HeroQuest 25th Anniversary Kickstarter

[lattd]

Yes I find it extremely odd to focus on Spanish rights when they were asking for Canadian dollars on an American website.

[Wolfshade]

Jurisdiction on the internet is a very grey thing.

Where is any of it based? Where the company HQ is? Where the buyer is? Where the server is located? Where the host ISP is? Where the server owners are located?

Tis a nightmare, and why some internet retailers can obsfucate their sales in particular regions to be more tax efficient...

[Mr Mystery]

Wolfie gets it in one!

Ultimately, it seems they were caught out on a technicality.

Due to vagaries of international copyright, trademarks and that, and the free market, there is nothing to stop say a US investor investing in a foreign product which uses a Trademark of a US company. No law has been broken, and nothing is below the belt. Issue here seems to be Kickstarter itself being a US company being perceived to be in violation of US IP and that.

It really is a sod to straighten out.

For instance, I can tell you that Paypal Europe are based in Eire (Ireland, Southern Ireland. All the same thing. But Eire is correct). This would put them outside of UK jurisdiction for financial services. However, Paypal are voluntarily under UK jurisdiction and have been since 2nd July 2007.


Prior to that, they were based in Surrey, so came under compulsory jurisdiction.

Crowd funding as a concept is not currently regulated in the UK, though I'm not sure about anywhere else in the world. However, this is about to change. That will hopefully nail down jurisdiction issues, in the UK at least, and it would be quite unusual for other countries to buck that trend, as it would leave consumers in the breeze, which is not the point of regulation.

[Wolfshade]

[As an aside: Free Ireland does things differently, and considers where companies are based, based on where their HQ are, so Paypal they would consider to be based in the US so not hit them with corporation tax]

[Mr Mystery]

So that's why their skint!

[GrauGeist]

Jurisdiction on the internet is a very grey thing.

Jurisdiction at the US port of entry can be very black and white.

If there are unlicensed, unauthorized imports, the US rightsholder can demand their impoundment and destruction.

[Mr Mystery]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand.....[url=http://www.heroquestclassic.com/last-hour-project-update/]it's down again[/url].

I don't normally like to be a negative nancy, but looks like that's our lot.

For better or for worse, justified or not, looks most likely that we won't be getting any 25th Heroquest funtimes.

[GrauGeist]

This isn't surprising. Verkami was looking down the barrel of massive chargebacks and potential accessory to fraud claims from backers, along with potential additional accessory if GZ got sued by GW and/or Hasbro Europe.

HQ25 is officially "toxic" business.

If GZ is going to fund, they'll have to do it on their own website.
____

ETA: the "accessory" bit is because Verkami reviewed and approved prior to launch, so they share some responsibility due to their editorial-equivalent role. They're not strictly hands-off, so not insulated from GZ's bad behavior.

[Ashriel]

If they actually had the rights to create the game, it seems like they would be good to go. If they are serious, they should quit trying to be cute and just call it what it is and make a "spiritual successor" to the game, like inXile did with Torment:Tides of Numenera when they decided that it was too expensive to get the rights to do a proper sequel to Planescape:Torment. Call the game Quest of the Hero and be done with it.

[Ezaviel]

It seems pretty clear that this mystical "permission" GZ claim to have from Hasbro does not exist.