deeproot

deeproot Pinball was a pinball manufacturer founded in San Antonio, Texas, in 2017 by attorney and businessman Robert J. Mueller. The company operated as the sole subsidiary of deeproot Tech and was financed through two investment funds Mueller managed, the deeproot 575 Fund and the deeproot Growth Runs Deep Fund, which together raised close to $59 million from investors. That same year, Mueller hired designer John Popadiuk, who brought with him Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (RAZA), a design he had begun years earlier at his own studio, Zidware.

RAZA became deeproot's flagship title. Prototypes appeared at the Houston Arcade Expo and other events in 2019 and 2020, and the company opened pre-orders for the game in December 2020. Full production never began, and no machines were delivered to buyers.

In August 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud complaint against Mueller and deeproot Funds, LLC in federal court in San Antonio, alleging that the funds' nearly 300 investors had been misled and that Mueller diverted more than $30 million of their money into deeproot-affiliated businesses, including deeproot Pinball, while making Ponzi-like payments to earlier investors. deeproot Pinball, deeproot Studios, and deeproot Tech entered Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings before the end of that year, ending the company's pinball ambitions. The RAZA design outlived the company, passing through deeproot's bankruptcy and eventually resurfacing at Dutch Pinball Exclusive (DPX), which credited the game's earlier development to deeproot.