by webgrunt » Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:08 pm
The people who purchased this game and did not get refunds were victims of theft by fraud. That's a pretty strong accusation I know, but I saw the evidence with my own eyes.
I was one of the first people who purchased this game back in early May, and I have pieced together the following by extracting the game contents and examining them with the program with which it was created (RPG Maker XP)
The game wasn't anywhere near finished when it was released. It had some game-breaking bugs, but they fixed the first few, however, fairly early in the game, there was one that they claimed they were unable to fix (though it took me two seconds to fix it with RPG maker). It was obvious that AJ (Arend-Jan, the creator of the game) put that bug in intentionally in order to hide the fact that there really wasn't anything after that point--Whisper of a Rose was released as a full game, but it was really only the beginning of an unfinished game. I reported this on their message board, and their response was to accuse me of "hacking the game" as though I had done something wrong. Excuse me, but if I buy something and it doesn't work, I think I have the right to take it apart to see why it isn't working. And of course I only accessed my copy--I didn't change anyone else's copy of the game and wouldn't be able to if I tried.
Other people had examined the game and mentioned this on AJ's web site, roseportalgames.com. Those posts were deleted. AJ blamed the "bugs" on "beta testers who were more interested in getting an early version of the game than testing for bugs" which makes no sense, because why would they approve an unplayable game either way?
I requested a refund and immediately received a response from him, "Refund Granted!" However, he did not refund my money. I wrote him several emails over the next week asking why, and he didn't respond--but he had plenty of time to post messages on the chat board, so I know it wasn't that he was too busy or unable to get online. Finally, I contacted Plimus (the company I purchased it through) and explained that I had never received the refund he said he granted me, and they refunded my money.
At one point, AJ actually admitted that he thought there "might be a few bugs" but released the game anyway because he needed the money for a field trip for school.
At first, AJ used "taking my finals" as an excuse for not "fixing the bugs." After finals were over and people started getting eager to continue their game, AJ then started saying he was taking extra time to revamp the game and make improvements. After about a month of saying the release would be "soon" and the bugs were not fixed, I noticed that he was still selling the game as a finished, working game. I pointed this out and accused him of fraud. His answer was that every software company released programs that have bugs. I replied that I knew the game wasn't finished because I and others had examined it, and that if he didn't stop selling the game, I was going to turn my evidence (screenshots of what I found when I examined the game) over to Plimus. He agreed to stop selling the game and he stopped selling it from his site.
However, six weeks after that, I noticed that new people kept coming into the Rose Portal message board and asking about the "bug" that stopped everyone from progressing in the game. I asked Arend-Jan how this could be, and he said that resellers were still selling his game. Apparently, he didn't feel it necessary to tell them to stop selling a broken and unfinished game as long as he had money coming in. I had already notified Blossomsoft, and they stopped selling the game immediately, but other companies were still selling it, and AJ kept stringing them along, more and more people massing their 30-day window in which they could obtain a refund.
At one point, I asked him on the message board if the game was likely to be finished in six weeks. He said that sounded right. Soon after that, he said that the beta testing of the game was completed. I waited until exactly twelve weeks after he agreed that it should be finished in six weeks, quoted his message, and asked him what the delay was about. I was gentle and respectful, because I wanted to give him every possible chance to prove me wrong about him being a fraud and a thief. I really wanted to believe he was a good kid who made a mistake but was doing his best to fix it. He didn't answer, and very shortly after that, he took down the Rose Portal games site.
To me, the evidence that AJ knowingly sold a broken, unfinished game as a fully working product is irrefutable. However, a lot of people sided with AJ, believing him to be a good kid at heart (He's only 18 years old) and they liked him for producing such a great partially-finished game and didn't want to upset him in case he decided not to finish it--which I do understand, as the little bit he did finish is one of the best FF-style games I've ever played (and I've played a lot of great ones.) I consider him to be a master storyteller, perhaps even a prodigy, but I realize that having extraordinary talent doesn't mean you're immune to laziness, greed and dishonesty. You can be a great artist and a huge jerk at the same time. Talent doesn't make people honest. However, he has a good deal of charm, even through a chat board, and people tend to trust him in spite of all evidence that they shouldn't.
AJ had to know when he released the game that only a small part of it had been coded and the rest was simply not there. There's no possible way a programmer could be unaware that his game was mostly unfinished. Yet he released it for sale and continued to sell it even on his main site until I called him out on it, continually denied that it was unfinished, kept telling people it would be "fixed soon", at one point even said beta testing on the new release was complete, and he never told the resellers to stop selling it--for all I know, some of them still are.
Now he's saying he's going to wait until December to release it?? What about all the people who bought it back in May and have been waiting all this time for a playable release?
I will never buy another of Arend-Jan's products until it's been out for a few months and even then I will only buy through Blossomsoft, because Blossomsoft has the integrity to stop selling games the instant they find out the games have serious problems.
I really look like a great game.
I am just going to wait until the whole game is really finished before I play again. Before I ever buy another rpg again I will check the forum to make sure this doesn't happen again!! 
