Megara Entertainment en eaux troubles

[BlackCat]

Pour ceux qui suivent un peu l'actualité, Megara Entertainement serait en difficultés financières. Plusieurs supporteurs de diverses campagnes Kickstarter se sont plaints de ne pas avoir reçu leur livre. Dans une mise à jour publiée par Mikaël Louys, patron de l'entreprise (que vous pouvez lire en anglais au bas de ce message), explique que l'entreprise fait face à des difficultés non seulement d'ordre financière mais aussi d'ordre personnelle. Une campagne Kickstarter visant la francophonie devrait être lancée en février pour récolter des fonds et sauver l'entreprise.

Rappelons que Megara Entertainment publie la série Neige d'Automne et une nouvelle version de la série Astre d'Or (Grey Star).

Vous trouverez également au bas de ce message un commentaire de Martin Charbonneau, l'auteur de la série Neige d'Automne, publié sur le forum de Projet Aon à propos de la situation de la série.

***

Mot de Mickaël Louys

Hello backers.

I am writing a complementary update here.

First of all, I read some hasty comments from some people certifying that there was a misuse of the KS funds.

This is not true.

Concerning the 8k we spent in 217 on the Champions of Megara video game prototype, the 8k were entirely funded by private investors with their own funds. Of course, I can prove that if needed.

Not a single euro or dollar from past KS campaigns has been used on this development.

However, products from Kickstarter campaigns sometimes take long to design. That was the case for Autumn Snow 2, Destiny Quest 4 and Fabled Lands 7. While the authors, illustrators, and me at Megara design such products, time passes by. At Megara we have each month to pay the office rent, electricity, internet, remunerate some people, pay monthly or yearly taxes, royalties, and bills. The office and associated electricity/internet/insurance costs represent 15 euros per month minimum. The yearly accounting fees is 35 euros. The yearly taxes to run a company in France can be up to 1, euros per year depending of the year and if you have benefits or losses.

We did the Champions of Megara videogame prototype because with a margin of only a few euros per book sold, it was more and more difficult to cope with the costs of running a business with an office in the country where I live, France.

Unfortunately we could not find the 5k remaining to release that game. It was a pity.

Last year was also tough on me on a personal level, one of my best friends in Cannes killed his whole family, I had an epilepsy crisis with one of my eye, other health issues I won’t disclose here, I also got injured because I got attacked while walking in a street peacefully.

Anyway. I haven’t been taking holidays for 11 years with Megara. Working for Megara for a low or average salary has impoverished myself and at 43 years old I can’t afford to pay the doctor because I have euros of spare money.

I also had several burn-out because of the company and the complexity of past successful and delivered Kickstarter campaigns.

I worked like hell for 11 years with all the stress from campaigns and the successful release of more than 1 products. I paid with the company almost 2 people in 11 years, freelance authors, designers, illustrators, translators.

I have apologized for the delays and for the financial problems

of the company. For the rest I would like people to show me a minimum of respect based on what I have just told you now.

Yes, the company has grown too fast the last years and I thought we could handle many different projects. However we have high taxes, bills and costs just to run the company as it is and it became complicated.

I have fought to keep Megara afloat all this time and it has been also a struggle to find financing the past years - time and health consuming.

But I managed. However I started to become pretty tired after releasing successfully so many products and my health isn’t improving with my age.

Anyways. I still haven’t found anyone wanting to invest in Megara this month to help us pay our bills and taxes that are waiting on my desk, and I need to go on delivering backers.

After all that you have read in this new update and if you want to help by investing in Megara against shares, please contact me at contact@megara-entertainment.com

I don’t plan to run to the Bermudas, I have always stayed at the office for 11 years not counting my hours AND very often working during the nights and week-ends.

This sunday for instance I had to come to the office to do all the trimester VAT calculations.

Concerning the webstore orders : for 11 years I have been delivering ALL webstore orders and I continue to do so. So please stop commenting this or that about the webstore orders, there is nothing to comment. Sometimes I am a bit late to send webstore orders if I have the flu or anything but I always delivered thousand of customers on the webstore for 11 years. I would like some respect for that.

To finish this update with something bringing hope for the company and for some of the backers still waiting for their rewards.

I have been trying to think a few days ago for a plan B in case no one steps in to invest this January to help us get back on trail.

In France and the French-speaking countries, Megara has a very good reputation. Mostly because the French almost only bought Megara products on the website, and were delivered successfully with good service and quality.

I will attempt next week to run for the first time a one month long crowdfunding campaign only for French Megara products and on a French crowdfunding platform.

This campaign will only offer digital rewards in French (like PDF version of some of our French gamebooks) that are ALREADY ready.

It’s the first time we do this and we won’t be able to do it again. I can attest that I will use 1% of the digital revenues of this campaign to pay the bills and taxes needed for Megara to be able to survive in 219 (you had the list on the previous update) AND to continue manufacturing and shipping Kickstarter rewards for which Megara is late.

I will communicate with you in one or two weeks from now to tell you how much money the campaign has managed to generate.

I hope as much as possible to be able to fix the problems Megara is facing, and once again I am sorry.

Mikael

Megara

***

Mot de Martin Charbonneau, alias Oiseau

Well, here goes…

I’ve been told that Megara Entertainment’s Kickstarter for Autumn Snow 2 has basically devolved into a shitshow — accusations flying, pledges unfulfilled, weird attempts to sell illegal(?) PDFs of other books, a laundry list of excuses, and a lot of angry people, from what I’ve glimpsed in my dark, lonely corner of the universe. No idea what really happened.

For what little it’s worth, I’m sorry. There isn’t anything I can do about this. I haven’t actually spoken to Megara in two years, since the nearly complete lack of interest for AS1 finally snuffed out the dying embers of my motivation. The last time I sent the guy an email, I just gave him the French text for AS2 and said, “do whatever the F you want with it”. At that point, I didn’t care anymore. Now it appears it’s all over.

I don’t actually know what’s going on. I myself don’t have the books, except the single one I had Lulu’ed for myself a few years back. Nor do I have any money for refunds. I barely have enough to scratch out my own dreary existence. Somebody posted “enhanced PDFs” on the Kickstarter page, which I grabbed for the heck of it — that’s all I can offer you, if anyone still cares.

As for who owns the rights, I’m no lawyer, but I’m assuming it’s complicated. I wrote the stupid things, and I don’t remember signing any contracts to hand over anything, but surely Gary Chalk has rights over his illustrations, Joe Dever(’s estate) has rights over Lone Wolf and Magnamund in general, and Megara has rights over the page layout and whatever revisions & enhancements they made. Heck, for that matter, I didn’t translate AS2 to English myself, so there’s a translator in this mess somewhere. Not to mention that Dever rewrote every f!cking sentence of the English AS1, so I’m not even sure I can still be called the author of what finally came out. That didn’t help the motivation, by the way.

So basically, given the fact that this thread has been gathering dust bunnies for four-and-a-half years now, is there even a point in continuing these adventures?… Hell, the Autumn Snow character will be nine years old this spring…

0

• Citer

[fustir]

Et visiblement il faut sauver le soldat Megara.

Un "foulancement" est en cours pour permettre la continuité de Megara (http://megara-entertainment.com/crowdfunding/?ignition_product=crowdfunding-to-save-megara-collecte-pour-sauver-megara). Les récompenses sont des fichiers numériques (carte, LDVH) en proportion de votre participation sans que l'on sache ce qu'un montant donné donne droit voir des parts sociales de l'entreprise. C'est curieux car dans mon souvenir on n'obtenait pas un fichier numérique du produit qu'on achetait physiquement. Après cela permet des récompenses à moindre coût mais avec le risque de voir proliférer ces fichiers sur le net.

A suivre donc.....

[BlackCat]

Et bien, avec seulement 1515 euros d'amassés sur un objectif de 1 , on peut dire que cette campagne de socio-financement est un échec... Ironiquement, Michael J. Ward, auteur de la série Destiny's Quest, a donné une entrevue avec le site Gamebook News et publiée aujourd'hui (https://gamebooknews.com/2019/2/28/a-conversation-with-michael-j-ward-destinyquest-crowdfunded-publishing-and-the-future/). Il en ressort qu'il y aurait eu beaucoup de problèmes de gestion et de relations humaines chez Megara... Fermer un bureau pendant 3 mois parce que ton air climatisé ne fonctionne pas, c'est franchement ridicule!

Après Magnamund Studios, Megara est le deuxième projet de Mikaël à mourir en laissant une dose d'amertume chez ceux qui ont collaboré avec lui.