Skip to main content

Kickstarter project accused of fraud shuts down campaign

dirty bird sports fraudulent 3d models
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The problem with crowdfunding is there’s always a chance you’ll encounter malicious attempts to dupe users. The Daily Dot reports that a commenter on a sports site discovered that a Kickstarter project to develop a college football game with the support of Jamal Anderson, a former Atlanta Falcons running back, didn’t quite add up. CM Hooe, the commenter in question from OperationSports.com, eventually discover that the $500,000 the project was trying to raise was probably going to end up in the pockets of the campaigners, and that the promises were more than likely to never get fulfilled.

The Kickstarter project was consequently canceled once it was publicly exposed, and Anderson took a step back from the team, announcing on Twitter that he had no part in the Kickstarter project. Although that type of claim is hard to believe when Anderson is the owner of Jam Entertainment, the very company that the project’s founders, Dirty Bird Sports, partnered with on this project.

So where exactly did the bid go wrong? For starters, Dirty Bird Sports were making elaborate claims that included acquiring the rights to use sports teams and players in a NCAA college football game that would be created for both Xbox 3 and Playstation 3. Dirty Bird was claiming to acquire the rights to 689 teams – bear in mind that a gaming behemoth like EA Sports only has the rights to 123 teams.

The clincher that sealed Dirty Bird Sports’ fate was when CM Hooe did some sleuthing and uncovered images credited as in-game screenshot that were in fact just images lifted from a 3D artist on TurboSquid. A finding like this leads you to believe that the game, despite Dirty Bird’s claims declaring otherwise, was never created in the first place.

If you have plans on starting a Kickstarter project, one word of advice that you might want to keep in mind is to be honest. An accusation of fraud (whether right or wrong) is not the best first impression for a fledgling company or product to make.

In an email response to The Daily Dot, a spokesperson from Dirty Bird Sports made it clear that its Kickstarter campaign wasn’t a scam: “That is simply not true,” the email states.

The company says the $500,000 it was raising from Kickstarters would have gone into licensing, advertising, and developing the software. In other words, it’s an admission that the product hadn’t yet been developed. For one thing, Kickstarter has banned photorealistic renderings or simulations of prototypes that don’t exist at least for hardware and product design projects.

As for the 3D model that the company lifted, the spokesperson tiptoes around the fact that the images were technically stolen and chalks it up to borrowing the images with, “every intent to purchase the 3D models once our goal was reached.”

Dirty Bird Sports heavily emphasizes that its project was not a scam, and that the company hadn’t taken down the Kickstarter project just because it was “caught.” Even if we were to believe the company’s defense, the project was a major error that Dirty Bird Sports might not be able to outlive. The company says that it will be back, the next time with the appropriate funding and licensing, and that the parties responsible have been let go. But would anyone be willing to give the company a second chance when it comes to donating our money to their efforts? They’ll be hard-pressed to find a sympathizer.

Edit: We wrote earlier that prototypes were required, but we’ve edited the statement above to clarify that Kickstarter prohibits campaigners of hardware and design projects from misleading users with false simulations or renderings of products that have yet to be prototyped.

Editors' Recommendations

Francis Bea
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Francis got his first taste of the tech industry in a failed attempt at a startup during his time as a student at the…
The best Dragon’s Dogma 2 mods
Dragon's Dogma 2 key art featuring a knight with a fiery hole in their chest.

Even before release, there were some red flags about how Dragon's Dogma 2 would perform on a technical level. While console players need to wait and hope for patches to fix things, those on PC can already improve their games through the hard work of modders. Of course, technical improvements are only one area where modders focus. With such a massive world and many systems in place, Dragon's Dogma 2 is brimming with potential for mods of all shapes and sizes. Aside from mods that just improve your performance, most are better saved for after you've reached the true ending, but no one is going to stop you if you'd rather start experimenting from the start. Here are a handful of the best mods you should try in Dragon's Dogma 2.
Dragon's Dogma 2 DLSS3 Enabler 01 - Puredark

For whatever reason, Dragon's Dogma 2 launched with its DLSS3 function disabled. While it is assumed it will be turned on at some point with a patch, modder Puredark went ahead and released the simple Dragon's Dogma 2 DLSS3 Enabler 01 to let you actually play the game with better visuals and framerates. If you have an Nvidia 4000 series GPU, there's no reason not to install this simple enabler.
Crazy's Shop

Read more
V Rising – Legacy of Castlevania crossover will let you fight Simon Belmont
Castlevania's Simon Belmont in V Rising.

Stunlock Studios and Konami have revealed that the survival crafting game V Rising will feature Castlevania crossover content when it leaves early access this May.

V Rising is a survival game where players control a vampire, and this crossover adds Simon Belmont as a hunter who's constantly trying to track down and kill players. If Simon Belmont is defeated, players will be able to equip and use his whip as a weapon. While that content is being added to V Rising free of charge as soon as it hits 1.0, a paid Legacy of Castlevania Premium Pack DLC will also be released. Purchasing it will net players Castlevania-themed decorations and music for their lair. These are all fitting crossover spots for a game that already heavily features vampires and pumps some life back into an unfortunately dormant game series.

Read more
What is dragonsplague in Dragon’s Dogma 2 and how is it cured?
A dragon roars in Dragon's Dogma 2.

Dragon's Dogma 2 likes to keep many of its mechanics and systems a secret until you discover them. You will learn quickly that you can't fast travel around the map freely, but there's one mechanic that is far more detrimental to your game. This is called dragonsplague and it is a disease that can't be cured with a simple tonic. In fact, you may not even realize if you have it in your game because it isn't something that affects your character at all; instead, it affects your Pawns. Failing to recognize you have dragonsplague and deal with it in a timely manner can ruin your entire playthrough if you're not careful. To avoid such a catastrophe, here are all the details about this cruel disease.
What is dragonsplague?

Dragonsplague is a special kind of disease that Pawns can contract seemingly by interacting with either Drakes or Dragons. That part isn't fully clear yet, however, we do know that Pawns with dragonsplague can spread the disease to other Pawns. Since Pawns are able to pass between worlds to join other players, you are never fully safe from being infected if you're playing online. Unlike a real sickness, though, dragonsplague actually transfers between Pawns rather than spreads, meaning it won't fully run rampant through the game.

Read more