Well, this was easily researched and not true. Sequoia Capital
[1], Accel Partners
[2], 500 Startups
[3], Insight Venture Partners
[4]. These are just a few of the MANY that are easily found online, all based in the United States and all have invested in video game developers in the last five years.
Curt Schilling's company 38 Studios defaulted on the $78 million dollar loan from the state of Rhode Island. Not only did he default on the loan but encouraged employees to continue coming to work after the money had dried up leading them on. The employees later found out when their payroll was missing from their individual bank accounts. In the end Curt's company was $151 million in debt with only $22 million in assets and had to file chapter 7 bankruptcy.
[5] I would say that the investors that as you say
"wouldn't have a second meeting with him", were smarter than you are.
Microsoft dropped Sigil Games (Brad's Company) only after multiple disputes and changes within Microsoft.
"... there was a regime change at Microsoft where they reorganized a lot of their game studios. The people who were in charge of the Vanguard project on the Microsoft side went elsewhere and a completely new group of people were put in place. In that new group of people, the upper management side were also in charge of getting the Xbox 360 out the door. So, the PC games at the time were not receiving a lot of support and I don't blame Microsoft for this at all." - Brad Mcquaid
Sigil also had infighting within the company concerning the direction of Vanguard which also concerned Microsoft. They funded Sigil Games somewhere to the tune of $30-$40 million before deciding not to continue and this also was partly due to the rise of World of Warcraft and the similarities that Microsoft believed Vanguard had to the very successful MMO. It was after this that he simply returned to his old publisher SOE. Also, this all happened in late 2006.
It also would seem in retrospect that Microsoft made a solid decision dropping them. They ended up only selling around 200,000 copies of Vanguard, ultimately getting squashed by World of Warcraft. In the end Sigil game's director Andy Platter fired all of its employees in a meeting held in the company's parking lot. SOE tried to revive the game more than once and failed in the end losing millions.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that you are full of shit.