TL;DR - oceanic esports workers attempt to get paid by esports heavyweight [IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE] and need financial help to pay for expensive lawyers

hey. it's me, emelg.

i'm back! and yep you guessed it, i'm back for the 4 things i value most: money, friendship, justice and money. the 5th thing i value is not getting sued, which is why all of the below is from our point of view and should not be taken as fact. if you'd like to learn more, we'd strongly recommend clicking into the various links attached below.

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here's the lowdown (adjusted for legal speak). me, Shok, Ricky and Toby all believe that we are still collectively owed $200,782.01 NZD from Arcanist Ltd, dating back to as early as 2022. this is for our work on The Matchfix, PCS/LCP and other projects like this banger music video. yes, we've been chasing this up for literally years. and yes, it's a sick joke.

you probably already know the sole director of Arcanist from his work as team owner of Dire Wolves, one of Oceania's largest esports orgs. he's also the sole director of a company called Spookers, which is NZ's biggest horror-themed attraction. weirdly enough, we've seen that Dire Wolves has previously been mired in payment dispute-related allegations, like this one experienced by UDYSOF.

on top of that, he's once again the sole director of another company who had their name changed to... "Arcanist Logistics"... in late Feb... which is a couple of weeks after we had sent in our statutory demands...

...anyway, we believe in the amount that we're owed so strongly that we've done the following:

after minimal response from their side for months, it seems that at the last minute, Ricky's alleged amount owed to him of $133,729.72 is now under dispute by Arcanist.

*we've yet to get a concrete answer on whether or not the rest of our invoices are also under dispute, but our messaging must have slipped off the radar... mistakes happen i guess!

here's the thing though - lawyers are expensive. they cost a lot of money. we've already spent a considerable amount, and are looking at spending even more in order to bring justice to OCE (get paid). unfortunately, we've all worked in esports which means we don't have money.

we intend to see our legal fight through to the end, because to be frank, enough is enough. esports is a tough industry as is, but it feels like the little guy is always stepped on without repercussions - if our allegations are true, we can finally hold someone in Oceania to account for their actions. that's why we're looking to you for help!

our legal team have estimated that the upcoming proceedings could cost us up to $20,000 NZD - we'll be starting the goal lower as any amount will help us, so please contribute if you are able to! if you don't have the cash to spare, that's okay - we genuinely do appreciate your time spent reading this regardless, and sharing this around would go a long way for us too.

‍⚖️ all of the proceeds will go towards our legal costs! if there ends up being any extra, we'll put out a poll to let people vote on where to donate the remainder :)

with thanks,

andy, ari, ricky and toby <3

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QUESTIONS THAT YOU MIGHT BE ASKING IN YOUR HEAD:

why didn't you sign a written contract?

short answer: we're dumb

long answer: unfortunately, the esports scene in OCE is pretty small and unregulated. especially in New Zealand, there are veeery limited opportunities available - your career's future is pretty much just up to a select few people, such as the guy that contracted us.

this means that if you want to make it in the industry, you're pretty much at the whim of whoever's calling the shots. and so we stuck with our verbal contracts, asked a few times for written contracts, didn't get anything written up, and eventually just stopped asking. we figured that the verbal agreement for services (as well as basic human decency) would be enough, but here we are.

nice answer but you're still dumb

not a question but yep

are you actually owed that much? where's your proof?

1. yes (this is what we believe)

2. we can't share any specific evidence here but fortunately in our line of work, we have plenty of publicly available records of us doing the work that we believe we have not been paid for - they're on YouTube and Twitch! and no, we don't do anything for free.

i'm reading this late, has anything changed?

our upcoming proceedings will start in late July and go until at least late September - if there are any updates, we'll post them here!

i'd like to learn more about your situation, where can i talk to you guys?

if you'd like to reach out to us:

https://x.com/emelg__

https://x.com/ShokLeague

https://x.com/RickkyRoad

https://x.com/metaphasetv

do you think you'll win?

yep

why is the GoFundMe in AUD if you're from NZ?

GoFundMe isn't officially available for NZ, but you can still use it as long as you have someone in Australia who can receive the funds for you. there are other NZ-based alternative sites, but the donation fees were a lot higher :(