This is important to anyone interested in independent game development. To my knowledge, two TGC members have been scammed by a company so far, me and one other person whose name I won't mention unless they come to this thread and indentify themselves. There might even be more of us, I'm not sure. Anyway, please read this thread... I think it's pretty important.
For those of you who don't have the patience to read the entire thread, there's a company calling itself VDIUK that's been offering paid positions to developers, but then flaking out on them when it comes to getting paperwork signed or even dealt with. They apparently try to scam aspiring developers by convincing them to work on their projects, but then they don't actually pay these people for the work or offer any sort of career advancement opportunities whatsoever.
Please avoid this company at all costs. After dealing with them personally, and seeing a fellow TGC member deal with them, I don't want anyone else to go through this process. I just can't figure out what their scam is. Are they selling contact information? Are they trying to get free work out of talented aspiring developers? Or is this "company" just one person with a head full of big dreams but no real prospect for reaching their goals?
Here's what happened:
As many of you are aware, I organized and conducted a Text Adventure Comptetition over the summer. The contest had fantastic entries, each unique and hard to judge, but at the end of the day we chose a winner and awarded this person with the grand prize: One copy of Dark AI from TGC, one copy of Playbasic from Underware Design, and one digital Imaging suite, offered by a company named Visionary Designs Incorporated. TGC and Underware Design both gave their prizes without conflict, and I'm eternally greatful for their support during the competition. But the third company, VDI, failed to give up the prize. But this isn't where the real trouble lies.
VDIUK is represented by someone who calls himself Simon Clark, and the company is allegedly run by a man named Stephen Frost, the supposed CEO. I was contacted by a TGC member whose identity will remain anonymous... this person may have also been douped by this phony company. This TGC member told me they worked for this company, and the company was willing to furbish this awe-inspiring prize to the grand prize winner. I contacted Simon Clark as instructed, who seemed genuinely sincere about our text adventure competition, and I screened him, to the best of my ability, to see that he was legitimate. After I made arrangements with VDIUK and advertised that we'd offer their prize, they contacted me again (I still have each of their e-mails, and recently backed them up on CD-R). Simon Clark asked if I might be interested in designing games for VDIUK, but I greatfully declined, pointing out that I'm the co-owner of MISoft Studios and we have our own games to develop. They also offered me a free copy of the digital imaging suite on the basis that I would only need to pay shipping costs to recieve it, but after a lot of consideration, I declined from this as well.
Here's where it gets ugly. After the competition was over, VDIUK contacted the grand prize winner, and they made arrangements to ship the prize package. The winner asked if they offered internships, being that this person is a game development student, and here is an exerpt of VDIUK's reply:
Quote: ""At this time we are engaged in developing 3 new titles, two of them by leading authors, and the other one from a very well known game designer who I am afraid I cant tell you of as we have an NDA agreement*. But we did like your work in the competition program, and I may be able to offer you a freelance contract working on a smaller project.""
* About NDA's
For those of you who don't know, an NDA is a "Non-Disclosure
Agreement." It's a contract that basically keeps either party
from publically or privately disclosing information about the title
* A question: Why would they provide information about a project without first authorizing and qualifying a potential employee with an NDA? Just wanted to throw that in there. Anyway...
This is basically the same thing I was offered and turned down, but the winner, excited about the prospects such an offer could bring them, accepted the opportunity with open arms. They continued to talk via e-mail, but that's when the trouble came about. There were long delays between communications, and all the while this person hadn't recieved their prize, or any paperwork that would get them to work on VDIUK's projects. VDIUK blamed the shipping problems on the postal service and everything else they could think up. At this point, the entrant contacted me and reported the problems, and we kept in contact about the shady dealings of this company. This person was later contacted by VDIUK with a claim that they'd be working on a 3D game with Amaranth Games. They contacted Amaranth, and Amaranth Games, in regards to this issue, stated (and I'm quoting here):
Quote: "There is no joint venture between VDIUK and Amaranth Games"
And the contact didn't end there. VDIUK's Simon Clark continued to contact this person with claims of approaching contracts and the elusive prize suite they were supposed to recieve. Eventually, this person sent VDIUK an e-mail, questioning their sincerity and the very existence of VDIUK as a real company. The alleged CEO, Stephen Frost, then contacted the prize winner directly by telephone (at a very late hour in the evening), in an attempt to re-assure this person that the prize was on its way, and further tried to validate the seriousness of their offers and the prize. The issue is still un-resolved.
After an investigation online, we've come to the conclusion that we're not the only ones dragged into the fantasy idea of VDIUK being legitimate. A number of others have claimed to have had shady dealings with this seemingly fictional company as well. I'm even wondering if the names Simon Clark and Stephen Frost are fictional... if perhaps there's one person at the center of this. There was an English author who wrote horror stories named Simon Clark, and a British comedian named Stephen Frost... maybe now we know where the names came from. Anyway, here are a few links for you all to take a look at if you want to see what others have to say about this "company":
Item A,
Item B,
Item C,
Item D
I'd like to extend a sincere apology to all of you involved in our text adventure competition for falsely advertising a prize that proved to not be real. I was anxious to offer as many prizes as I could with the competition and at that time I had no reason to think VDIUK would flake on us. Now I know otherwise, and for our 2007 competition, I'll only be contacting serious, tested & true companies for prize furbishment.
If you come across this company, VDIUK, during your independent or mainstream game industry career, please take everything I have to say into consideration prior to making any sort of deal with them. Don't do any work unless you have contracts, signed and authorized. And don't get your hopes up about any promises they make regarding money, because from what I can tell, they'll only prove fruitless.
I co-own a company. We're puny and insignificant. Besides the private-sector games and training tools we've made, we haven't released any serious games to the public... just Cheney Hunter, which doesn't really count. But although my experience might seem limited, I care about this community enough to not offer things I can't supply. I don't go around offering dreamy positions to absolute strangers, or even my TGC friends for that matter, because I realistically acknowledge that I can't offer tens of thousands of dollars to anyone. And when we do offer a position to someone, we ask them to sign several contracts with us, contracts that don't just protect our company, but contracts that protect the potential employees as well. Contracts that garauntee that we'll do everything within our power to release the games we advertise in a timely fashion. And we get those contacts to these people as quickly and efficiently as possible, and we've never once had a conflict, in over twenty contracts that we've sent out and thirteen people besides myself who've signed and returned those contracts. Maybe VDIUK needs to learn this basic element of business operation. Until they do, please be aware that thus far, we haven't been able to locate a single individual who can verify that VDIUK is a sincere, honest company. Deal with them at your own risk!
"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
