Is Battlefront refusing to pay for the remaining Kickstarter rewards for Operation Babylon?
Dust Tactics is a Weird War II game set in an alternative super science version of World War II, created by Dust Studio – of which Paolo Parente is one of the principals.
In 2013, Fantasy Flight Games dropped publishing and distribution of Dust Tactics, and Battlefront (of Flames of War fame) took over. Battlefront, in cooperation with Dust Studios then launched a Kickstarter in 2014 for a new expansion, entitled Operation Babylon, which ended up raising close to $470,000. It now seems the future of the project is in doubt.
Update: Paolo is asking for Kickstarter backers to send him their Kickstarter invoice. Details below.
The Kickstarter was planned to ship in waves, with wave 1 mostly delivered – when suddenly Paolo dropped a bomb yesterday alleging that Battlefront has failed to honor their commitments to pay Dust Studios to produce (all) the Kickstarter rewards.
In an interview with Wee Gamers, Paolo makes several claims about how Battlefront owes Dust Studio a large sum of money, is allegedly outright refusing to make payment, and even produces what appears to be a signed contract between the parties – link. As a result, Dust Studios is refusing to make further deliveries to Battlefront and has symbolically downed tools.
Battlefront has posted an official statement on the matter on the Kickstarter itself – in summary, Battlefront acknowledges there is a dispute, and that they hope to resolve it via mediation – without further details about the state of the Kickstarter rewards or allegations made by Paolo. More on this story as it develops.
UPDATE:
From Michael Zabkar:
Paolo is requesting that everyone who received an invoice for this Kickstarter to scan them and send them to Dust Studios at the following email address:
From Paolo:
Please e-mail your invoices from your pledge manager to [email protected] object: KS-BABYLON-ORDER+ your name.
The total lack of transparency from BF makes so that here at Dust Studio we don`t even know if the numbers of “wave 2” minis we are producing is correct or not… We need to collect the data at first. You should have received a pdf like the sample l attach here. Help us to help you.