Not wanting to get overly involved, but Ram has a point.
As far as I know, James has a reputation for distasteful modding acts over the course of his Warband life. I cant point names or mods since I dont know, but i've been told by several people who worked on this mod that they were uncomfortable working with James because of similar practices like this he's done in the past, though not as crass as money grabbing and running.
From my position, James had been asking the mod community for a full £80 minimum JUST for scripts, not for a server. He managed to raise the money in one transaction from a guy called Shas whom, whilst very drunk (and yes im being serious), donated to the paypal link in the FoR steam group after a steam announcement asking for donations. Shas demanded the money back the next day because he was understandably pissed, but James stated that he had moved the money to another account and spent it on the scripts that day, even though he later contradicted this by claiming he acquired the scripts at a later date.
The server, a rather poorly hosted NA server hosted by unknown, though i've been told it's you Connor (hence why you're involving yourself in this), appeared for a few days before dropping. At first it seemed like the server dropped so another version could be worked on with better scripts and scenes, but the server never came back up. I did some probing at this point to find out that James had completely distanced himself from the module in both name and position, actively avoiding confrontation about the module to the extent of shutting his steam and teamspeak off (this is coming from 4 other parties whom attempted to contact him about the module).
Now, several things leap out at me here.
One is James constant contradictions about funding, script prices and their eventual acquisition.
Two is the fact that Ramaraunt, the base coder for the module, claims to me that James actually had the scripts made IN HOUSE by a friend of his, therefore negating why he would need donations.
Three, and i'm just going off of what i've been told, but parties have told me that James and you (Connor) have a nice system set up where he is provided a very cheap server. I'm not exactly sure what his side of any deal is, but this isn't the first time James has supposedly shut down a module down server side VERY early on after acquiring things from interested community members. Now, once again, i'm not accusing anyone of anything i'm just reiterating what i've heard, but this in THEORY would also make you partly responsible for James' practices with small mods since you'd know what he's been doing with the server. I've heard fairly negative things about you in the past Connor but once again, i'm NOT insinuating anything directly. Dont shoot the messenger.
At first I thought James had simply withdrawn due to embarrassment about mod release being a total failure, but a different picture has been painted the last few weeks. I highly doubt James will come onto this thread to defend himself, firstly because he likely doesn't care but second because nothing can be DIRECTLY proven, right now its just VERY heavy circumstantial evidence.
We're working on developing a module similar to FoR that'll be in-house controlled by the MoR Dev team directly so there shouldn't be any tom ****ery from here on in regarding that, since servers will be privately hosted by clans. If anyone has any other version of events do chip in, everyone seems to have heard something completely different about this and i'm personally curious to see what images have been painted in every body else's eyes.
EDIT: As Azra says, James did actually promise Shas full compensation for his donation when he acquired the money, but as of now has obviously failed to do this, hell he's failed at even talking to the guy (i've checked). Shas isnt exactly the type of guy you hold money out on, as a friend of mine its likely James' PC will pop like a baloon when 20TB of hardcore animal porn are sent to it for not paying in a timely manner, but his refusal to even acknowledge that he cant pay back should also shed some light on his attitude towards this.
Further Edit: This only just occurred to me, but James DID get donations from other parties as well. He must have got WAY over the amount he was asking for even though that amount is suspiciously high, so where he's put that money which he obviously didn't spend on the server or scripts is up for debate.
