Opinion Articles

WARNING about First Press Games

I know I said I wouldn’t make a Limprint Article ever again.

And still, I won’t. That whole line of opinion articles got me so much stupid heat from bagholders and diehard fans that I do not want to engage with that anymore if I can, especially as I myself have pulled out of limprint collecting.

But when a dev is being swindled, and I’m angry enough to notice and see that they’re being scammed, and it’s a dev of a game I reviewed here on this very site, I’m gonna use my platform to warn people.

So yeah. First Press Games. I mentioned them in my report cards. I’ve noted they’ve been getting worse and worse and ghosting customers.

Turns out, they’re ghosting devs too. POWA, Mindseize, and now Project Blue.

Three years, and not a single proof of the Collector Edition that FPG reached out to the indie dev for being made.

Three years, and constant excuses and stealth delays.

Three years, and no payment until today, when that very tweet I linked got them to do something and make yet another excuse that will almost certainly fail to come true yet again.

This is why I covered Limprints in the past to begin with. Sure, when LRG misled about Shiren, it was with a bigger company in Spike Chunsoft, but that was still a dev team they screwed over. And from that partnership dissolving in the aftermath of that, these partnerships are something both sides have to uphold to, and if a limprint is taking advantage of an indie, well… That’s fucking sad. Holding these publishers accountable to not just giving consumers what they were promised, by the devs/pubs they partnered with, was why I would call out limprint companies at times when things got really shitty. Especially when it came to poor quality control.

Especially when the original aim of the first limprints were to get smaller games preserved to a wider audience via physical media. Now this whole thing has been tainted by FOMO bait companies popping up, promising devs the world and either delaying stuff nonstop or ghosting/scamming them. It happened with Warned Collectors, it happened with Brian Schorr’s Dispatch Games, and it’s happening again with First Press Games. This whole boom is crashing down, and in the process innocent indies and devs are gonna get screwed, and those who got in the game for the money are gonna be the first to turn on these developers.

And damn it, that just makes me sad. Sad as a nine year long game reviewer who covers games, even those on my endless review queue that took forever to get done, and who mainly got into it to spread the word about cool games nobody else is talking about.

I sure wish some publishers would care about these indies. It doesn’t help that I type this the day an indie publisher, Modus Games, laid off the majority of the dev staff for a fighting game they bought solely to publish on consoles. And they kept the IP and such, too. All that work, ruined by a greedy business.

Sometimes writing in this industry sucks, even as a freelancer. Don’t even get me started on Embracer.

So yeah. Don’t buy from First Press Games. If ya have a pending order, cancel it now. You’ll thank me later if they go under. They may dodge refund requests like they tend to but damn it keep emailing them. They’re in germany and have to abide by EU law, for pete’s sake.

QUICK EDIT JAN 2024: I didnt want to touch this again, but due to how the Project Blue dev has since silently nuked all of their social posts related to FPG, how FPG resumed advertising their in hand stock heavily on Reddit/Facebook again, and how FPG sent out a status update email claiming that “oh the games are totally coming any day now just the boxes took forever because Covid!!!”, I’m pretty much confident that FPG silenced the Project Blue dev or pushed him to take his posts down. Considering they did do the same thing with the Powa dev earlier in 2023, I’m more confident this is just to save face for them.

Do not fall for it.

Do not give First Press Games your money. Even if they somehow get every thing in-hand after all these years, that doesn’t explain the long delays, ghosting of devs, ignored payment to devs, excuses to customers, ghosting of customers, and ignoring refund requests to the point of shutting off all public social media comments in any capacity. This is not a sign of a healthy company.

EDIT FEB 2024: We doin this again? OK I guess.

So yeah, apparently FPG made a recent tweet where they forgot to shut off the comments. Needless to say, people were pissed about the lack of ETAs, mainly with Chained Echoes (by far the most acclaimed game FPG has the publishing rights to), and their response was yet again, mass hiding all the replies calling them out and refusing to acknowledge the situation. Now they’re back to posting CE trinkets they just got in, promising imminent Chained Echoes news soon, trying to act like the 5+ year wait for some of them wasn’t at all absurd and they weren’t violating EU law this whole time for dodging refunds.

Even if Chained Echoes squeaks out in some last hurrah attempt to get a lot of people to panic buy and fund other preorders with that, don’t buy from these guys. Don’t support publishers who take money for games, spend 5 years ignoring any inquiry on the matter and the EU law mandating refunds if requested, and then keep pumping out more games without referencing their old stuff. Of all Limprints I dealt with, FPG gives me the worst, shadiest vibes of them all now, and considering how Dispatch Games imploded, that should say a lot.