In a bit of a bizarre turn of events yesterday something rather awkward happened with a Kickstarter campaign. You guys probably can remember l3p right, he is a Dutch guy who made the l3p d3sk , back in the days when he won our rig of the month, see that here.
Now here the story, a guy named Martin Bowman started a kickstarter on the 3rd of February with heaps of pledges, the first thing you’ll notice in the photo is the l3p desk, as he would be selling that design. The kickstarter basically stated that they can build you get the desk for less then 1000 pounds (which is 1160 Euros and 1250 USD).
Try to imagine that you have an idea, start to develop it, produce it and then see a guy on kickstarter taking your idea and he even uses product photos that you made of your D3sk:
About this project
Purchasing a top quality Desk PC can be very expensive and also require some expert knowledge when setting up. What if it did not have to cost £1000’s?
We aim to produce high specification Desk PC’s whilst still being affordable and stylish. Think of all the room you will save not having a large noisy case taking up so much room.
Using a variety of materials such as wood, glass & carbon fibre we can evolve the common PC system into a 21st century marvel. Our designs ensure that you fit comfortably under the desk whilst keeping the system at an efficient cool level (even when overclocking). Unlike traditional PC cases your components are not crowded into a solid metal compartment reaching extreme temperatures. Instead it is encased within the desk where it is cool and airy.
With your funds we will be able to purchase the necessary equipment and materials required to mass produce a large number of PC Desk Systems at an affordable price.
Looking to the future we hope to become the leading manufacturer of affordable Premium High Specification Desk PC’s. We will ensure that we will take all necessary steps to complete our obligations in full by the outlined time scale.
We really do hope you enjoyed reading about our exciting new product line and would like to thank you for your time.
We will be keeping all members fully up to date with our progress.
The guy set a goal of £150,000 in pledges! If you look at the pledges you’ll start laughing hard, carbon fiber version of the desk at a 900 pound, 2000 pound pledges would get you the Desk PC fully equipped with: i5 CPU, 8GB+ RAM, 500GB SSD, AMD RX 480, Blue-Ray (Shipping included).
He even has a Pledge £8,000 with a brand new Desk PC fully equipped with: i7 CPU, 16GB+ RAM, 1TB SSD, AMD RX 480 8GB, Blue-Ray, Water Cooling System, Wide-Screen Curved Monitor, WiFi, Wireless Keyboard & Mouse, and much more. Hey with Shipping included J
For a pledge of £10 you’d get a friendly smile, and for £20 a virtual hug (I am not making this stuff up go look at the KS page). Somebody was smelling money alright.
So here we have a kickstarter campaign of a guy stealing the design of l3p, using his photos and basically ripping off pledgers money. Everything here stinks of course, the campaign got reports and many complaints. The current state is that the kick starter campaign has halted and was deleted. The guy got precisely 1 pound in pledges.
Kickstarters can be great, they also can be a scam perhaps even a joke. This certainly was a KS in either the last two options. L3p, Peter we feel ya bro ! Glad this project got cancelled this fast and speedy.
