3.80 star(s) 64 Votes

HardcoreCuddler

Engaged Member
Aug 4, 2020
2,543
3,245
The interesting tidbit of regulations on this is that pateron being donations based doesn't impact your ability to refund or sue for this (donation isn't even really a seperate form of transaction from any other.) Based on how you pay though you wave that right in favor of arbitration. I'll probably dust off an old "How you refund Patreon" guides when/if the update drops and we get the usual influx of disappointed patrons, but it essentially boils down to a charge back.
well damn...didn't think I'd get a finance lecture on a porn forum
But nonetheless, I stand corrected lol
I'm surprised
 

user0609

Member
Dec 17, 2018
409
1,262
HardcoreCuddler

"You can't sue someone in court ...on a donations website"
Yes, you can. On Steam there pages and screenshots that prove you paid 229$ or 59$ for "preleased game with campaign". Now, if the game with campaign is not released, or "put on indefinite hold" they must return your money and wait for you money indefinitely until release. if they do not, they will be expelled from Steam and doing any business within US and Europe.
Something like this happened with Cyberpunk 2077, where owners of psp 4 & 5 and legal game copy couldn't run it, with disappearing structures and 10 fps. Sony forcibly returned money to owners from Techland even before they went to court and only some of them bought that game back after fixes.
Yes, this only works with Steam, not Patreon or some website, but I addressed it to Steam clients only.
Techland and CD Projekt Red are two different companies/developers. The problem with Fallen Doll is that you can't buy this game on Steam, at least not right now, if you want to join endless beta test you'll need to pledge ~$35 on Patreon, claim your key from Helius, and unlock the game on Steam.
 

Rz85

Member
Jan 27, 2019
178
226
user0609
Oops, my mistake, of course I meant CD Projekt Red.
I thought you buy prelease game on Steam. I never entered in detail, what is exactly selling PH on Steam, so if you right about it, those swindlers well covered their butts.
 
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Terix3

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2017
1,099
1,620
Yes, you can. On Steam there are pages and screenshots that prove you paid 229$ or 59$ for "preleased game with campaign". Now, if the game with campaign is not released, or "put on indefinite hold" they must return your money and wait for you money indefinitely until release. if they do not, they will be expelled from Steam and doing any business within US and Europe.
Something like this happened with Cyberpunk 2077, where owners of psp 4 & 5 and legal game copy couldn't run it, with disappearing structures and 10 fps. Sony forcibly returned money to owners from CD Projekt Red even before they went to court and only some of them bought that game back after fixes.
Yes, this only works with Steam, not Patreon or some website, but I addressed it to Steam clients only.
They way it was with CP2077 was that after the backlash CD Project Red said that they will refund anyone that wants it. But Sony doesn't really refund their games from what i hear and there was short period of time when Xbox/steam was giving refunds for the game but Sony wasn't. Then Sony presumably said we ain't fucking dealing with your shit (i assume checking how much people played the game) and refunded everyone and delisted the game.
Now if CD Project would refuse refunds and go hard into "we will fix it" i'm not too sure if court case would go that far- probably depends on country. Some got more strict consumer protection then others but in general we have little say in enforcing "promises". I recall very well that Diablo III had on the box "PvP arena mode will be added later" well they never did.

As far as Helius is concerned I'm confident he got a lawyer advise in regard how to handle Steam. But in short the game is not sold on Steam so there is no protection from Steam side.
 

Rz85

Member
Jan 27, 2019
178
226
Terix3
That is pretty simple, like the case with Cyberpunk 2077, they CD Projekt sold preleased game on PSP/XBox in not working condition - and they intended "to fix it " - game was delisted and refunded before the lawsuit.
Diablo 3 doesn't had "PvP arena mode will be added later" - but the game was in working condition and players got what they paid for - no refund.
Here like Cp2077 - instead of working game only bunch of animations, less than a demo - it will be delisted and refunded, and no lawyer in the world would take this "lost case". But if they tricked it and sold only the key (not the game) on Steam - they covered their asses.
 

Terix3

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2017
1,099
1,620
Rz85
The thing is, what is working? 10fps? 15? 30? if the game drops under that at any point is it "not working" ? For how long does it need to perform at poor fps to be considered broken ?
Something "not working" is not so easy to prove in court. Big publishers do the refunds for PR reasons rather then fearing lawsuits.

Was there any case in US court that forced the publisher/dev to refund a game?
Was there ever case where crowdfunded project was forced to return the money ?
There have been a number of abandoned patreon projects - did the people get refunded?
 
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Rz85

Member
Jan 27, 2019
178
226
Terix3
1) "The thing is, what is working? 10fps? 15? 30?"
You saw that CD Project objected players and Sony and Microsoft decision that game is "not working condition" and was delisted and refunded? You saw any lawyer that would backup CD Project in court? You imagine how big it would harm CD P reputation would have they lost it in court?
2) They fear that and try everything not to bring that to court.
3) Who talks about crowdfunding, while we talked about PSP/XBox market and Steam, the official game markets?
4) Patreon never was official game market, they even don't pay taxes. The same goes for crowdfunding, and Star Citizen (another big scam project, but not porn), it was never sold on the official game markets.
 

Terix3

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2017
1,099
1,620
1) "The thing is, what is working? 10fps? 15? 30?"
You saw that CD Project objected players and Sony and Microsoft decision that game is "not working condition" and was delisted and refunded? You saw any lawyer that would backup CD Project in court? You imagine how big it would harm CD P reputation would have they lost it in court?
2) They fear that and try everything not to bring that to court.
3) Who talks about crowdfunding, while we talked about PSP/XBox market and Steam, the official game markets?
4) Patreon never was official game market, they even don't pay taxes. The same goes for crowdfunding, and Star Citizen (another big scam project, but not porn), it was never sold on the official game markets.
1+2) Again CD Project offered refunds for everyone first, then the refunds/delisting happened. The lawyers took up worse cases, as long as they get paid they are gucci. The biggest image blow would be a court case happening, well besides the image loss they already took by releasing the turd.
But this is not a case of company losing a lawsuit and being forced to refund.

3-4) This game was never sold on official markets. You brought the official markets to discussion
"You can't sue someone in court ...on a donations website"
Yes, you can.
and i followed because i've not heard of any lawsuit were US court would force company to refund. If it has never happened for "normal" games it is far less likely to happen for crowdfunded project.
 
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Rz85

Member
Jan 27, 2019
178
226
Terix3
1)+2) Again, CD Project refused to refund to the last. They offered "to fix everything", coupons, free dlc and season pass, but not to return the money. It was Microsoft then followed Sony decision after multiple players complains to delist and refund. CD P could fought at the court, but would lost almost certain, with enormous publical harm for reputation, that's why they feared the court.
3)+4) Here my citato:" Yes, this only works with Steam, not Patreon or some website, but I addressed it to Steam clients only. "
Again, it will work only if they tried to sell game as a whole "product". If they sold "key", "dresses", "characters" - that's another deal.
 

BobKilan

Member
Jun 26, 2019
105
75
The Helius model for a while now has been hype up projects using tech demos with decent animations, then when it gets too much announce the previous project has been cancelled to be reworked into the next. (Then recycle much of that into a new tech demo under a new working title to repeat)

It's been working perfectly since the average patreon supporter won't stick around long enough to see the cycle repeat, so you just normally get new people coming in who played the most recent project and think it's great without knowing the context of the past.
This isn't true though, at least from what I know.

If I'm not mistaken they had originally a different concept, which eventually evolved into Fallen Doll which obviously warranted a major overhaul. Then they were offered a potential financial support and due to this matter and monetization/content changes they had planned it eventually evolved into Harem. Harem involves online infrastructure so this is completely fresh and not a simple rebuild. However, they didn't do a good job testing this and they basically skipped proper optimization entirely before launching the alpha which was a bad idea but isn't really that unusual for alpha. Up to this point nothing is weird or greedy and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't really have any experience with alpha and beta phase of games.

Next came the actual rebuild, which was recently finished. This was obviously necessary because of the train wreck that the first release with online functionality we got. This marks this as the first real rebuild so people shouldn't overexaggerate this is some perpetual scheme. We've seen such plans with projects before but, at least for now, that has not happened here.

Do they deserve feedback for misteps? Certainly, but do proper feedback rather than nonsense hate agendas otherwise you just look silly.

Sure, because love and hate are two sides of the same coin. They're both emotional investments into a particular subject, the opposite of them is apathy.

That aside, does that even matter? Doesn't change the fact that the haters have valid criticisms about Helius and his development clusterfuck.
I'd be curious about what this corruption is but I'm fairly confident the response I'm going to bet it isn't based on reality or any logical reasoning. You should include specific information of your supposed conspiracy theories so we can at least tag along for your lunacy.

8 years of development, more then 24 months of no updates (2 years), unoptimized, buggy, lacks content, just a bunch of animations, not a game, etc.
And yet even here someone asks why "haters" hate this game scam project. Good for PH, he found his fools for milking and they praise him for fooling and taking their money.
"Human stupidity has no boundaries" A. Einstein.
These are the kind of posts that are just trying to spread fire with malicious intentions. It contains plenty of false information and nonsense.

The game was first available around 2016 as far as I can tell which is approximately 6 years, not 8.

The alpha with the last update was less than a year ago, being last December, and not 2 years.

The game is in alpha and has really only had one major update and some minor updates during that December alpha launch before they realized this wont work and had to delay it with a major rebuild. This is totally normal for alpha to be a disaster. This your first alpha test bro? The average alpha starts out initially far worse than this one, but usually they don't do a major rebuild after an alpha launch so that part is a bit unusual though there are valid reasons for this. Clearly, there were different ways they could handle the situation and they chose a major rebuild. Of course it is buggy and not fully optimized Sherlock. Guess what? When the rebuild happens, which is still alpha, there are going to be bugs and it will not be crystal f'ing flawless even then. This is how development works. Hell, AAA titles release regularly in a worse state nowadays, as bs as that is.

The game's alpha launch came with quite a bit of content, not far from an illusion game in fact. They've also showed and talked about quite a bit of content but its still very early in. Content will probably be its strongest aspect due to the monetization season pass model they have in mind but its all delayed until they relaunch with the rebuild and throw in the extra content they've been actively showing off in the meantime. You're being ridiculous and illogical.

If you're going to whine at least do so about legitimate reasons and not made up crap. Complain about communication needing improvement, about poor transparency regarding galatea, about inconsistent information regarding campaign, gallery, and other plans, and you know actual real issues.
 

ShadowChanSeh

Newbie
Oct 19, 2017
48
125
This isn't true though, at least from what I know.

If I'm not mistaken they had originally a different concept, which eventually evolved into Fallen Doll which obviously warranted a major overhaul. Then they were offered a potential financial support and due to this matter and monetization/content changes they had planned it eventually evolved into Harem. Harem involves online infrastructure so this is completely fresh and not a simple rebuild. However, they didn't do a good job testing this and they basically skipped proper optimization entirely before launching the alpha which was a bad idea but isn't really that unusual for alpha. Up to this point nothing is weird or greedy and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't really have any experience with alpha and beta phase of games.

Next came the actual rebuild, which was recently finished. This was obviously necessary because of the train wreck that the first release with online functionality we got. This marks this as the first real rebuild so people shouldn't overexaggerate this is some perpetual scheme. We've seen such plans with projects before but, at least for now, that has not happened here.

Do they deserve feedback for misteps? Certainly, but do proper feedback rather than nonsense hate agendas otherwise you just look silly.


I'd be curious about what this corruption is but I'm fairly confident the response I'm going to bet it isn't based on reality or any logical reasoning. You should include specific information of your supposed conspiracy theories so we can at least tag along for your lunacy.


These are the kind of posts that are just trying to spread fire with malicious intentions. It contains plenty of false information and nonsense.

The game was first available around 2016 as far as I can tell which is approximately 6 years, not 8.

The alpha with the last update was less than a year ago, being last December, and not 2 years.

The game is in alpha and has really only had one major update and some minor updates during that December alpha launch before they realized this wont work and had to delay it with a major rebuild. This is totally normal for alpha to be a disaster. This your first alpha test bro? The average alpha starts out initially far worse than this one, but usually they don't do a major rebuild after an alpha launch so that part is a bit unusual though there are valid reasons for this. Clearly, there were different ways they could handle the situation and they chose a major rebuild. Of course it is buggy and not fully optimized Sherlock. Guess what? When the rebuild happens, which is still alpha, there are going to be bugs and it will not be crystal f'ing flawless even then. This is how development works. Hell, AAA titles release regularly in a worse state nowadays, as bs as that is.

The game's alpha launch came with quite a bit of content, not far from an illusion game in fact. They've also showed and talked about quite a bit of content but its still very early in. Content will probably be its strongest aspect due to the monetization season pass model they have in mind but its all delayed until they relaunch with the rebuild and throw in the extra content they've been actively showing off in the meantime. You're being ridiculous and illogical.

If you're going to whine at least do so about legitimate reasons and not made up crap. Complain about communication needing improvement, about poor transparency regarding galatea, about inconsistent information regarding campaign, gallery, and other plans, and you know actual real issues.
Mate, you can't be serious.
Firstly, the corruption that people see from Helius is not based on mere conspiracy theories, for the most part at least, it's based upon dodgy practices and a pattern of dishonesty. The proof of which is posted several places in this very thread said by Helius himself via his discord server and/or through his patreon.

Another big thing, is the fact that little in the way of content has been created for the project in the longest time. If we are to believe Helius' own words, he has a talented team of artists/animators, which means there is no excuse for the lack of content. You can't really believe that the creative team can't create anything while the dev team reworks the game, can you? Not to mention the pace at which content was put out prior to this multiplayer debacle.

Let's just forget the fact that the multiplayer/freemium aspect of the game was unwanted and only announced a short bit before it's actual release. Why don't we also ignore the fact that patreons that were only wanting the original offline experience and campaign were ignored and often banned for voicing descent. Keep in mind here, these are not random people, these are people that contributed, at times, hundreds of dollars towards the project's development.

Sure, there may be a few voices in here that hate just to hate, but when the proper outlets for people to take criticism have been restricted and ban people for even slightly negative opinions, what can you really expect? I could go on, but what's the point? There's so much evidence and discussion on this issue, right here in this very thread, that there's really no reason for me to do the work for you.
 

taboge9459

Member
Nov 16, 2021
238
643
This isn't true though, at least from what I know.

If I'm not mistaken they had originally a different concept, which eventually evolved into Fallen Doll which obviously warranted a major overhaul. Then they were offered a potential financial support and due to this matter and monetization/content changes they had planned it eventually evolved into Harem. Harem involves online infrastructure so this is completely fresh and not a simple rebuild. However, they didn't do a good job testing this and they basically skipped proper optimization entirely before launching the alpha which was a bad idea but isn't really that unusual for alpha. Up to this point nothing is weird or greedy and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't really have any experience with alpha and beta phase of games.
Forgive me if I'm assuming anything here, but you might be exactly one of the new patrons I'm talking about there. In terms of Fallen Dolls alone there's been two failed ideas already, "Origins" which was a brothel sim with Erika and has been delisted for some reason by Helius (it's the game you get cheats for on patreon even though you don't actually get the game) and Paralogue, the xcom style strategy game. Before that though when he was marketing primarily in Chinese is when we had more games to be recycled as well. Here's a post detailing some of his older stuff. And no, it's not usual for alpha/beta games to take 8 years and half a dozen rebrands. At least not the ones that ever plan on releasing.

In terms of whats greedy, I go into some detail in that last link about Helius not being from Bethesda or Google as he claims (or at least got a job there sometime after 2014/2015, when he was supposedly working on this full time). He was just a translator/modded illusion games previously. Essentially, Helius lies about his credentials to make himself see more reliable. I have more screenshots here, this time essentially lying about mtx right up to the release of beta where it was a mtx filled gacha game. If you survived past the release of Harem, you saw countless people banned for simply disliking the new update. You can read through here for more if you'd like, there's a lot of examples.

About the rebuilds, I'm not saying Harem is rebuilt infinitely, I'm talking about his behavior across all of his games. Origins was the closest to a release, only to be scrapped, unlisted and recycled once more.

Do they deserve feedback for misteps? Certainly, but do proper feedback rather than nonsense hate agendas otherwise you just look silly.
As for why no one here posts in Discord or offers feedback, it's the bans back around the release of Harem. If you're just gonna get banned out, why bother?

The alpha with the last update was less than a year ago, being last December, and not 2 years.
The two years you see quoted around here sometimes are usually referring to the approximate delay since 0.34. A lot of the old supporters who've retreated here never wanted the online, or at least not a complete focus, so the 0.4 releases don't really add anything. Compared to the release schedule before Harem, what we have now is pathetic.

The game is in alpha and has really only had one major update and some minor updates during that December alpha launch before they realized this wont work and had to delay it with a major rebuild. This is totally normal for alpha to be a disaster. This your first alpha test bro? The average alpha starts out initially far worse than this one, but usually they don't do a major rebuild after an alpha launch so that part is a bit unusual though there are valid reasons for this. Clearly, there were different ways they could handle the situation and they chose a major rebuild. Of course it is buggy and not fully optimized Sherlock. Guess what? When the rebuild happens, which is still alpha, there are going to be bugs and it will not be crystal f'ing flawless even then. This is how development works. Hell, AAA titles release regularly in a worse state nowadays, as bs as that is.

The game's alpha launch came with quite a bit of content, not far from an illusion game in fact. They've also showed and talked about quite a bit of content but its still very early in. Content will probably be its strongest aspect due to the monetization season pass model they have in mind but its all delayed until they relaunch with the rebuild and throw in the extra content they've been actively showing off in the meantime. You're being ridiculous and illogical.
Reading this I think you are the new patron I'm talking about. Harem came with very little that 0.34 didn't have, and some poses were even removed for steam censorship, another thing they had been saying would never happen. Another reason people criticised this is at the time they were lying about why it was going bad. They'd say they got way more players than they ever expected, but had 80k keys and never breached 1.5k concurrent players. They blamed an outage on an AWS outage a couple weeks after the AWS outage was a thing. The season pass model is another point of contention since for a while this was supposed to be one time purchase get everything, and that season pass model isn't a plus in the eyes of many.

I would definitely suggest you read farther back about the history of this in places other than the discord which has had many of its posts deleted. You're not going to find many people here who will take you seriously if you call people ridiculous and illogical when you aren't all that familiar with the history of the project.
 

Rz85

Member
Jan 27, 2019
178
226
Ok, my report was somehow rejected, so I'll answer here:
All that Bobkilan wrote is just a bunch of lies and disinformation. It is not worth my time to answer his point after point. It all just 100% lies.

And about personal:
" If you're going to whine at least do...Complain"
You, crying baby, will never tell me what and how should I do. And no matter how much hard you will cry, whine and scream, is that understood?!
 
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Jul 2, 2020
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This isn't true though, at least from what I know.

If I'm not mistaken they had originally a different concept, which eventually evolved into Fallen Doll which obviously warranted a major overhaul. Then they were offered a potential financial support and due to this matter and monetization/content changes they had planned it eventually evolved into Harem. Harem involves online infrastructure so this is completely fresh and not a simple rebuild. However, they didn't do a good job testing this and they basically skipped proper optimization entirely before launching the alpha which was a bad idea but isn't really that unusual for alpha. Up to this point nothing is weird or greedy and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't really have any experience with alpha and beta phase of games.

Next came the actual rebuild, which was recently finished. This was obviously necessary because of the train wreck that the first release with online functionality we got. This marks this as the first real rebuild so people shouldn't overexaggerate this is some perpetual scheme. We've seen such plans with projects before but, at least for now, that has not happened here.

Do they deserve feedback for misteps? Certainly, but do proper feedback rather than nonsense hate agendas otherwise you just look silly.


I'd be curious about what this corruption is but I'm fairly confident the response I'm going to bet it isn't based on reality or any logical reasoning. You should include specific information of your supposed conspiracy theories so we can at least tag along for your lunacy.


These are the kind of posts that are just trying to spread fire with malicious intentions. It contains plenty of false information and nonsense.

The game was first available around 2016 as far as I can tell which is approximately 6 years, not 8.

The alpha with the last update was less than a year ago, being last December, and not 2 years.

The game is in alpha and has really only had one major update and some minor updates during that December alpha launch before they realized this wont work and had to delay it with a major rebuild. This is totally normal for alpha to be a disaster. This your first alpha test bro? The average alpha starts out initially far worse than this one, but usually they don't do a major rebuild after an alpha launch so that part is a bit unusual though there are valid reasons for this. Clearly, there were different ways they could handle the situation and they chose a major rebuild. Of course it is buggy and not fully optimized Sherlock. Guess what? When the rebuild happens, which is still alpha, there are going to be bugs and it will not be crystal f'ing flawless even then. This is how development works. Hell, AAA titles release regularly in a worse state nowadays, as bs as that is.

The game's alpha launch came with quite a bit of content, not far from an illusion game in fact. They've also showed and talked about quite a bit of content but its still very early in. Content will probably be its strongest aspect due to the monetization season pass model they have in mind but its all delayed until they relaunch with the rebuild and throw in the extra content they've been actively showing off in the meantime. You're being ridiculous and illogical.

If you're going to whine at least do so about legitimate reasons and not made up crap. Complain about communication needing improvement, about poor transparency regarding galatea, about inconsistent information regarding campaign, gallery, and other plans, and you know actual real issues.
Are you new supporter right?
 
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Echo82

Member
Aug 6, 2018
280
288
This isn't true though, at least from what I know.

If I'm not mistaken they had originally a different concept, which eventually evolved into Fallen Doll which obviously warranted a major overhaul. Then they were offered a potential financial support and due to this matter and monetization/content changes they had planned it eventually evolved into Harem. Harem involves online infrastructure so this is completely fresh and not a simple rebuild. However, they didn't do a good job testing this and they basically skipped proper optimization entirely before launching the alpha which was a bad idea but isn't really that unusual for alpha. Up to this point nothing is weird or greedy and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't really have any experience with alpha and beta phase of games.

Next came the actual rebuild, which was recently finished. This was obviously necessary because of the train wreck that the first release with online functionality we got. This marks this as the first real rebuild so people shouldn't overexaggerate this is some perpetual scheme. We've seen such plans with projects before but, at least for now, that has not happened here.

Do they deserve feedback for misteps? Certainly, but do proper feedback rather than nonsense hate agendas otherwise you just look silly.


I'd be curious about what this corruption is but I'm fairly confident the response I'm going to bet it isn't based on reality or any logical reasoning. You should include specific information of your supposed conspiracy theories so we can at least tag along for your lunacy.


These are the kind of posts that are just trying to spread fire with malicious intentions. It contains plenty of false information and nonsense.

The game was first available around 2016 as far as I can tell which is approximately 6 years, not 8.

The alpha with the last update was less than a year ago, being last December, and not 2 years.

The game is in alpha and has really only had one major update and some minor updates during that December alpha launch before they realized this wont work and had to delay it with a major rebuild. This is totally normal for alpha to be a disaster. This your first alpha test bro? The average alpha starts out initially far worse than this one, but usually they don't do a major rebuild after an alpha launch so that part is a bit unusual though there are valid reasons for this. Clearly, there were different ways they could handle the situation and they chose a major rebuild. Of course it is buggy and not fully optimized Sherlock. Guess what? When the rebuild happens, which is still alpha, there are going to be bugs and it will not be crystal f'ing flawless even then. This is how development works. Hell, AAA titles release regularly in a worse state nowadays, as bs as that is.

The game's alpha launch came with quite a bit of content, not far from an illusion game in fact. They've also showed and talked about quite a bit of content but its still very early in. Content will probably be its strongest aspect due to the monetization season pass model they have in mind but its all delayed until they relaunch with the rebuild and throw in the extra content they've been actively showing off in the meantime. You're being ridiculous and illogical.

If you're going to whine at least do so about legitimate reasons and not made up crap. Complain about communication needing improvement, about poor transparency regarding galatea, about inconsistent information regarding campaign, gallery, and other plans, and you know actual real issues.
Not worth fighting with them. I did it for awhile and gave up. If you enjoy the process, feel free to keep supporting them. You shouldn't let others dictate how you feel as it is your decision should not be up to others.
 
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coolgy

Newbie
Apr 19, 2018
67
124
Half of these posts aren't even about the game anymore, its just hate lmao. grab some popcorn. love reading 4 paragraphs about a guy/gal malding about how someone else uses their money. feels like twitter
 
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