Introduction
Imagine an MMORPG that lets you craft, build, farm, fight, play, tame creatures, and do whatever you want. DreamWorld, an “infinite open world creative MMO,” claims to be the “last game you’ll ever play” and will eventually host millions of players in an immersive world.
Even with a massive budget, this game is impossible with today’s technology. The designers of DreamWorld, Garrison Bellack, and Zachary Kaplan, have never produced a video game for profit.
Y Combinator and Kickstarter backed this fantasy, which raised almost $65,000 in March. However, MMO streamers called DreamWorld and its May 21 alpha release a “fiasco” and a “scam” as I investigated this impossible project.
DreamWorld’s charges:
On DreamWorld’s Discord server, Kaplan said his “nine years” of game development experience is in personal Flash games, “some work in Unity,” and DreamWorld documentation.
Kaplan, a marketer and entrepreneur, founded Core Aegis, a wearable Bluetooth speaker. The pair’s engineer/coder, Bellack, works for Apple, Facebook, and Google.
The developers of DreamWorld’s Kickstarter campaign raised $64,706, which was only a tiny portion of its budget.
We know MMOs cannot be built with just $10K. We got most of our funding from Silicon Valley’s best investors.
Kickstarter Campaign Page
The advertising campaign promises a totally dynamic world without any set places of interaction and “multiplayer with the population density of actual cities.”
Each backer will receive a plot of land proportional to their tier to build whatever they want. “Anywhere online” 3D models can be imported, according to Kickstarter. It would be like Second Life on next-next-next tech if all that was in the game.
In response to a super backers question about how DreamWorld would incorporate multiple game genres, the developers wrote, “On a broad scale, we’re very eager to give players the resources they need to design their own games inside DreamWorld, similar to the tools found in Roblox. The creators compare their game to Minecraft on a press page that’s still online but not linked to the DreamWorld website. They clearly set high standards for their work.
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Without millions of dollars, pitching a crowdfunded MMO is nearly impossible. Y Combinator, the world’s leading startup accelerator, gave DreamWorld’s developers more than $65,000.
Y Combinator’s rigorous vetting process culminates in an exclusive demo day with “selected investors.” Its alumni may be familiar: Twitch, Dropbox, Coinbase, Airbnb—tech titans worth billions.
DreamWorld’s ambitious goals set it apart from other YC-backed game developers and gaming infrastructure startups. I don’t think DreamWorld will ever kill Minecraft or WoW.
Bellack and Kaplan now face numerous allegations from the YouTube community, led by independent developer Callum Upton and MMO casters Josh Strife Hayes and KiraTV. The key claim is that DreamWorld is a scam run by two incompetents.
Dissecting DreamWorld
Upton broke down DreamWorld’s Kickstarter trailer in his first YouTube video on March 23. “A fucking Frankenstein of code that was copied and pasted from other people’s creations” is how Kira describes DreamWorld’s trailer. He says the game uses the baseline Unreal mannequin in default movement mode and is a mishmash of Unreal Engine asset packs without any original coding. In addition, critics in Discord have noted that none of the assets are properly credited.
“Based on what they have done, this is supposed to be a technical demonstration of what they can do,” Upton says in his video, comparing DreamWorld’s visuals to store-bought asset packs with code built-in. “In the last eight months, 90% of the [assets] that I found that they’ve used, which have just been ones I’ve mentioned, have been free.”
One backer complained in the Kickstarter comments that the Kickstarter only promised alpha access, not a finished game.
Like a multi-level marketing scheme, Kaplan announced on March 12 that the pre-alpha would only be available to those who invited two friends to pledge.
Bree Royce of Massivelyop.com wrote a summary of the game’s many issues in April, highlighting the lack of technical details on how the creators created a persistent infinite environment with a million players.
The DreamWorld developers completely underestimated how dedicated the MMORPG fanbase is to research
Josh Strife Hayes, MMO Streamer
Many players feel MMOs have stagnated for years, leaving them hungry for new content.
MMOByte streamer Stix claimed on March 26 that an unnamed developer requested positive coverage of their Kickstarter game. If his coverage resulted in more money being spent on the game, he was offered “20% of all [their] earnings.” Stix announced the offer, and the developers tried to backtrack. Stix named the game DreamWorld in a video titled “DreamWorld: The Biggest MMO Scam to Ever Get Fully Funded.” No comment from Stix.
The most serious allegation is that DreamWorld received Y Combinator funding through nepotism. A senior Y Combinator employee told Upton that Bellack’s friend helped greenlight DreamWorld without due diligence.
At first, I assumed this was a joke, but they called me and verified their information and sources. He’s more than an investor. DreamWorld wasn’t tested. Despite having nothing to show on demo day, they were allowed in.
Y Combinator employee
While researching videogame crowdfunding, Upton discovered DreamWorld’s Kickstarter. Upton says in a Discord call, “My first DreamWorld video was made a month ago.”
“This rabbit hole is massive. One month ago today, I had 50 subscribers, contrary to what many believe. I was the original whistleblower for this because DreamWorld gave people bad vibes.” Now over 5,000 subscribers and a Discord server document the scandal.
Discord from hell
DreamWorld’s official Discord shows its passionate but volatile community’s best and worst.
The DreamWorld team built a verification system utilizing the AltDentifier bot to keep banned people out after doubters and trolls joined the server. No one can directly message Bellack (“Grit”) or Kaplan (“Wulf”) because they have their accounts set to private. Or add them as friends.
The only adult mod left the DreamWorld Discord server, and mildly critical comments disappeared. The logs aren’t accessible to mods, so they can’t see who’s been banned.
The Discord mood fluctuates between cult-like enthusiasm, occasional skepticism, and half-jokes about being unable to express legitimate concerns without being banned.
The developers’ integrity and the difference between an alpha and a prototype are constantly debated.
Developers occasionally respond to @s about technical issues, make announcements, purge channels, and ban users, but their community jokes about their chronic absence.
MilkyMoobs wrote, “The game in good time will prove [the critical videos] wrong.” “But will there be a community left by the time the game is even at that point without [the developers] saying anything?”
Because the game is new, many are excited and dismiss criticism. However, some backers want a new game and view Upton and Kira’s call-outs as destructive and toxic. Zutzut wrote, “I made a small contribution that doesn’t hurt me, and I’m watching how this plays out. No need to keep inviting random people to harp on it. Use your time better.”
Upton says he initially dismissed rumors that mods were mostly children because it seemed absurd.
He says, “They came to me after this rumor spread and they were like, ‘No, we’re 14 and 16’.” He also discovered that the DreamWorld team had DM-bombed Fortnite and Minecraft players to promote their game and invite them to the server.
“Screenshots started getting dug up of the team trying to offer Amazon gift cards and Uber Eats to the moderators as some form of non-payment, because they obviously can’t pay them,” Upton says.
Two kids were offered internships in Redwood City by the developers. A full-time job was promised to 14-year-old mod Jack, who left the community.
I asked Bellack if he could talk after a mod gave him my information. Bellack replied, “I really appreciate it, but with the team working over 80 hours a week, it’s inappropriate for me to do interviews,” before offering to answer a few “quick questions.” Bellack said, “In response to the allegations of false advertisement, recruiting kids to moderate and potentially work for the company, and nepotism, slander makes these people rich. It’s mostly ignored as we focus on making DreamWorld fun for real players.”
He also said they wanted to expand to 5-7 people by year’s end. Garrison Bellack and Zachary Kaplan ignored repeated requests for comment.
A former mod who requests anonymity says, “Since joining Discord in 2015, I have never witnessed game developers hide from the community, ban users secretly, and then let 14- and 16-year-old kids take the fall.” That’s sad.
Alpha’s spotlight
Google Drive was used to share the alpha files. To DreamWorld backer and YouTuber Skiazos on May 20. Skiazos told me he was cautiously optimistic but started leaning away from the game after seeing other creators dissect it. After playing the alpha, things changed.
In a Livestream, Skiazos noted that the only difference between the pre-alpha and alpha is grass.
The horizon is covered in a flat white fog, giving the impression of infinite distance, but the objects behind the fog are pre-rendered. You can fall off the map. Upton found copyrighted music in the alpha’s game files.
Upton asked the music publisher Unless DreamWorld had obtained a song licensing, which it did not. Also purportedly included in the alpha is a file for a song from 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, which doesn’t play in the game but is still distributed.
DreamWorld’s central city is a dirt patch with buildings. Except for the pantheon, the buildings have no colliders. Mysterious white cubes dot the landscape. If you fight other players in the PVP area, they appear as nameless orbs with the default Unreal mannequin texture.
“Large text,” “Medium text,” and “Text” are the only words on Kickstarter backers’ plaques.
On May 21, Upton live-streamed the alpha and discovered that sending packets to the server could hack the game, speed up the server’s day and night cycle, and give him unlimited resources.
He says in the Discord stream, “You can literally tell the server you’ve done whatever you want.” I’m telling the server I’m the server.
Upton added a weather system in another stream, spawned thousands of clouds, and crashed the game. In another video, he says, “The damage you could do with this to somebody else’s computer… is bad.”
As a kid, Upton, a freelance bot developer, started messing with game networks, which he says you learn by doing.
When you try to mine a block, he explains, in Minecraft, the server checks your player identity, tool, and proximity to the block. Upton tricked DreamWorld’s server on the livestream because the server didn’t check.
“Through this, code can be remotely run on other users’ machines. If they don’t make these initial checks, it’s easier than the above example” he claims.
After a game’s release, players will always try to push the game’s limits and see what’s possible.
Though the alpha has no terms of service or use, some DreamWorld Discord members call this toxic and inappropriate for a game in alpha.
Skiazos placed thousands of peppers around his plot to stress-test the alpha. In the snow biome, Upton planted a 1,000-foot battleaxe.
In Discord, Bellack asked who created the “massive scale bug” so he could credit them in the patch notes.
Aislinn Evans, Kaplan’s ex-fiancee, posted a video criticizing DreamWorld’s main Kickstarter video, which inexplicably mentions their breakup.
The game’s sad “origin” story follows Kaplan’s struggle with unemployment and the loss of a promising job due to COVID-19. He says, “My fiancée left me soon after,” a DreamWorld skeptic meme.
In her tell-all video, Evans exasperatedly says the idea for this game was inspired by the anguish of losing everything and seeing the world break apart.
“No! He was months into developing DreamWorld before I broke up with him, so using our breakup to leverage his Kickstarter video feels like straight-up emotional manipulation—sorry, emotional marketing, “She says. “The story, timeline, and motive are false.”
She claims that Kaplan proposed to her at a red-carpet event with a fake diamond ring and that he lied about it for ten months.
DreamWorld detractors believe Evans’ video proves Kaplan’s dishonesty. Fans of DreamWorld call it a sad chapter in Kaplan’s life that doesn’t affect the project.
Evans endorses Kaplan and Bellack in her video. She says, “I can guarantee that these boys are not trying to scam anyone.”
“They’re confident they’ll keep their word. Since I don’t have gaming development technical knowledge, I can’t say if they can deliver.”
I ask streamer Kira how DreamWorld differs from Chronicles of Elyria, another ambitious MMO’s $1.4 million Kickstarter campaign that collapsed and had angry backers file complaints with Washington’s attorney general.
He says, “I think we use the word scam as a colloquial term mostly and there’s some nuance.”
“I think both games’ developers are living in a dream world and don’t intend to disappoint. I don’t care about the base intent when the end result is the same, and you’ve lied to everyone.
If people said, “We thought we could do this, but we couldn’t,” I think most of us would forgive and forget. The world isn’t easy.”
DreamWorld is far from Kaplan’s promise of years of development and weekly updates in their “alpha development phase.
Despite the criticism, DreamWorld seems unfazed.
DreamWorld fans believe it will happen one day. Kaplan wrote in Discord, “We’re hoping to have DreamWorld on every internet-connected throughout the course of our development, hehe. A device with a screen.”
Bold! Kira says They’ve asserted that they can resolve networking problems that have eluded industry heavyweights up to this point, despite just employing a single developer who has never previously worked on a video game.
We’ve witnessed all the magic shows at the party, and Dreamworld is arriving late, so we know this isn’t Gandalf.
