Introduction and Explanation
There is a saying about stories: stories have three sides—your side, my side, and the truth. This blog is no one's side; this blog is the truth. The reason that this one is so different from the rest is not just that it has insane highs to go along with the ridiculous lows, but because I was personally involved with it at almost every step of the way. I'm in the unique position where there are only three people in the entire world who know the details, and one of them is me; one of the others is the subject of this blog, known as Unravel—the CEO and founder of Square Root Studios, maker of the Titan Reach MMORPG, and the mystery benefactor that committed to giving Unravel millions of dollars throughout a couple of years with absolutely no strings attached.
A lot of stories need a villain at the center. I ask you to stick around until the very end before you come to your conclusions on how you feel. This is the story of how a game developer killed the golden goose for nothing but his greed. On February 12, 2021, Titan Reach will be laid to rest. This is the message penned by Unravel to his community: "The studio is closing; we're out of money, and the reasons for this will not be discussed as they are private." The message was cryptic, and if it were left there, it likely wouldn't have blown up too drastically.
Unravel, however, decided to not leave it there; he wanted to clarify that they were working on turning the MMORPG that started out trying to emulate RuneScape into a crypto NFT blockchain hybrid game. This, of course, was a mistake to divulge, especially at the same time as they were announcing the closing of the studio, as the message sent the Discord into a frenzy. Within minutes, there were calls for him to be reported for financial fraud; his real-life picture was linked with people making fun of him; his real-life name and address were being spread around with calls to visit him, and much more. The Discord was out of control, and Unravel made another poor choice or the one he thought was necessary at the time, and I don't blame him for it. He closed the server immediately and not in the seven days as his announcement had detailed.
As soon as the server closed, alternative servers were popping up for the "refugees" of the Titan Reach community, and it didn't stop there. Developers of the game who were just as confused were also joining up to discuss what just happened. This is where the story should have ended, and where Unravel thought it would too. I think he still thinks it's ended here; however, he made too many mistakes for me to keep this to myself. Now we have to give you the context of Titan Reach, my involvement, and what happened with it.
We have to go back to the beginning, the place where many of the best stories begin: back to Kickstarter. On September 16, 2020, the page appeared titled Titan Reach—a modern take on old school MMORPGs, asking for pledges totaling $430,000 from the public to achieve a modern version of an old classic called RuneScape. We've all been here before; my channel seems to return to this well of content often and drink deep—a Kickstarter MMORPG asking for large sums of money with nothing of substance to back up their idea. Eventually, I must make a blog chronicling the downfall of the company, usually with millions of dollars vanishing into thin air. However, Titan Reach was different, and that's what got me interested initially. They presented this Kickstarter with a fully functioning demo client, free to download for anyone and try before you buy, so to speak.
The demo worked as an MMORPG, albeit very early on. You could log in, run around the game world with other players on a persistent server, perform tasks, do quests, work your way up the leaderboard in the skilling system, and see progress to the game development for the month of the Kickstarter remained active. For this reason, I gave the game positive coverage. While I suggested no one back the project if they're averse to the risk, as it just turns into nothing, as I usually do. I did talk about the positive aspect of presenting the Kickstarter with transparency about the game state—a demo that you could play and see what they had, no lofty promises, and no CG trailer presenting a lie to hoodwink people out of their money. It looked legit; it looked like they had something. And what they had, they were showing people.
On October 16, 2020, despite Titan Reach doing it in what I'd call a more ethical and honest way, it might not have funding. Titan Reach did not hit their $430,000 goal; the campaign closed at 31% of funding, meaning they did not receive a single penny. The community that surrounded the game due to the campaign, though, was strong. They were very vocal about wanting to support Titan Reach in other ways, not just to go quietly into the night. Eventually, it was decided that the project would do month-to-month funding via their website, selling pledge packages with rewards such as a lifetime subscription if the game is fully launched, cosmetics, access to alpha, and more. The website ran a ticker that showed the top donors as well as funds received to date, and this ticker eventually crossed the $200,000 mark. However, this was the end for Titan Reach as their community knew it.
On August 30, 2021, after penny-pinching and stretching the $200,000 raised by the community for about eight months or so, they'd run dry on funding. The month-to-month pledges had slowed to a crawl, and despite asking employees to work fewer hours, they just couldn't continue any longer with what was coming in from the fan base. The announcement came that they would be letting all the staff go, with the founders also moving on to find full-time employment, which would, of course, result in the Titan Reach project entering the hobbyist state of development yet again.
Now we're about to head into the modern events that start to get crazy—the parts where people struggle to believe and where all the misinformation and speculation is coming from. But I can confirm this is the truth, and this is the only place you're gonna get it. Bear in mind, at this stage, the public's money is gone; there's nothing left. And to this point, my involvement with Titan Reach and the developers was pretty light. I was messaged by Unravel after each of my blogs on the game's development, and we chit-chat about the project, and what was going on in our lives—nothing major at all. And I wouldn't call those friends, but we were on good terms.
On September 19, 2021, Unravel announced in the Discord that a mysterious investor had come along and funded "the whole game" out of the kindness of his heart. He specifically used the words "fully funded," and that will play a role in the blog as we progress, so keep that in mind. At this stage, I knew there was content to be made on this as it was such a weird story, and it's not something you hear about every day. As someone who covers things like this for interest, I contacted Unravel to see if I could get the scoop and if I could speak to this mysterious investor. He obliged and put me in contact with the person who was to bankroll the entire project. I put together an interview just from talking to this individual for a few hours, getting to know who he was, and what he was about, and then I got some quotes from Unravel in an official capacity, and I put the blog together. I released it, and that was that. They both enjoyed the blog; it was factually accurate based on what I was told, and we all moved on with our lives.
Titan Reach closed their alpha client of the game and stopped making public development posts, besides a few trailers, and a few teasers now and again. And to this point, there are no wrongdoings. The project was no longer beholden to the public, as they were no longer crowdfunding or taking a single penny from their community, and development was ongoing behind the scenes to deliver a game on a scale much larger than what was previously thought possible due to this investor's involvement.
I rarely spoke to Unravel; we exchanged pleasantries every few weeks, just a typical "How are you," "How's the project going," and things like that, until November 2, 2021, when Unravel told me he was considering adding crypto to Titan Reach. His idea was to add crypto but still have it be a game first—the first crypto game that was fun for the gamers and not built for crypto traders to speculate on, one that you could play and not even know it had crypto involved. That's how it was sold to me. I didn't address this too much, and mostly we talked about other stuff, as he was just talking about maybe.
Then, a few weeks later, on November 18th, he messaged me again with what I'd consider mostly a confirmation that they would be adding those elements to the game, to which I responded I wouldn't be against the idea, but it would be a tough sell for the obvious reasons that he'd raised money from his users initially for an MMORPG, and then he's changing it to something they likely would not want later on. I told him how he would get murdered for this from a PR angle, and he told me they had plans to either refund the community of what they'd funded originally or give them the equivalent in the crypto token to make the original backers whole from no initial investment into the Titan Reach project as an act of good faith. So, whether it was going to be the token or whether it was going to be straight cash, they would all get their money back eventually.
I responded to this positively; I said that this wasn't a huge deal to refund people since they'd already been given a large sum of funding from this investor and that it was a good idea. I liked it. And at this stage, you might ask, "Why didn't you put out the fact that Titan Reach would go in NFTs?" And it's a pretty easy reason; I think this should be fairly obvious. I didn't see this as being harmful to anyone, and if every time somebody told me something privately I immediately ran to the public, I'd never have anyone trust me enough to publish stories like this one I'm doing right now. And at the end of the day, the public's money was spent months ago. I'd confirmed with Unravel that they would not take another single penny from the public for Titan Reach, and I'd also been told they plan to refund these people eventually.
Coming out publicly at this stage that the game was going the NFT route would only serve to burn the project without anyone getting anything positive from it; perhaps it would even jeopardize the refunds people may have received, and undoubtedly would have burned my relationship with Unravel, and therefore would have been my relationship with pretty much anyone who would tell me anything privately. Sometimes conversations are off the record, and you can't just go running around telling people everything that people say to you; otherwise, again, nobody's going to tell you anything. I also do not believe that blockchain is inherently bad. I'm open to the idea that the tech could be used in an interesting way that may be beneficial if the right people with the right motivations were involved. Full transparency: I believed Unravel to be trustworthy at this point, and I still believe the investor has the people's best interests at heart.
I was wrong about Unravel, and now we're about to get to the truth of exactly why Titan Reach failed and exactly why I had to make this blog not just to get the truth out there, but to protect my integrity as well as that of the employees involved in Titan Reach. So now let's talk about how Unravel ruined his life and tried to drag me into it with him. And the money from Titan Reach, you ask? I now have to reveal its name is Andrei Cronier. I wanted to keep his name out of this because he honestly has done absolutely nothing wrong in any of this except to be way too trusting with his finances and subsequently his time. He did legit fund Titan Reach, with no strings attached. He repeatedly told Unravel he doesn't expect him to do anything except to make a good game.
Unravel was the one who repeatedly brought up swapping the game to have blockchain tech and crypto involved. Whenever he did bring it up, Andre told him that he was under no obligation to do anything and that he should choose what he thought was right for the game, not to placate him as he was going to be funding it no matter what happened. I've seen these conversations unedited with my own eyes; I've got the receipts; this is what happened. The only reason I'm naming Andre is because I must put the story together, and his name would have eventually come out anyway due to Unravel's complete negligence. Andre was supposed to remain anonymous, and so he should have. However, this is where their lives begin, and I'll tell you how it happened to me.
I woke up on the 9th of February with a message from Unravel, which wasn't too out of the ordinary, but I hadn't spoken to him for a few weeks. He said he had a proposal for me and then proceeded to open with something I immediately knew was a form of manipulation. He talked about how he had been thinking of me recently and my quote medical which, if you don't know, I had late-stage cancer, and so my health is kind of poor. He then told me it would be of great personal gain to me, meaning I'd get rich. He then confessed to me that he'd gambled 150,000 of the investor's money on a cryptocurrency and lost it all. His position got liquidated, and he lost 150 grand overnight.
He confessed to me that the payments were made to him for the Titan Reach product month-to-month to reduce the investor's risk. And when he confessed to Andre, it was funding Titan Reach. He confirmed with his legal team, and they decided it would be no longer in their best interest to fund Unravel or the project, as he was untrustworthy, and this was not the first time he had exhibited red flags such as greed, misappropriation of funds, or downright incompetence. Unravel's proposal to me was presented as one that would benefit me, but I knew it reeked of the desperation of a man who had hit the bottom. He knew as soon as he announced the funding had dried up that I would go to Andre, and I would ask him what had happened, and Andre would not lie to me.
He knew I'd published this information and buried him for misappropriating investor funds and failing in his fiduciary responsibility to his business. His offer to me was that I remain silent, and he would then raise money via venture capital firms, and then give me a quote gifted amount of tokens when they mint them, meaning he would pay me money to not talk about this. This was a lot to take in, and just waking up and reading this huge wall of text about how he'd taken this money, etc., etc., and how he was offering me money to keep quiet, and I told him I needed to speak to Andre to get the whole story. But before I even thought of what he was telling me, there were only two choices I could see, which were to out him and show the world that he'd taken money from Andre, and that would bury his reputation.
Keep quiet but do not accept the money. Of course, I'm not going to accept hush money; it's against what I stand for. But then obviously know that later on he could do the same thing with other people's money, and that would be partly my fault. But Andre put across a third option, which was we just let him go quietly in the night. We tell him that he can no longer continue the project, and he just goes away. He closes down Titan Reach, seeks no additional funding, pays off his employees for the time they'd worked, and Andre would help clear his debt if he was liable for any taxes, even though he'd him over; he didn't want to leave him in a bunch of debt for the money he'd given him.
Today, now, this might be a decision some people take issue with, but I believe it was the best decision available. The public had already lost the game that they'd paid for before; they'd already run out of money before Andre got involved. Anything after that point was firmly his risk and his risk alone, so they were losing nothing additional to what they lost already back then when the crowdfunding ran out. And I didn't have to be responsible for ruining someone's life, even if they brought it on themselves, which I don't want to do. I don't want that on my conscience. This is where we left it; me and Unravel talked; he said he respected my decision when I told him why I couldn't allow him to continue raising money for the game or to accept money, as I wouldn't trade my integrity for riches. And then, of course, he announced the closure of the game. And as I went over early in the blog, it blew up massively due to how he did it.
This is where the whole dynamic changes. As more information started to come to light as a result of the public outrage, I had people messaging me for comment, where my blog was going to be if I was going to talk about this. Some people even accused me of being in on the quote rug pull, which of course, no rug pull happened. I don't know where that came from. There was no money to rug pull, at least not publicly. Then some of the developers began to message me, and they were saying things that were completely contrary to what I and Andre thought. And obviously, new information required a new investigation on my part to see where the discrepancy was between what I'd been told to all of us. He'd used even more money that was for the business than what he'd confessed to. There was more money missing.
I interviewed three employees who remain unnamed for their protection, of course, and all three of them confirmed to me that Unravel bought a new Tesla using money he claimed was either given to him by the investor or they won from investing in cryptocurrency using the investor's money, with his express permission. Both of these things never happened. Andre ever gave him money for a car, and he explicitly told him not to invest in crypto, even with his money, let alone money that was given for the operation of the business. Then it came out that Unravel had announced exactly who the anonymous investor was to the developer Discord chat. I confirmed independently with multiple developers who had access to that general chat section; Unravel named Andre and even linked to his Twitter, talking about how he was going to put a picture of him up in their new office he just rented and of course was beginning to outfit with new equipment. This is what makes the situation completely untenable. I could no longer publish this story.
If I left it as it is, eventually, somebody would leak the investor's name and contact him; he would then tell people what Unravel did because he doesn't lie. And eventually, it might look like I kept quiet for a financial incentive. In reality, I kept quiet because while I separate personal feelings from work, I didn't want to be responsible for ruining someone's life who called me a friend for no tangible benefit. The public had lost their money in 2021 when the funding had run out; the employees were paid, and the only people who had been over was me by putting me in this awful situation, Andre for having his trust thrown back in his face and his money wasted on Unravel for ruining a literal fairy tale by letting money dictate his principles.
So here's the story; here's the truth, and this is why Titan Reach is dead. There is so much speculation out there that the investor did this or that, and the investor was the wrong person, and he just ran away and left Unravel without the money, and this was a rug pop where Unravel ran away with people's money. There's so much misinformation. The reality is that none of that happened. He misused funds that were given to his business to gamble on crypto. He won, bought himself a car, then lost and ruined his relationship with someone who was changing his life for the better and would have allowed him to make the game of his dreams with zero strings attached.
To give you context about some things that people are also calling out for things like Unravel still having access to the Discord server, even though he's closed down the game. Of course, he does. It's his server; it's his Discord server; he pays for it. The investor's payment method ran out, and so Unravel began paying for the server out of his pocket because he wanted to maintain control over it. I also have to address the idea that Unravel may have run away with the money that was given by the investor. There was no money from the investor left to run away with; there was no money in the first place. He never gave Unravel money to run the game; he would give him money for the business to operate, for his salary, for any employee's salaries, for office space, for equipment, for anything he needed. It was all fair game. It was all there for the business to run smoothly.
What the money was not for was for Unravel to buy himself nice things, gamble on crypto, or lie to people about what had happened to it. And that's the story. That's what happened with Titan Reach, and I hope this is the last time I ever have to make a blog like this. I've seen too many people lose too much money for no reason other than some people's ego or inability to separate personal feelings from business.
Summary
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In summary, Unravel's actions led to the downfall of Titan Reach. He misused funds, made poor decisions, and ultimately failed to deliver on his promises to the community and the investors. His greed and lack of integrity undermined the project and betrayed the trust of those involved. Now, the game is dead, and the truth behind its demise has been revealed.
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