Super Retro Squad Update

Public image of jay pavlina from exploding rabbit

Jay pavlina and exploding rabbit are not updating backers like they should so the exploding rabbit scam blog will step up and do it.

Incredible folks, remember that Super Retro Squad by jay pavlina of exploding rabbit is.... wait for it.... still not made!

It is seriously mind blowing the level of epic failure on the part of jay pavlina and exploding rabbit. As a reminder, super retro squad was funded on kickstarter on July 19, 2012. It is now June 6, 2016!! Yes that is right, jay pavlina of explodingrabbit has had almost 4 full years to complete super retro squad. Check out our Exploding Rabbit Super Retro Squad Timeline.

So what on earth has jay pavlina and exploding rabbit been doing? Well that's a good question. Jay pavlina set up a patreon page to e-beg for more money. Luckily nobody is actually falling for this nonsense.

Of course jay pavlina changed his mind on so many things several times. Jay pavlina from exploding rabbit changed the name to operation pyxel and then joined up with JForce games but of course that didn't last long because they quickly realized jay pavlina is a joke and does not actual work.

Here are a few of the updates from the exploding rabbit patreon scam as written by jay pavlina of exploding rabbit

"I don't really know how to schedule the google hangout."

"It's very important that patrons read this because I changed what I am doing."

 "You should read over the rewards because I changed them. I also changed the goals just so that I can focus on the game."

"I'll try and do a better job of having something by the end of the month instead of shortly after."

In summary - Jay pavlina is not competent or qualified to make games. He is just selfish and wants to milk money out of people so he doesn't have to work a normal job. Please people, stop enabling this madness.

Just say no to jay pavlina and exploding rabbit

Exploding Rabbit Patreon Scam

Exploding Rabbit Patreon

Oh hey Rob-in it looks like Jay Pavlina is at it again with the new Exploding Rabbit Patreon scam. And is the game Super Retro Squad, Super Action, Super Retro Crossover, Project Pyxel? I just can't tell anymore! We need to put a stop to this stupendous scamming skipper of Exploding Rabbit saliently!

Quickly to the Ratmobile.......

 

* Just a bit of fun and parody of the Exploding Rabbit company the Exploding Rabbit Patreon page and Project Pyxel.

Super Retro Crossover - Scam

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So I don't believe I am writing this but Jay Pavlina and Exploding Rabbit is continuing the scam. Now it's called Super Retro Crossover.

Just to recap, Jay Pavlina swindled backers on Kickstarter out of over $50,000 back in July 2012. He did a whole lot of nothing and certainly never fulfilled the rewards of the backers, to this day, May 2015. He did buy himself a nice house though with the backers money.

Backers have been demanding refunds and rightly so. Here are just a few quotes from Jay Pavlina's loyal backers on Kickstarter;

"You guys are horrible. You begged for money, we gave it to you, all you did was play games and push back release dates while you fumbled through changing your game design every other day, then you just up and quit and steal our cash?
Don't bother making another game. No one will touch it."

"I requested a refund, was told I would get a refund, but did not get a refund. Sent a PM."

"Thanks for basically making me avoid kickstarters like the plague thanks to your disgusting work."

So needless to say these poor backers of Super Retro Squad had not received their rewards and are not even being given the refunds they deserve from Jay Pavlina and Exploding Rabbit.

Get ready for this though, you won't believe it....

Jay Pavlina of Exploding Rabbit has now changed the name of the game, yet again, to Super Retro Crossover. It is now to be a fan game continuing to steal assets from Nintendo and others.

Jay Pavlina from Exploding Rabbit has a Patreon page asking for more money. Yes that is right, let me say it again that the owner of Exploding Rabbit, Jay Pavlina has created a Patreon page to swindle more money then he already has and is not even refunding backers of Super Retro Squad.

Super Retro Crossover is a scam. Jay Pavlina of Exploding Rabbit has really stooped to an all time low here. I truly feel bad for the backers of Super Retro Squad, who have been so badly disrespected and slapped around by Jay Pavlina and Exploding Rabbit.

Super Retro Crossover is not a finished game, and uses stolen assets. Please, please, please do not make the mistake that a group of backers made with Super Retro Squad with this new Super Retro Crossover scam.

It is just sad what Jay Pavlina is trying to do with Super Retro Crossover and scam even more people.

Here are just a few more quotes from Super Retro Squad backers

"This "game" has definitely soured my experience with Kickstarter. However Divinity Original Sin, another Kickstarted game just came out and is fricking awesome."

"this is yet another perfect example of why i will never kickstart anything again"

"Thieves"

Call it Super Retro Crossover, or call it Super Action Squad, or call it Super Retro Squad.....
We all just call it a SCAM!

Getting a Refund for Super Retro Squad (Super Retro Crossover)

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Well unfortunately the day has finally come where Super Action Squad, formerly called Super Retro Squad, has been cancelled. Jay Pavlina wrote a huge article over on explodingrabbit.com which basically makes excuses and then throws his team members under the bus.


More importantly let's talk about refunds. You asked for my help and I will accommodate you. It appears he refunded a few people so they would stop bad mouthing him, basically buying them off. There are a bunch of other people who have asked for refunds and not received them as of today and in looking at the comments on Kickstarter and the explodingrabbit YouTube channel, Jay is not even responding to people. Long story short people want refunds, and as usual Jay has gone MIA an ignoring them.


So here is what you can do.


First of all, you are legally entitled to a refund because he didn't fulfill the rewards. You can read more about that on my post here Timeline for Exploding Rabbit's Super Retro Squad (Super Action Squad)


Right now you basically have 2 options to get the refund.

Option 1 - Ask Jay Pavlina for a refund

You can continue to ask him for a refund though he doesn't seem to be responding to people at all and has pretty much vanished. You could ask on Kickstarter, where the funding took place or attempt to contact him via the "contact form" on explodingrabbit.com. Beware of the contact form though because you have no idea where that goes, will have no record of the email, and he will track you personal IP address. In my opinion this option doesn't seem to be working out.

 

Option 2 - Sue Jay Pavlina

As a backer you legally entered into a contract with Jay Pavlina. You gave him money and in return were to receive rewards. The rewards were not provided and it appears never will be. What you would need to do is sue him. It would be a civil matter and you would sue him in small claims court. Specifically you would sue him for the damages which is the amount you gave him for the rewards as well as court costs. Court costs include court fees and your lawyers fees. Most lawyers will work on contingency which means they won't be paid unless you win the case, and like I said you won't have to pay anything because you would sue Jay Pavlina for the court costs as well. That is basically the overview and if you want to do this, just reach out to a lawyer and find out of they will take the case on contingency. The lawyer will then walk you through the specifics of what you need to do. If a lot of people are interested in this method I can reach out to a lawyer who would do a class action suit on Jay Pavlina on behalf of all the backers. Let me know guys, I am here to help.

Super Action Squad vs Shovel Knight

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So Jay Pavlina's game Super Action Squad and Yacht Club Games's Shovel Knight are both retro games that were funded on Kickstarter and are being produced by "indie" developers. I want to do a comparison of the two so people can see the clear difference between two indie games that were both funded on Kickstarter. Hopefully this will help backers in their decision of what games to back in the future.

Lets start out with Yacht Club Game's thoughts on the risks of developing an indie game;

"Making great video games is hard. Like, really hard! Art, design, and technology have to be blended seamlessly to create a cohesive experience. On top of that, it takes time to iterate and expand on ideas. There is a reason lots of awesome games take forever to come out!
The biggest risk is that Shovel Knight would take longer than anticipated. If production were to go late, cash would be the biggest problem. If catastrophe truly struck, our backup plan would be to pool our remaining funds and partner with venture capitalist or publisher to get the game done. This game is our livelihood, so we will do whatever it takes!
However, perish the thought of failure! Yacht Club Games has an experienced staff that has shipped more than 30 projects on more than 8 platforms. We work as a team, we have made games of this type before, and we know what we are doing!"

I at least think that this sums up the risks pretty nicely. Yacht Club adresses the risk and says what they will do in the case it happens. Jay Pavlina did not even acknowledge or discuss risks at all on the Kickstarter page for Super Retro Squad (now called Super Action Squad).

Missing the deadline is certainly one of the major risks in backing an indie game on Kickstarter. Both Shovel Knight and Super Action Squad missed their deadlines so let's take a good hard comparison of how both indie developers handled the situation.

It's pretty easy to see the situation and I'm actually not even going to say anything about the data, what do you guys think?

Jay Pavlina's Illegal Profits

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"Exploding Rabbit makes $16,000 per year"

How does Exploding Rabbit make Money

This might seem crazy because Jay Pavlina of Exploding Rabbit doesn't sell anything and claims to have created a "non-profit" game called Super Mario Crossover. So how then does Jay Pavlina pull in $16,000 per year you ask? Exploding Rabbit makes this money from the Google advertisements that you see all over his site, explodingrabbit.com . He publically admitted to this in his video "An Inside Look at Super Action Squad" where he said the average Exploding Rabbit employee makes $2,000 per year and because there are 8 Exploding Rabbit employees, that equals $16,000.

What is on explodingrabbit.com to make money from

If you take a look at explodingrabbit.com you will notice that it is absolutely full of Nintendo stuff. The site background, the wiki, the forums, and of course the game Super Mario Crossover. Even the keywords for the site and the description of the site mention "Mario." Thus, he is purposefully using the fact that Nintendo characters are known and people search for them to bring people to his site and then make money off of advertisements.

Does Jay Pavlina own the rights to anything on explodingrabbit.com

Although most of what is on explodingrabbit.com is owned by Nintendo, Jay Pavlina does own the rights to the following only

• Super Mario Crossover source code
• explodingrabbit.com source code
• Exploding Rabbit images
• Super Action Squad

Summing it all up

To sum up, 90% of the content on explodingrabbit.com is owned by Nintendo and Jay Pavlina makes $16,000 a year from this illegal content. The funny part is that Jay Pavlina claims the ads are for "other things." As you can now see, as if you couldn't before, that is just not true.


What do you guys think?

Super Action Squad Update - Explodingrabbit Game

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Jay Pavlina from Explodingrabbit originally budgeted and asked for $10,000 to create a game called Super Retro Squad (later changed the name to Super Action Squad).

He ended up actually getting $53,509 from kickstarter on 7/19/2012. Specifically he got $43,509 more than he claimed to need to make the game for the purpose of adding stretch goals.

Pretty much exactly a year later 0n 7/20/13 Jay Pavlina sets up a page on explodingrabbit.com for Super Action Squad to ask for even more money. He asked for $235,000 more in fact. So pretty much he originally estimated the game to need $10,000 to complete but then "re-estimated" the cost to be a whopping $288,509 dollars. So he is saying his original estimate was only 3% of what he actually needed? That is truly incredible how inaccurate his estimates are. Check out the nifty graph below.

Now mind you that in that year from 7/19/12 to 7/20/13 Jay Pavlina did not provide any tangible updates on what was going on with Super Action Squad.

This new page asking for more money has been called "e-begging" but how well has it worked? Let's do the math.

As of today Jay Pavlina has allegedly got $4,465 through "e-begging" for Super Action Squad as far as I can tell from explodingrabbit.com . It has been 162 days since 7/20/13 so he is getting an average of $27.56 per day or $137.80 for a typical work week (5 days). Now there is certainly no way to tell how this is divided up among the explodingrabbit people, but that is way less than anyone would get from a minimum wage job. This pretty much means that anyone on the explodingrabbit team would be crazy to quit any kind of job to work "full-time" for explodingrabbit.

But then again in a video Jay Pavlina said that the average explodingrabbit employee makes an average of $2,000 per year. Assuming that is split equally among all 8 explodingrabbit team members, Jay Pavlina is pulling in $16,000 per year from advertising revenue for an illegal fan game. Nintendo, can we say damages/lost revenue maybe?

And lastly it looks like on Alexa that explodingrabbit.com had a high point in early 2012 and has been in steady decline since with a current bounce rate of 60% and a global rank decline of 91,277 over the past 3 months. In fact explodingrabbit isn't even ranked on Alexa after around August 2013 because it is not popular enough.

Now the good news is that since this blog has been around, Jay Pavlina has actually been posting updates about Super Action Squad on kickstarter and responding to people's comments on youtube. He has also done some stuff with the illegal game Mario Crossover, but that doesn't matter.

Its great to see the blog had an impact and happy holidays followers!