I was wondering what if freelancers withholding copyright became standard operating procedure for every book...

If only half of what we've been told about CGL's habits is true, CGL would not manage to publish a single book.

If the freelancers were to all unite and follow through with this solution, then the CGL counter would be to hire 'scab' writers that would be willing to go without such measures and cut out the current crop of freelancers. This may be happening even now to those that are independently holding out on copyrights.

So the two big options seem to be

CGL keeps the license, things eventually return to somewhat normal. Hopefully they get people who are better at writing rules and don't screw up the setting more than they already have.

New Company gets it: Here I guess they could pick up where they left off and all the freelancers holding onto good could pitch it to the new company. But I suspect we'd have a 5e coming up quickly in the production line, which would be fun since I am still waiting on my 4ALE(arriving soon as I understand)

This is all still very much up in the air and I think we could be here talking and ranting about points from today until the day we get the official nod on who has the license. This is all very draining to me as a fan much less anyone who has so much more tied into this game.

My best wishes go out to those who are suffering during this time

*Falls off chair*

Should't it be about time for a new thread?

Trollman's last post is like Nero tuning his fiddle.

What drama! I would totally love it if I wasn't so saddened by it.

Nero wasn't responsible for the fire and Nero did not fiddle while Rome was burning.
Nero was responsible for the rebuilding of the city after the fire.

Thats not good mate.

Yes. Nero actually is a victm of slander by politically motivated historicans. And fiddles were unknown in Rome, anyway. Fiddle are a development of the late Middle Ages to Renaissance.

Like police detectives?

Unicorns are rare and hard to breed. It makes no sense the Star uses them and not a proven biodrone horse.

I'd be fine with a couple vampire elite cops in France or Italy riding Bayards (superfast horses that turn to mist), though.

I'm no lawyer but IIRC copyright applies to a text but not to the ideas... Which means that anyone could rephrase the freelancer's text and get something they could legally publish.
It's more tricky with game mechanics, though.

So.. no biodrone unicorns with move-by-wire3 and taserhorn?

If you are producing a derivative work that would be bad. Copyright law is a morass that is best avoided - iirc to find out what the law really means on how one given work relates to another given work you need to get a judge to rule on it in an infringement suit, which is highly risky. If you give a new writer the original proposal and asked them to write the piece that might work, if you gave them the submitted piece and asked them to rewrite that would seem more likely to not work. But I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

Well, there's retractable cyber-horn and a creative combination with the shock hand implant stuff. Or a cyber-implant-taser-gun.
A Unicorn shooting lightning from it's horn.

I'd imagine they'd be interested in them more for their anti-magic capabilities than their looks. They're relatively cheap (moreso than Hell Hounds or Barghests, two very common paracritters used by security and law enforcement), too. The only problem is their allergy.

Allergy to lead does not count, everything is allergic to lead if it's administered fast enough.

They have a severe allergy to pollutants, not lead. What the hell entry are you reading, man?

i forgot the smiley, sorry ^^#
And yes, that's probably doubleplusnotgood in seattle or ANYWHERE ^^

Ok here's my question, and it may have come up before but not in the past 20-30 pages that I've read.

"One of the owners embezzled company money on a massive enough scale so that, a NUMBER of writers have not been paid and now books are being held and taken off shelves and offline.

Why isn't he in jail?"

It's not a small sum we're talking about here. It's more than a few 100 bucks 'misplaced'. We're talking about thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars.

Why isn't he in jail?

That amount of money isn't spent on staples and post-it notes. You might mistake a paycheck that's $100 or so over your norm, but not Thousands and thousands of dollars as described. This guy willingly took the money. Where'd it go? And... as it's gone and all these people are not getting paid for their work. He stole from the company and his employees. Why hasn't he been arrested?

People are talking about if the license and stuff are going to be picked up. I'm more curious as to why he hasn't been thrown in jail.

While I don't know anything specific on the timeline of this situation, generally that takes time. Especially in cases like these, where accountants would have to comb through financial records.

And where at least some of the other owners (like Randall Bills) are hoping to sweep the mess under the rug and pray the IRS doesn't notice it.

Because stealing money is only a crime if there's someone who will go to court with it.
If nobody sues you, if everybody just forgives you, then nothing ever happened.

Yeah, though the IRS actually gives out a reward for someone who drops a dime on a tax evader. If the tax evasion is substantial, the reward can be quite a bit of money. Though not everyone qualifies for the reward, even if they do report someone.

hmmm . . delivering paydata to the government? O.o

So long as the money's good? Why let morals get in the way of a good business oppoirtunity, Seele.

Think of this swiss banker who raked in millions from the German government and made all those tax evading rich people shit their pants. They even got the morals on their side, you ask me.

's just . . usually the Government is The Enemy <.<;, . . feels kinda strange . .

So out of all these writers that have not been paid their contracted money, and many whom have withheld copy write due to non payment, not one of them has threatened to go to the police, or.. actually picked up the phone? I'm pretty new to these boards but it seems extremely clear that some major embezzlement went on here if the company can't pay it's people due to one guy making off with the money. It's not like he slipped a few $100 here and there and hid it in operating cost. This is thousands and thousands of dollars, to the point that the coffers are empty and people aren't getting paid. That's ___EASY___ To find when you look for it.

I wouldn't assume that. Though I'm sure they wouldn't post about it on a forum if they did. After all, anything they said here might very well be admissible in a court somewhere down the line.

Well yeah I get that. lol.

But the original question remains. Dude stole 1,000s or 10,000s from the company. He needs to see the inside of a cell.

Since the original figures were actually in the 100's of Thousands, I would tend to agree with that...

Keep the Faith

These numbers were the one most disputed point in this whole thing.
but seeing how the freelancers alone might be in there with 5 to 15, maybe up to 20k of outstanding payments, it does seem a bit more realistic to me right now.

Yeah I don't have any 'hard' numbers, past the fact that 3+ people are owed $3,000+ each. And you gotta think it's enough missing so that it bottomed out the coffers, as they're actually pulling books from sale, vs just cowboying up and paying the people.

That means the money just isn't there.

Which means it was stolen. Lets call it what it is. The guy stole company money and used or hid it. Other wise when busted he'd give it back. He hasn't. People are still unpaid, so the money is GONE or hidden. Either way it's still stolen. To the tune of $1,000s MINIMUM but more likely $10,000+ (( just going off what a few freelancers here say they're owed, and the fact that the company is bottomed out)).

That deserves criminal charges and jail. He didn't steal someones sandwich from the fridge at work, dude stole thousands of dollars. THat's not an 'oops my bad' action.

*Nods to Jennifer*

Stole money from the company, and from the mouths of babies... That's pretty low down.

Yes it is, but no smoke, no fire.
Technically, the money missing belongs other owners of CGL, if i understood this whole PR/Legalese Mumbo Jumbo correct.
And if they don't sue, then nothing happens. Of course, this missing money means the freelancers don't get paid, that's true.
But the freelancers could only try and sue for outstanding wages, but not because of the missing money.

That depends. In Switzerland, this would be a crime that the state persecutes whether or not the owners want it persecuted. Once the police hear of such an act, they will launch an investigation.

Probably only because of missing Tax-Money.

I'm not sure in the case of what is alleged to happened here, but most crimes are crimes against the state/country in the US. There are states that don't follow that rule, but the Feds do as far as I know. For states though it started in a large part because of things like domestic violence and some sex offenses, people would not press charges against there husbands/fathers. I don't know how much it has entered the realm of financial crimes.

Embezzlement is still a crime. It could be charged in the US. Happens all the time. Usually with much larger companies but it's still a crime. If you stole $1,000,000 or $10,000 it's still theft and embezzlement.

Most of the crimes are actually state crimes over here, especially theft, con, etc..

As far as FASA goes, they always paid me on time, Mike Mulvihill was very generous with his time in answering questions. From my perspective, Mike built up a considerable group of freelancers that did excellent work.

For your tenure as Line Developer I am more than content to take you at your word.

Yet, by your account from when Mike went to work at Wizkids (and FASA closed) till the time that you became Line Developer the pool had shrunk.

You had no history with writing for FASA...you were part of the new closed pool. You see, after FASA, that is when the new pool was formed...with decidedly fewer FASA freelancers.

Hrm, can't say I agree with that. As I was one of the freelancers who wrote for FASA and then moved to FanPro and then later moved to Catalyst. Honestly, I'm not aware that at any time there was anything resembling a closed freelancer pool.

FASA may have always paid you on time, but they did not always pay me on time. And I know I was not the only one. That said, I will agree there a lot of great freelancers at FASA. When FASA ended and FanPro took over, we lost a lot of those freelancers. Not because there was anything keeping them from joining FanPro, as far as I can tell, but because most them didn't want to bother. I know I spoke to a freelancer I had great respect for during the FASA time who told me he wasn't going to bother to keep writing for FanPro because of non-payment issues he had with FASA.

And if it went to court CGL would see no money as Loren would put it into his defense. By reading the email from Randall it seems that Loren will try to pay back the money. The threat of jail may mean more than actually going to jail. So if Loren goes to court and gets jail time were are talking maybe months assuming someone is even willing to prosecute.

Then we are left with the question how much is Topps license for shadowrun? If CGL goes down who is going to pick up the license? Who can afford to publish a book? A shadowrun 5 book would cost 300-400k to produce plus 1-2 years of development time? It is not exactly like pen and paper rpgs are the bonanza for profits. It is in everyone's best interest for CGL to get their accounts settled by paying their debts, repair the relationship with the freelancers/writers and to move on. As long the money to print books and pay writers is done then the owners can fight for the remainder of the cash inflow.

The thing we don't know is how much the owners are having to pay to fix this. I would be pretty aggravated if I was an owner only to find out to keep my company afloat I had to dig into my savings because someone skimmed money off the top and didn't pay people. Lets assume a book is 50000 just for the writing, layout and artwork. If the owners have to suddenly come up with 150-200k by second mortgages, higher interest rates, etc then it has hurt everyone. Still at the end it is the owner prerogative to decide if they want to remain partners or simply sell their stake.

For reasons that have nothing at all to do with Shadowrun, I am very familiar with the current costs to produce RPG books. I assure you, these numbers are grossly inflated.

This makes the false assumption that everyone likes the 4e rules and wants to see them continue. I, for one, would like to see a new edition with new mechanics and I hope that work on it starts sooner rather than later.

Well, It is quite apparent that you cannot please everyone....

Keep the Faith

Sorry got my math wrong on the freelancer pay by a factor of 10, but we are still looking at what 10k a book let alone a print run?

Time to jump into the deep end of speculation. Some of my friends and family and I were together for Easter. Some of us have experience in publishing, intellectual property (both entertainment and scientific), and all of us have experience in business.

Our collective (summary) Wild Ass Guess of what has/is happening follows:

1) Financial problems were found.
2) Problems had tax implications.
3) Taxes were paid.
4) Cash reserves were significantly reduced.

This brings us to the recent disclosures and problems with paying people. CGL needs money for the license renewal and fixed bills, so the easy place (in their mind) to cut was the freelancers and salaries.

Our speculation is that there was a conversation with TOPPS. TOPPS most likely watches this board (I used to work for a company that helped people do just that - watch sites related to their interests). They most likely know what is happening, and probably had a short conversation along the lines of "fix it or kiss the license goodbye".

So, the owners do the following:

1) Keep everyone in the fold, so as to continue to get restitution from them and show that they are a going concern. The terms of the LLC could also make it difficult to remove one of the owners.
2) Implement controls and procedures that satisfy TOPPS that they have their operations under control. The troublesome owners are neutralized, everyone is watched and accountable, and a plan is put into place to right the ship.

This would be the preferable approach, as it saves the startup headache with a new licensee. This would also explain much of what we have seen, including the marathon check writing session and the lack of terminations/resignations from the owners.

Going forward, TOPPS would keep a close watch to ensure the new procedures protect the line, and that everyone is paid. They may even allow some of the license payment to be delayed if it helps right the ship. If this course is what is happening, a few things will happen over the next few weeks:

1) Books will be published
2) Bills will be paid, including freelancers
3) CGL will retain the license
4) The owners will have less direct control as individuals, it will be exercised as a group

If this happens, CGL should be able to right the ship, people will get paid, products come out.

Again, this is an educated guess, but it fits with what we have heard from JHardy and the facts presented by other insiders without assuming the complete fall of CGL.

-MP

Crimes are against the people as a whole prosecuted through the state. Against people it is a civil action. As a private company embezzlement is a lot harder to prove. Tax issues are a different story.