Orion ( Incoming: Source / Orion: Source) - Makes $20k in donations & sacks team

[Hectic Glenn]

This was pretty high up on reddit today - I'm not sure how true the things which have been said are though. No smoke without fire though so something has happened.

Just noticed this thread, My name is Javid and I've worked on Prelude as an animator, I kept hearing about all these promises especially about getting paid for my work David would mention this countless amounts of times every day which aroused suspicion for me

After submitting the work I had created I was immediately canned from the project without any warning/notice along with Curtis and Marcus Zuhr, the main sound guys. He forgot to remove me from the skype group chat however and he basically lied and told the rest of the team members that we found jobs or something came up.

I personally don't care about the money or anything as I just do things as my hobby and I wanted to get the word out there as well about David Prassel, It's hard to believe someone such as himself would exist, I'd say he's the worst.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/g2sol/david_prassel_creator_of_orion_prelude_receives

The thread has been deleted from the polycount forums but you can see a cached version here - http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ww.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81931

For those of you who remember - Incoming: Source / Orion was originally a Source mod run by Praz (David Prassel) which was dubbed 'halo with dinosaurs' a long time ago. They brought out a multi-player demo on Source before moving to UDK where they announced that Orion: Prelude is being developed as an indie title. In order to do so they started a kickstarter and raised $20k in donations. They recently did a presentation at GDC and since then several individuals have come forward with these claims. Thoughts?

 

[Barnz]

David/Praz has always been a huge shithead, so no surprise here.

http://www.hl2world.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=50380&start=225

 

[Stigmata]

What a dick. I'm going to remember that name, and never buy a game that he is attached to.

 

[Lucid]

Nice.
Yeah, I'm not buying anything made by him either.

 

[StardogChampion]

If they didn't sign any contract then tough poop.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

That seems to be the tricky issue here. These contributors aren't actual employees but people who work on a volunteer basis offering up work. The danger with indie devs who transition from mod teams is this exact issue. I assume they had some promise of money which is what they kept on working for. I'm not saying it's right though, from a moral perspective if someone produces that much content for the game they shouldn't be treated like a cast off.

I suppose this is more damaging in that way. Who else will want to come work on this title now? The greatest asset to a company is the people after all.

 

[Ennui]

Not that I would have paid money for that game anyway, but this still sucks for the developers. Praz has no right to make off with that money.

If they didn't sign contracts it's probably because the game started out as a mod many years ago and they've been working on it ever since. It only recently went fully commercial. Not too smart on the devs parts perhaps but they still don't deserve to get screwed out of their money.

Praz and I have always had some friction and I've always thought he was a bit of a twat, but I didn't expect him to do something this ridiculous.

Hopefully the developers get it sorted out and Praz caves under the pressure from all this scrutiny. Interested in seeing what he does. I hope at least that the donators get a chance to take their money back since it'll be going straight into David's pocket otherwise.