Yesterday, we covered the bizarre but perhaps expected news that Portalarium has transferred Shroud of the Avatar and other assets to Catnip Games, which is the new studio of Chris Spears, the public front of the game for many months now.
As we noted at the time, Portalarium’s had a rough year, as it closed its physical offices, refused comment on missing Kickstarter rewards, missed SEC filings required by the game’s equity crowdfunding (still missing), and the weird obfuscation surrounding who exactly was CEO of the company and when that happened.
Starr Long has today finally posted the first update in a year about what’s going on with the missing Kickstarter book – and as players expected, they’re never doing to see that book. They’re getting in-game items instead.
“Digital copies were delivered as promised but unfortunately we could never reach an agreement with the publisher on distribution of a physical copy to our backers. Please accept our apologies for our failure to deliver the reward and the extreme delay in an outcome. It is not all bad news however! We have come up with unique book themed replacement rewards! Kickstarter backers at the Patron level were eligible for a physical copy of the book. They will receive instead a unique in-game reward of a Challenge Dungeon Remote Dungeon Entrance! This entrance allows direct access to the Challenge Dungeon from the property it is placed on. The entrance itself is disguised as a magical book with the Blade of the Avatar symbol on the cover! Kickstarter backers at the Citizen level (and higher) were eligible for a physical copy of the book signed by Richard and Tracy. They will instead receive two unique in-game rewards. The Sword of Midras Library is a huge unique dungeon room filled floor to ceiling with books, similar to the Lyceum in Artifice. It can be placed in any Player Made Dungeon. The Sword of Midras Magical Printing Press allows you to create 12 book copies per week without needing any blank books and each of these copies automatically comes in a book bound with a Blade of the Avatar symbol book cover! We hope to have these items complete and delivered on later than the end of this year. NOTE: Citizens will also receive the Patron reward of the Challenge Dungeon Remote Entrance for a total of three unique rewards.”
We reached out to the studios, devs, and lawyers with a stack of questions yesterday relating to the missing book as well as the missing SEC filing, the involvement of Starr Long and Richard Garriott, and the state of the studio and game. No one has responded, though Spears appeared on a vague livestream yesterday.
