Paprium has been in the headlines of late for all the wrong reasons.
The game began life over a decade ago; a Mega Drive / Genesis version went up for pre-order in 2017, but only a tiny handful of copies made their way into the hands of buyers, with a great many other customers still waiting, even now.
In 2021, WaterMelon Games launched a Kickstarter in order to generate the funds to not only honour all of the existing pre-orders, but also to bring the game to modern-day systems, too. 3,271 contributors invested 895,569 euros (around £767,000 / $973,000) into the project. The game was supposed to launch in 2022, but nothing has been heard since.
More recently, a YouTuber posted a video which claimed to show boxes of the game sitting in a French warehouse – a claim which was later revealed to be a hoax. However, if the video's aim was to catapult Paprium back into the spotlight, it has had the desired effect; a new site, Paprium Case, has since gone live which serves as a call to arms for all of those still waiting for the game.
The site not only gives a good outline of what has happened so far, it cites other examples of crowdfunding campaigns which have seen successful conclusions for investors – namely, the crowdfunder being forced by the Federal Trade Commission to reimburse customers.
It then asks those who have placed pre-orders to submit their details to a lawyer who is being tasked with creating a class-action suit against WaterMelon Games.
"In collaboration with the plaintiffs identified, these testimonies will be collected and analyzed until September 2024," says the site. "On this date, without reaction from Watermelon, it will be proposed to bring them together and deploy them in a collective action."