Doom inflation (romeronomics thread)

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Didn't he hide Sigil behind the paywall for a month?

I swear I remember that the link wasn't available for a month and it was open for those who bought the wad+CD version which costed €6,66.

Edit: if you don't believe me
youtube.com/clip/UgkxHKaF31jmog08UPZLmsQJgGkqrmb5xNPt

You're not entitled to play it. Or you could wait for Sigil 2. 
However, the readme clearly states that non-commercial sharing of this WAD is allowed. So you can give it to your friends. Just don't sell it or repackage it. 

I understand €5 is a lot of money for some people but that is always an issue in gaming. Maybe it would have been better as a pay what you want kinda deal, like with a humble bundle. But I don't fault Romero for giving people an incentive to donate and using the weight of his name / celebrity status to get people to donate. If anything, it brings some people back into Doom who haven't played it in a long time. 


PS: I don't think the map is great. I could have used some more polish, though it is indistinguishably Romero, but the fact that this map will be in Sigil 2 and not some speedmap he made specifically for this cause does take away a lot from this. 
PS2: and yes, I have filled up my car with goods to donate and have donated money as well, before Romero's map

Yes, obviously. This is communicated by the price tag. Hence this thread.

Youve been in the community for a while. Youve had to see someone hyping up their new megawad project theyre working on that they just started one map on that never actually gets finished.

The news isnt going to write articles after the transaction to red cross happens. The pc gaming news feed is already flooded with his name just for saying "this is what im going to do."

Crowdfunding is so widespread, and unless youre using a service that facilitates that, you really dont have any accountability for what you do with the money you receive in 'donations' on your own website. Nobody is watching it.

John Romero has already received all the congratulations on social media for it and free press. People who 'donated' money to his fund already feel good about it. They did something good and got an exclusive romero map yeahhh baby. But theres no way to know if theres overhead or if hes gonna pocket some or all of it. The efforts that specifically help those who are hurt by the war are immeasurable and mostly invisible unless something actually really good comes out of it. And in an ongoing crisis like this, its definitely going to be invisible.

All we got is to trust his word because he made doom.

It would be cooler to make a large ~10,000€ donation in advance, to guarantee that red cross is getting money and the ukrainian people are being helped asap in this time of emergency. Then run the crowdfunding through his doom after to replace the money you donated. That way he would have to make sure the map is good in order to make a decent return. You dont get as much social media buzz for that though, and thats whats most important. If it was real philanthropy, you'd just eat the costs even if people dont reach your fundraising goal, just like everyone donating has to. By doing it the way he's doing, the ukrainian people have to wait for:

1. when the crowdfunding period is over
2. when/if John Romero makes the donation
3. Red cross to receive the funds
4. Red cross to allocate the funds towards aid
5. to deliver said aid to the people

That time adds up. Also, the volume of his donation is measured by what other people donate. Not what he donates. Lastly, because no money actually gets to the war victims yet, people donating arent actually donating directly to the cause. They donate towards a cloudy mush of a factors:

1. how badly they want the map
2. the guilt felt for not helping enough for those effected by the war
3. the social pressure to know what its like to play romeros map at the time people are actively playing and talking about it

Its all really messy but its the format people like because it makes everyone feel good.

he can be sued if it was easy to verify if what he was doing is illegal.

The risk of getting 'caught' and paying penalties in a crowdfunding campaign is actually very low

Hes receiving the money through his own website. he's not bound to any terms and conditons that other crowdfunding platforms use, and theres no transparency about whether he actually does it or not. If his intentions are good why does he have to do it this way?

anyway, sites like gofraudme say its too damn easy for people to scam on these crowdfunding platforms even with the protections in place. Who is going to be the autistic Doom superfan that constantly badgers Romero and called Red Cross to make sure the money got to where he said he was gonna put it?

That's what I said, he can be sued, and he can be prosecuted for fraud.


The issue with these crowdfunding campaigns and platforms, is that they're not charities. They're people collecting money for himself.

Under EU Law (and he's in Ireland, mind you), if you claim any % of proceedings go to charity, you're committing fraude if you don't go through. That's partly true because these types of donations are tax deductible for the donators themselves. 

I know some US companies that were fined in the EU because they sold products there claiming 100% of proceedings would go to charity, but they were withholding internal production costs like salaries, while only external costs (like shipping) are excluded from that clause.