Brianna Wu Is Coming Off More And More A Blatant Fraud, Especially to Those who Paid Wu Good Money GethN7 Follow Jun 30, 2016 · 4 min read

This story will be partially a commentary on the below Medium article, partially an open letter to Brianna Wu, and while I have a well known personal animus towards Wu, I shall keep this strictly limited to the topic at hand, namely, Wu’s ever growing appearance as a shameless scammer.

The above is an article by a Kickstarter backer for Revolution 60. They wished to remain anonymous since Wu tried to extort personal information out of another similar party who asked questions Wu did not wish to answer without the ability to extort the questioner’s silence, specifically, their IRL name, with the intent of handing them information that could not be publicly confirmed as accurate. When that party refused, seeking transparency, Wu lashed out at them, so this party who wishes to remain anonymous has sensibly wished to avoid the same.

As to the contents of the article itself, they point to several delays and lack of concrete information on Revolution 60’s release date. Worse, the release date continued to be pushed further and further back when updates did occur, and usually then only when backers reasonably requested updates to make sure the money they donated in good faith had not been squandered.

The pattern continued to become more worrying as the writer points out Wu’s ability to keep backers informed of delays has been very spotty at best, and even then could rarely be bothered to address them via official channels, with the backers often having to either check out secondary websites or attempt to trawl Wu’s Twitter for further updates, as the creator appeared averse to direct inquiry about the project, except under duress.

Before I go on, I too would consider these worrying red flags, especially given how high profile the project seemed and how several big names attested to the developer’s ability to provide the product intended.

When matters came to a head around May 2016, over two years since the initial projected release, it appeared as if Wu was going to honor the wishes of the backers and assure them beyond doubt their good faith was not squandered.

I covered this myself here:

However, this turned out to be more false hope, as this came and went, and Wu again sunk back into a pattern of ignoring backers, many had taken to monitoring Wu’s Twitter in desperation for actual news. However, Wu appeared more interested in frittering away time on unimportant matters, with R60 not even getting so much as anything aside from maybe a token mention, with no actual updates ever given in even a semi-official manner.

Worse, the last actual news indicates, after blowing nearly two plus years of time frustrating the backers, Wu announced VR plans of R60, with the obvious meaning of FURTHER delays, yet has yet to update any official sites like the kickstarter page or give any further ETAs.

The writer of the article comes to the same conclusion I did: Wu is an apparent ripoff artist who refuses to deliver because either the product cannot be released in any playable state, or has constantly delayed and ignored things because the game, aside from it’s initial iOS release, has been mostly a scam.

Neither conclusion seems unreasonable based on my own opinion as a game dev myself, especially given the amount of money invested in the product, the high promises for it, and the subsequent lack of updates and noted hostility Wu has shown towards direct inquiries into the legitimacy and solvency of the project itself.

This all said, I have an even more damning conclusion to reach: Wu, for reasons unknown, has no intention of honoring the backers or anyone with good faith questions about what they paid money for, even though a look at the Steam database confirms all Wu has to do is release the product, and examination of the tweets and updates reveals no sensible reason the game cannot be released NOW, with VR support and other refinements released as DLC/updates, much like how Skyrim is being re-released by Bethseda in an updated format for PC with core updates and other refinements while using the existing version as a base.

And on the conclusion the author reaches about how Wu refuses to honor the intentions of the backers, I agree wholeheartedly. If this were merely a game released on Wu’s own time and dime and these people had made occasional donations to Wu via Patreon, that’s one thing, Wu is not necessarily expected to operate on anyone’s time save their own, Patreon carries no assurances of products save by the party who plans to deliver them when they deem fit. Kickstarter, on the other hand, has much more concrete rules, a product or service is all but guaranteed to be delivered in exchange for the funding should the goals be met (and it was), with the expectation the backers will be refunded and/or otherwise compensated should the Kickstarter fail to deliver.

Overall, Wu comes off more and more the blatant fraud, and I too encourage the backers to pursue legal recourse to discover why Wu has proven unable, unwilling or incompetent to exercise good faith and provide what they paid for.