time. This was a silly thing after all. So how two years and $85k later can someone go broke and “still be working on it” with absolutely nothing to show to backers on progress?

so that thing where people think if you just work hard no one will care that you’re a marginalized person or a minority is total bullshit.

— ℤoë “Haute Topic” ℚuinn (@UnburntWitch) August 30, 2018

Instead of owning up to her having spent the money and not made the game, she immediately went to identity politics. This is a standard way for her to operate and for the SJWs in all entertainment industries when they fail to deliver products because they are typically focused on themselves and not actually producing their content. We see this in comics with B. Clay Moore’s comic Kickstarter where he also ran out of money to produce the book. The stories are the same, there’s always a lot of excuses. Is Quinn even a minority or a marginalized person though? She brags on the same thread about having a book tour and a hugo award nomination. It seems like the establishment cultural elite have completely accepted her… despite her failure to deliver. And with the amount of press that Polygon and others gave to hype this video game, you’d think they’d be slightly concerned for their readers that they pushed into backing this? I’ll hold my breath waiting for an article on this from them.

It’s conjecture as to what Quinn did with the money or if she will ever deliver a game at this point, but if I were a backer, I’d be livid. Especially given the next posts where she says she’s too busy vacationing overseas and having fun and talks about how great her life is despite the “trolls” by which she defines as customers who want their product she didn’t deliver:

Okay time to stop being bitter about the people trying to sap my joy in bad faith and go back to appreciating the fact that I get to be too busy with making cool shit that I love to completely goof off in Tokyo. What an awesome problem I get to have 💪

— ℤoë “Haute Topic” ℚuinn (@UnburntWitch) August 30, 2018

 

Remember, if you want a product that you paid for and didn’t get, you’re sapping her joy in bad faith.

What a bizarre world in which we live. And remember, this is who DC Comics now hires to make their books. People who are mired in identity politics who hate their own customers. How much longer will DC last?

I produce what I say I’m going to produce, by contrast. Flying Sparks is already done. I’m waiting on some of the high rezz file and we’ll be getting to the printer immediately. There won’t be a long wait for this book. You can still late back on IndieGoGo here. You’ll see what professionalism and real delivery looks like by contrast to the above.