Hatrack River Forum: Escapist Screwing over its Contributors

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Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

The short gist of it is that it turns out that in over a year of doing movies on talking about the theory behind making good games and why bad ones are made and videos on how to move the medium forward and all that it seems that the escapist magazine has only managed to pay the dudes (and dudette) at Extra Credits once, claiming control over their IP and that somehow magically the EC people owe the magazine 10,000$ and generally as best as I can tell being dickish evil overlords.

Here's the twitter feed:

code:

ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Thanks Bob ; )
3 minutes ago 
 
the_moviebob Bob Chipman  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz I Am Spartacus
7 minutes ago 
 
cwgabriel cwgabriel   
I am so excited that we have finally lauched the trenches. New comics on Tuesdays and Thursdays people!
5 minutes ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Sorry, I'm trying to read all of these as fast as they come in, I feel bad but it's way more than I can answer per second
6 minutes ago 
 
LaScaldaferri LeeLee Scaldaferri  by ExtraCreditz   
@ExtraCreditz I was scared to say anything but I realize it's morally worse not to. The Escapist hasn't been paying me either.
15 minutes ago 
 
egreco Erika Sadsad  by cwgabriel   
You guys! We just launched The Trenches! The new collaborative comic from @pvponline @cwgabriel and @TychoBrahe http://j.mp/oun5pA #goseeit
13 minutes ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
In fact, I think that there are a lot of people still doing a lot of good work on the site. I don't think they should get any less views
16 minutes ago 
 
River_Anarchy River Annarchy  by ExtraCreditz@    
@LinksOcarina @ExtraCreditz its not like hes saying "THE ESCAPIST SUCKS DONT GO THERE" hes stating his side of the story nothing more
17 minutes ago 
 
Chris_ToyTma Chris Pranger  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz We're still new, but thus far...you can guess.
19 minutes ago 
 
xerafenix Roberto Rivera  by ExtraCreditz   
@ExtraCreditz While we are fledgling right now I can honestly say that from all of us at Stages of Kaos Studios we support you guys.
24 minutes ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Their contract doesn't actually allow us to terminate. It only gives them the right to...
19 minutes ago 
 
SuperShadowAce Shawn Mudington  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz What's stopping you from firing them?
20 minutes ago 
 
GordonBellamy Gordon Bellamy  by ExtraCreditz@    
.@ExtraCreditz join us in supporting Global @IGDA Scholars igda.org/scholarships Tokyo and L.A.! Deadline TOMORROW!! @jackbogdan
29 minutes ago 
 
Jimtopia Peter Gehm  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz I'm was the animator for Creature Caster Masters, and it took The Escapist 6 months to pay me for the work I did.
33 minutes ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
<3 you guys @rkhoo :)
32 minutes ago 
 
StephenAtHome Stephen Colbert   
The Dow rebounded today! I say we end America right now on a good note.
42 minutes ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Anyone else have any dealings with the escapist where they weren't paid?
48 minutes ago 
 
DTPlaythroughs Allistair Pinsof  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz I wrote for The Escapist for a couple months. They owe $890 and never respond to my emails. It sucks :( I'm on your side.
48 minutes ago 
 
rkhoo Robert Khoo  by cwgabriel   
Yo @ExtraCreditz you know my info. :)
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Sorry, having a thousand conversations. Hopefully we'll be able to publish everything soon...
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
I think clarity would be achieved ; )
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Alex knows I can't publish his letters due to the confidentiality clause of his contract, but were he just to publish all of them...
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
haven't actually read it, but if @archon would like to just publish all the emails between us I think that would clear the air
1 hour ago 
 
D1ffusion Justin Calero  by ExtraCreditz   
@ExtraCreditz A response back with some good detail facebook.com/notes/alexande… Still dunno how much is spin but i dunno..
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Wow, there are a lot of forum threads about this.
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Really? I haven't been checking (been on phone with industry folks)
1 hour ago 
 
bojac6 Jacob K  by ExtraCreditz   
@ExtraCreditz So I think your announcement has caused so many people to go support you on The Escapist that it's brought down the site.
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Also, any game students in Japan, tomorrow is the last day to apply to be an IGDA scholar ; )
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
So @GordonBellamy, also the man (in the good "the man" sense).
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Gordon Bellemy head of the @IGDA just called ; )
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Head of the ECA @HalHalpin just offered to allow us to give away ECA memberships in place of the PubClub ones. <3 Thank you Hal!
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Nope, I'm paying all of our legal expenses out of pocket
1 hour ago 
 
nekoikono Ikono  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz Do the legal fees and them trying to take a cut from RocketHub mean an end to the Indie Game Fund? I sincerely hope not.
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
But if they're not I really don't know what some of those guys can do
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
I'm just worried because I run a company & have lawyers, I'm working under the assumption that the other shows are getting better treatment
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Bleh, I want to be working on the Indie Game Fund, not dealing with this ;_(
1 hour ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Nope, after we notified them of breach and then of termination they still claimed rights to all the episodes @elpelco
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
But it's going to be costly. It'd probably sink the Escapist (assuming they really don't have the money to pay us) and leave me broke
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Unfortunately in the US contracts give a lot of power to the one issuing them. We should be able to win if it comes down to it...
2 hours ago 
 
PurePareidolia Dan Armstrong  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz Still, if the Escapist failed to fulfil their end of the bargain, the can't contractually claim anything from you, right?
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
On the plus side, Allison is starting to be able to draw again and Jo Mad's crew offered her a position working on the next Darksiders
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
(sorry, answering stuff on our FB page for a little bit...)
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Yup, all of that is potentially part of the IP as well as every episode ever created
2 hours ago 
 
DevMartinMusic Devin Martin  by ExtraCreditz@    
@ExtraCreditz Well... is the name/style/concept part of the IP? or can you take that with you?
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
I'm sorry all this energy can't be channeled into something more productive. On the plus side, I'll probably be on twitter more now ; )
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
The Escapist is still claiming our IP and our back catalog of episodes as "work for hire" though we weren't paid ;_(
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
People are asking if this can be discussed. The die has already been cast; if there's any blowback from this it'll be from me talking.
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
(also, it struck me as a funny last moment when the Yahtzee fundraiser came up for...$20,000...a day before they said money would appear)
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Also, there are still a lot of good people doing a lot of good work on the Escapist. I don't want to see this screw over any of them
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
(I've now spent more on lawyers than we were ever paid for the show...this isn't what I wanted at all)
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
We could use your help thursday to spread the word when we post the Youtube link. I don't want to let down people expecting an episode
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
I just hope everyone else on the escapist is getting better treatment than we did...
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Of course this means that the rockethub rewards will have to change (no Escapist Club memberships) but we promise we'll find something
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
And that's really the worst part. All of this takes away from actual good things we could be doing...
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
(But for legal reasons I haven't been able to talk about the show or the rockethub or anything for a while
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
I'll be on on Thursday to post a link
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
We're looking for other outlets at the moment, but we promise we'll keep doing the show on Youtube until we find one
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
But the money never materialized and so we gave them notice two weeks ago and terminated our contract last Friday
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
and wanted to make sure we got paid before we started to talk IP (which would have basically ensured that we didn't get our IP back)
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
The short of it is we told them we wanted to discuss our IP and they gave us a long run around saying they magically found money
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
After that there was a lot of ugliness that I won't go into
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Yeah. This was probably one of the most disappointing moments for me in quite some time. I thought we were all playing for the same team.
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
And that, despite having paid us once over a year, we actually owed them $9500
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
But they shot back informing us that they felt like they were entitled to 75% of the Rockethub money
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
We actually thought we were operating in good faith and getting the IP back so we could do things like make Tshirts would be easy
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Because the contract they had us sign made us give up all the right to the show
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
When, after a lot of wrangling they sent us $1000, we asked them if we could trade them some of what they owed us for our IP back
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Unfortunately, I had to ask the Escapist to send me some of our money then to help Allison (this was before I put up the Rockethub)
2 hours ago 
 
igda Int'l Game Dev Assoc   
10 Lifehacking Tips for Producers http://ow.ly/5ZiWc 2011 Game industry leadership? Check: http://igda.org/leadership #igdalf
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
And that week really was one of the best of my life. Better than releasing games or speaking at GDC.
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
That meant when Allison hurt her arm I was out over $20,000...which is why we had to turn to all of you
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
- not much, but enough to cover Allison’s wages - unfortunately they were never able to.
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Dan and I work on it for free and I pay Allison’s salary out of pocket each month, then, in turn, The Escapist was supposed to pay us
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Last thursday was our final episode on the escapist
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
I'm also sorry that I haven't been more communicative of late, I haven't been able to talk until just now
2 hours ago 
 
ExtraCreditz ExtraCreditTeam   
Hi everyone...I've got a lot to say tonight, so I apologize in advance for the spam. -JP

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

Main publi9sher dude from Escapist Responds:

quote:

Hey guys. This is Alexander Macris. I'm the publisher. Jame's statements are very one-sided so I think they deserve a response.

Yes, we are having a very unfortunate dispute with James over Extra Credits, and yes, he's planning to leave The Escapist, despite our repeated requests that he stay. It's also true that we fell behind in paying James.

Here are the key facts as I see them:

1. From November 2010 to June 2011, James told us not to worry about paying him and to focus on paying other people. His exact words were "I really don’t want to squeeze you guys if you’re in a crunch, so you can put us to the bottom of the list for right now…" Given that we have been in a crunch due to the recession, we took him at his word, thanked him profusely for the flexibility, and focused on paying down other debt. (Several other shows were cancelled around November 2010 you'll recall, as we couldn't pay them, but James' flexibility allowed us to keep working with him to promote Extra Credits.)

2. This continued until June 2011, when James emailed us to alert us that he needed funds urgently. The request was partly for family matters and partly for Allison's surgery. He asked for our permission to raise funds through Kickstarter. We more than gave permission, we threw our weight into supporting it. Unfortunately, Kickstarter refused because they don't do charity. I then suggested James try RocketHub and RocketHub agreed. We again collaborated to make it a joint effort. Our agreement was that we would be compensated for the wholesale cost of the t-shirts and Publisher's Club, and that the funds would be used to save Extra Credits. I reasonably interpreted "save Extra Credits" to mean that anything beyond what was needed for Allison's surgery would be used on Extra Credits production. I also Pay-palled James as much money as we had available at that time.

3. After the RocketHub was enormously successful and James had decided to use the funds to create an indie publishing label rather than to "save Extra Credits", James decided he would no longer speak to us directly and instead assigned a "business development manager" to speak to us. James' new business development manager demanded that we assign all the IP of Extra Credits to James.

4. We indicated we would be happy to work out an IP transfer but that before we did that, we would like to make sure we got paid for the wholesale cost of the t-shirts and the Publisher's Club memberships, and that we would like to see the Extra Credits RocketHub money used to create more Extra Credits. We did NOT ask that James send us $9,500 - we said he should use $9,500 to create more episodes of the show that the money was supposed to be used to save.

5. James' business development manager at that time emailed me and told us that his position was now that we had no rights to the show, no deal, and that our entire contract was invalid. This was out of the blue as far as we were concerned. We had no understanding at this time of James' intent to use the "Save Extra Credits" money to start a publishing business.

6. At this point, Russ Pitts, our editor in chief, flew out to meet with James and his business development manager personally. They agreed that we would continue to work together; that we would transfer the IP to James in exchange for some fee to be negotiated; and that James would handle the EC t-shirts directly rather than through us. We agreed to swallow the cost of the Publisher's Club memberships, a few thousand dollars.

7. I then emailed James and his business development manager to explain that I wanted to get them paid as quickly as possible so that the back debt was not a sticking point in negotiations. I then emailed them again to say that I had talked to our Board and investors and that payment would come in about a week.

8. At this point, James had his lawyer send us an email stating that we were in breach and that unless we sent money more quickly than I had just stated we'd be able to send it, that James was terminating his relationship with us. I presume that James thought we were playing games with him, although we were not.

9. We went ahead and mailed James the money we got from our investors the next week as we had promised. James' lawyer nevertheless sent us an email indicating they intended to terminate our agreement.

10. Finally, I should add that as of last week, we had paid James over $14,000 of the $20,000 we owed him, and that as of today, our company has mailed James all payments he is owed.

I have all of this documented extensively in email. James is simply in error if he believes we have ever lied to him or any of his staff. We are prepared to defend ourselves against future defamation in a court of law.

Cordial regards,

Alexander Macris

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :

Bit of a big old wall of text.

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

Most legal spats are.

Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :

The response from the publisher sounds pretty reasonable.

I'm now 10% less likely to ever start a business. I'm down from about 2% likely to about 1.8% likely.

Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :

Successfully starting a business requires, among other things, that you are ridiculously overconfident about how likely your business is to succeed.

(I don't know if that's actually relevant, I didn't bother reading the wall o text).

Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :

quote:
Successfully starting a business requires, among other things, that you are ridiculously overconfident about how likely your business is to succeed.

I was grimly pessimistic and spent whole nights reading tax filing instructions.

Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :

If you weren't overconfident, you wouldn't have tried in the first place.

Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :

(Both previous statements are calibrated to sound profoundly contrarian rather than actually be true. They're based loosely off some random quote from some [successful] entrepreneur.)

Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :

I completely disagree Blayne, I donated to the save Allison's arm fund, and it was not clear my money would be used for a private business venture.

Read Jim's (of jimquisition fame) and the guy who does Miracle of Sound's comments. James entered into an agreement that he wouldn't be paid until the big E could gather funds for all of its contributors.

He went and put this all out there and has potentially severely damaged EM's revenue and its ability to pay its other contributors.

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

If you donated before it hit the goal then it went to the arm, if you donated after the limit then you're a part of the problem.

Also they most definitely did not agree to not be paid for over a year, a few months seemed reasonable for a site drenched in ad space not for over a year, it is unacceptable for them to not make payroll like this the entire thing smells like a repeat of the 90's dot com bust.

Also it is not a private business venture, its a not-for-profit fund for indie developers.

The Escapist clearly has a terrible business plan of "keep trying to recreate Yahtzee's success".

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

Jame's open response to Alex:

quote:

People have been asking me to respond to this, I will, but I’ll try to be brief. In truth I’d rather not and I don’t want to stir this any longer; I think most things of value have been said.

***I just finished writing this, and answering just made me sad. At first some of the spin on what happened frustrated me, but now I realize that it doesn’t matter. Truth will out in time. I don’t want to do the Escapist harm, and I don’t want to see everyone’s energy wasted on this discussion when it could be put to more productive uses. It is my hope that the Escapist can find an equitable solution for all of their content producers and be stronger for it. While we can no longer work with them, if that happens they’ll find nothing but support from us.***
----
Hey guys. This is Alexander Macris. I'm the publisher. Jame's statements are very one-sided so I think they deserve a response.
Yes, we are having a very unfortunate dispute with James over Extra Credits, and yes, he's planning to leave The Escapist, despite our repeated requests that he stay. It's also true that we fell behind in paying James.
Here are the key facts as I see them:
1. From November 2010 to June 2011, James told us not to worry about paying him and to focus on paying other people. His exact words were "I really don’t want to squeeze you guys if you’re in a crunch, so you can put us to the bottom of the list for right now…" Given that we have been in a crunch due to the recession, we took him at his word, thanked him profusely for the flexibility, and focused on paying down other debt. (Several other shows were cancelled around November 2010 you'll recall, as we couldn't pay them, but James' flexibility allowed us to keep working with him to promote Extra Credits.)

*This statement is meant to bate me into saying that I waived my right to be paid. Alex knows this is false and has been trying to do it in every email for a month now.*
2. This continued until June 2011, when James emailed us to alert us that he needed funds urgently. The request was partly for family matters and partly for Allison's surgery. He asked for our permission to raise funds through Kickstarter. We more than gave permission, we threw our weight into supporting it. Unfortunately, Kickstarter refused because they don't do charity. I then suggested James try RocketHub and RocketHub agreed. We again collaborated to make it a joint effort. Our agreement was that we would be compensated for the wholesale cost of the t-shirts and Publisher's Club, and that the funds would be used to save Extra Credits. I reasonably interpreted "save Extra Credits" to mean that anything beyond what was needed for Allison's surgery would be used on Extra Credits production. I also Pay-palled James as much money as we had available at that time.

*I asked for payment because one of my brothers was going through a painful divorce and needed funds badly. I had no money for him because I hadn’t been paid. Again, they told me they were going to pay me and again didn’t come through. I actually told them that I would hustle up more work for myself when they asked for more time to find funds…Then Allison happened. That made twice in a month where I failed someone I cared about very much because I had spent all my money on the show.

This is when I insisted on doing the Rockethub as a final recourse before I _had_ to take legal action. You can judge for yourselves if the Rockethub was in really a joint effort.
Alex told us that it would cost $36,450 dollars to make the t-shirts. In the end we had to tell them that we’d just do it ourselves.

As to saving Extra Credits, that was what the initial Rockethub amount was for, but became clear that even with physical therapy and some living money for Allison we had overflow. We couldn’t possibly need that money to “save Extra Credits” if they had any intention of paying us in the future.

Alex did send us funds over paypal. I’m not sure I can mention how much but I think you can probably extrapolate from the fact that this is the only time that amount isn’t stated in this response what general range of sum it is. Though I trust Alex as CEO wasn’t taking a paycheck at this point and so this was truly the absolute last money they had.*
3. After the RocketHub was enormously successful and James had decided to use the funds to create an indie publishing label rather than to "save Extra Credits", James decided he would no longer speak to us directly and instead assigned a "business development manager" to speak to us. James' new business development manager demanded that we assign all the IP of Extra Credits to James.

*
http://www.rockethub.com/projects/2165-extra-credits/posts/740

If you check out the link you’ll find that none of us earn money from this “label”. It’s actually going to cost us time, but the idea is that we can use it to create jobs for people doing what they love and maybe help some more people get into the industry. I think the concern here was that we were suggesting we give away that money rather than keep it.

As far as our business development manager. We couldn’t get a straight answer out of the Escapist so we needed to bring on someone who could. He actually very clearly offered to exchange some of our debt for our IP back. The response from the Escapist was to tell us that they were entitled to 75% of the rockethub money, so that covered their debt…and we owed them $9500.*
4. We indicated we would be happy to work out an IP transfer but that before we did that, we would like to make sure we got paid for the wholesale cost of the t-shirts and the Publisher's Club memberships, and that we would like to see the Extra Credits RocketHub money used to create more Extra Credits. We did NOT ask that James send us $9,500 - we said he should use $9,500 to create more episodes of the show that the money was supposed to be used to save.

*Again, why would that money need to be used to create more Extra Credits if they were going to pay us? It could have been used to keep other people employed in this economy.

Again, cost of t-shirts shouldn’t be $36,450 at wholesale.

I’m glad there was no denial about the fact that they not only wanted to wipe out their debt but also have us indebted to them by $9500.*
5. James' business development manager at that time emailed me and told us that his position was now that we had no rights to the show, no deal, and that our entire contract was invalid. This was out of the blue as far as we were concerned. We had no understanding at this time of James' intent to use the "Save Extra Credits" money to start a publishing business.

*This is a conflation of two totally different events. Our manager told him this in response to our inquiries about payment and the statement that we owed them $9500. I’m not sure what the alleged “publishing business” has to do with this.*

6. At this point, Russ Pitts, our editor in chief, flew out to meet with James and his business development manager personally. They agreed that we would continue to work together; that we would transfer the IP to James in exchange for some fee to be negotiated; and that James would handle the EC t-shirts directly rather than through us. We agreed to swallow the cost of the Publisher's Club memberships, a few thousand dollars.

*This is a false statement that we can actually talk about because it’s public knowledge. If you go here http://www.igda.org/summit/tracks-topics-2011/writing-about-games-2011/ you’ll see Russ was scheduled to be out that weekend anyway. He stayed at the W Hotel right next to the convention. The week they dropped this on us was in fact a week they knew I’d be busy with two conventions.*
7. I then emailed James and his business development manager to explain that I wanted to get them paid as quickly as possible so that the back debt was not a sticking point in negotiations. I then emailed them again to say that I had talked to our Board and investors and that payment would come in about a week.

*We’ve been informed that this was a tactic to keep us from having any claim to our intellectual property. Once they had paid us, they could just tell us “no”. If that wasn’t their goal why not begin negotiations as if they were going to send us payment, which we offered to do.

Though, thinking on it, it is a wee bit odd that money would just materialize when we asked about getting our rights back, even though they’d been unable to pay us during the previous year.*
8. At this point, James had his lawyer send us an email stating that we were in breach and that unless we sent money more quickly than I had just stated we'd be able to send it, that James was terminating his relationship with us. I presume that James thought we were playing games with him, although we were not.

*We sent the breach of contract notice when a week rolled around and no money came. Instead we got a Rockethub Fundraiser for Yahtzee for _$20,000_ and another excuse saying they needed another week. Our breach of contract notice actually gave them another week to repair the breach. They did not send us any money in that time.*

9. We went ahead and mailed James the money we got from our investors the next week as we had promised. James' lawyer nevertheless sent us an email indicating they intended to terminate our agreement.

*So far, I still haven’t seen any check from them.*

10. Finally, I should add that as of last week, we had paid James over $14,000 of the $20,000 we owed him, and that as of today, our company has mailed James all payments he is owed.

*Still haven’t seen a dollar. I hope this is true. Regardless, it doesn’t change where we’re at. We can’t keep waiting for money that doesn’t materialize. We also can’t continue to work with business partners who we don’t feel have treated with us in good faith.*
I have all of this documented extensively in email. James is simply in error if he believes we have ever lied to him or any of his staff. We are prepared to defend ourselves against future defamation in a court of law.

*It’s amazing how quickly they are ready to threaten court when someone starts to speak about what’s been going on. We haven’t done this, though I believe we have a stronger case. I’m going to work under the assumption that our situation is unique and they’ve never threatened any of their other content creators with legal action. I’m also going to assume that this was said in a moment of passion and not fault Alex for it, I know he’s not the sort of person who would spend money on suing one of his content creators while others remain unpaid.*

Cordial regards,
Alexander Macris

*Alex, if you read this, know we have no desire to harm the Escapist or burn things to the ground. I think there’s a way out of this that’s ok for all of us and I don’t bear you any ill will. I’m willing to work under the idea that, barring anything new, the last month and last year have been the result of the terribly stressful situation you must be in. At this point I’m going to bow out of the discussion for 24 hours to give you some space to think and allow things to get a little more calm in the internet world. If you’re acting in good faith, contact our attorney and work with him to find an answer, you have my word that reasonable talk will be met with reasonable talk: there is time to resolve this well yet.*

Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :

Some thoughts:

1) Jeez, putting that all out with Twitter looks ridiculous as compared to the concise email sent in reply. I've never used Twitter, and still am confused what the friggen point of it is.

2) I was fairly neutral after reading the first two exchanges, but the third exchange seemed to do more harm than good in me supporting James in the spat. He comes off a bit too jerkish there for my tastes. Edit: I'm not sure if I could point to a specific thing said that made me feel this way, it just did.

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

They have a concise email on facebook themselves somewhere but I can't find it.

Also the point of twitter is that it gives more of a sense of cooperation/conversation with their fans/followers.

I didnt much see the point of twitter until I started using it myself.

[ August 11, 2011, 05:51 PM: Message edited by: Blayne Bradley ]

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :

Also Jim & Yahtzee who we can assume are paid on time are a) the owner of destructoid and the golden goose of the escapist magazine respectively. Of course they would be paid on time and be upfront about it.