“We got a call from the bank,” says Mr Fishel.
“They said they couldn’t give us a loan because it was so late, and they said we could get a refund if we had the right documentation.
It was pretty crazy.”
He says they contacted the BBC to see if they could get the video game refund, but the BBC told them that the video games they had been working on were already sold.
“I told them I was going to get it in the mail,” he says.
“The next day, I got a message saying they could have it shipped for $2.50.
It took a little while to get the money out of the bank, but eventually they gave me the money.”
The loan was granted on January 5, 2018, and Mr Fisshel is now waiting to see how long he can keep working on the game.
“It’s been a crazy few months, but I can’t wait to get back to it,” he laughs.
“That’s what I love most about the BBC: they’ve always been there for me, always willing to help.”
The video game industry has had a turbulent history.
In 2014, a young video game developer named Paul Hannon went on trial in the US on fraud charges related to his work on the video-game adaptation of The Matrix, which he co-wrote with former Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
After being cleared of the charges, Hannon was sentenced to seven years in prison.
But he appealed the decision and was granted a release in 2018, when the US Supreme Court ruled that Hannon’s conviction violated the US constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The Supreme Court has now overturned the conviction, and Hannon is currently awaiting sentencing in the UK.
