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I am intrigued by this game, unfortunately I only discovered it after the Kickstarter campaign for the "What goes up must come down" expansion ended.

I want to confirm future game availability. To my understanding:
1. There is a chance that the base game and all expansion content will be available for purchase on this website in Q1/Q2 2019 after all copies have reached Kickstarter members.
2. This game will not go to retail
3. The game will not be re-printed.

Is this correct?

I am willing to patiently wait until next year for an opportunity to purchase this product directly through Serious Poulp. I do NOT want to have to resort to paying scalpers fees for several reasons (least of all because it obviously costs more).
1. The money paid for this game deserves to go to the creators who have obviously labored for hundreds (probably thousands) of hours over this game
2. I feel safer paying money directly to Serious Poulp rather than an unknown third party who may or may not be honest about actually selling the product and stealing my money.
3. Scalping is morally corrupt and I strongly feel that scalpers should not profit in any way from some one else's hard work.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

You're 100% correct!
I hope you'll be able to by a copy when the online shop open.

I missed the campaign by a week and I´m really hoping that there will be some leftover copies for me and you (and all the other poor souls out there who missed to pledge).
Hopefully Serious Poulp has as soon as possible some news in that regard, i´m terribly nervous that i might be forced to buy from second hand for 200% the price to a guy i don´t know if he is trustful.

Do you have an estimate on when the shop will be open? Are we talking weeks or months?

That's a bit strong. The scalpers would argue they helped fund the project when otherwise it might have struggled. Venture capitalist firms could be argued to be nothing more than greedy capitalist pigs, but then again, most of the companies they fund wouldn't exist without them, and some turn out to be massive drains on the venture capitalists (not all companies they fund are viable).

While I would much prefer to pay a higher fee to Serious Poulp for the game and expansions rather than a scalper, sadly, I missed the last window, so that is not an option. I had not even heard of this game at that time. I recognize that despite limited advertising, limited time window, and limited production, the scalpers did help SP accomplish what they set out to do with these limitations. Without the scalpers, it would have taken longer, required more word of mouth/advertising, and more money and greater risk. You could say they are a necessary evil if you still prefer the term evil. In a perfect world, SP would simply be able to fulfill orders on demand and not need KS or need backers. But this is not a perfect world.

The fact that SP has long stated it won't be reprinted creates an environment for scalpers to thrive in. Otherwise, if there were uncertainty about future reprints, scalpers would be taking on uncertainty themselves by investing in something that might turn out to be commoditized. So in a way, SP deserves some blame for the fact that Ebay is starting to fill up with shrink wrapped base sets the last few days as we enter the holiday season.

The following sentence is right :

Resellers didn't have much of an effect on the making of this particular game (we blew past stretch goals with cash to spare) but they are helpful to gamers because they increase the supply. "Scalpers" take advantage of scarcity- there are only so many tickets to a concert, so buying 100 limits the ability of others to get hold of them. Ordering 100 copies of 7th Continent meant an additional 100 copies were produced, so if anything they give you a *better* chance of obtaining this game at a reasonable price.

And even in the case of scalping concert tickets, those people waited in line, called phone numbers endlessly, or sat at the computer in virtual line to get the tickets they resell later, so that those who couldn't be bothered to do the same, get to pay a markup for someone else doing the work for them. People may not like paying more for this "service" but nevertheless, scalpers are doing what "you" couldn't or wouldn't do, which is fight to get tickets when they first went on sale. It's not their fault "you" didn't. They are nothing more than middle men. Not a glorious profession, but middle men exist in almost every industry and are necessary. Certainly not immoral.

And by that making the need for being engaged into a need for being rich enough. I wouldn't even be against rich people paying someone to buy the tickets for them if they are to busy, but as it is practiced now it's more like someone cleaning your car without you wanting it and then charging you a fee for their work. There were more than just a few events where there were enough tickets for everyone who wanted to visit, but still people had to buy from scalpers because those grabbed the tickets only to sell them with a hefty markup.

So where you are from, you are first forced to attend a concert you don't want to see, and then pay for the ticket later? Strange customs...

Scalping is basically a form of investment. If someone invests in something like this (or tickets) and the demand isn't high enough they end up with a large stock of items they can't get rid of or have to sell at a cheaper price. It's a risk reward scenario, you also have to choose the right time to sell. I can understand the gripe when it comes to tickets for big events because of the limited quantity and time limit you have to purchase them within. Buying actual items to sell on like this isn't an old concept or particularly bad... it's basically the same as people who buy a product and keep it in mint condition to sell once production has stopped, there are games made while I was a kid I'd kill to have but cost a daft amount because they're rare and in good condition, but at least there's still a way of getting a good copy thanks to these guys!

Normally you would buy tickets yourself - but with scalpers taking away the tickets within minutes after sale opens (i'm not sure, but there was even under 1 minute once if i remember correctly), to attend a concert you are forced to pay for a service you didn't ask for - as you said that the scalpers are providing a service for those who want to buy tickets. If they would only provide their "service" for those who actually want that service, they wouldn't have to offer the tickets on the free market, as then they would already know their clients.



Buying stuff to keep it available later for an upmarked price is ok, but forcing yourself as a middleman between buyers and sellers is not really something we should see as something helpful. I mean we also are not ok with big companies claiming the rights for a well in afrika and then selling the people there the water they had for free all the time, or am i wrong?

That's a terrible analogy--equating your first world problems of buying life's luxuries, like going to see an Adele concert, to third world problems of life and death at the hands of warlords. What it really comes down to is you don't like paying more than you want to and you are stamping your foot like a toddler who didn't get their way. It seems that you don't understand that this is a fundamental issue of supply and demand, and that you don't have a right to expect that when demand is much higher than supply, you don't get to control the price you pay. You are part of the horde driving up demand so how do you get to complain? You are part of the problem! There might be other countries you can live in that rigorously control both supply and demand, but I can promise you, none of them are worth living in . Scalpers wouldn't exist if people weren't willing to pay more to get those last tickets to a concert. Scalpers also wouldn't exist if artists were forced to perform as many times in a city as there were fans who wanted to attend. Again, if you can't afford to pay for the service they are providing, you certainly could have gotten online when the tickets went on sale in the first place. The only reason events sell out in minutes is fan demand for that event is huge. Scalpers are only getting a small piece of it, as there's many more fans who are buying them at the same time. You make it sound as if Ticketmaster sells all the tickets just to scalpers. Scalpers are actually doing the vey thing you say is ok, which is keeping stuff available for a later upmarked price.

I find it interesting that you have a problem with scalpers, but you don't even mention Ticketmaster, who makes a ton more on this than scalpers do. They make the initial "convenience" fees, then they let the scalper resell the ticket on their very own site, charge the scalper another 15%, and the second buyer another 10% on top of all that. When buying a first-hand ticket, I certainly don't get to choose Ticketmaster as the broker, and I certainly don't find their fees "convenient". There's very little value provided, and I could do without their "service" as well. But they are a middleman that is also forced on us. So what are you going to do about it? Don't go if you don't like it. No one is making you buy a ticket to go to an event.

When I go to an electronics store, there's a salesperson who makes a commission on any item I buy. That person didn't provide any value to me, and most of the time I already knew what I would be buying, and they just tagged their name on the sale. Why do I have to pay their commission on my purchase? I could complain all day about people who I indirectly pay for things that I just don't like paying for, that were not helpful or did not add value. It's just part of life.

The fact is, you don't get to choose middle men. Unless you are far more important than I am, I certainly don't get to demand which transport company is used to get a product I'm buying to the store I'm buying it from. There are MANY middle men forcing their way in to get involved in EVERY purchase you make. I'm not sure what makes you think scalpers are any worse than the others, or the unionized labor that is often part of that middleman workforce. Every middleman involved adds their markup, plus profit. Just making this post transits hundreds of devices that were bought by ISPs (and hosting companies) who procured through many middlemen from the equipment manufacturers, none of which I personally chose to do business with. Scalpers are certainly no more immoral than Starbucks who takes a 5 cent commodity and turns it into a $2.50 mediocre drink, times a million per day. Why don't those bean growers get a bigger cut??? Dang it, it's downright immoral!!!!!

Ok, i'm sorry if my somewhat exaggerated comparison did hurt anyone's feelings. I'm known for bringing up extreme examples to clarify my point.

Also, i didn't talk about warlords, but about "respected" companies, which i know doesn't make the situation any better but rather worse.

That said, to equate contracted transporting companies with scalpers is, while not an absurdly exaggerated analogy, simply wrong.

But maybe we just have different definition for what a scalper is? In your example of buying a product in a store, the scalper isn't anyone in the chain from the manufacturer to the salesman in the store - those are all people involved in the process by contracts to assure a smooth process. Whether it's for your convenience (you don't have to search for a manufacturer selling you his product) or for better risk management (manufacturers often don't sell directly as they have contracts with distributors which give them more security in their business), all parties involved were contracted by one side or the other. The scalper would be the person standing at the front door of the store demanding a fee you have to pay so the open the door for you - a service not needed nor wanted, but they will keep the door shut until you pay.

A scalper doesn't buy things to assure availability, but to artificially lower supply, so the price raises when they resell. Scalpers are the people who go to a convention, grabbing all the promos laying out (yeah, there's a reason why you now have to ask for promos) and selling them for moon-prices on eBay.

Oh, and on the topic of Ticketmaster: i just never heard of them? You know, i personally don't visit concerts, festivals, sport-events or other such things. So i don't know that much about what companies are involved in buying tickets. That doesn't mean that i don't know about scalpers. And as i said before, if one of the two sides of a transaction sees the necessity of contracting someone to help them, that is their right. Now if you tell me that Ticketmaster forces the hosts of events to sell them their tickets, then i'll tell you that they are scalpers whether they are a "respected" company or not.

Oh, and not to forget: i also don't support Starbucks...

Quite a lot of us seem to be in the same slow boat. I would absolutely love to purchase this game, including all its addons!

Slydev1l, it seems like there are two options. Watch Ebay, or watch this site for when the store opens. The problem with Ebay is that it's mostly the base sets that go on sale, and very rarely an entire collection. The expansions, when listed by themselves, seem to be listed at exorbitant prices, like currently there is a playmat listed for $199, and each of the three original expansions are listed for $175. Definitely not worth that price if you ask me.

As for scalping, Unisus, you had correctly identified "scalpers" as "middlemen" in a previous post, although you categorized them as an unwanted middleman. You seem to put scalpers in a separate category and the same category at the same time, which makes your argument particularly weak. Also extreme examples, tend to weaken an argument, not strengthen, because there ends up being less common than there is common between the situations. On one hand you say what sets them apart is that the buyer is being forced to go through them. And when I point out, anything you buy in retail, you are likewise being forced to buy at a markup from a retailer, you object that it's different. You have the same choices with scalpers. You also try to strengthen your point by making it sound like the scalpers control the venue, like they are the ticket takers or something. You know, if I try to force my way into the Apple store to grab an iPad, they won't open the door to let me back out without paying either. Gasp! Those dirty b@stards!!! Actually wanting to get paid for the product before giving it to me. The only difference is your distaste for scalpers, not the process, or the situation, which I still don't understand.

Historically, scalpers bought tickets for an event months in advance, held the tickets until the day of, then stood on a corner selling them to late comers who wanted to attend but never bought one in advance. These days, the situation is a bit different. In the past, fans who couldn't attend generally got stuck holding a ticket they couldn't use, or giving it to a friend. Now middle markets exist for fans to sell tickets they can't use, but it makes it easier for scalpers to also sell theirs well in advance of the event. It also creates a fair open market where demand and supply meet in the middle. Low demand shows sell for less, high demand shows sell for more. Fans and scalpers all benefit alike. It becomes hard to demonize scalpers because you really can't tell the difference, and even if you could, both types of resellers are both making the same profit or loss on the exchange.

Other than that, the other problem with your argument is that it is based on a number of provably false assumptions. The main one is that scalpers artificially create scarcity. And the second, that scalpers operate is if they were some monolithic, monopolizing entity. If that were the case, then why aren't all events sold out? After all, if all that "scalpers" have to do is go buy up all the tickets, create false supply scarcity, resell at massive profit, then this is a repeatable process that should just net huge cash flow each time, rinse and repeat, right? So why don't they do that? For grins, I just picked a big name event off Ticketmaster's homepage: Ariana Grande. I can buy original tickets for my local city, even on the floor. To be fair, there's a lot of resale tickets too. But the point is, scalpers have not bought out the venue. Why not? Because you are wrong in your assumption. The real way scalpers work is they first FIND the high demand events, like Elton John, THEN they buy as many tickets as they can (and they ARE limited in how many can be bought), and then resell them. Meanwhile, other fans are also buying up tickets too, in much larger numbers than scalpers. The error you are making is that the supply and demand are ALREADY out of skew. Scalpers do not have the ability to create this situation. They simply react to an existing situation, trying to make some money off the exchange. In the days before scalpers, events still sold out, and people who wanted to go still could not go. Yes, scalpers make money on some of these (they also lose money if they guess wrong, which you also fail to understand), but they don't create the disconnect between supply and demand as you assert. If they did, then shows like Ariana Grande would already be sold out.

So given the fact that it's only the select events that get sold out like this, how much do scalpers really impact things? It's hard to say. Those events would sell out quickly regardless, without help from scalpers. Scalpers do make tickets available to those who otherwise couldn't be bothered to get in "line" when tickets went on sale. My wife has managed to buy tickets to high demand events many times. Other than the frustration of a slow website, no problem. If she had been too busy, she could have let someone else do the work for her and pay the markup at a later time. It's pretty simple. If you don't want to pay for the scalper's "service", then don't. Do what all the other fans do and get online early to get your tickets. But your notion that there is some entity named "scalper" who MAKES you buy from him is just garbage.

On the flip side, I've bought from scalpers at times where they were taking a loss. Which brings me to the third point you seem to make, that scalpers are not providing a service anyone wants. This one is so obviously wrong, it almost doesn't even deserve to be corrected. First, it's more of an opinion to begin with, so arguing it as an objective fact is nothing more than a projection of your opinion onto others. To disprove such a "fact" is to argue popular opinion, which I'm not inclined to do, as it is the worst form of debate, where everyone makes their own appeal to demagoguery, claiming it to be fact. That said, if your claim was true, and all people agreed with you, scalpers would cease to exist. They never would have arisen in the first place. Maybe you don't like the service they provide, but quite obviously others do. If they didn't, eradicating the entire group of them could be done overnight, virtually at the snap of a finger. Don't buy from them...ever. They would go away overnight. But obviously many do disagree with you. Many like being able to walk up to an event and buy a ticket on the spot. Many like being able to trade up to better seats. You can't argue based on your personal opinion, because if you could, I could argue the sky is green, even if the rest of the world disagrees. To you, they don't provide a useful service. To others, they certainly do. That's really about all there is to say. I don't expect you will change your mind because your argument is based on your preferences and misconceptions. not objective reality, but whatever. I suppose I'm the foolish one for trying to convince you, so I expect I will stop trying at this point, as this is the second go round of pointing out the same flaws in your argument, yet you continue to try to use them.

Ticketmaster is the ticket broker for virtually all concerts and events. Just like manufacturers don't want to operate distribution and retail stores (generally speaking), in the event space, a ticket broker handles the ticketing for an event. When Adele wants to do a concert, she doesn't go build arenas. The arenas she contracts with don't want to go build a ticket website or operate phone banks. Brokers generally handle all this. I don't even recall a time "before" Ticketmaster. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "forcing the hosts of events to sell them their tickets" but you can't attend any major sports/concert/fine arts event without the initial ticket going through Ticketmaster. It seems they have an exclusive contract for all major arenas and venues. Even if you go down to a box office you can't buy a ticket without paying a bunch of Ticketmaster fees. The point I was making is that they hold a virtual monopoly on all major event ticketing, far more than any group of scalpers you could point a finger at. They get their cut regardless, both coming and going. Like any other for-profit business, they are not operating solely for the benevolence of consumers, which is why I don't see the distinctions you are drawing.

For those of us only just becoming aware of what sounds to be a fantastic game (!) but now are left to forage cautiously through eBay for copies, what WERE the original prices of the 2nd edition base game and/or any of the expansions or accessories/add-ons? I'd like to be able to determine for myself how much of a mark up I'm willing to pay, but I don't have a basis yet for such a comparison.

Here's a list of all the bundles/add ons with prices from the 2nd edition.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1926712971/the-7th-continent-what-goes-up-must-come-down?utm_source=sp&utm_medium=home&utm_campaign=launch

Wow! Incredibly fast response, thank you!!!