Smalland: A Case for Transparency in Early Access Games - Sensationalist Headlines

Last night before I went to sleep, I saw that post by SMALLAND and thought, 'hey, maybe this story is going to have a happy ending.' Then I come to this thread today and see Hezzy's post. I'm glad Newpunch can still generate the good drama shit.

I hate shit like this, so I am making sure that every gaming news site, subreddit, etc, is being made aware of this.

I was Art Director / Technical Artist on Smalland. Here's my story about being underpaid, not getting paid for the period between last payment and when I got fired, poor and outright brutal management, the damage they did to me and how they were in breach of the contract in multiple ways. First of all, I was terribly underpaid. They paid me for barely 13 hours/week. I was contracted to do 40 hours and I actually performed 60-60+ hours / week. I was in a financial bad situation, and I had to take this job because of the lack of other jobs avaiable. I was very motivated for the project, hence why I performed so many hours. I was Art Director and felt responsible for the art team meeting deadlines, so I went the extra mile to help out the artists on the team. Management was outright brutal to me and didn't support me on my role. They did not communicate at all. And when I tried communicating with them, usually all they said was things like "You should've asked that last week, now you'll have to figure it out on your own", or "You're not doing your job, step up" without further helping me with the questions I had to actually do my job right. They also did not communicate the job description clearly. Followed by daily insults that I'm not doing my job without explaining what it is that I'm not doing. I did everything the guy described that was my job in the job interview I had with him. I mean, I know what an Art Director is supposed to do in general, but every company has extra things they expect. If you don't communicate that, then ofcourse the employee will not do he's job right. I did not get paid for the period between my last payment and when I got fired. This is 13 days of work and about 1k dollar. They fired me on an unprofessional way, while being in breach of the contract in multiple ways: the contract stated when either party wants to end the contract it should be done 15 days in front of the date that the contract stops. They just send me a document that I was fired (with wrong date, my name spelled wrong) which would have me stop working on the date they send me the document itself. The date on the document was the date where I started working for the company. The contract stated upon ending the contract they would pay any money that they still owe. They damaged me more than 1k dollar. Here's why: It's very difficult in the indie game industry to find work. While I was working for them and not getting paid, I have probably missed 1-2 interesting projects I could apply for. They didn't follow the contract and didn't give me 15 days before I would get fired, so I didn't get that payment either, that makes the total amount owed already at 2k dollar. (28 days of labor) By constantly hearing I'm not doing my job, and I need to get better, and by not communicating to me, I started to actually believe I was not doing my job properly and that the communication problem was my fault. After I got fired I got into a pitfall, being down, maybe even depressed. Thinking being Art Director was to much for me. So I applied for regular shitty small tasks again as regular programmer or 3D Artist, which were also less paid. After a few months I realized that the fault was all theirs and I decided to start my own company and recruited 12 people with a royalty contract. The team has been amazing and we finished and released a game in early access in just 5 months time. Noone left the team, I didn't have to fire anyone. I appear to have a talent for being Creative Director and doing art direction, programming direction etc etc. and I can motivate people, manage them properly and get games finished within the time frame. If only I had known that when I went in the downwards spiral for a few month of the SMALLAND scandal, I would've been much further developed with my company right now!! Sorry for wall of text. I know it's a long story. Should I try to talk to Rustic and try and get my money or shoudl I just sue them? Because there's not much point in talking with a guy who ignores your questions and avoids them and talks scummy all the time.

Multiple cases of wage theft and breach of contract? Get in contact with each other and get a lawyer - you basically are sitting on a gold mine and the company has severely fucked up beyond an apology + just paying what is owed.

Sue the fucker, nothing else will get through his thick skull from what I've read.

Hell, even if just talking to him was enough to change his ways and you even get paid back, sue him anyways. Make an example out of him for other devs who think they can get away with shit like this to learn from.

What game is it that u make?

Smalland more like Scamland

🎶🎶class action🎶🤔🤔🤔

A game where everybody but the greedy boss dude who doesn't understand how a contract works, loses.

I say report the game on steam for fraud.

I'll be brief in saying this - I really appreciate the support everyone has given me and in this article. It took me a long time to muster up the courage to write this because there was a voice in my head [along with being threatened with an NDA] saying that this would really mess me up legally. I don't understand the business or legal world, and in fact, I started majoring in Business about when I got fired because I wanted to be idealistic and not mess people up [or get messed up] the way myself and others were. But, I feel like the message of the article is getting away and turning into an angry mob ready to burn down this studio. Yes, what happened to me and Stefan was fucked up. We were both set back quite a bit and left me to really reassess what I'm going to do. I made the mistake of really depending on this money to help myself buy a beater car so I can finally get some independence - so I could finally get a glimpse of financial freedom without freaking out at the end of each month. I take responsibility for not doing the due diligence on really determining if these were the right people to employ me. However, I wanted first and foremost to give the backers accurate information about the game. They have collectively ~$5000 in investment towards a project that has failed to give any sort of updates for the existence of its development. That trumps my >$1600 of unpaid wages and subsequent struggles therein. The updates, previously as of April, were fabricated and not a real indication of their progress, and their lack of progress since them is worrisome. And, this has been a trend I hate to see in games, my favorite creative medium. You are beholden to your backers because they are equivalent to your shareholders. That's Business 101. I take these claims of them being beholden to a grain of salt because of threats I received by the CEO. You have an obligation as a business owner to make sure that you maintain your business ethically. If you knew me in person, I'm a very open and forgiving person; in fact, maybe I'm a bit too much. But there is a difference between being friends with someone and running a business. This is not a situation of a friend messing up, fessing up, hugging it out, and moving on. When you are running a business you hold responsibilities of the livelihoods of your employees and your shareholders. You cannot make these sorts of [conscious] mistakes and think that they will be solved with a simple apology, especially after you threaten your employees with legal action for trying cry foul on your illegal activities. When you hold the position of CEO, your holding a rank of prestige but also immense responsibility. You cannot simultaneously play PUBG, refuse to lead your team, and complain that competent workers are not getting their job done when you do not provide them the tools to allow them to do their job. And you do not get to hold their financial stability hostage because it fits And really, much of what I said does not unique to my situation. In fact, I tried not to focus on Smalland [although, there is so much more I didn't get into] and expose an industry that is incredibly rife with corrupt. Smalland is a microcosm of a greater issue of lack mismanaged teams with other people's money on the line. I'm hopeful in my outlook, however. At the end of the article I mention the excitement I have when I made something awesome with my team and go through the right channels to share it with people who are following after our game. It's an awesome feeling; that's why game developers do what they do. When you are backing a game, you should actively look for that in a team. If a team is fucking discouraged by their playerbase, then they aren't doing a good enough job. They should be talking to y'all about the awesome game that they are making. I hate this bullshit of people defending development teams and their feelings. We have a great fucking job, stop being pussies and get back to making the game. Nevermind, that wasn't so brief.

If it turns into an angry mob, then it does. They can deal with that and they cannot seriously be surprised. Honestly, if you're going to be lying and doing unethical stuff behind the scenes it is generally smarter to keep the people who you have entrusted with this secret happy or at least treat them right. I think what makes people mad is that with early access and kickstart is that so many people have been burned by shady developers and quick schemes. Some have been burned by legitimate attempts but developers just didn't have the experience or the knowledge to complete their game. In the end this leads up to thousands of dollars robbed from gamers. Which also affects indie games who are made by legitimately talented and experienced developers. Its like paying someone to come build your fence, they don't have the capital to buy the supplies, so you end up paying for the job up front instead of after. Then they build you 1/4 of the fence and run off with the money or fail to build the fence because of improper finances. In the end you are left with something broken and incomplete. I'm angry because no one deserves to be robbed or cheated out of their work. It is like a employer having you work 40 hours for the week, but because of one call in, missed task, or mistakes, and they withhold your whole paycheck. While doing that they turn around and slander you and attempt to distract from what they did by trying to discredit you. Not only that, it seems like the CEO/Lead Dev is deliberately doing this in order to get free work out of people. I don't believe for a second his intentions are pure and I truly believe he is dicking people out of money and work so he can try and claim more money in the end for himself. What makes people even more angry is when they actually get to read someones stories and talk with them. It personally angers me to see someone who under normal circumstances wouldn't have taken this job. Takes the job because they need to, gets screwed over by some greedy bastard, and has to basically just deal with the situation. You have goals and are trying to accomplish these goals and your being screwed over because someone is being a cheap-ass and is incompetent. Though your reaction is a bit refreshing, you got burned, handled it constructively, learned from it, and are speaking out about it. Though, I feel as if CEO needs to be held accountable and that does mean the studio as a whole will be feeling it as well. That is what happens, you cannot steal from people and expect to hide behind your employees. You are the only one who has been sincere through all of this and the reactions you got from the CEO/Dev's are ones of fear. They do not want or care to make things right, they simply want to salvage their reputation , and try to bury this. If they actually cared and actually wanted to do better they would address their past wrongs and work on making sure this never happens again. They would also have some transparency with the community as well as to the games progress.

If the company can't even pay you $1600 it really shows how little confidence there is in the game.

I'm pretty serious and curious about this question though. Rhino87 can just make up stuff.

You mean the game that we made after the Smalland project, the one that we released in early access in 5 months time? I rather keep that quiet, at least in this post. Don't want them to know about our projects so they can badmouth it. I was gonna say if you really want to know send me a PM, but it seems this forum doesn't have PM system, unless i'm missing something?

Nah, garry hasn't inplemented the PM system back unfortunately.

We've still yet to get a PM system after some months, so you're correct.

It appears that my work ethic is still being attacked by Rustic in the private backer chat.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there are people in the art industries that are unfathomably and inconceivably petty. He and whatever cronies he might have will likely never stop. I've had a particular group leader actively and publicly disparage me and my work for the past five, almost six, years straight now, with his cronies that either don't care about the reality of the situation or are just not informed of it all, believing and perpetuating the lies and misconceptions. All because I had the gall to tell said group leader that his money means fuck all to me, I'm not interested in working for him, and he can fuck off. Some people are just going to talk shit about you because they don't like something about it. More often than not, it's going to because you refuse to stoop to their level and play their twisted game. It's best to just learn to not let it affect you, and to keep on keeping on. That's a weight you don't want to carry.

See, this is one of the reasons people like Facepunch. The, "Fuck you." attitude also leads to users being protected from shitty devs and other groups and it brings down scammers like that server hosting guy.

Pm me in discord Zien

Hey everyone - Don't mean to have a redundant bump, but I wanted to just give a quick update. I just finished up my term papers and finals and it took me from really focusing on this issue. I am still very much dedicated to solving this for myself, Stefan and the backers. Thank you for all the support in this really stressful situation.

Grats on finishing your finals. Been a while since I've seen FP rally behind an event like this. Hope it works out for you and Rhino.

SidAlpha has done a video on it. https://youtu.be/s1VD7ixFXR8 Also if anyone didn't know Rustic7 stole that old SantosRP gamemode years ago from the real developers who were making it then went around selling/leaking it to people claiming he had the rights to it . Chances are that the "SMALLAND" account is Rustic7.

They have a kotaku article out about this game, actually. I just sent a link to this forum post to the guy who wrote it. Here's a link to it in case someone else wants to bring it to the guy's attention. All I did really was link him to this thread; none of the other evidence.

It's really cool to have my name said by a guy with such a sexy voice. Good video.

He speaks first person in response to questions asked directly to and about rustic, so it is him.

How about small claims? It's practically free, they can't send a lawyer, and if they want to move it to higher court you can argue it would be unfair to you, etc. This is for washington but there's probably a lot of information about how to recover wages or money from breach of contract via small claims court. https://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/files/C9D2EA3F-0350-D9AF-ACAE-BF37E9BC9FFA/attachments/392EB9E3-0FCC-EB8C-5976-C08B26CE690D/2200en-small-claims-and-recovering-wages.pdf

This whole situation is fucked. I really hope that everyone gets paid what they're owed and the backers (shareholders) at least get an update on the game.