Kingdom Craze Review: Virtual estates & tributes?
There is no information on the Kingdom Craze website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The Kingdom Craze “Terms and Conditions” do mention a “Kingdom Craze LLC” operating out of Texas in the US. A Google search reveals multiple businesses operating out of the provided street address (including FedEx), indicating that it is just virtual office space or a PO Box.
Further confusion arises with Kingdom Craze indicating a possible business registration in the state of Nevada:
By visiting the Website, even if accessed from a location outside the United States, You agree that the laws of the state of Nevada will govern these disclaimers, Terms of Condition, or Privacy Policy, without giving effect to any principles of conflicts of laws.
You hereby irrevocably and unconditionally consent to jurisdiction in the state of Nevada.
Corporation Wiki links a “Ehrich Pakala” as an “Manager” of Kingdom Craze LLC (Texas), however I wasn’t able to find any information specifically connecting Pakala to the MLM industry.
Read on for a full review of the Kingdom Craze MLM business opportunity.
The Kingdom Craze Product Line
Kingdom Craze offer no retailable products or services themselves. Instead, affiliates join the company and invest money in virtual real estate, which Kindom Craze refer to as “hovels”.
This is an inhouse game run on the Kingdom Craze website, only available to registered affiliates and presumably owned by the company itself.
On the Kingdom Craze website a series of third-party games are available to visitors (non-affiliates), some of which are purportedly “pay to play”.
Some sort of affiliate agreement most likely exists between Kingdom Craze and the creators of the games, such that if a visitor pays to play, the company receives an affiliate commission.
The Kingdom Craze Compensation Plan
The Kingdom Craze compensation plan revolves around affiliates purchasing virtual real estate the company calls “hovels”.
Hovels cost $10 each and are purchased with Kingdom Craze’s virtual currency, the “krun”. 1000 kruns is equal to $10 USD.
Once purchased, each hovel pays out a daily ROI to the affiliate that owns it for 180 days.
The amount of land you own directly affects how much Krun you receive daily in tributes.
Kingdom Craze affiliates can increase their affiliate rank via purchasing more hovels. This apparently increases the amount of “tributes” they are able to earn. In order to qualify for their daily ROI, Kingdom Craze affiliates must play games on the website (which I believe increases as their affiliate rank does).
Tributes is what Kingdom Craze call their referral commissions, with each recruited affiliate paying a 10% referral commission to their recruiter on each hovel purchase.
A referral tribute commission (variable) is also paid out on the hovel-based daily ROI paid to affiliates.
Referral commissions are paid out in kruns.
No fixed minimum and maximum krun investment amounts are provided, however Kingdom Craze do state in their Terms and Conditions that
Minimum and maximum limits may be applied to Your payments into Your Account, depending upon Your history with the Website, the method of deposit, and other factors as determined solely by the Provider.
“Other factors” most likely includes “Kingdom Craze not wanting to pay you” and “sorry, you’ve invested too much money”.
Kruns are also earnt via engaging in player vs. player (PVP) “wars”, which appear to be wager-based and playing games on the website (monthly krun commission).
Joining Kingdom Craze
Affiliate membership to Kingdom Craze is free. Affiliate must purchase hovels however if they wish to earn a daily ROI, or recruit new affiliates if they wish to generate referral commissions (tributes).
Note that if Kingdom Craze affiliates do not log into their accounts and play games ‘ for a period of six (6) consecutive months or more, (Kingdom Craze) reserve the right to charge a maintenance fee of $2.00 per month‘.
Conclusion
While it’s refreshing to see something other than the usual “advertising credits” attached to an investment scheme, sadly as creative as the whole medieval theme Kingdom Craze have got going (which admittedly gave me flashbacks to playing Age of Empires), it still effectively just boils down to an affiliate-funded investment scheme.
First and foremost we’ve got an MLM compensation plan (downlines and referral commissions), with affiliates not selling any products to retail customers. I’ve got nothing against gamification and paying for game items etc., but when you deploy an MLM compensation plan your affiliates need to be marketing something.
In Kingdom Craze the company sells virtual items, affiliates do not. And even if they did, the question of product value comes up as Kingdom Craze clearly state in their terms and conditions that
Virtual items have no value outside of the service.
If a retail product existed, the notion that a non-affiliate customer (retail) would purchase virtual items that held no value outside of the income opportunity (the service), clearly doesn’t make sense.
Breaking down the Kingdom Craze compensation plan, we’ve got affiliates investing in kruns and hovels and earning a daily ROI over 180 days.
No guaranteed daily rate is provided however when considering the motive behind hovel and krun investment, it’s clear that an implied >100% guaranteed ROI over 180 days exists.
Without an implied guarantee the scheme would fail to attract new investors.
Kingdom Craze do state that the daily hovel tribute ROI paid out to affiliates is
calculated based on the overall advertising revenues taken in by KC from various media channels.
However with affiliates advertising the scheme as currently hovering around 0.8% (and as high as 1% a day), this seems highly unlikely:
As is typical with schemes offering such a high daily ROI, a far more likely scenario is that Kingdom Craze simply take newly invested affiliate money and pay it back to the affiliatebase in kruns.
This of course reduces Kingdom Craze to a simple Ponzi scheme with a whole bunch of gamification gimmickry attached. And even if they weren’t paying out a ridiculously high ROI from affiliate investments in krun, there’s still the issue of the company offering what is obviously an unregistered security by way of virtual real estate.
As with all Ponzi schemes, Kingdom Craze’s business model will naturally work until enough affiliates have built up their krun balances such that the amount of real money affiliates are withdrawing exceeds new investment coming in.
What happens then?
All purchases of virtual items made through the service are non-refundable and non-transferable.
All Virtual Items are forfeited if Your Account is terminated or suspended for any reason.
(Kingdom Craze) reserves the right to terminate your account, limit or prohibit your participation in the service for any reason.
(Kingdom Craze) also reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to add, alter or terminate the website, a game or any other service offered therein, at any time and without notice to you.
You acknowledge that (Kingdom Craze) is not required to provide a refund for any reason, and that you will not receive money or other compensation for unused virtual items when an account is closed.
Furthermore,
Residents of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee or Vermont are NOT eligible to become Authorized Members.
Nothing suss there folks…
Hmmm… what makes those states special? I got it… They cloned it from this MMO game
http://www.streetempires.com/terms.php
kruns, hovels, stupid
corporationwkiki says iowa…
http://www.corporationwiki.com/Iowa/Cedar-Falls/ehrich-pakala/135854060.aspx
Yeah I saw that, I think Kingdom Craze LLC was registered in Iowa prior to Texas. Corporation Wiki has two entries for the LLC.
Hitesh Juneja and Jason Rose was listed as agents on Bizapedia for Kingdom Craze, no mention of Ehrich Pakala.
http://www.bizapedia.com/tx/KINGDOM-CRAZE-LLC.html
Hitesh and Ehrich were buddies in college and joined a business incubator. Apparently it didn’t work out.
http://www.jpec.org/content/student-business-incubator
Hitesh seem to be the serial MLMer here, with names attached to CopyNProfit, Power Results Academy, Commission Ignition, etc.
No idea on Jason Rose.
Jason Rose’s name popped up when I was doing my research as he’s the owner of “J&H Marketing”.
J&H Marketing are listed as the owners of the Kingdom Craze website domain and a Jason Rose claims to be the owner of J&H Marketing on LinkedIn.
J&H Marketing mention on their website (“jhmarketingsolutions.com”) that they “design websites” though so I wrote them off as just having designed the site. Rose’s name appearing as agents for Kingdom Craze might indicate company ownership.
In his LinkedIn profile, Rose also lists himself as the COO/CFO of Power Results Academy.
I’m going to take a random stab in the dark and guess that the “H” in J&H Marketing stands for “Hitesh”…
Why are you posting a review about something you haven’t really reviewed?
All you have done was make assumptions from some things you have read.
The biggest mistake I see that you made was the fact that their virtual currency has no value in the real world.
It does and that’s what makes this interesting.
You can cash out everyday. You exchange your virtual currency for real currency or buy real items online.
You’re “play money” gets deposited into your bank account as real money.
I can’t believe you didn’t see this in your so-called review.
Also look at the alexa ranking it’s 44k already.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/kingdomcraze.com#
This site is aleady getting a lot of traffic.
(Ozedit: recruitment spam removed)
PS- I don’t know why the author of this post didn’t join himself and get the real story it’s free.
PPS- That’s the other big misconception your article gives… You DO NOT need to buy or pay for kruns (virtual money) with your own money. You can if you want to get a head start but you can play games and earn them, you can fill out online offers and earn them. There are other ways too but you have to read about it after you sign up for free.
And to be honest it looked like a ponzi scheme to me like zeek rewards because as you say they are not selling anything. But you just need to follow the money like any other opportunity to judge it’s validity.
They have money coming in from advertisers and from people filling out offers (to earn kruns or money).
Have you ever heard of cpa offers, this is a brilliant way to generate income. And they have video ads that play before the games.
the biggest thing that I see that makes this different from the pyramid ponzi money schemes is that if I was to buy a lot of kruns by paying for them with real money through paypal (who also won’t be a part of a scam) is the fact that the person who invited me or my upline or affiliate i signed up under DOES NOT get paid a commission from the money I spend buying the virtual currency.
They get paid a percentage of the profits according to how much virtual land they own.
Think about it because it makes all the difference in the world… (the real world)
Things like the Kingdom Craze compensation plan?
Fancy that. I suppose the Alexa ranking is a far better indicator as to the mechanics of the Kinddom Craze business model…
You can “cash out” as long as Kingdom Crazy convert your monopoly money into real money.
Try and spend your Kruns on soemthing outside of Kingdom Craze. See how far that gets you.
Yeah Zeek Rewards had a few people buying retail bids too. The rest of it was affiliate money.
Same deal here. Massive affiliate investment and some breadcrumbs on the side.
Yawn. A Ponzi points, sorry “kruns” based Ponzi schemeis still a Ponzi scheme.
They get paid a percentage of whatever the other affiliates invest. This is just your standard points based Ponzi wrapped in online game packaging.
I received the following email from an “Ehrich”, sent from an email address using Kingdom Craze domain name:
My response:
People put in money, said money is converted to Krun, Krun are used to buy positions in the comp plan (hovels), each hovel pays out a daily ROI. Where does that money come from? Other affiliates who have converted real money to Krun.
Please Ehrich, a spade is a spade.
So? Plenty of Ponzi schemes cap max investment amounts.
A nice little way to drain affiliates of some additional money once they’ve (literally) invested themselves in the scheme, but irrelevant to the core investment mechanic outline above.
There’s no mention of it because it’s irrelevant to the mechanics of the underlying investment scheme (outlined above). People are promoting Kingdom Craze as an investment opportunity because… wait for it… that’s what it is.
Dressed up in the trappings of an online game granted, but it still functions as an investment scheme, with referral commissions on investments (tributes), primary investment (hovels) and a daily ROI.
…now we’re getting somewhere.
Or they could invest in hovels, in which case you as the recruiter would earn referral commissions (tribute). Referral commissions need multiple levels and a downline, thus KC uses an MLM compensation plan.
Well then it’s not really “exactly like” them then is it. Without having looked at those games, the fact that you can’t convert their virtual currency into cash is most likely what makes them not Ponzi schemes.
Whether intentionally or not, KC’s business model functions as any other online Ponzi scheme would. Affiliates invest in hovels, earn a daily ROI, recruit others and if they invest then earn referral commissions.
Whatever else you attach to this core mechanic is irrelevant.
It’s funny. You seem to pick out things from Anthony#7 comments that you feel you could reply to. But you leave out a lot of the things he said.
Like the fact you are issuing a review about a product or service without testing it yourself.
Hell…you did not even bother reading all the details about the site. Or if you did…you did a diservice to your readers by leaving a lot of important facts out in your so called review.
Including the fact that you don’t have to invest 1 penny to make money through the game.
Including the fact that the site makes money through advertising and sponsored offer through Trialpay.
So people don’t have to buy anything, The site makes money from advertisements that appear before the games on the site are played. (By the way to earn daily tributes you must play 3 games per day) and the site makes money from trialpay when users do trial offers.
Yet you write your so called review and leave all of this out.
Really?
(Ozedit: removed derail attempts)
The review is written from an MLM business opportunity perspective, with what information was available on the site at the time. Thus any marketing spiels and information not related to Kingdom Craze as an MLM business opportunity are irrelevant.
A business model and compensation plan are all that is needed to review an MLM opportunity. Use of the product is neither here nor there.
Facts that have nothing to do with KC as an MLM business are irrelevant. In writing reviews I sort through the fluff and try to stick only to what’s relevant from an MLM standpoint.
“Don’t have to” doesn’t negate the fact that you can. Fail.
You and I both know this will not pay out the 0.8% average daily ROI KC is paying out its investors. All advertising based investment schemes just use the premise as a front. Affiliate money is taken in and redistributed back to investors, depending on how much they initially invested (and convinced others to invest).
Advertisers aren’t interested in advertising to passive investors playing games as a qualification requirement to receive a daily ROI payout.
I have not signed up for this at this time. However I agree the investment thing is a bit of a turn off. What I do know and wanted to comment is the fact I had an idea like this in the past but no means to implement it.
With the information I managed to gather you could surely make a profit from advertisers that want to reach a gaming market. With thousands of games played the income would increase dramatically.
Example: Pogo
When pogo was released they offered cash prizes if you were lucky enough to win. They also offered a subscription based service which is investing. However Pogo is not considered a Ponzi Scheme.
The problem I do see however is the fact that they can not make any promises to the amount of income you should earn. It is very likely that each video that plays earns .001 in advertising revenues and the rest of the money is paid though other investors.
However given the player base its possible to earn up to 3.00 per advertisement highly unlikely but possible. That would be the only way to offer such a high rate of return.
With that being said if you have 100,000 visitors and they all play 10 games a day at .001 you would have an income of 1000 dollars a day on the low end. I could see them offering that to register users. If they only had 5,000 registered users and they all earned a portion of the income would be around .20 usd a day.
I would say that would make this business model reasonable and what I had in mind when I was looking at starting something along these lines. However I would not sell such items but rather let them be earned and split the proceeds among those. Such as 1,000 games played you get x hovels and the hovel would provide 1 share of the money. The more shares issued the less revenue you would expect to earn from a share.
With this system someone might get 5.00 a day and someone else might get pennies. I could say for sure no one would be earning 20.00+ a day unless they had played millions of games.
I look forward to reading your reply and feel free to share to my email since I more than likely would not make it back here again.
I don’t know what Pogo is, however if they didn’t accept payment from affiliates then they couldn’t have been a Ponzi scheme.
There’s nothing inherently problematic in running an advertising supported gaming service. The problem is when you start charging players (affiliates) and paying them commissions.
Advertisers aren’t stupid. Financially incentivized players are there for one thing and one thing only, commissions.
It’s worse if their commissions are directly tied into the advertising or playing of games, as the motive behind their participation is then thrown into question (in that it’s likely financially based).
Advertisers aren’t just interested in numbers, they want their dollars spent to be targeted. As such that’s why these types of schemes attract fraction of a cent advertisers. $3 per advertisement is wholly unrealistic.
Awarding hovels via game playing is fine, the problem here has always been the affiliate-funded purchase of them which, when you consider the ROIs attached to hovel ownership relegates Kingdom Craze into Ponzi scheme territory.
I think he’s referring to Pogo.com, the online flash game website bought by Electronic Arts.
Well I’m going to go ahead and assume EA aren’t charging their players money and paying out commissions per dollar spent.