An open apology and admission of guilt

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DcSteve
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Post by DcSteve »

Metafox is a great person. He scraped together money that could have been used for more important things, just to get to Wisconsin from NY for the convention. When i met him at DreamCon, he had done everything he could to insure that people understood the mechanics of the dreamcast scene. There is nothing to be mad about because it wasnt THAT MUCH money that people spent on this plus it was going to a better cause then charity (friendship). Also, People are beginning to get the money refunded or possibly still a chance of getting the mag. Dreamcon would not have been possible without Metafox. Thank you sir.
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Matisfaction
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Post by Matisfaction »

Personally I have a lot of time for Metafox, The guy genuinely cares about the dreamcast scene. Since I started DCPS (which is almost a one man band), Metafox has shown a genuine interest in what we do there and encouraged us to keep going.

I think that judging his character by this one regrettable incident without taking in to account of all the good work he has done in the past is a little shortsighted. The guy has owned up to his mistakes and is trying to put things right so please give him the chance to do that.
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Post by Quzar »

Strapping Scherzo wrote:I've been pretty silent during this ordeal mostly because I didn't order the mag. I'm just curious. How much total money are we talking here?

I feel if it was pretty much a life or death situation involving himself or someone else that he cares for, then what could he have done? What anyone would have done. Now if it's a situation where he wanted to avoid borrowing money from a relative or avoid maxing out his credit cards, that's different. This money should have been last resort.

We can only speculate at the actual specifics. Maybe he had the mag money in his personal checking account which made it too easy to take a little here and there, promising himself to make up for it the next time extra money came around but never did.

I'm still fine with MetaFox and would trust him since he has never wronged me personally. Considering his track record for giving to and helping the DC community, this should, in time, be forgiven.
Max of something like 1350$. iirc 150 people preordered and it was 9$.

I havn't really said anything either, mostly cause I don't know what to say, but I'm fairly sure that (at least to me) the issue wasn't that he used this money for something else, it was that he told us the mags were coming out, and faked the release as opposed to just delaying them further until the money could appear again.
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Post by Strapping Scherzo »

Yeah. Lying isn't a good thing. Nosiree.
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Post by Christuserloeser »

Quzar wrote:I havn't really said anything either, mostly cause I don't know what to say, but I'm fairly sure that (at least to me) the issue wasn't that he used this money for something else, it was that he told us the mags were coming out, and faked the release as opposed to just delaying them further until the money could appear again.
Don't really know what to say too other than I already was somewhat aware all the time that he did not sent out the magazine (as we were working on the disc at some time but Meta stopped his work at some point). At the private DreamCon forum at DCEvolution, we use(d) to discuss everything Sandman related. I also was and still am part of the private Sandman/DreamOn forum over at DCS and there weren't any new posts by Meta since Feburary - and December before that.

I am not entirely sure why I didn't say something when he posted about the sent magazines. I guess at first I thought he would buy himself a week or two with that. Then I thought he possibly could have sent the magazine without the disc. Then, when people started reporting to recieve nothing, I thought "damn, he really is lying about it".

It's like you see a car that you know now will drive into an heavy accident and you just stay there with your eyes opened wide and everything is happening in slow motion but you don't really know what to do.

The only post I made regarding this was posted here in June:
Sweater Fish wrote:Yeah, MetaFox is definitely no stranger to people who have been into Dreamcast homebrew for any amount of time. We all know him. But at the same time, what we all know about him is that he's a bit of a flake. He gets great and grand ideas, tries to follow through on them, but things usually don't really come through. At least that's one of the things *I* know about him. I knew it when I made my original pre-order and I've known it as I watched his comments on my ocassional visits here.

I've never thought there was any chance he was trying to scam anyone or even that he would acidently scam anyone. I have totaly faith in him on that count. That doesn't mean I actually believe that 120 magazines got lost in the mail. Sorry, it doesn't.
[...]

I for myself never thought that you'd intend to do any harm, but I think similar as Sweater Fish Deluxe. You plan a lot of things but once something gets near completion you tend to just abandon it.[...]

The menu you were working on for the Sandman disc that was supposed to be shipped along with the magazine - it's fantastic and works great, but you never finalized it. I never heard from you (at least regarding this topic). Instead of getting rid of the few remaining bugs of your menu, you anounced new features that the menu is supposed to have (shareware VMU thing, I didn't exactly understood what you meant I think)

Still, just releasing what we had months ago would have made (and still would do!) a fantastic release in my opinion.

And: the option to release a regular issue of the magazine with a demo disc would have boosted the scene a lot! It'd still be a major boost of the scene to be able to release software (like smaller games or apps) on a real disc... You just need to get it on ;)

I remember that I offered MetaFox to send him money to support the magazine in late (or early?) 2005 - about 100 or 200 Euros that he could pay me back with sending me a package with some of the first issues for promotion and selling here in Germany. But then I decided that I should wait to see any progress in his work at first before sending money.

In 2002 I started to work on a magazine myself so I knew how hard it would be. We started with about a dozen of friends of mine to work on it for about 1 year. Time went on and we had most articles done, but layout and pictures really was where we crashed into a wall that we couldn't climb.

And that's what's really the thing that bothers me most: Like Curt wrote, knowing he would be working on a magazine to be sold commercially he should (and could!) have called for outside help. There is so much talent in this scene, one could have get the needed things done in no time.

Anyway, I am still interested in getting the thing done and out.
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Post by Quzar »

Christuserloeser wrote:I also was and still am part of the private Sandman/DreamOn forum over at DCS and there weren't any new posts by Meta since Feburary - and December before that.
As am I, but didn't really see that as evidence or anything. Considering I completely forgot the forum existed =P.
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Post by Darksaviour69 »

offtopic: Matisfaction, i added DCPS to the front page links at dcnews.co.uk ( i kept meaning to do that. i hope that helps (traffic wise)
Max of something like 1350$. iirc 150 people preordered and it was 9$.
well i paid $13 as i'm in europe (i forgot how much i paid, only was reminded when he refunded me)
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Post by bentodd »

let him be. Who cares. Anyone ever shop on ebay, see how much stuff you never get or get months later. Or even reputable companies. Forgive and forget.
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Post by ace »

DcSteve wrote:Metafox is a great person.
Who stole our money
DcSteve wrote:He scraped together money that could have been used for more important things
Like not stealing our money.
DcSteve wrote:There is nothing to be mad about because it wasnt
It's still our money, and it still got stolen.
DcSteve wrote:Also, People are beginning to get the money refunded or possibly still a chance of getting the mag. Dreamcon would not have been possible without Metafox. Thank you sir.
It's not the actual act of thievery that hurt people so much, it was the betrayal of trust.

Anyways, I forgive MetaFox.
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Post by Quzar »

ace wrote:
DcSteve wrote:Metafox is a great person.
Who stole our money
I don't see how it's theft if he refunded all our paypal things when he told us he used that specific money for something else. I don't see how other than the lying part, this is any different from him saying the magazine wouldn't be coming out and refunding us all our money.
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Post by butters »

Quzar wrote:
ace wrote:
DcSteve wrote:Metafox is a great person.
Who stole our money
I don't see how it's theft if he refunded all our paypal things when he told us he used that specific money for something else. I don't see how other than the lying part, this is any different from him saying the magazine wouldn't be coming out and refunding us all our money.
There is a such thing as time value of money. Money now is always worth more than money later unless you get more money later than you have now.
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Post by emptythought »

This is never gonna end. Can we lock this?
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Post by LordNikon »

This situation is a prime example of how pre-orders / donation boxes for privately funded projects are a bad idea. Donation links on project sites often serve to allow the site owner to sleep in, not work, and sit around in their undies all day drinking Mountain Dew. The point being, money usually doesn't go towards what the paying user thinks. The people do not get what they payed for, and the Project Admin will try to rationalize the mere existance of such a payment channel.

MetaFox should not be commended for simply coming out and telling the truth. He has an obligation to conduct commercial business in an honest fashion. Whether the current government could successfully prosecute him or not is irrelevent. This situation would still classify as fraud, and any user who pre-ordered a magazine would be right to take it up with PayPal (or whatever method that was used for payment.)

In my opinion, I think MetaFox should have obtained another job, and set enough money aside after 2 paychecks to start paying users back before he made this thread. So far this entire charade has revolved around excuses. Myself and many others are tired of hearing them.

The sad part is, the real damage wasn't done to MetaFox, or people's wallets. The real infliction of damage was on the Dreamcast Community itself. The DreamOn magazine project got a lot of attention within the community, and to see it end up like this is quite a disappointment. This situation is yet another example of the amateur state of Dreamcast projects. I can only hope that in the future the bar is raised for the level of quality and professionalism expected of the Dreamcast Community.

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Post by Juan »

LordNikon wrote:The sad part is, the real damage wasn't done to MetaFox, or people's wallets. The real infliction of damage was on the Dreamcast Community itself. The DreamOn magazine project got a lot of attention within the community, and to see it end up like this is quite a disappointment.
Exactly. This whole fiasco pretty much killed the chance of any similar projects... At least.
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Post by ace »

fackue wrote:This is never gonna end. Can we lock this?
You're right. Done.
Locked