First in... a long while that I've made a thread on this forum. Hopefully I'm not too rusty at it but this whole situation annoyed me to the point I wanna spread the word and do my damnest to warn people about this company and support a dev of a fun game.
So First Press Games is a Limited Print company operating from Germany. You may know them moreso as the pub behind the ever delayed Chained Echoes physical edition. They've been around since 2018ish, and they've made OK physical editions. But they clearly joined as part of the whole "Limited Print Boom" that kicked off around then due to the Switch. And a LOT of limprints exist and most came from said boom, as we have...
...Special Reserve Games (Now defunct), Limited Run Games, Strictly Limited Games, Dispatch Games (Also scammers, who've gone ghost), Warned Collectors (Scam from the start), 1Print Games (Inactive), Hard Copy Games, Red Art Games Premium Edition Games, Limited Rare Games (Hard Copy Games doing a poor parody attempt), and Super Rare Games. And there are likely others I'm forgetting. So yeah, it's a crowded market.
Crowded market, means these guys almost never sold out of anything. Which was nice from the consumer as you could just often buy your item when in hand rather than worrying about immediate sellout like some other limprint pubs had for a time. They put out their first set of three games, albeit with a small delay near the end, and that seemed decently fine. Took a bit more for the CEs of those to wrap, but they came out good and I personally liked my Hole New World standard edition due to the nifty manual and Ultra-inspired cover art.
However, the second set of games is where things start to get a bit messy. Mulaka, Rival Megagun, and Psychotic Adventures Origins all were put up for preorder, and the former two only finished production of the standard editions, with the CEs STILL in limbo. Mind you, these all were up for preorder in 2019. The third and final game, Psychotic Adventures Origins, still has not finished production. As far as my notes take me, it's been on the production update page as a "Patch in QA" status since 2021, with no word on this standard edition shipping out. Nintendo's Lotcheck must be real busy these days! /s
Needless to say, these guys kept opening up new orders, including for stuff like Crimson Clover and a Sydney Hunter game, and almost all of them have been delayed indefinitely. Almost no progress has been made at all per the status update page, and last year, they went from saying they'll ship their stuff in Q4 2022 to Q3 2023 (and now everything got delayed to Q4 2023, which ends in two weeks, and... Yeah, you can see where this is going).
They wouldn't answer emails on why, and since early last year they completely disabled all communication on their social media. (mainly because people were asking why their refund requests were being ignored or where their game went, and they even went as far as to change their facebook page to not be a business page anymore so that people would stop leaving 1 star reviews there) Per the limited print reddit/discords i'm in, almost nobody can get ahold of em for refund requests unless they start to threaten them or report them to EU consumer protection agencies, which then leads them to finally responding. Yet they don't hesitate to promote any new kickstarters they partner with and open up more preorders, while not answering questions about the older stuff. As of this year, the only new products they printed were the Natsuki Chronicles and Ginga Force Standard Editions for PS4, with their CEs in limbo too. They also got a Blazing Rangers NES game out, but again, only the standards.
So yeah, another of several limprints that dont communicate well and ghost their customers. Well, while Dispatch Games have gone ghost and their devs they worked with are silent on that matter, the same doesn't seem to be the case for FPG, which is why I'm making this thread to raise awareness, especially if you have a preorder with em on other stuff. Earlier this year, the POWA dev (a GBC homebrew they published) noted they couldn't get ahold of em and were being ghosted on twitter. This blew up a bit before eventually FPG messaged them.
A week or so ago, the Mindseize dev (yet another game they kickstarted and promised physicals for) finally got them to reply and they told that dev the physicals are just *now* starting production. Despite going up for sale years ago. Yeah, he's equally as annoyed as you would be. But that seems to continue the trend that FPG is not just ghosting customers, but the devs they partnered with too.
Then it all blew up today when the dev behind Project Blue, another indie they backed a kickstarter for (this time to make a Famicom version, with a CE that, yep, still isn't out after 3 years), came out and claimed that not only have they failed to give production updates and ETAs to them, but also didn't pay them at all and kept ghosting their emails with lots of silly excuses. He did a whole Reddit AMA about it. Of course, shortly after making this thread and a tweet, FPG finally paid them, but the damage was done, and the dev is rightfully annoyed that they keep giving him silly excuses for why they haven't heard *any* progress on the collector's edition, and why they keep ignoring his requests to try and streamline the issues they mention (such as cancelling a CD soundtrack they claimed was giving them trouble for *eighteen months*)
View: https://twitter.com/toggleswitch2/status/1734966056312316149
So, some highlights from the AMA, from the Project Blue Dev to describe what his experience working with FPG was like. On communication and unfair treatment...
On how they're breaching contract by going way, way past their deadline to actually finish making the stuff for the CE...
On the stupid amount of ghosting and time it took to just get a darn payment
On the constant excuses...
From another Project Blue Developer, including the reply they got emailed today after the twitter callout (note that FPG's twitter still hasn't tweeted any ETAs on anything in a while publicly)
And lastly, how this whole thing began with the Famicom Kickstarter and why FPG partnered with them.
So yeah. TLDR: First Press Games is shady as fuck, has ghosted three developers this year, and the most recent has made a lot of callouts and pretty much outlines that it doesn't seem like they're bothering to do any actual work on these CEs whatsoever. Constant excuses, delays, and refund dodging isn't good, and considering that a thread here just a bit ago on Chained Echoes's physical was asking where the heck that went, well, if it's anything like the other stuff they owe, it's probably nowhere close to being out the finish line. Personally, i'd just advise refunding anything pending from First Press Games at this rate, at least until it's actually in-hand. Project Blue is luckily available digitally on itch, Switch and Xbox, and I found it to be a charming time when I played it on XB earlier this fall.
That's why I made this thread since quite frankly, this shit seems to be getting increasingly more common in the limprint industry with devs getting ghosted or screwed, and First Press Games really needs to do something about this to not only communicate better with customers, but their own dev partners they reached out to, promised to make a kickstarter for, then went off with the money to produce nothing (or standard editions that took a bajillion years to come out). It also just pisses me off to see a well meaning indie getting screwed by a publisher who promised them money and didn't deliver until a public call out, (and still no proof on how close they are to producing the remaining CE components) and still not agreeing to pull the game from the site.
So First Press Games is a Limited Print company operating from Germany. You may know them moreso as the pub behind the ever delayed Chained Echoes physical edition. They've been around since 2018ish, and they've made OK physical editions. But they clearly joined as part of the whole "Limited Print Boom" that kicked off around then due to the Switch. And a LOT of limprints exist and most came from said boom, as we have...
...Special Reserve Games (Now defunct), Limited Run Games, Strictly Limited Games, Dispatch Games (Also scammers, who've gone ghost), Warned Collectors (Scam from the start), 1Print Games (Inactive), Hard Copy Games, Red Art Games Premium Edition Games, Limited Rare Games (Hard Copy Games doing a poor parody attempt), and Super Rare Games. And there are likely others I'm forgetting. So yeah, it's a crowded market.
Crowded market, means these guys almost never sold out of anything. Which was nice from the consumer as you could just often buy your item when in hand rather than worrying about immediate sellout like some other limprint pubs had for a time. They put out their first set of three games, albeit with a small delay near the end, and that seemed decently fine. Took a bit more for the CEs of those to wrap, but they came out good and I personally liked my Hole New World standard edition due to the nifty manual and Ultra-inspired cover art.
However, the second set of games is where things start to get a bit messy. Mulaka, Rival Megagun, and Psychotic Adventures Origins all were put up for preorder, and the former two only finished production of the standard editions, with the CEs STILL in limbo. Mind you, these all were up for preorder in 2019. The third and final game, Psychotic Adventures Origins, still has not finished production. As far as my notes take me, it's been on the production update page as a "Patch in QA" status since 2021, with no word on this standard edition shipping out. Nintendo's Lotcheck must be real busy these days! /s
Needless to say, these guys kept opening up new orders, including for stuff like Crimson Clover and a Sydney Hunter game, and almost all of them have been delayed indefinitely. Almost no progress has been made at all per the status update page, and last year, they went from saying they'll ship their stuff in Q4 2022 to Q3 2023 (and now everything got delayed to Q4 2023, which ends in two weeks, and... Yeah, you can see where this is going).
They wouldn't answer emails on why, and since early last year they completely disabled all communication on their social media. (mainly because people were asking why their refund requests were being ignored or where their game went, and they even went as far as to change their facebook page to not be a business page anymore so that people would stop leaving 1 star reviews there) Per the limited print reddit/discords i'm in, almost nobody can get ahold of em for refund requests unless they start to threaten them or report them to EU consumer protection agencies, which then leads them to finally responding. Yet they don't hesitate to promote any new kickstarters they partner with and open up more preorders, while not answering questions about the older stuff. As of this year, the only new products they printed were the Natsuki Chronicles and Ginga Force Standard Editions for PS4, with their CEs in limbo too. They also got a Blazing Rangers NES game out, but again, only the standards.
So yeah, another of several limprints that dont communicate well and ghost their customers. Well, while Dispatch Games have gone ghost and their devs they worked with are silent on that matter, the same doesn't seem to be the case for FPG, which is why I'm making this thread to raise awareness, especially if you have a preorder with em on other stuff. Earlier this year, the POWA dev (a GBC homebrew they published) noted they couldn't get ahold of em and were being ghosted on twitter. This blew up a bit before eventually FPG messaged them.
A week or so ago, the Mindseize dev (yet another game they kickstarted and promised physicals for) finally got them to reply and they told that dev the physicals are just *now* starting production. Despite going up for sale years ago. Yeah, he's equally as annoyed as you would be. But that seems to continue the trend that FPG is not just ghosting customers, but the devs they partnered with too.
Then it all blew up today when the dev behind Project Blue, another indie they backed a kickstarter for (this time to make a Famicom version, with a CE that, yep, still isn't out after 3 years), came out and claimed that not only have they failed to give production updates and ETAs to them, but also didn't pay them at all and kept ghosting their emails with lots of silly excuses. He did a whole Reddit AMA about it. Of course, shortly after making this thread and a tweet, FPG finally paid them, but the damage was done, and the dev is rightfully annoyed that they keep giving him silly excuses for why they haven't heard *any* progress on the collector's edition, and why they keep ignoring his requests to try and streamline the issues they mention (such as cancelling a CD soundtrack they claimed was giving them trouble for *eighteen months*)
View: https://twitter.com/toggleswitch2/status/1734966056312316149
So, some highlights from the AMA, from the Project Blue Dev to describe what his experience working with FPG was like. On communication and unfair treatment...
On how they're breaching contract by going way, way past their deadline to actually finish making the stuff for the CE...
On the stupid amount of ghosting and time it took to just get a darn payment
On the constant excuses...
From another Project Blue Developer, including the reply they got emailed today after the twitter callout (note that FPG's twitter still hasn't tweeted any ETAs on anything in a while publicly)
And lastly, how this whole thing began with the Famicom Kickstarter and why FPG partnered with them.
So yeah. TLDR: First Press Games is shady as fuck, has ghosted three developers this year, and the most recent has made a lot of callouts and pretty much outlines that it doesn't seem like they're bothering to do any actual work on these CEs whatsoever. Constant excuses, delays, and refund dodging isn't good, and considering that a thread here just a bit ago on Chained Echoes's physical was asking where the heck that went, well, if it's anything like the other stuff they owe, it's probably nowhere close to being out the finish line. Personally, i'd just advise refunding anything pending from First Press Games at this rate, at least until it's actually in-hand. Project Blue is luckily available digitally on itch, Switch and Xbox, and I found it to be a charming time when I played it on XB earlier this fall.
That's why I made this thread since quite frankly, this shit seems to be getting increasingly more common in the limprint industry with devs getting ghosted or screwed, and First Press Games really needs to do something about this to not only communicate better with customers, but their own dev partners they reached out to, promised to make a kickstarter for, then went off with the money to produce nothing (or standard editions that took a bajillion years to come out). It also just pisses me off to see a well meaning indie getting screwed by a publisher who promised them money and didn't deliver until a public call out, (and still no proof on how close they are to producing the remaining CE components) and still not agreeing to pull the game from the site.
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