Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

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noeinan
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Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#1 Post by noeinan »

A game dev that I follow shared this video and I realized I'd seen these games on the lemmasoft forums. A lot of folks who have worked for this company post here, so I thought I'd share and see if anyone had more information on this?

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Re: Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#2 Post by Zetsubou »

There's a write-up here, for anyone who doesn't want to watch the video: https://www.resetera.com/threads/an-exp ... lent.8752/

And a reddit thread discussing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/c ... r_vns_and/
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Re: Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#3 Post by TheJerminator15 »

I'd be interested in seeing what others think as well. I saw the video this morning and was shocked at how bad it is and long running this seems to be.
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Re: Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#4 Post by Imperf3kt »

I do not trust the internet.
With fancy wording and minor fact adjustments or hiding, social media can be a very effective tool for character assasination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination

I will wait for any actual legal action to take place before judging the parties involved and spreading unsubstantiated claims.
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Re: Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#5 Post by Zetsubou »

Official statement from Sekai Project as well: https://sekaiproject.com/2017/11/30/sta ... ud-expose/
Though they aren't really adding anything new. Just confirming their involvement with the "The Guardian’s Spell" fiasco.
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Re: Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#6 Post by Errilhl »

Imperf3kt wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:26 pm I do not trust the internet.
With fancy wording and minor fact adjustments or hiding, social media can be a very effective tool for character assasination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination

I will wait for any actual legal action to take place before judging the parties involved and spreading unsubstantiated claims.
While I can understand that position, and personally had no knowledge of Winged... anything before this blew up, I've been reading up on this the last couple days, and it seems at least some of what is told in the video is very very true. I don't know if the possible (il)legal things add up completely, that would take way to long to research, but the games is run-of-the-mill, minor modification drivel. It seems like there is a concensus among former employees that the habitat was horrible, and that payment was more or less non-existent.

That doesn't necessarily mean they were screwed after the fact, it might also be partly inexperienced people signing bad contracts. Not that much more honorable, but at least that would be legal (albeit morally reprehensible).

Regardless of whether or not they are as horrible as it sounds, I really don't see any point in making them stay afloat when all they put out is crap. Or, not crap, but the same package in a slightly different wrapping, and mostly with no real content (as far as I can tell).

As "Internet generated vitriol", I think this one is fairly well founded, unfortunately
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Re: Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#7 Post by VimislikArt »

I've been doing freelance illustration work for over ten years now, since I was in college, working with everyone from single clients on personal projects, to small teams overseas, to larger companies like Scholastic and Oxford University Press.

This is all pretty typical for a smaller client- many are tight on money, ping pong projects between artists they fire and hire, and have demands that sound outrageous to anyone working in the industry. Even the "controlling" elements addressed in this video are more common than you think - never sign an exclusivity agreement unless it's under very specific terms, everyone!
Imperf3kt wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:26 pm I will wait for any actual legal action to take place before judging the parties involved and spreading unsubstantiated claims.
None of this will EVER result in legal action. I was once stiffed by a client for $1000 (the last payment I was due for a bunch of work), and you just have to absorb the cost - it wasn't worth the time, money, and effort to try to get the money out of them. Don't even get me started on the stories I've heard from colleagues about verbal/physical/sexual harassment that they never bothered pursuing legally. If someone in your industry warns you NOT to do work for a company, you listen to them!

If Winged Cloud never gave a reason for the Voice Actors/Actresses to refute the blame placed on them for the failure of a kickstarter project, we probably would never have heard about this at all; so I guess the biggest takeaway from the video is if you're going to exploit your contract workers, just keep quiet about it.
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Re: Winged Cloud Worker Exploitation

#8 Post by Aviala »

I had already heard that Winged Cloud hasn't been paying people properly but watching this video, it's much worse than I feared. Hearing interviews from these people, especially Michaela Laws, who has produced good games and has a good reputation is the dev community, indicates that at least most of the things said in the video are true.

Hopefully people see this and know to avoid working with Winged Cloud or buying their games. Unfortunately, there will always be a young yet skilled anime-style artist who'll work for very little pay so I don't think Winged Cloud's bad behaviour and scamming will stop unless people stop buying their games. Well, all we can do is to hope that as many people hear about this as possible.

In an ideal world, all the people he has scammed would do a mass lawsuit against him. But I understand it's not that simple because going to court is so expensive and the artists might have accidentally signed bad contracts that technically make Winged Cloud's actions legal.

Btw, from reading Sekai Project's statements on the matter, it seems that they weren't involved too much - the biggest mistake they did was believing Winged Cloud's leader's lies without confirming with the voice actors.

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