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Malise and the Machine

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CRITICAL UPDATE

Malise and the Machine was a scam started by Patreon user Eromancer to start gaining money through Patreon.  While an actual game was at one point being developed, it appears that Eromancer never intended on finishing the game & just continued collecting money from people who thought they were going to get a game out of supporting him in it's creation.  Eromancer unfortunately stopped developing MatM and switched to another game called Pure Onyx, the original project never seeing another update beyond roughly 2016 to 2017 (at least as far as I can tell).  Eromancer took off with the money that he gained from his Malise and the Machine scam & used it as a startup for Pure Onyx.

Eromancer was called out about the lack of updates in the past & threatened that if he didn't provide what was promised (a copy of the game to anybody paying over $20 over the course of the development of MatM), they would be getting law enforcement involved.  Eromancer's response to this was that he claimed those individuals had not paid anything into the game, where some of those individuals provided proof of purchase through various forums (screenshots of the emails, bank charges or PDFs of the emails invoices).  Eromancer stopped developing MatM after these individuals calling him out, later updating his creator page to show that there was updates (with a test build that was released probably a year and a half prior), then switched to developing Pure Onyx.

On 10/23/2021, after a case of creator victimization by Patreon & refusal by Patreon to look at the facts provided in an appeal on the fraudulent account termination, I personally filed a criminal complaint against Eromancer with the Internet Crimes Division of the FBI through their online complaint forms.  Personal history with the FBI through online complainst have been close to nothing on results (the exception being when a complaint was filed about death threats that were being made over both PSN & Twitch by the same user & multiple accounts on each platform), so it's unexpected that anything will be done about it, but it was within my right as I lost money on this original scam being run by Eromancer & got nothing out of it.

ORIGINAL REVIEW
with updates

Malise and the Machine is a game that is being developed in RPG Maker (meaning you need the runtime installed, if you don't own the actual software) with extremely high-quality, 3D images displaying explicit adult-content through a an adult-oriented combat system.  The game displays various situations such as rape, monsters, tentacles, excessive creampies, egg-laying & so on.  The project is being funded on Patreon, looks promising & the developer (Eromancer) has made a promise that any individual that has paid $20 or more into the project through the development of the game would get a free copy of the game once it's completed.

The problem with this project is it appears to have run cold & there doesn't appear to be any activity with the game from the front page, however you will see if you look at the Inner-Circle posts, there are at least progress updates being posted (at least as far as I can see based on post dates, seeing as I am unable to read them not in that pay-tier anymore), but there has been no playable update since 10/17/2016 & he's stopped responding to posts regarding the free version to anybody who's paid over $20.  The last playable update that I could see ended at the end of the second chapter.

On 7/20/2016, I went to check his page on Patreon & found that his Patreon account was under review:

It seems his lack of playable updates for over a year has triggered a review of his page to see if he's actually making good on the tens of thousands of dollars he is pulling in each month through Patreon & I expect this probably has come from a good portion of his patrons canceling their subscriptions to his page.  While I do believe the progress updates in the Inner-Circle might be enough to have the review of his account dismissed, there's still the fact that even the Inner-Circle hasn't had a legitimate playable download according to the tier rewards/downloads page (if he's doing it through Inner-Circle posts, I can't say for certain), so whether the game gets canceled & everybody loses the money they have put towards the development of the game is anybody's guess...

I for one created a Patreon account for the purpose of this game alone (later I started using it to allow donations to my media channels, seeing as I don't trust the official donation systems on those sites) & have thus far contributed a one-time payment of $20 towards it to secure a copy of the game upon completion (there was another $3 payment in a later month, but seeing as there was no further playable updates since the last time I paid, I ended up getting into it with Eromancer & told him I would like a refund for that month, it didn't take long to have it refunded one he had responded to the thread regarding the copy to patrons who had paid over $20.  I continued to wait for over 10 months, watching his page to see when a playable update was presented (Eromancer apparently believing progress reports to be enough, not making it specific in his previous posts that updates included any form of update, playable/downloadable or not), the apparent lack of updates resulted in the review on his account & I have to wonder if this will be the end of the project.  I don't know Patreon's policy regarding projects that go cold & their accounts closed for lack of activity for which they are being funded, but I've seen a number of projects go south & get canceled (one of the reasons why I don't really trust Patreon or projects being funded on it, Breeding Season being a big example) & have seen videos on YouTube that stated that some Patreon pages have been used to purchase as much as a house (not necessarily fund the purpose of the creation of their Patreon account), so I'm expecting everybody who was funding the project should it does just to be stiffed, just like many, many other projects before it...

UPDATE:  Late on 10/24/2017, I noticed the Eromancer Patron has been reinstated, however didn't immediately notice the changes that were made until later, which is where I noticed that nearly every single explicit video/image had been removed from public posts.  I expected this was in response to the page perhaps not being unlisted (as adult-content Patreon pages should be according to policy) & getting flagged for what appeared to be a drop of about $6000 per month in one or two months (happening directly after it was stated that the project looked abandoned), however checking into it later today (10/25/2017), I realized that my assumption was only partially right, as the details are actually posted in a new post when the page became public again:

We're Back!

Hey guys!  

We're back online! 

For those that missed the action, this page was offline for about 5 days after having been hit by the adult content guidelines changes that Patreon made last week.  In order to be reinstated we had to make changes to our public content and remove links to NSFW sites.  This means that I've removed the links to the public demo, as well as the links to our blog and Tumblr.  These can still be found via a simple Google search however.  We also had to limit the nature of extreme content (images, links, and so forth) in paid posts.  We weren't asked to change the content of the game itself.  Ultimately it's pretty good news.

Naturally, this trajectory leads me to question the stability of Patreon for adult projects going forward, so we're going to make it a serious effort to come up with contingency strategies to maintain funding until project completion if the worst does eventually happen.  This is probably a good time to point out that with five developers our expenses are running in the ballpark of $8000 a month (not including random things such as computer hardware), and this is without me taking any personal pay.  It should suffice to say that funding is crucial for the survival of the project, so we will definitely be taking backup plans more seriously.

In the event that something does happen to the Patreon page down the road, I'll be backing up records each month so that I can still fulfill my end of the $20 uncensored retail version reward to those patrons that have met that requirement (in such an event, you'd receive a link to the game via email once it's completed).

Anyways, we'd be lying if we said this hasn't distracted us for the past few days, so we will likely need a couple of days to get an Inner Circle update ready to show off what we've been working on.  It should be a pretty good one :D.

Thanks for sticking around and for all the motivational messages while we were gone!  It's much appreciated!

- Eromancer

This new post points out a few things:

It's still undetermined whether people in the Inner Circle are getting playable updates through unadvertised links, but one thing is certain, the reward downloads portion of this page still hasn't updated since October 13, 2016 & the last public post (before the page got thrown into review status based on content) was on October 15, 2016 (the post about the uncensored retail copy for anybody paying $20 or above through the development of the project, where responses to that post still appear to be getting ignored), so I can't really say I have much hope that the project will be completed & I probably won't get anything for the money I have spent into it thus far...  What I can say is if he backs out of that promise to those who have paid the minimum as stated in that post, this review will turn into more backup information for an impending boycott against the developer (not that I want to see things go that way, but I have little hope with the lack of responses to those posting on public posts thus far).

UPDATE:  The timeline for the last playable update is now over 2 years when it comes to this game, giving only further reason to doubt the validity of it turning into an actual game & more along the lines of Breeding Season, where they just sat on their asses & collected until ultimately they ended up canceling the project (although there was an additional detail of corruption when it came to that game, so it's somewhat acceptable that they had to cancel the project, however not acceptable that everybody who paid into it got stiffed).  Moving aside from the obvious lack of updates for the time being, there are other details that need to be brought up of shady business tactics...

On 8/3/2018, the developer of this game made a new public post to their page calling out Patreon for nuking most of their subscribers as a result of switching to an overseas billing company (which resulted in mass-fraudulent false-alerts getting sent out by banks & those monthly charges getting blocked/reversed):

We left a comment on that post quoting the developer regarding the "lack of warning" when it came to the change of billing method, which turned the comment around & stated that it was unfair to those paying into the project that there was no prior warning that the project could go years without a playable update:

The expectation of this comment was it was going to get fully ignored (as has been the case with a number of other comments left trying to confirm whether the project was still in development & hadn't been abandoned), but the first response to it was actually supporting the comment, where the next response was abusive retaliation to it (which probably wouldn't have happened if not for the supporting comment being made first).  After this review was was mentioned in a follow-up response to the aggressive retaliation to out comment & the supporter of it, Eromancer himself decided to weigh in on the matter, claiming I had not paid anything into the project thus far:

At this point a long drawn-out response was made to reiterate the facts & to point out that the statement of "$0 support" was inaccurate (giving evidence of the original payment back in 2016), including a very stern statement that the project was currently expected to be "fraudulent" & that we were willing to get authorities involved, as it appears he was revoking our contribution with his statement of saying we hadn't paid anything into it thus far:

What is interesting about this is not the fact that nobody made a response after this comment (not even Eromancer) & not related to the fact that monthly contributions continue to drop, but rather the Likes on the posts between Eromancer & the final statement by us (Likes are indicated by the heart underneath a post).  Eromancer's post originally had 4 or more Likes on it, but later dropped down to 3 in a period of almost 3 months after he made the statement; our response to his comment (while slow starting) now sits at 7 (not including our own Like on it, which is only being used as a marker to quickly get back to the post).

We are expected to pay into the project again once a new version has been released (it's a game we've wanted to write a proper review of since we heard about it & got a chance to try a demo, but the lack of updates has changed that path until we are able to verify that it's actually going to be completed & the copy of the game that we've already paid for under his agreement hasn't been nullified), but that's only going to be if Eromancer has confirmed that our original contribution of $20 was not revoked towards the full version upon completion, which was stated above that it was pretty obvious he is not keeping records of people not continuing this contribution to the project by ending of monthly payments to it (I can say that we won't pay the full price of the game when we've already met the requirements that were giving by Eromancer).  Our hope is that Eromancer will follow through on his promises & we will get what we have paid for under his own statement, at which point this review can turn into an actual review of the game, rather than what currently appears to be deception of the developers of the project; the fact remains that a detail will still be left behind that the project took excessively long for playable updates to be released to their patrons, so the public is still aware that they may not see anything for quite sometime if they do decide to become a regular patron to further Eromancer projects (this will serve as the warning that Eromancer himself did not supply, although people will have to search for it if they need to know this information).

It is unfortunately expected that Eromancer will retaliate to this review & decide to stiff us on what we've already met the terms of his original agreement to receive a copy of upon it's completion, at which point this review will never become an actual review of the game, but rather a straight review & boycott against the developer, so people are aware of this fraudulent developer & with any luck, warn those who intend on being a part of any further projects he may intend on starting (much less releasing, if it even gets to the point he starts another project, completion of this one looks dim).

UPDATE:  Over 3 & a half years since the last playable update on this game, most of the original content for this game being removed from the Eromancer Patreon page (replaced with their new game they are working on called Pure Onyx), it's all by certain that Malise and the Machine has been canceled & anybody who originally paid into it are going to get left in the dust; Eromancer has taken the money paid into it, given the finger to those that supported him on it & moved onto another game.

Along with dropping the original game & moving onto another, I also noticed that I can't seem to get the page of posts to load anymore, loading a full white page rather than a list of posts & when going through the source code of the page while it's doing that, I found a line in the page's raw HTML that includes code that looks like the reason I'm getting a blank page rather thna a list of posts is Eromander decided to block me after stating that I was going to get authorities involved for fraudulent activity, which shows that they are backing out of their original agreement to provide a copy of Malise and the Machine once development is completed (which looks certain it never will be at this point).

This shows why people that are supporting this team are only throwing their money away & only stupidity would have them continue to support a team that has proven themselves unreliable in their claims towards games that will (or more accurately, won't) be completed.  The claim of obtaining a copy of Malise and the Machine was a lie, as it's obvious it will never see completion.

In response to the block on Eromancer's creator page, I've taken some additional steps in publishing negative reviews detailing the dangers of contributing to creators (if you can actually call them that when they pull this crap) on Patreon, the first one being on Norton's website (Patreon may not be a dangerous site as far as viruses, malware or phishing is concerned, however there is still scam artists, fraudulent activity & funding for illegal activities), the second being submitted to the Better Business Bureau (with very much the same details of what was mentioned on the Norton website).  There will likely be another review about Patreon being published to this site as well, not to mention a boycott & review of Eromancer in the near future if I don't see any improvement in this situation before we hit the 4 year mark on playable updates for Malise and the Machine.  Outside of online publications, then we have the authorities, which will probably include getting the FCC involved for fraud committed by Eromander (seeing as I know a complaint filed to Patreon against Eromander is unlikely to go anywhere).

On 10/23/2021, after about 4 years of no development on Malise and the Machine & after the termination of my own Patreon account, I determined it was time to file a criminal complaint against Eromancer with the Internet Crimes Division of the FBI through their online complaint form.  They've been ignoring my reports for the most part (as has Patreon when I tried to report this issue multiple times in the past), but considering I did lose money to this scam artist & it wouldn't be possible to provide a copy of the game (if it ever did get completed) as a result of the fraudulent closure of my Patreon account, I had a right to file a criminal complaint against the individual that did steal money from me under false statements of a copy being provided once completed (of course nobody was aware that he never intended on completing it, but I'm certain some of us had our suspicions, myself included).  As for whether the FBI does anything about it, my personal experience with them is probably not, they only time they proved themselves useful was when I filed complaints against a PSN user for making death threats online (of which I had screenshots off, so it seems something was done in this case, that individuals PSN profile going dormant for 3 years roughly a week after filing that report, starting with my local law enforcement).

Last updated 10/23/2021