Star Horizon: Crowd1 scammers launch spinoff Ponzi
It’s no secret that Crowd1 has all but collapsed.
ROI withdrawals collapsed almost two years ago. Recruitment kept Crowd1 going, but that’s devolved into Russians and Ukrainians scamming eachother.
Outside of eastern Europe, Crowd1 is dead.
Crowd1’s collapse has prompted executives and top promoters to abandon ship. A week ago BehindMLM documented the departure of Ambassador 3 ranked promoter, George van Wijk.
As part of his personal exit-scam, Wijk branded Crowd1 “unfair and unsafe”. Wijk also mentioned “next steps” but didn’t elaborate.
Today BehindMLM can reveal Wijk, together with other Crowd1 scammers, are gearing up to launch Star Horizon.
On December 23rd, 24-48 hours after Wijk’s Crowd1 exit-scam announcement went out, Star Horizon held a “pre launch presentation”.
The presentation was opened by Alan Platt, a UK resident and former Crowd1 promoter.
Platt went on to introduce Star Horizon’s CEO, Gregory Stevens.
Stevens is from South Africa and is tied to Crowd1 through the failed Emerge Gaming and Miggster Ponzi ruses.
Rob Hersov is credited as Executive Chairman and the “main investor” of Star Horizon.
Hersov is also tied to Crowd1 through the Emerge Gaming Ponzi ruse. Hersov was appointed a non-Executive Director of Emerge Gaming in February 2021.
After Crowd1 ran its course, Hersov cashed out and resigned in January 2022.
Not surprisingly, the ruse behind Star Horizon is gaming.
Starvara is headed up by “Chief Architect and developer” Dominic Obojkovits.
It’s not really worth getting into, because it has nothing to do with Star Horizon’s MLM opportunity, but Starvara is purportedly an MMO.
If you’re familiar with gaming think World of Warcraft, Lost Ark, Final Fantasy XIV etc., but without core game mechanics and ruined with cryptocurrency.
If none of those names mean anything to you, don’t worry. Like I said, mirroring Crowd1, gaming is just a ruse to push Star Horizon.
Here’s George van Wijk salivating at the prospect of scamming people through a new Ponzi scheme;
[24:51] I am not a gamer but when I saw this, the virtual (and) I put the glasses on, I saw so many opportunities.
Not just in the game world but in an open world. Where we can meet each other, we can see each other. Where everybody can be who he want to be [sic].
And be the character and I imagine we have the boardroom and its amazing loft. What you have seen the big table and we can sit altogether and talk to each other.
You are there in England, I am here in the Netherlands and Nic is in South Africa. And there we sitting altogether and have a me- (van Wijk stops himself from saying “meal”)… but there’s no Zoom. We can see each other and we can communicate with each other.
What van Wijk is describing is VRChat, an “an online virtual world platform” released in 2014.
What I do want to establish is that Starvara is recycled nonsense from Crowd1’s Metaversy flop.
Metaversy was Crowd1’s transition from traditional gaming to Web3 gaming (note Web3 is crypto bro speak for “scam”).
Gregory Stevens and Emerge Gaming were in on Crowd1’s transition ruse (Crowd1’s whole Ponzi business model is coming up with new ruses to dupe investors with, they’ve been doing it since the first gambling ruse in 2019).
On September 24th Crowd1 held a PR event for a new office in Singapore. As regurgitated in a BusinessForHome puff-piece;
Metaversy Game Director Henric Swahn (aka “The World Builder”) showed the audience how the most exciting virtual trading game will be defining this new world.
Specifically, Henric shared some tantalising game mechanics developments, which cemented Metaversy as one of the most anticipated web3 games on the planet. Greg Stevens, Nick French and Dominic Obojkovit from GameOut ushered in the new age of online gaming, unveiling the evolution of Miggster Plus, showing the audience what they can expect in the coming months, and introducing their newest Starlined avatar.
Starvara’s website domain was acquired a month later, on or around October 27th, 2022.
Rebranding as Star Horizon aside, Starvara is essentially a continuation of the gaming ruse Stevens and Emerge gaming started with Crowd1.
The trojan horse in Starvara are VARA tokens. This brings us the Star Horizon the MLM opportunity.
Star Horizon’s MLM presentation was given by Nicolaas van den Bergh.
Van den Bergh is from South Africa and, you guessed it, is tied to Crowd1 through Emerge Gaming.
Van den Bergh’s LinkedIn profile cites him leaving Emerge Gaming in May 2022. That same month he signed on as CMO of the newly created entity DFY Studios.
DFY is a Cape Town-based AAA / Web 3.0 gaming studio. We create and distribute multi-platform gaming experiences for a global community, spanning over 152 countries.
I think you can put two and two together…
Mirroring the Crowd1 and Emerge Gaming Ponzi –> ruse relationship, Star Horizon is pitched as an
MMO (massive multiplayer online) network open world which has the exclusive right to sell the starvara universe.
Specific details weren’t revealed but from what was revealed, we know Star Horizon is another “staking” MLM crypto Ponzi scheme.
Sign up as an affiliate, invest in VARA tokens, park the tokens with Star Horizon, get paid a return in VARA tokens and cash out subsequently invested funds.
That’s it, that’s the business model. And everything built around that is smoke and mirrors.
Star Horizon as an MLM opportunity pays affiliates to recruit VARA token investors.
Again, specifics are light but Star Horizon’s marketing references a “two-legged plan”. This would be your typical binary compensation structure:
New money flows into Star Horizon through VARA token investment and conversion of Starvara assets into VARA tokens. Commissions are paid on that volume.
Why this wasn’t realized within Crowd1 isn’t clear. The likley explanation is that nobody is interested in “wEb3 GaMiNg”.
Just with term web3 gaming itself, “gaming” is doing some pretty heavy lifting. Web3 games inevitably incorporate “play to earn” mechanics, which transform a game into essentially work.
Perform menial tasks, earn an in house token and hope to cash out before the entire thing inevitably goes tits up.
As have the majority of Crowd1 investors lost money, so too will the majority of Star Horizon affiliate investors.
Pending Star Horizon’s official launch (TBA), BehindMLM will likely follow up with a detailed review of its compensation plan.
Update 18th January 2023 – Star Horizon entered “pre-promotional” launch on January 16th.
The company appears to have scheduled a “live launch event” for April 1st.
Update 15th March 2024 – Star Horizon appears to have collapsed.
The Alan Platt presentation YouTube video cited in this article has been marked private. The “Starhorizon Corporation” channel the video was hosted on no longer exists.
Furthermore Star Horizon’s website, previously accessible at “starhorizon.net”, now returns a “403 Access Denied” error.
When I read this I thought “Wasn’t there already a scammy space game called Star Horizon”? I then looked up Wikipedia and worked out I was thinking of Star Citizen.
Star Citizen was one of the most prominent examples of a crowdfunding scam. Basically it involved selling pretend spaceships for a game that hadn’t been made yet for thousands of dollars. After which nothing much happened except the occasional perfunctory tech demo.
“Development” seems to be still bumbling along ten years later.
Arguably it presaged the NFT grift nearly a decade later.
The Crowd1 scammers using almost the exact same name has to be either an unintentional homage or a pisstake of their own victims.
Space is a common enough theme in video games. Star Horizon, Star Stake is another that comes to mind. Lazy sure but so this is afterall a lazy respin of the Crowd1 grift.
These aren’t video games as much as they are scams with video game wrapping. Actual game developers “researched” crypto over the past year and abandoned it.
I think Ubisoft was the latest to retire their plans. Generally speaking any actual game company tries to grift their consumers and it doesn’t go over well.
That’s why for all these MLM crypto game scams the only “players” are the affiliate investors – most of whom aren’t gamers to begin with and just want to withdraw other people’s money.
Congratulations Alan & George smart choice!
Emerge Gaming Stock -52% in 2022 and now they Go full ponzi tokens, at least they have the best ponzi Leaders a board to compete with Crowd1, probably they
Get paid for a while here, just refurbish the same old sheep.
The real gamers won’t touch these axi infinity clones.
Let’s watch the race to the bottom between this new company and Crowd1… Greed is the new sexy in 2023 just Too Funny Alan & George get all those Crowd1 people!
THE NFT MARKET IS RIFE WITH SCAMS, PUMP-AND-DUMPS, AND A SPECIFIC KIND OF CRYPTO RACKET CALLED A RUG PULL.
polygon.com/platform/amp/23521430/nft-video-games-crypto-failed-decentraland-axie-infinity
Rug pull is just crypto bro for “exit-scam”, which is a controlled collapse.
A “rug pull” can be executed in any Ponzi scheme.
You’re on the money here Oz, this is a failed game they couldn’t shift two years ago with mediocre reviews:
metacritic.com/game/switch/star-horizon/critic-reviews
thesixthaxis.com/2020/09/03/star-horizon-review/
Now the developers have been persuaded to trot it out as the basis of a “metaverse” project with a rogues gallery ready to promote globally.
Got my popcorn ready: this will be everywhere god help us.
I could be wrong but the 2014 Star Horizon game was an “on rails” space shooter. Different game unless I’m mistaken.
Note 2014 was the original PC release date. The original Star Horizon has since been ported to mobile and Switch (2020).
Thank you Omnipresent comment no #6 !
They (Greg) just refurbish a failed game system into a crypto Ponzi and they needed Ponzi specialists George van Wijk and Allain Platt.
These 2x guys always represent the companies like they we founders or shareholders, pure greedy guys that have zero clue about the real gaming world.
They won’t make it into summer this year, just wonder where they bring their victims after this one again.
Minor update:
Star Horizon got in touch with the ol’ “iNaCcUrAtE iNfOrMaTiOn!” ruse. Didn’t actually cite any inaccurate information so I left it there.
I went looking for an update on Star Horizon’s launch with the aim of publishing a more complete review. Noted compensation details are not provided on Star Horizon’s website.
Also noted they’re flogging a $3000 “Founder Pack”. Comes with 3000 virtual shares, which Star Horizon represents equates to 1% of the company.
Nothing registered with financial regulators so this is of course all securities fraud.
ALAN PLATT THE KNOWN THIEF! SCAMMER of Mass, Ramtek COIN, Crowd1 PONZI is a thief, wanted by the authorities.
NEW SCAM CALLED VARA TOKEN, PONZI, BEWARE OF THIS SCAMMER!
If Platt’s still in the UK I doubt he’s wanted. They’d know exactly where he is.
Rumours are that mr George van Wijk got terminated.
ALAN PLATT IS A KNOWN SCAMMER. MASS COIN, CROWD1 AND NOW THIS.
NUMERO UNO RASCAL, stay away.
Review updated to note Star Horizon appears to have collapsed.