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The BBC has just pushed David Levy's company into the public arena, and not without good reason.

"Following a credible threat of violence against personnel of Retro Computers Limited, including threats made as recently as last night, we asked [technology desk editor] Leo Kelion and the BBC to refrain from publishing a story we believe to be factually inaccurate and might put people at risk of physical harm, alarm and distress," Retro Computers Limited founder David Levy said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Since December 2016 the BBC have formally been on notice that this is a police matter, and we ask that the BBC and Mr Kelion do not compromise the police investigation."

The BBC delayed publication of this report to give RCL managing director Suzanne Martin time to provide evidence of the threats, but she did not do so.

In the meantime, the Gizmodo news site also published and then deleted an article about the matter because it too was told of threats.

Sinclair ZX Vega+ funding campaign halted by Indiegogo - BBC News







The Vega+ was originally promised for September 2016, then October, December and finally February this year.

I shall express an opinion, having been one of the IndieGoGo campaign backers. I firmly believe that RCL continued after the Spring of 2016 to take more money through the IndieGoGo funding campaign while at the same time knowing with certainty that their successive delivery promises to their backers were unattainable, until IndieGoGo unilaterally closed the campaign last month.

Dr David Levy, Chairman of Retro Computers Ltd, said: "For the past five months our company's new management team has spared no effort to bring the Vega+ into production under very difficult circumstances, and to secure Vega+ a sales and marketing agreement with a substantial company in the consumer electronics field. We are very confident that with the manufacturing strengths of SMS and the worldwide reach of our new sales and marketing partners, the Vega+ will be a huge and long-lived success."

Contributors can still pledge to secure a classic black Vega+ now that the Indiegogo campaign is in the InDemand Phase.

http://retrocomputerslimited.com/news/2 ... aunch-date







Google tells me "David Levy's Erotic Chatbots Ltd. now raising funds". Presumably his corporate logo will be subtitled "toss you for it". I am not impressed.

Gosh. An extreme vituperative pair of Italian assessments... https://translate.google.com/translate? ... edit-text=

(which refers in passing to http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2933 ... mpaign.php)

and https://translate.google.com/translate? ... ruffa.html

Meanwhile back in England, the story is spreading...

https://thenextweb.com/gear/2017/03/09/ ... r-zx-vega/

https://liliputing.com/2017/03/indiegog ... paign.html

The BBC was asked by RCL founder David Levy not to report on the campaign’s troubles due to a "credible threat of violence." In a statement on Wednesday, he said: "Since December 2016 the BBC have formally been on notice that this is a police matter, and we ask that the BBC and Mr Kelion do not compromise the police investigation."

The BBC delayed the publication of the report so RCL managing director Suzanne Martin would have time to provide evidence of the threats, but nothing was passed on to the broadcaster. Gizmodo also published and then deleted an article about the campaign because it too was told of the threats to RCL personnel.

When the BBC first contacted RCL in December to enquire about Vega+, it was threatened with legal action. "Our clients are concerned that the BBC is in fact supporting and participating in a malicious campaign intended to denigrate our clients' reputation," wrote RCL lawyers.

RCL has blamed the delay on unexpected issues with the console buttons. It said the first units would ship in February this year, but none have been sent out. Unsurprisingly, the campaign’s Indiegogo page is inundated with angry backers demanding refunds. RCL claims it hasn’t been able to respond due to legal action brought against it by former directors Paul Andrews and Chris Smith.

Sinclair ZX Vega+ faces crowdfunding nightmare as backers demand refunds - TechSpot



And then Dr Levy posted on IndieGoGo today, the first update in two weeks. It's from start to finish we were stopped, we were prevented, we couldn't update for legal reasons, we'll have something through your letterbox by September 22nd. He actually says "in a few weeks" but qualifies that with "summer", the new deadline date is an interpolation on my part due to me owning a calendar.

Here's one of his key sentences and the tone of the rest of it is just as appalling:

During what we had expected would be final testing of the product prior to the first shipment, we discovered that the software for three of the user features, which had been announced for the product, had not yet been implemented.

How any development can reach that level of catastrophe is beyond belief - indeed, that sentence (which has to refer to a time well before last September, more like June at the latest) I do not believe at all. In my opinion the company has been ineptly led and the backers' updates for most of the last year, when these problems must have been fully apparent, can only have been deliberately misleading.