Designer of Kickstarter solarpunk boardgame Solar City (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1689336268/solar-city-a-solarpunk-game) has quit after reportedly finding out his publisher has been conning previous crowd funding backers on a polish site

taken from a BGG article here https://boardgamegeek.com/article/29841480 by Krzysztof Lityński

“Marcin Senior Ropka, one of the designers of Solar City, announced this week that he is no longer an employee of Games Factory. His decision was based on a fact that company was lying to him and the backers about at least one of the previous crowdfunding campaigns in Poland.

The publisher has been stating for many months that the games (Polish edition of Raiders of The North expansions) were stuck at the Polish customs office, and even in one of the updates fabricated materials from customs agency. Eventually, due to the growing distrust, one of the backers asked the publisher of the original game (Garphill Games) if Games Factory even participated in the international print. It was then revealed that although the games were manufactured Games Factory has never paid the final bill and the games have been waiting in China for eight months to date.

It is worth noting that during this time the company published different games outside its crowdfunding campaigns and it is still unclear if these were paid for with backers’ money.

As a reaction to revealing the truth Games Factory published formal announcement apologizing for lying to the backers and promised refunds. It also later stated that only board members of the company knew about the situation.

It is also not clear if refunds and the whole situation won’t impact other projects such as Solar City or Board Game Creative Kit, although designers and the publisher stated that this will unlikely be the case. Games Factory still has at least six unfinished projects at the time of writing this.

Games Factory is known to be banned from the largest crowdfunding website in Poland due to the lack of communication, and undelivered projects. Last Polish campaign which was for Solar City PL was ran on the relatively new crowdfunding website.

The next campaign of the company was supposed to be Polish edition of Architects of The West Kingdom, although its original publisher Garphill Games already announced that it’s not going to license the game to Games Factory due to breaking of the former contract regarding Raiders of The North expansions. After this announcement the game disappeared from Games Factory website.

Sources:
1. Private correspondence with Shem Philips of Garphill Games
2. Games Factory statements on Polish crowdfunding website wspieram.to:
– https://wspieram.to/najezdzcydodatki?pokaz_projekt=1&active_…
– https://wspieram.to/najezdzcydodatki?pokaz_projekt=1&active_…
3. Polish article on blog Planszówki we dwoje:
– http://www.planszowkiwedwoje.pl/2018/08/games-factory-kamstw…
4. https://wspieram.to/najezdzcydodatki?pokaz_projekt=1&active_…

edit: typos, wording, added information about fabricating materials from customs agency”

Posting the story so BoW users are aware of possible issues with the publisher in the future