Dallas Snell, as is his wont, wrote a lengthy missive in an attempt to address the recent controversies surrounding Shroud of the Avatar pledge gifting. Here is the full text of his remarks:

I truly regret that events have transpired in such a way to trigger the feelings of confusion, disappointment, disillusionment, betrayal, and broken promises that many of you have expressed in recent forum posts. There is no doubt that each of you, based on your own understanding of dev team communications (whether those communications were in the form of project updates, dev chats, or forum threads) are fully justified in feeling the way you do. Your perceptions, and interpretations are the truth as you understand it. I agree with HoustonDragon who posted that the biggest issue at stake is trust. Trust is the foundation upon which sustainable relationships depends. Principles such as trust are at the very core of Portalarium’s existence. When we started Portalarium we drafted a set of principles designed to guide our actions. You can find this list of principles on our Company Culture web page. Trustworthiness, honesty, and integrity are just a few of those principles we endeavor to live by every moment of every day, to the best of our ability to do so.

Those of you that believe we have broken some of our original promises have every right to feel mistrustful. I would feel exactly the same way if I were you. But please understand that regarding the issue of Founders being able to purchase additional Founder pledges for one full year at original Founder prices and with full Founder rewards, to keep for themselves or to give away as they please is indeed something that we promised. I know, because I’m the one that wrote it.

We offered this because of our profound gratitude to the 22k+ backers that rallied to our team and our project and through their efforts and generosity allowed the Shroud of the Avatar project to happen! We wanted our original backers to have every benefit we could provide them for what they had helped us accomplish, and it seemed that allowing them the privilege to continue purchasing and upgrading the original tiers at the original prices was a very powerful way to express our appreciation.

I thought this was clearly communicated in Update #25, dated April 9, 2013, when I stated:

“We are currently designing the new tiers for brand new backers, and should have those available by end-of-day Sunday, April 14th, at the conclusion of our current one-week grace period. It is our intention for all Kickstarter backers to be able to purchase/upgrade to both the previous tiers (pending availability of limited tiers), and the new tiers, whereas new backers after April 14th will only have access to the new tiers.”

When I wrote “purchase/upgrade” the word “purchase” was referring to buying additional pledges, and the word “upgrade” was referring to existing pledges. Since a tier is defined by the rewards it contains, when I wrote “both the previous tiers…and the new tiers” the previous tiers was referring to rewards listed in the tier descriptions prior to the end of the Grace Period, and “new tiers” was referring to rewards listed in the tier descriptions after the Grace Period. This means that all backers up to May 20, 2013 would be able to purchase additional pledges that contain all the original rewards and the new rewards, as well as upgrade any of their pledges to tiers that contain all the original rewards and the new rewards, thru April 7, 2014.

I repeated this again in Update #27, April 16, 2013:

“We expect to have the new tiers ready to go early next week, so we are extending the grace period until then. Once that integration is complete, all Kickstarter backers will be able to purchase/upgrade to both the previous tiers (pending availability of limited tiers), and the new tiers, whereas new backers after the grace period ends will only have access to the new tiers.”

Also, during our Kickstarter campaign we received requests from some backers to be able to purchase additional pledges for their friends or family. We advised them there were 3 ways they could accomplish this:

1. Create additional Kickstarter accounts and purchase one pledge per account
2. Increase the size of their pledge to cover cost of multiple pledges and put in a customer service ticket after the campaign to have us divide and transfer their pledge to multiple accounts
3. Go to the SotA website once it launched on March 23, 2013 and make multiple pledges there, which we would then give them the ability to transfer any of their pledges to any account they chose, either through contacting CS or through an eventual UI on the website itself

The SotA website, since it launched on March 23, 2013, has always allowed backers to create as many pledges per account as they wished, with the intention of being able to transfer their additional pledges to anyone they chose, with all the original rewards intact. This feature may not have been specifically written about in an official project update, but it has certainly been communicated to all members of our community who requested this ability.

The ability to transfer one of your pledges to another account with an automated UI on the website kept getting back-burnered because of higher priorities. When the holiday season was approaching last year, we decided to implement the “Gift” feature to make it easier for those people that were asking us to implement a feature so they could transfer additional accounts to friends and family. Allowing transfers via “Gifting” seemed appropriate for the holiday gift-buying season. We announced the Gifting system in Update #49, on November 22, 2013, with the message “Gifts can be sent to existing backers or to someone that wishes they were a backer“.

In Update #56, January 17, 2014, we started reminding our backers there were only 80 days remaining until the end of the 1 year Early Founder Pledge availability. We started receiving customer service tickets from Early Founders that said the price of additional pledges was listed at the higher Benefactor prices, although the tier text description did include all the original Early Founder rewards. We looked into it, and sure enough, even though you already had an Early Founder pledge, the cost of additional pledges being added to your own account or sent as a gift were at Benefactor prices (which was a bug) whereas the reward descriptions included the original Early Founder rewards (as we originally promised). We pushed out a fix for this bug last week, which is what started the recent controversy.

To all the backers that asked to buy multiple pledges during the KS campaign (and during the ensuing 1-year promotion period) with the intention of distributing them to friends or family, we never imposed a time limit on when they had to transfer those additional Early Founder pledges. We were okay if they waited until the day we launched the game and we’d still allow them to transfer their additional Early Founder pledges to anyone they chose. We assumed they would be sending those Early Founder pledges to friends or family that had never pledged, thus allowing their friend or family member to be an Early Founder as well, with all the Early Founder benefits (which included purchasing/upgrading at Early Founder prices and rewards).

We didn’t foresee that Early Founders would transfer or gift their additional Founder pledges to existing Benefactors, thus giving the Benefactors access to a Founder pledge (which automatically grants them Founder benefits). This is a recent emergent behavior. When we learned of it, we acted quickly to attempt to keep it from becoming the equivalent of the gold farming black market, while also honoring what we thought we clearly communicated as an Early Founder’s right to purchase additional Early Founder pledges at Early Founder prices and rewards to transfer/gift to anyone they chose, thus granting the recipient Early Founder benefits as well.

I, and the entire Portalarium team, cannot apologize enough for the distress these misunderstandings of our communications have caused. We will continue to make every effort to honor our promises as we believe we described them, while working together with all of you to achieve the purpose for which we founded Portalarium: “To provide fun games and virtual worlds that foster community, good will, learning, and people playing together.”

Dallas Snell
COO/Co-Founder, Portalarium

It isn’t, in other words, that Portalarium didn’t communicate their intent in allowing Early Founder to gift Early Founder pledges to others. They did…repeatedly.

Two issues come to mind. The first is a practical one: Portalarium’s weekly Updates of the Avatar are, typically, exceedingly lengthy, and have more or less always been. In one respect, this is good: they have a lot of information they wish to convey on a weekly basis, and they take the time to do this in an informative manner…for those who take the time to read it.

But there’s the rub: who takes time to read everyting in any given Shroud of the Avatar update? Most users probably just skim through the “wall of text” in their email or browser window, looking for screenshots or headlines that seem related to those subjects that are in their immediate interest (housing, Blade of the Avatar, etc.). A detailed explanation of the pledge gifting system might be buried somewhere within that wall of text, but they don’t take note of it because there’s just so much text on the screen already that they skim past it on their way to the screenshots of whatever the featured backer reward house is that week. Voluminous writing is all well and good for the audience that appreciates and digests it…but we aren’t talking about the average reader there, nor are we talking about the majority of the audience for the Updates of the Avatar.

Also, there’s this:

We didn’t foresee that Early Founders would transfer or gift their additional Founder pledges to existing Benefactors, thus giving the Benefactors access to a Founder pledge (which automatically grants them Founder benefits). This is a recent emergent behavior.

I’m probably reading way more into this than I should, but it concerns me that many of the same people who helped create and launch Ultima Online didn’t consider the possibility that people would abuse the pledge gifting system in this way…especially given the existing conflict and disparities between Early Founders and Benefactors.

There’s money (and virtual goods) involved, being transacted through a semi-anonymous online community. In general, the first thing you should suspect — given those circumstances — is that people will find a way to abuse the system, no?

Of course, since I drafted this post, things have changed still yet further. Browncoat Jayson left a comment explaining the solution that Portalarium have come up with:

Based on the latest posts by Starr Long, we now have Early Founders, Founders, and Benefactors:

Because of the recent influx of New Founders, we feel it is important to differentiate all the original Early Founders (backers prior to May 20, 2013) who, during our brief Kickstarter campaign, championed our team and our project. It was their efforts and generosity that allowed the Shroud of the Avatar project to happen! We are doing a poll with the Dev+ group on a new set of rewards for Early Founders. Rewards will include a new title and a different color scheme for the Founder items (weapons, armor, cloak, etc.). We will announce the results of the poll on Friday with the update and even include an example item.

So you can become a Founder, but there are still some exclusives for Early Founders.

Of course, this does nothing to resolve the tension between Early Founders and Benefactors, which was (I maintain) a causal factor in the results of this unpleasantness. Indeed, if anything, further stratifying the backer base may well serve to exacerbate things.

Time will, I suppose, tell.