Guess I should pass the announcement made on Discord here.
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jaspertandy#9501:
Hi everyone,
Firstly I want to apologise for the influx of spam in the last few days. For some reason I wasn't getting tagged in these messages so that I actually saw them, and you had to put up with them for longer than you should. I've installed a plugin recommended by ecto that should help stem this, but please tag me directly if you see more of it so that I definitely get notified to delete it.
Secondly, I know a lot of people are wondering what the hell is going on, with varying degrees of speculation, and that's totally fair. Hopefully this message will serve to clear some things up a bit. I don't want to speak for Perkins, so I'm going to keep that to a minimum, but I will say that he's been going through a very tough time personally for the last 6+ months, and keyboards haven't been on his radar. Whilst I understand that this leads to frustration at a lack of knowing what's going on with Fourteen's projects, it is what it is (I know 1930 people are going to be on the verge of a rage right now - please hold your thoughts for a second, I am getting to 1930).
So what's going on with Whimsy? Perkins made the decision right out the gate that he wasn't going to take any money for Whimsy until there were prototypes in-hand. It was always going to be the case that manufacturing was going to be done as close to 100% UK-based as possible. Perkins paid for case prototypes to be fabricated, and the quality was pretty shocking. What's more, the fabricator admitted that the quality was poor and Perkins is currently in a lengthy game of email tennis with them to try and get his money back, or get the prototypes done properly. Some of you may be thinking "well if he'd run a GB, there'd be budget for this", and whilst that may be true; just because you have a bit of cash, doesn't mean people should get away with doing a crappy job, so that would've just increased the pressure of getting money back, finding a new fabricator, having a full time job and a young family...
This in particular was always meant to be a passion project that was made available to other people, rather than something with a load of commitment and stress attached to it (and look how that turned out!)
And what's going on with 1930?! There was some complexity around the timing of full packages landing with us. We've blown right through every reasonable deadline now, purely as a result of the timing of all of the above and below, and I know it's not good enough. Ecto has offered to help with the shipping so we can get these sets out ASAP, and I'm planning to talk to him right after I post this message to see about making that happen. Once again, I am really sorry about how this has shaken out - it's been a perfect storm and I know a lot of you are mad and you have every right to be, but we're going to sort it out as soon as possible.
And finally: until Perkins is ready to come back and continue Whimsy at a reasonable pace, I will be temporarily trying to field questions from as many people as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to DM me or tag me in channels and I will either answer your questions, or get you an answer as soon as I can. You can literally ask me anything and I will try to get you an answer. I also have a very busy full time job but I will do my best to get quick and accurate answers to any of your questions.
I'm sorry that I can't offer you a more fun update than this, and that it took so long for this update to happen, but people's mental health always has to come first, and I can't personally write updates for you until I know what the situation is. Thanks for understanding, and if you don't, I'm sorry that this was a waste of your time.
Jasper
