This here is Sam Hyde, a failed internet celebrity turned scammer whose life basically revolved around trying to sucker money out of other peoples' pockets to pay his rent instead of actually working for himself. He fancied himself as a sort of master troll who could do nothing wrong, and his next big scheme targeted whom he believed to be the internet's least intelligent people: the brony community. Several months in the making, this plan was a surefire way to make him some quick cash and immortalize himself as a legendary figure amongst his adoring fans...
...Except he didn't. The plan completely backfired, and as of now the Dark Skyes
Kickstarter has been cancelled after most of the original backers pulled out. What lead to such a carefully planned-out project to fail so dramatically? You can find the story below the break, along with a bunch of screencaps.
On the 20th of December, Sam publicly announced his plans to create a Kickstarter for a fake pony dating sim on the Facebook page of his mediocre YouTube "comedy" group, Million Dollar Extreme, and thus had already doomed his project to failure by providing evidence of its invalidity. He also uploaded a casting call on YouTube, but at least had the sense to make it private to keep prying eyes from finding it (
not that he succeeded, of course). Early reactions from his limited fanbase seemed to be extremely enthusiastic for the most part, since the majority of them despised the pony community and were of the opinion that this was the perfect opportunity to take those bronies down a peg.
Several months passed as Sam and his small crew of voice actors created their Kickstarter pitch at a snail's pace, but they lacked one very important crew member to ensure that their ruse would be successful: an artist. For that purpose they paid a woman named
Pukey Pony to draw "concept art" for the visual novel's characters that supposedly wasn't going to be used in the final product, a decision that would later come back to haunt them in the months to come.
On March 6, they were finally ready to put their plan into action, and uploaded their first Kickstarter project under the title "Dark Skyes -- an EPIC brony dating sim", along with a 6 minute video and some mockup screenshots. With positive press from major pony news outlets being released shortly afterwards and several thousand dollars worth of donors, success seemed even more sure for MDE than ever before.
That is, until the frequently misunderstood anons of /mlp/ became extremely suspicious at the trailer's distinct lack of any actual gameplay. All it contained was some guy talking in a mask and cringeworthy samples of voice acting playing alongside static pictures of ponies on abstract backgrounds, which is very unusual for a project claimed to be 95% complete. This lead to the discovery of various incriminating screenshots, some of which were
compiled by Horse News' analysis of the Kickstarter. This was followed by
another post a day after the first, which was extremely well received and lead to over $2000 in funding being pulled by concerned backers.
An increasingly desperate Sam Hyde, afraid of not being able to earn his $7500 and finding that the pony community was a bit too intelligent for his liking, turned to 4chan and uploaded an
unintentionally hilarious plea for them to donate to his Kickstarter anyways because he apparently expected them to appreciate his "sense of humour" or something. This was unsurprisingly met with
widespread derision and mockery of the angry little man, along with Pukey Poney publicly
pulling support from the project in an incredibly damaging blow to the scam that would later lead to her
being interviewed by PonyToast of Horse News and effectively proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Dark Skyes was by no means a genuine visual novel.
After this, Dark Skyes was effectively defeated; no amount of sockpuppeting by MDE or its fans could salvage the Kickstarter now. After much pressure by potential backers a demo video was supposedly
released, although it wasn't very convincing for a game that had supposedly been in development for four years (longer than the total existence of Friendship of Magic and its fandom!). There was also an attempt by MDE to artificially inflate the amount of donations received after most backers had already left, but with 12 hours left on the clock Sam finally decided to call it quits and pull the plug on his flawed dream after having made a mockery of himself and everybody else associated with MDE.
So what have we learned about Sam Hyde through all of this? He's an extremely lazy and pathetic man who takes 3 months to set up a half-assed scam, and screws it all over by publicly bragging about it beforehand due to his insatiable desire for attention. Now he's even poorer than before, utterly friendless outside of his small circlejerk, and best of all his actions are forever archived on the internet to ward off any potential employers who would consider hiring him.
Also, I'd like to thank the anons of /mlp/ for uncovering this and
Horse News for their phenomenal coverage of the scandal as it unfolded, along with Pukey Poney for her assistance in the matter as well. Derpibooru is also an excellent source for screencaps if you'd like more info on exactly what took place: just search "
dark skyes".
Mind you, there's still more of Dark Skyes to come, although that'll deserve a post of its own...
