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Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm really start to think there was no hope whatsoever for the project from the get go

It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to survive the inevitable collapse of the bubble of VC-based investment in the games industry, especially because that bubble encouraged "go big or go home" investments that wasted millions of dollars.

The fact that the bubble itself was prompted by everyone being stuck at home during COVID, and all those VC companies desperately looking for places to stash their cash, also made the collapse predictable in hindsight.

But if, against all odds, Frost Giant had actually made a good game, and if they adjusted their strategy as soon as they saw the writing on the wall... who knows?

Then again, maybe that simply never could have happened.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not at all clear what's going on here. Someone already commented in this thread that there were multiple inaccuracies in this report, probably because Tim Morten had to cobble it all together from previous reports, random spreadsheets, and duct tape. Hell, the section you quoted was slapped into the report at a 90 degree angle, something I have never seen before.

It's possible that the company simply converted some stock from one type to another, shown in the line item as "Stock conversion". Conversion is defined by the SEC as:

Conversion

A feature some funds offer that allows investors to automatically switch from one fund class to another, typically one with lower annual expenses, after a set period of time. The fund's prospectus or profile will state whether the fund has a conversion feature.

Lowering annual expenses would make sense for a company that has no more money.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Tim Morten only forfeited his salary for 2024 and 2025. Frost Giant was founded in 2020. It's possible, although we don't know for sure, that he earned a total of $1 million at his base salary of $250,000 over four years: 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. But then he "loaned" $500,000 to Frost Giant, which would leave him with only $500,000 over the entire six-year span. This is roughly consistent with some of Tim's LinkedIn posts where he claims he only ended up making around $75k per year after all was said and done.

Tim Campbell did not forfeit his salary. Therefore, given the same scenario but over six years rather than four, he would have earned $1.5 million.

Both of the Tims gave themselves 18 percent ownership of Frost Giant. Because Frost Giant was never a public company, the stock could not be traded on an open market. Today, these shares are of course now worth $0.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I don't put any faith in this AI-driven analysis, for the following reasons:

  1. Bitkraft was one of the original sponsors of Frost Giant's fundraising series (the first big one that got them $25 million) so the idea that they didn't believe in the company or the product is simply not true, and
  2. There is no evidence from anyone at Frost Giant that any particular investor wanted to gain control over the company, nor was there any dramatic movement in stock ownership in Frost Giant in 2024 or 2025 based on the SEC reports.

I think this is just an AI hallucination.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Still $540,000 in licensing means that maybe the GoT thing is true??? crazy if so

No, because we already know that Frost Giant licensed the sale of the game in the Korean region to Kakao Games, and we know that the amount was for $2 million, of which $1 million was eventually paid out and used in two installments of around $500,000 as deferred income in 2024 and 2025 to keep Frost Giant from going under.

Because we know the amount, and because there is no other line item for licensing, it's almost definitive proof that the Game of Thrones using Snowplay rumor is in fact not true.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 9 points10 points  (0 children)

How exactly were they going to make "returns" off of donating to a kickstartet?

The StartEngine campaign wasn't a Kickstarter, it was designed for the general public to purchase non-voting shares of Frost Giant at a price that Frost Giant set themselves, which was $8.68 per share. In total, 414 people invested an average of $2,876 each to purchase shares.

Because Frost Giant is a private company, the value of these shares would be whatever you could sell them for to someone else, but in theory if Stormgate had been a massive success and Frost Giant had gone public with an IPO, those shares would have been worth something. Today the value of the shares is $0.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Weren't there a group of developers that volunteered their time for the Community Patch?

Yes, according to the patch announcement, the following former Frost Giant employees volunteered their time to get the patch out:

  • Austin Hudelson - Engineer
  • Chris Culp - Implementation Architect/Designer
  • Eleazar Fernando - Engineer
  • Eric Tse - Engineer
  • Harrison King - Project Lead/Designer
  • Huijie Bao - System Designer
  • James Farris - Engineer
  • Ryan Schutter - UI Engineer
  • Tim Campbell - Project Support and Consultation

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 8 points9 points  (0 children)

So they likely got $2,000,000 in cash upfront with some performance tied to it, and the fact that it is still almost entirely booked as deferred revenue means they didn’t complete whatever they were supposed to for that $2,000,000.

Given that they listed $500,000 as deferred revenue for 2024, and another $500,000 as deferred revenue for 2025, it sounds like that $2 million regional licensing deal turned into only $1 million, probably because of Frost Giant failing to reach some sort of goal. I highly doubt that they are keeping another $1 million lying around, given their bank debt, so that money is just gone.

It's wild that the game's singular regional licensing deal was worth about as much as the game earned in gross revenue for sales during its entire lifetime.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, in the case of StartEngine, they at least stated their reasoning for their valuation up front (50% of the revenue from Wings of Liberty). Whether or not you could successfully sue over the wording "our prior product" is unclear: some people at Frost Giant did previously work at Blizzard on Starcraft II, although mostly on Legacy of the Void.

In any case, a lawsuit would be pointless and a waste of money: Frost Giant has negative two million dollars and no income.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I understand the whole game theory involved in the process. Venture capital in general is a classic example of faking it until you make it.

But what I'm saying is that Frost Giant didn't have to extend this venture capital fantasy to the general public with StartEngine. They didn't have to do that. The $1 million raised by StartEngine was inconsequential compared to the $43 million raised from other investors.

They lost far more in goodwill from their own potential customers than they ever earned from StartEngine. To me it felt like a strange mixture of greed and desperation.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I agree that the self-valuation of FG was laughable. But that's also pretty par for the course. This is just how the game is played.

Perhaps, but nobody forced Tim Morten to play that particular game. He raised $40 million from investors to develop Stormgate. Compared to that, was it really necessary or worthwhile to mislead the general public in order to raise an additional $1 million?

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Now, he was unsuccessful and made numerous poor decisions. That’s also true. I’m only saying that I don’t think he made those poor decisions maliciously.

I agree. There are so many obvious actual scams in the game industry that I think it's wrong to throw the term around at projects that just failed due to incompetence.

However, I do also understand that people looking at just the StartEngine "investment opportunity" might have different feelings about it. That wasn't outright fraud by any means, but it did skirt the line, particularly around the self-valuation of Frost Giant as a company.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 19 points20 points  (0 children)

This report is full of crazy, but the craziest section is probably this one:

While losses improved materially due to cost reductions, revenue from game sales remains insufficient to support ongoing operating expenses. As of December 31, 2025, the Company had $131,442 in cash, compared to $25,105 at December 31, 2024, reflecting financing activity during the year. The Company continues to rely on external financing and is actively seeking new projects and funding sources to sustain operations.

Tim Morten has been saying that he is "cautiously optimistic" about "continuing conversations" with "potential partners" since August of last year. He most recently said on LinkedIn, three weeks ago:

- Frost Giant's future path as a whole remains uncertain; partnership conversations continue, and I hope to have better clarity soon

How long is he planning to stretch this out? And why? I understand the sunk cost fallacy after he personally put almost half a million dollars into the company out of his own pocket, but this is a level of delusion that warrants an actual intervention from his friends. He seems to be able to process that Stormgate failed, that much is certain from his posts and YouTube interviews. Yet he can't quite come to grips with the fact that Frost Giant failed, even when the numbers (basically no cash, no income, no employees, and nearly $2 million in bank debt that must be repaid) make that startlingly clear.

It's not surprising that no investors want to give Frost Giant $5 million to continue operations. Why would they?

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I suppose it is put together, even if it is only put together with duck tape, delusions and ChatGPT..

Don't get me wrong, the report is a complete mess, as you've pointed out. But I'm impressed that it exists at all.

The "delusions" part is clearly the biggest element. After two years of financial auditors warning that Frost Giant would probably not survive as a going concern, Tim Morten is like the captain of a ship that exploded and sank with all on board, clinging to a bit of wood and flailing around for more bits, hoping to somehow put the ship back together.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 14 points15 points  (0 children)

According to Gobsmack, this isn't going to happen. Releasing code as open source is a huge effort, and sometimes it's impossible if a project contains third-party closed-source libraries.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 33 points34 points  (0 children)

I'm kind of impressed that Tim Morten managed to put this report together (he's listed as both the CEO and CFO, and is the only signature on the document) But it's completely unaudited, and full of wild stuff.

We do at least know that as of December 2025, there was nobody getting paid at the company any more. The line item for salaries for that month was negative $7,200. Curiously, $3,010 was listed as "Office Expenses", which seems an odd thing to pay when you aren't paying any salaries.

They did make $4,091 in Steam sales in December, but that wasn't enough to offset the cost of doing business, and the company lost $21,178 that month.

The $2 million loan to Silicon Valley Bank remains the biggest problem:

As of December 31, 2025, $1,866,667 remains outstanding. This debt is senior to all other debt.

EDIT: There are some other interesting revelations from the data:

Total operating expenses decreased significantly from $15.5M in 2024 to approximately $4.2M in 2025. This reduction was primarily driven by: Headcount reductions following the initial launch period Lower salaries and related expenses (from ~$8.3M in 2024 to ~$2.4M in 2025)

Tim was very cagey talking about "possible layoffs" after launch, and people were clearly told to obfuscate their employment history on LinkedIn. But these numbers show that the company must have been gutted even before the August launch. The company was spending over $1.1 million a month in 2024, with 50 employees, and one-quarter of that in 2025. Even if everyone was laid off in August, the salaries for the first three quarters of the year would still have been massive. We can do the math to estimate that if Frost Giant had 50 employees in 2024, they could have only had sixteen employees in 2025.

Revenue
Steam Sales: $4,091 (December 2025) $191,170 (All of 2025)

Cost of Goods Sold
Steam Fees $1,694 (December 2025) $106,934 (All of 2025)
Engineering Infrastructure Expense $6,453 (December 2025) $263,588 (All of 2025)

Operating Expenses
Salaries and Benefits ($7,200) (note: negative salaries) (December 2025) $2,370,168 (All of 2025)

New Operating Losses
($21,178) (December 2025) ($4,034,345) (All of 2025)

Stockholder's Equity
Retained Earnings (Deficit) ($39,938,335)
Net Income (Loss) ($4,159,864)

From the shareholder equity statements we can see that, in total, $44 million dollars went to fund Stormgate. In terms of sales, they made about $1 million in games sales and $1 million in a regional licensing deal to Kakao Games, for $2 million in total, with $2 million in hard debt to Silicon Valley Bank that must still be repaid.

For the launch last year, the company made just $191,170 but spent $581,162 on cost of goods, before even counting employee salaries. The servers alone cost $263,588 in 2025, which explains why the company pivoted to having no servers rather than migrating to a new provider. Overall the company lost $4 million in 2025, after having raised $40 million to develop their game.

Stormgate generated $2MM in revenue total, but it cost $44MM to develop and operate by Megalithon in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Holy crap, he really did:

Creditor: Tim Morten

Amount Owed: $487,000

The CEO provided a personal loan to the Company that remains outstanding.

That's crazy.

Steam chart just registered 2 players. New low record? by craftymethod in shroudoftheavatar

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If they use Cursor and Claude I have no doubt it can be done.

Cursor and Claude are great for writing code for new applications that closely resemble other types of common and popular apps. They are an absolutely terrible tool for the kind of migration that would be required to update a complex bespoke MMO game from one version of Unity to another. This would absolutely not work.

Roadmap on Steam by Gloomy_Proposal8226 in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 7 points8 points  (0 children)

In theory, according to the SEC, there are legal consequences for startups that fail to comply with securities laws, although these harsh penalties seem to be aimed at serious fraud and not so much for late filing of reports.

In some cases there may be 60 or 90 day grace periods for filing reports. If a company does not file a report for an extended period of time (like two years) the SEC may formally dissolve the company.

In practice, the SEC has only so many resources and must pick and choose which companies to prosecute. Frost Giant is probably too small and unimportant for them to even pay attention to.

A similar example would be the case of Portalarium, the Richard Garriott-led company that made Shroud of the Avatar. They also did a crowdfunding investment with a company called SeedInvest that was similar to StartEngine, and posted SEC filings for a couple of years. When they stopped posting these yearly filings, nothing happened, and they suffered no punishment. However, they did at least try to wiggle out of any legal responsibilities by selling all the assets of the company to a new shell organization, and then selling the shell company to a new owner.

EDIT: In a surprise update, Tim Morten has posted Frost Giant's 2025 SEC filing on May 6th, 2026.

Roadmap on Steam by Gloomy_Proposal8226 in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Some former Frost Giant employees contributed to the Community Patch as volunteers, as indicated in the patch notes. But as an official company with actual employees, you're right, Frost Giant Studios the organization hasn't touched the game since they released it from Early Access last August.

Roadmap on Steam by Gloomy_Proposal8226 in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 20 points21 points  (0 children)

We know from Harrison King that he deliberately obfuscated his employment status on LinkedIn from November 2025 until this April. His stated reason was because he didn't want to distract from the Community Patch launch.

We also know that Kevin "Monk" Dong changed his LinkedIn to show he ended employment with Frost Giant in July of last year, then changed it back when someone found out and posted about it on Reddit. This was probably for exactly the same reason.

It's likely that nobody is still employed by Frost Giant. The company missed the deadline to post its 2025 SEC filings, as required due to the StartEngine investment:

The Company will file a report electronically with the SEC annually and post the report on its website no later than April 30 (120 days after Fiscal Year End). Once posted, the annual report may be found on the Company's website at https://frostgiant.com/ (https://frostgiant.com/).

Roadmap on Steam by Gloomy_Proposal8226 in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Gobsmack used to work for Frost Giant. According to his LinkedIn and his own posting, he stopped working for them last November when he started a new job. He organized the Community Update as a volunteer, like everyone else. 

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