Rolfe and Matei are total scam artists
The moment James received his $300,000 check from whichever crowd funding site he used, what did he do? Stopped making episodes, moved into a new house and bought a bunch of new toys that he foolishly bragged about on Twitter and the like. The most important one of the three was that he stopped making AVGN episodes, which is what made him semi-famous. Can you imagine South Park receding into four episodes a year at the height of their popularity? Instead of making new episodes, he began going the lazy route of just playing random games while sitting on a couch with a camera pointed at him. Little to no editing required, no special effects, no script... but plenty of YouTube checks.
Thankfully, not all of his fans were total idiots and a backlash resulted. How did they deal with it? By banning everyone who spoke negatively about them. Ever see that South Park episode about safe spaces? That applies to them more than anyone else I've ever seen on YouTube, and that's quite the accomplishment. Rolfe lost 3,500 subscribers in one day and figured something needed to be done, so he started making AVGN episodes again... four per year, that is.
Around this time he partnered with another person, who shall remain nameless because **** him, and sought funding to manufacture reproduction cartridges of Cheetahmen II, a game none of them actually owned the rights to, but if there's a buck to be made, who cares? After collecting some money, through crowd funding websites again, the project was cancelled with no refunds given.
It gets worse.
Currently, since his Cinemassacre account has almost two million subscribers and he was a pioneer of the YouTube partner program, he finds ways to make as much money as possible by uploading old videos. First, he started breaking up newer videos into multiple parts for no reason, then he went back and deleted old videos, broke them up into two parts and re-uploaded them. Then he uploaded older videos with "better quality," even though not a single person could tell a difference (because there was none). Currently, he's uploading entire "seasons" as one video. That means single episodes are on YouTube up to four times, and I'm sure if he or Matei can think of another reason to re-upload them (better sound, bonus commentary...) they'll be on there five or more times.
You know what I find to be hilarious? In one of his videos he joked about Lucas going back and re-editing Star Wars and re-releasing them, saying he'd never do that to his videos. Well, what he's doing is far worse because at least Lucas changed some things around before re-releasing them.
This movie is terrible, plain and simple. It's rushed, poorly edited tripe that was filmed in front of a single green screen. The effects were done on his Mac, it was shot with the same cameras he uses for the web series and no special care was given to the audio. My point is... where did the $300,000 go? In their pockets, that's where. A man named Stuart Ashen crowd funded his own movie, named Ashens and the Quest For the Game Child around the same time Rolfe made his. He asked for $50,000, every penny of which went into the actual film... which, by the way, was released for free on the Internet, and it's still there now. How can someone make a better looking, better acted, better written, better edited and better filmed movie for 1/6th of the price? Eh, I've already answered that.
One of the more sickening things is that every game reviewer that has reviewed this film gives it glowing praise, all because they want a slice of James' pie. Same goes for the AVGN video game, which is a whole other story. Basically, everyone acted like it was just a fan making an indie game, when in reality it was commissioned by Rolfe himself, who receives most, if not all, of the profits.
I think I've given enough examples of why these two horrible human beings are scam artists, who continuously exploit their fans, almost on a daily basis. Speaking of which, congratulations to the AVGN fans, you bought both of them new houses and merchandise, paid for everything Rolfe's kid needs, made sure all they have to do for the rest of their lives is play video games and how do they thank you? They ban you if you disagree, they ban you if you dislike and they lie about what they'll spend your donations on.
"Sorry there haven't been any new episodes, I'm feeling burnt out."
Thankfully he'll never get burnt out on uploading old videos!