Player Studio Checks. Please?

If you'd like to PM me that's fine, but I think I am the person to direct the questions to, at least so I can check internally for you.

This thread was a great read!

I 100% agree with MM here!

What little we make,. is secondary,... I LOVE making stuff for my EQ family! I am so honored that you all like what we create. Always puts a smile on my face to see any of the Player Studio items in-game!

Curiouser and curiouser it gets, care to travel down the rabbit hole with me good friends?

Our checks have started arriving, but we note some discrepancies.

First some interesting data points to incorporate:
-Checks were cut the day I complained to DisputeNotice@DaybreakGames, Accounts-Payable@Daybreakgames, and started this thread.

-Checks were mailed Friday, the day I PMd Dreamweaver asking for confirmation the checks were sent by end of day.

-No reply ever from either email address.

-Dreamweaver said they'd see if they could get confirmation the checks were sent, then never replied again.

Now some issues with checks as they are arriving.
-My check was short from what was stated on my 1099-MISC form. Less than $20, so it's a small amount. But how does it not match to the exact penny? And how do they pay less than they claim to the IRS and not fear an incoming audit?

-Artists much more popular than myself are saying it's the smallest check in 5 years. When we were expecting a small bump, at least, we usually see from Halloween and Christmas sales.

-We have never been given any metric at all, or have any way of knowing what our sales are, we simply have to trust them on what they pay.

I was happy to say how generous the deal was, agreed to between us and SOE. Are the current employees trying to renege on the contract? They've been sending the checks late for a year now, but never this late.

After the change to Darkpaw I'm left wondering what is going on? I have items in all the games, perhaps my shortage is from Planetside2 and didn't get included because of the breakup. But that just makes me wonder all the more if they didn't even consider finances or accountants for each new 'studio'?

Maybe my money went to making Darkpaw t-shirts for the team?

Time to end this experiment and move on. Biting the hand that feeds, indeed.

Having been audited before, I can assure folks that the IRS can be mean. They will want to review this carefully.

How would you tell which are the free points and which are the ones I bought?

This adds some variety to the game and helps people out. It's time to better support it and expand it beyond robes, to plate, chain and leather.

While I appreciate the player studio artists and your grievance, I think some statements are better left unsaid (or worked out privately).

Aye. I'd just let it go personally. But perhaps I'm biased, I work in the financial industry and there really do seem to be a lot of people who get obsessive over money. Had a meeting a while back about someone foaming at the mouth yelling, "My daily balance is 15 cents off! I want my 15 cents! I don't care if you have to sit there for hours figuring this out, I want my 15 cents in my account before the end of the day or so help me the SEC is going to shut you down with the powers of Zeus!"

The guy's portfolio was moderately sizable at around 350k, in a wide variety of products and investment types and since it was a slow day we spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out how the guy even knew it was off by 15 cents.

Turns out, the guy had been calling us every day for over 5 years, getting daily balance updates on every account. His average call was around 6 minutes per account.

Some people really just need to let it go.

I want to make a correction here.

My 1099 and my payments (DO MATCH). I was calculating on the year it was earned, not the year it was paid. Which doesn't make sense to me, but I'm no accountant.

Fact is, the lateness of our checks started me on the warpath. And I'll be continuing to advocate in no uncertain terms that we be paid on the schedule outlined in our contract and the schedule we were paid on by SOE.

I won't post any more here about it. I'll just bug Dreamweaver about it.

I will continue to answer questions about Player Studio if you have them.

You all are probably right. Going forward, I won't bother you with this again.

With the way our contract is worded I have no leverage over the company, and I shouldn't. I felt Forum Quest was my only leverage.

And I was tired of us Player Studio artists hunkering in a corner and asking each other every three months. "did you get paid yet?" "No, did you?" "No, what should we do?"

I contacted Dreamweaver and the checks were sent, apparently completely on Dreamweaver's authority and not in a pre-planned-happens-every-quarter way.

So there are issues, and I decided to bring them out in the open, because we're sick of it. Everyone else is just too nice to throw a Forum Quest fit like me.

There is no way for you the player to tell 'which' DBcoins are free, bought at a discount, or paid full price. They know how much you paid for each one, and how much they gain when you spend it, but that value behind it is hidden from you.

MM and I are messaging separately so I am going to close this thread for now.