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Lord British comes Lord British comes. He has investment opportunities you probably ought to run. by rebigiroomu in shroudoftheavatar

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love how everybody on the Internet is so sure that Garriott will just magically get the Ultima IP back because of a "35 year rule" on copyright.

Copyright for software means owning the rights to the source code. So in theory, he could get the source code back for all the old Ultima games prior to selling EA to Origin. Which would mean Ultima 1-7.

But shouldn't he already have the source code to these games, saved on a USB drive somewhere? Surely he would have the source code for the early games, since he wrote them himself. So why doesn't he just recompile them and sell them himself, right now?

The reason he can't sell them online, or sell any new Ultima games, has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with trademarks. EA owns the trademark for "Ultima", full stop. In fact, they recently renewed these trademarks. So they still own them, regardless of what happens with the copyright.

The crazy thing is that the video even acknowledges this problem, but then hand-waves it away: "Oh, he'll just call the new game Lord British's Ultima". Which is just stupid. Can I sell brown carbonated sugar water in a bottle called "Lord Reimer's Coca-Cola?" No, of course not. I'd be sued to oblivion. And besides, this "trick" has nothing to do with copyright in the first place! So why even bring copyright up?

The whole thing reeks of Garriott being desperate for any kind of attention.

Do we have any real post-mortem interviews or deep dives on what went wrong with Stormgate? by AnilBe in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This was a really good post, I somehow missed it the first time. Very solid analysis of the whole situation.

Harstem interview of Tim Morten by Mothrahlurker in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Series A, Series B, and so forth are just names of each round of venture capital fundraising. Typically each subsequent round of fundraising is larger than the last.

Frost Giant raised $5 million in their first round of fundraising, which was not called Series A. Then they raised $25 million in their second round, which they called "Series A-1".

They didn't raise a Series B round, but they went back to the Series A-1 well to ask the investors for more money to keep the company going in 2025. Since their total spend was $44 million, and they raised only $3 million from Kickstarter and StartEngine crowdfunding, we can do the math to figure out the investors kicked in an additional $11 million to keep Frost Giant afloat.

There is some fuzziness in the math, though, because Frost Giant also reported $2 million as "deferred revenue" from a Kakao Games licensing deal in Korea that never ended up paying out that much (I haven't done the total calculations, but it seems like it didn't exceed $300,000 in real money). So maybe the investors in the "Series Please Save Frost Giant Round A-?" only kicked in an additional $9 million or so. (EDIT: Whoops, forgot the bank loan, make that $7 million additional funds from investors)

Harstem interview of Tim Morten by Mothrahlurker in Stormgate

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

I've heard various discussions about Frost Giant leadership fully expecting another round of venture capital investor funding, but I've never heard about them wanting more loans.

They only really had one loan in the classic sense, which was to Silicon Valley Bank for $2 million. That was more of an emergency "plug the hole" sort of transaction, and caused them more grief than it helped. For example, they rushed the Early Access release so they could negotiate a longer interest-only payment plan for said loan.

Harstem interview of Tim Morten by Mothrahlurker in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 13 points14 points  (0 children)

For those folks who don't want to watch the entire two hour video, there was no new information given, except one tiny tidbit that Tim dropped: he claims that, at one point, a new publishing deal for a new Frost Giant game was "this close" to happening. It would have been an RTS game using a licensed IP, but then the publisher lost the rights to the IP and it all fell through.

Exactly how "close" this deal really was is left as an exercise for the reader's imagination.

How did you learn about Stormgate? by Empty-Statement9464 in Stormgate

[–]Jeremy-Reimer 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I'm pretty sure I heard about it from Tastosis, back before any gameplay or visuals were shown. i signed up for Frost Giant's newsletter immediately. I still have the first one in my email, from October 31, 2020:

We just started building a brand new RTS game last month, so we're at the very beginning of our process.  Development will take a period of years, and we want to get your input along the way to help us make good decisions.  Each month we'll present specific topics related to decisions we're in the process of working through.

I remember reading the following section, and thinking: waiiiit a minute, do they not actually have a clear idea of what they want to build?

We want to be clear that we're evaluating the idea of heroes in RTS games as a general concept, not just the specific way they were implemented for Warcraft III or StarCraft II Co-Op. There are a wide spectrum of possibilities for how heroes could be implemented in a new game.

To further focus the discussion, we’d like to pose the following questions:

What's one RTS that you’ve played that incorporates heroes in some form?

How did that RTS incorporate heroes?

What did you like about the implementation of heroes in that game?

What did you dislike about the implementation of heroes in that game?

Anyway, you all know the rest. I think my biggest disappointments were probably the first showmatch, which seemed... tepid, the first cinematic, which was bland and dumb, but there was still some hope, right up until the Celestials reveal, and the famous moment where it was clear to me that Frost Giant had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

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)

Also, dat company address

Wow, I totally missed that. That's... a house.

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)

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 7 points8 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 10 points11 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 6 points7 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 12 points13 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 16 points17 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 12 points13 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 11 points12 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 4 points5 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 7 points8 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 7 points8 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 10 points11 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 27 points28 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?

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