This is appalling

The full details on the bad deal between Limited Run Games and BadLand Games/Publishing came out earlier today, and once you read, it's easy to see how this became a nightmare situation for Limited Run and Tom Happ, developer of the game. I thought we were done with all the messy details earlier, but unfortunately, we have new information to share courtesy of Dan Adelman. Mr. Adelman worked with Happ directly on this entire situation, and the new details he shared are the worst yet.

You might remember a post we made quite some time ago about the deal for Axiom Verge between BadLand Games and Thomas Happ, creator of the game. BadLand had pledged to donate 75% of their revenue from Axiom Verge to Happ in order to help Happ's son fight an illness. Check out the original explanation from Happ below.

As you may have seen elsewhere on my blog and Twitter, I’ve tried to be pretty open about my son Alastair’s health situation. In short, he was born healthy, but the doctors failed to treat a routine case of jaundice during a critical period when he was just days old. The result was a life-long condition called Kernicterus that is characterized by severe neurological damage which robbed Alastair of much of his motor control and hearing. The reason I mention this is that after we decided to move forward with BadLand Games as the publisher, they offered to donate 75% of their share to a special fund dedicated to Alastair’s ongoing health care costs. They didn’t want to publicize it, since none of us wanted to be seen as trying to use my son’s suffering as a marketing tool for the game. I hope this doesn’t come off that way. I just wanted to thank them for their generosity in offering that up, since it was definitely something they didn’t have to do.

I'm sure you can see where this is going. According to Adelman, Happ never received a single dime of those donations. When it was time for BadLand to pony up, they simply went radio silent. That's exactly what happened to Limited Run as well.

This entire situation is bad, but never giving Happ the promised donations to help fight his son's medical issues...that's absolutely disgusting. I doubt Happ will ever see a single cent of that money, even if this aspect goes to court. I think that's more than enough reason to steer VERY far away from any games BadLand publishes from here on out.

Thanks to TheDreamingHawk for the heads up.