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Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

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Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#161

Post by philliphaydon »

sanxiyn wrote: post #17
tobr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the reason for the rule is to avoid the submitter pushing through their viewpoint, this particular case shouldn’t be a problem. The “Y Combinator” part is a reason why it’s relevant to this site, and it’s not a viewpoint.

"Scam" is the problematic part. The article avoids the word in the title because the article itself says: > "I think we use the word scam as a colloquial term mostly and there's some nuance to this. I don't think either game's developers have the actual intention to not deliver." So it's not a scam, not to speak of blatant scam.

It's a scam IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RQ7NdpW1R0&t=0s

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#162

Post by [deleted] »

ypzhang2 wrote: post #154
sombremesa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this as not having anything to show (in terms of numbers, product) at demo day and I assumed the implication was that they had also not been meeting their weekly obligations, but you’re correct that there isn’t really anything for YC to do at that point - short of running up and snatching LoIs which is obviously overstepping.

There really isn't any weekly obligations when I went through, other than a dinner weekly. You met with the partners as much as you liked. At Demo Day, there were folks in 2011 with no product, someone even pivoted the day before demo day and just had an idea on a powerpoint. Some of the folks went on to build very successful businesses. So the lack of demo day progress in of itself doesn't mean too much i think. The…

[deleted]

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#163

Post by fredophile »

jVinc wrote: post #105

So it's a "scam" because they are promising something they can't deliver straight away? Isn't that basically a description of every startup company ever?

There are a couple reasons it's a scam. First, they've apparently overstated their relevant credentials. Claiming nine years of experience in something they don't have any professional experience in is a scam. I wouldn't open a restaurant and claim decades of cooking experience when my experience is just cooking for myself at home.

Second, and more importantly, it's a scam because they are charging money for something that they have no viable path to delivering the thing people paid for.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#164

Post by RapidFire »

wearywanderer wrote: post #86
new299 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some sympathy for the difficulty evaluating tech plays when "an RSS search engine" turns into twitter. These ideas are the starting point, but it's difficult to tell what they might turn into. Quite possibly they evaluate the ability of the founders to shape the company into something interesting during the program. But more than that, they're probability are trying to figure out how well the founders will per…

"Invest in the team" makes some sense when you're talking about bright people with a lame idea (RSS search engine, or whatever.) But in this case the idea isn't merely lame; it's a scam, and the team being invested in are a team of con-artists. What might they pivot to, if not another scam?

"Invest in the team" gets you Juicero.

Great ambition; they raised a bunch of money.

Great production; watch a tear down of the Juicero product itself, it is a mechanical work of art.

Great potential; a SaaS for a fruit drink? Lots of people love fruit drinks! They can buy our packets of delicious pre-made juice, people drinking juice is a huge Billion Dollar Market™!

Stupid Idea! You can just squeeze the juice out of the bag by hand, no fancy device needed. It is less convenient than pouring from a bottle! Does it really taste better than the delicious organic juice you can buy at any grocery store in every city for a lower price?

Lets put one hundred and twenty million dollars behind it and find out. Hahahahahahahahaha big swing and miss! Survey said? No.

You can of course have a great team with the smartest best credentialed people working on the idea motivated by tons of money. If the idea is bad they still fail, maybe they can pivot, but probably not.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#165

Post by gota »

kkotak wrote: post #127
jVinc wrote: post #105

So it's a "scam" because they are promising something they can't deliver straight away? Isn't that basically a description of every startup company ever?

Nope. There is Tesla and there's Therasense.

Is Therasense == Theranos?

A google search returns a lot of stuff on patent litigation but no "human readable" articles

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#166

Post by neolog »

elliekelly wrote: post #50
runawaybottle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to ask, I’ll go ahead and take a wild guess. I looked at the founder’s bios. A couple of white guys, think one worked at a few FAANGs - textbook archetype for ‘certainly people of this type know what they are doing’. Yeah, we do live in that world. This shit might be the most valid textbook case of white male privilege ever. Edit: I usually have a very high bar for throwing around while male privilege thi…

I (woman without CS degree) once pitched to an investor and his first question was “Okay, but who’s going to build it for you?” Um... me? I _built_ it. It already exists and I have users and I said that several times but apparently the idea of me being able to do that on my own was simply too confusing for him to understand. His next question? “Who’d you hire to build it?” facepalm

Ouch. Did you find a good investor eventually?

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#167

Post by tmilard »

kleinsch wrote: post #57
dvt wrote: post #8

I've been following the DreamWorld saga on YouTube for a hot minute now, mainly because I find it so interesting how they got through the YC vetting process when I myself have applied twice (maybe 3 times) and I also know plenty of people -- brilliant, motivated, entrepreneurial folks -- that applied many (many) times as well and were rejected (YC is mega-competitive after all). IMO, it's a bit insulting to the strug…

Yea, I’ve found it interesting reading about YC companies from this batch that include: - A scam MMO - Terminal autocomplete as a service - A Splitwise clone - An app that puts your next meeting in your menu bar (for $10/month!) YC gets 5K+ applications/cycle, accepts 1-3%, so they rejected 4500+ companies for these?

Yes, it is funny. Sometimes fools with big mouth get more attention than they clearly deserve.

By the way, I wouldn't like to be those three YC interviewers who valitaded this idiotic project into ycombinator !

"Le bonnet d'âne pour tous les trois ! "

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#168

Post by sangnoir »

tom_mellior wrote: post #38
Shadonototro wrote: post #12

i knew this project was a scam it was obvious, default unreal 4 templates, art from asset packs and people asking for 10k to make an MMO, LOL what people can do for a quick buck, this not only expose the pseudo "scripters & asset flippers", but also everyone who promoted the project

> default unreal 4 templates, art from asset packs I don't understand this criticism. Using existing asset packs seems sensible to me. It's a tiny team that seems to have more software engineering than graphic design experience. Focusing on the game itself first and using placeholder assets allows them to make progress for now. It can be made pretty later, when there is an actual game. If it were the other way around…

> I don't understand this criticism. Using existing asset packs seems sensible to me

Code reuse is fine, but when 90% of your game is from various art pack, it's kinda like a software project thats 90% copy-pasted from StackOverflow. Sure, reusing 3rd party code is fine, but at some point, they've cross the line into "Do they even know what they are doing?"

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#169

Post by sangnoir »

themacguffinman wrote: post #55
ffhhj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Favoritism shown or patronage granted to relatives and friends. But I think this is just an example that shows investment is merely gambling.

Not necessarily, the article mentions that YC allegedly never even vetted the project: > According to Upton, a senior employee at Y Combinator claims that Bellack has a friend in the accelerator who helped greenlight DreamWorld without the appropriate due diligence. "Originally, I thought this was a bit of a joke, but they called me and validated all their information and their sources. This person is actually higher…

Isn't this congruent with the "Invest in teams, not products" philosophy though?

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#170

Post by patmcc »

jfrunyon wrote: post #143
setr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think graphics rendering is really the problem — worst comes to worst, you just reduce graphical fidelity — and regardless, rendering 300 AI characters roaming around is clearly doable, and it’d be the same with viewing real players. It’s a client-side problem, and doesn’t have to really scale much with player count (Stadia’s main pitch was that you didn’t need high end PCs to play AAA games — not that it wou…

The delays, interpolation, etc. are a big problem in games like FPS, but I fail to see why they'd be a large problem in an MMO. Why can't you just send the new position of other visible players, and then client-side play those characters' walking animations to the new position from their current (client-side) position? Unless the accuracy of another player's targeting is relevant why is there a problem with their pos…

A good MMO typically isn't just a large number of players walking around and not interacting with one another.

Look at Eve Online; you have a spaceship, you travel around and shoot stuff (this is simplifying it, but that's a big part of it). Sometimes there are 100 or 1000 ships all involved in one battle; what do you have to deal with in that case? You need to send all ship data (model, loadout, customizations) to every client so they can load in the right assets. You need to track where each ship is (in 3d) and where it's going at any given time. You need to track what weapons are firing, and who they might hit (there are missiles, interception missiles, "bombs" with an explosion radius, lasers that hitscan, guns that have tracking projectiles, etc). You need to compute status effects that may change based on distance between given ships. You need to send all this data to each client regularly (every second at least).

This really adds up, both in compute and memory on the server and in amount of data that needs to be sent to each client. It gets difficult quickly. Let's say all the info above can be described in 1kb/ship/tick - you get up to the larger battles, which in Eve have hit 5000+ (rarely, yes) - and you're dealing with 5000kb/tick going to every one of those clients.

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