In the ongoing sideshow event that is the West Games saga, we actually have two fantastic new updates to share with you today!

First up, if you haven't heard by now, West Games is a "developer" that looks to scam people out of their money. They claim they are made up of ex-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developers and have been linked not only to failed Kickstarters that have been suspended, but also to other obvious scams such as a $50,000 nuclear powered space station. Now that you're all caught up, let's continue with the latest.

As West Games took to their own site to attempt "direct funding" after their suspended Kickstarter, they also issued a statement to the public. In their English based public statement, they said the following:
"People also need to take into account that Ukrainians and Russians are in an information war right now, and as a Ukrainian developer, we were subject to constant hostility from Russian Kickstarter accounts (we even got death threats)."

However, in the statement made to their Russian speaking audience they said:
"Мы вышли на американскую площадку краудфандинга Кикстартер и рассказали, что мы разработчики игры S.T.A.L.K.E.R., но нам американцы не поверили и время ушло на доказательства... Для нас была большая неожиданность, что игроки именно из России нас сейчас массово поддерживают."

Thanks to the translation efforts of the Internet, that roughly says:
We brought our project to the U.S.-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and told everyone that we were the original developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R but the Americans did not believe us and we wasted a lot of time trying to prove ourselves... It has come as a huge surprise to us that it is now the Russians who are supporting us the most.

Notice any discrepancies there like with, oh I don't know, the entire reason? Yes, to the English speaking amongst us, West Games say they blame the Russians. To the Russian speaking audience, they are blaming Americans.

Simply amazing.

Let's move on to the next big bit of news on this express train to Stupid Town. West Games has made another lengthy statement on their Facebook page today! In it, they start out by criticizing and bad mouthing the press. Namely, they once again call out Forbes' Erik Kain, they claim they experienced a "full on witch hunt", and after they get done bad mouthing the press they then beg for free publicity.

Let's enjoy the copy and paste of their statement from Facebook:
The war against Areal:

When our team launched a Kickstarter for Areal, we candidly said that we were the people who were responsible for making the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. Our videos show that, and convey that we are more than capable of making triple-AAA games. We have an idea, art, an experienced team and early prototype footage, with which we launched a Kickstarter and now our website to fund our game. We showed our vision for Areal, which we feel will be the spiritual successor to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. -- we want to make something that's more interesting than what we made before, and we know how to make that happen.

Over the course of our campaign, some individuals started spreading accusations that none of us have worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and that we weren't real. We responded to this by releasing a video of our team and addressed specifically the people who worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

(it's the second video on our main page).
You can see our full team here:
These types of accusations are fine for the most part (everyone is entitled to their own opinion), and if they concern the video game, warrant a response from us.

But what we experienced during our Kickstarter was a full on witch hunt, with the biggest initiator being Erik Kain (a contributor to Forbes), who decided to write articles about us almost every day. Erik was interested in everything; even details of our personal lives. It got to a point where we think that he would be genuinely interested in knowing whether or not our team members had pimples on their butts. We ultimately answered that the level of unprofessionalism on display was likely do to relaxed editorial standards, because Forbes was in the process of being bought out by a Chinese company (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28380634). We also had people writing to us saying that a substantial amount of shares from the Hong Kong based company that Forbes was sold to, is owned by state-controlled companies from North Korea. We hope that this isn't true, so we are asking Erik Kain directly, who really owns Forbes now?

Even though Erik Kain clearly accused us being fake, another editor from Forbes, specifically contradicted Erik by saying that he doesn't think that we are fake, and Erik has since then stopped writing articles about us. Which is a shame, because we think that he should apologize, because he is a young reporter who is making a name for himself by fabricating a controversy about our game, and he did so in an otherwise respected news outlet. He mocked and tried to discredit people who made a world renowned video game series with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Regarding a few other websites, we want to say that they have every right to write whatever they feel is necessary about us. We don't even expect any level of objectivity in their reports. One of our fans emailed us this, and we think that this letter gets the point across really well, "Even if websites manipulate facts you need to understand that for some websites, scandal is a form of getting money, because every click is money to them." So we understand, and we accept that this is what it is. But please, do not try to bury us every single day, because that's way too often. Over the last 3 weeks, there have been over a hundred reports of our game being closed, being dead, and all sorts of things like that.

So we are again answering with the words of Mark Twain; the rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated! We ask gamers to not pay attention to the absurdity that's happening around us, to take a look at our website and see for yourself if you want to support our game:

The most interesting part of all this is that, though websites continue to write about us, they always either forget to link to our website, are afraid to link to our website, or think up of any reason that they can to not link to our website. If you, as a news site, consider yourselves fair and honest, then you need to allow the other side to have a voice, and link to our website.

Yeah, outlets are "forgetting" to include a link. Fuck you.

Links are not included because you are scamming people out of money. West Games also don't deserve the privilege of having outlets link to them when they bad mouth the media for doing their job, something West Games should try doing instead of playing the victim card at every opportunity.