For those rejoicing at ND's departure and Archon/Prodos' arrival, please investigate Archon/Prodos' treatment of their Alien vs Predator kickstarter backers. I'd link the kickstarter campaign but they voluntarily took down their own kickstarter page (along with thousands of negative comments) with a copyright claim because they couldn't change what they posted earlier. They then said that backers should join a facebook group for official updates and communication; if you joined but complained publicly about not having your pledge despite seeing the same products for months/years on your local store shelves, you were booted from the group and blocked.

After 5 years, only 20% of backers had their full pledges and about as many didn't have any part of their pledge despite the same exact products sitting on store shelves for years by their own count in an update in 2018. Many of the backers who did get all or part only had it because they sweetened the pot for Prodos/Archon by saving them money on shipping by picking up the pledge at conventions Prodos/Archon were attending or by placing additional orders on their direct webstore.

You may be wondering why I keep using the two company names together like that. It's because convientenly after the failure to fulfill AVP put a big stain on their reputation, Prodos transferred their assets to Archon (a new company created in another EU country founded conveniently by the father of the head of Prodos); obviously the debt/liability from their other ventures didn't follow them to the new company. They then ran their next (one or two?) kickstarters under yet a third company in the US with no mention of either Prodos/Archon until gamers at Boardgamegeek sleuthed out the truth. The AVP license recently ran out and, despite multiple attempts at communciation, some backers still reported that they never got any of their rewards.

Have they been doing better since the AVP fiasco with regards to fulfilling their kickstarter rewards? Yes, they have. When things go well for them and everything is under their control, they do seem to live up to their obligations. But the only record we have of them with regards to a financial failure is the AVP campaign and they were perfectly willing to give backers the short end of the stick permanently while the rest of their business went on as normal. Given that Starfinder backers are a similar type of albatross hanging around their corporate neck just like AVP backers, I wouldn't get your hopes up too high.

I sincerely hope they do better this time... I'm simply not counting on it. I have the luxury of fortunately missing out on the kickstarter so have no money at stake either way. My only interest in it at this point is simply to get around a half dozen figs from backers on the secondary market.