AirBNB Squatter May Be Developer Of Overdue Kickstarter-Funded Game

The man occupying a vacation condominium in Palm Springs, California without paying rent was not thrilled that his new landlord planned to cut off the electricity. He said that it would affect his work, which he does from home and earns $1,000 to $7,000 per day. What kind of work? Developing video games, apparently.

We learned from Polygon that both the renter and the owner of game company Kilobyte Studios are named Maksym Pashanin and are based in Austin, Texas. Neighbors and the homeowner report that the renter’s brother has been staying with him, and Panashin’s brother Denys works with him on games and was originally listed as one of the principals in his company.

How did local TV station KESQ figure out that the game company owner and the AirBNB squatter are the same guy? Google searches, probably. Neighbors revealed the man’s full name to the station, and they found his company. The station showed a Kickstarter campaign video to the neighbors, and they confirmed that the guy in the video is also the now-infamous squatter.

Not every delayed project is a massive fraud in the making, of course. Polygon describes the games as “flailing,” but one title, Knuckle Club, is still in the funding phase. Confederate Express was funded with almost four times its $10,000 goal back in November of 2013. Yet backers are upset because they haven’t heard anything after a demo of the game was released at the end of 2013.

The company promised backers copies of different game title, but that title is still in the Kickstarter campaign phase, with only $742 of its $25,000 goal pledged.

Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games [Polygon]

My Airbnb Squatters [Blogger]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist