Delusionally Ambitious Harry Potter Kickstarter Shut Down

​ Anyone who follows the Kickstarter world closely has seen their fair share of projects that are overambitious, delusional, bizarrely slick-sounding, copyright-infringing, and overall just kind of shady. But rare is the project that ticks off all of those boxes simultaneously. I present to you the Wizarding World Online, a massively multiplayer online RPG set in the Harry Potter universe.

To date, there have been eight​ official Harry Potter video games that were exclusively pegged to the movies, which explains why there are two Deathly Hallows games. Each of these was released by EA Games, which licensed the rights f​rom Warner Bros. in 2000. There have also been various offshoots—the Harry Potter Lego games, the Quidditch World Cup, and others—all of which have been published by either EA or Warner Bros.

So it's utterly bizarre to see how far along Wizarding World Online actually made it before Warner Bros. hit it, and Kickstarter, with a cease-and-desist claim. Most of the Kickstarter is preserved here.

Produced by a company called Bio-Hazard Entertainment, which has deleted its website since the copyright infringement claim, the original Kickstarter video featured extremely slick production values, complete with not-bad computer graphics, videographers who appeared to know what they were doing, and alleged in-game videos. The credits for the Kickstarter video feature dozens of artists, animators, producers, a five-person public relations team, and, apparently, not a single lawyer.

The only sort of disclaimer was a warning that the product is not "endorsed or produced by Warner Bros. Entertainment."

"This product is a Non-Profit development created for the sole purpose of supplying fans the experience of creating their own wizard or witch within the beloved and reknown [sic] world," it continued. "We are not affiliated with Warner Bros. and are not producing this production for a profitable income."

The problem with that is, nonprofit status is not enough to make derivative or copyrighted works. And this was not a nonprofit—Kickstarter would be making money from the endeavor, and the company is not licensed as a nonprofit anywhere.

There were other reasons to be skeptical: The creators wanted only $100,000 to create a massively multiplayer online game (they raised $5,000 over the course of a few days). That's a herculean task, and it's highly unlikely that $100,000 would even cover server costs, let alone pay the army of people who were apparently working on this project.

I have reached out to several of the company's cofounders and Warner Bros. for some clarity, but the company's public statements on its now-deleted Kickstarter page suggest that much of the Kickstarter was built on outright lies: "Seeing that it could be a really great business plan, a license was given that would allow the company to begin production on the MMO up until beta. Once beta was hit it would then be decided by Warner Bros. if the production would be a good investment or not."

The Kickstarter has already been shut down, suggesting that no agreement was ever in place. A dig into the Kickstarter by the website Contains Mod​erate Peril found that the company's website, before it was deleted, was built on a free template.

Copyright infringing Kickstarters are nothing new—one of my favorites was an extremely amateur attempt at a Po​kemon movie, and a short film called "Snape ​and the Marauders" was shut down by Warner Bros., too. Warner Bros. is famously protective of Harry Potter—it even went after some live action role-players in the United Kingdom who wanted to buy an​d hang out in a Harry Potter castle.

But Wizarding World Online actually got some traction: Its existence was covered, without any level of skepticism, by Joystiq (now fol​ded into Engadget), a year ago. The Kickstarter raised more than $5,000 in a couple days, and there was even a plausible-looking gameplay demo.

Kickstarter, obviously, is obligated to take down these kinds of projects. But it's very difficult to understand how a project Wizarding World Online even gets so far, and demonstrates one of the major problems with Kickstarter: Anyone, with any level of experience or know-how, can ask for money, and if no one catches you and you've got a slick video you can make off with lots of money. Biohazard is now pitching another game, which its shoestring team has, somehow, been developing in parallel. I would shy away from it.