The unofficial Minecraft convention that was to take place in New York in July suddenly disappears and over half a million dollars is unaccounted for.
Ticket purchasers are irate at the possibility that they just lost up to $150 each, or over $500,000 as a group by the sudden disappearance of Mineorama. Mineorama was meant as an unofficial New York City convention for Minecraft fans. It was set to take place on July 11th through the 13th, but four days before the event was to begin the organizers announced they were postponing everything, “It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that mineorama has been postponed, stay tuned for updates.”
Popular Minecraft YouTuber SkyDoesMinecraft, who was one of the Minecraft personalities heading to the event, received further confirmation from the Mineorama contracted travel vendors that the event was canceled.
This of course was not what convention goers wanted to hear after already booking their flights. But the Mineorama Twitter insisted it was not a scam and that they were “sincerely attempting to make this right.” The next day one of the convention organizers Lou Gasco further elaborated on the situation that the “financing fell through” but that they’d be issuing refunds shortly. There were 3,600 tickets sold for the event.
Shortly thereafter the Mineorama website was deleted. The Mineorama Twitter account was abandoned and quickly picked up by YouTuber Leafy Elfreda who has since turned it into a parody account about the failing of the convention, though she insists if the respective parties want to reclaim the Twitter account she’d give it back. The Mineorama Facebook account is still active but there’s been no update since July 8th.
Some ticket purchasers have tried to go through their respective credit card companies and banks to retrieve their funds with some success. But as one customer told Kotaku, “… the people who paid through PayPal have no chance to recover their money because tickets were purchased so long ago.” Attempts for comments from Mineorama organizers like Lou Gasco and Timothy Carroll have been unsuccessful. Lou Gasco’s personal Twitter account mentions that he was planning to have a Twitch livestream to address the issues around Mineorama. That tweet was made on July 8th and the livestream has yet to take place.
YouTuber BebopVox created an entire video about the Mineorama controversy, and provides additional information that so far there have been three Minecraft conventions that have scammed its ticket purchasers: Meeting of the Mines in Florida, Meeting of the Mines in New York, and Mineapalooza. Mineapalooza ticket purchasers have received their refunds.
There is still a possibility Mineorama isn’t a scam, but hope for ticket purchasers is dwindling.
This isn’t the first time an unofficial convention is in the news for being a disaster: in July the Tumblr convention Dashcon was its own type of fiasco.
Source: Kotaku
