Relic Content Creators & rights to unionize

Source:
https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/forums/1-general-discussion/threads/3316-my-experience-as-a-relic-content-creator
Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/110igsr/my_experience_as_a_relic_content_creator/

MY EXPERIENCE AS A RELIC CONTENT CREATOR:
AceHiro42
This is a post aimed at explaining the situation that has developed in the past few days and expose the problems that are currently affecting the community and its members.

I’d like to start with the fact that I was kicked without any notification from any official Relic source.

I woke up one day and the “privileges” granted by the creator program were gone, I didn’t have access to the Private Discord chat for the creators, the website for the promotional code didn’t work anymore (not that it ever really did) and my discord role as a “creator” was removed, all without anybody telling me why or what happened.

So I started suspecting that something changed and decided to DM the moderators of the discord channel trough ModMail but I was ignored and so I decided to DM JohnRE and ask for an explanation. After a good part of the day he answered telling me that they essentially forgot to notify me and that I was kicked because of my behaviour and comments towards other players and members of the community.

It goes without saying that I felt deeply hurt and surprised at this immense lack of professionalism and great disrespect that has always been a prominent thing troughout my partnership.

I joined the creator program back in August of 2022 thinking that my privileged position would greatly help the development of the game not only because I regularly streamed on twitch for more than 2 years at that point but also because I played the game almost every day at an above average level.

Unfortunately that’s not what happened, the promises of the Coh-Development ended up being empty for me and the interaction with the Relic staff was incredibly underwhelming, JohnRE was the only one who interacted with the creators and more often than not answering in a very vague manner our questions or straight up ignoring them, effectively rendering the chat useless since we ended up knowing as much as everybody else.

Feedback also wasn’t received well from my experience, I made a very detailed and objective Feedback post about call ins back when the US deep dive came out and the first response that I got was “play the tech test and then let us know” which I found to be, again, disrespectful and quite condescending since the whole point of the Coh-Development was to involve the community and their feedback BEFORE the game would be launched.

I would like to talk about the reason why I got kicked and why I don’t think it’s fair.

Ignoring the fact that the reasoning why I was kicked is, again, extremely vague and uncertain, I have reasons to believe it was because someone reported me for some things I said in a private discord channel. What I mean by that is that I most likely broke the code of heroes while talking to my friends, most likely by making jokes about them, and those words were taken out of context by someone and sent to relic which then acted upon the rules set by them.

The code of heroes does apply to third party platforms such as Discord but I believe it’s not fair that the stuff said in a private enviroment such as a closed discord group can be subject to judgment and end up getting you banned.

The code of heroes doesn’t apply only to creators but to every member of the community meaning that anybody is subject to scrutiny even in their most private enviroments. I really dislike this procedure as it greatly limits privacy and inflicts paranoia on everybody who worries about their spot in the community.

Overall I found the partnership to be a terrible experience, giving up creative liberties and suffering from constant paranoia on anything I say or do in any setting for little to no upside. The one true bonus that I got was coh3 for free, which I’m very grateful for but when put into perspective and compared to the 3 years of streaming everyday for 3 hours it ends up not being much at all.
I hope things will change in the future and the handling of the community improved to not only guarantee a better enviroment but also a better gaming experience.

Perhabs "unionize" is the wrong word but as paid content creators you have the right to "group negotiate" a better deal with Sega.
I encourage CoH content creators to reach out to other Total War YouTubers that have talked about the same issues. Don't become a Sega marketing puppet/lapdog as that set the CoH community on a self-destructive path.

Related to this;
Below, listen to video clip from 15:42. Conversation between RepublicOfPlay (former CA) and LegendofTotalWar one of the largest TW YouTuber


Watch Independent Total War Content Creator, Volound:
Volound | Should Total War Youtubers Unionise (after this latest round of humiliation)?:

Volound | The Great Total War Shilling Operation;

Total War is kept afloat in 2021 by a fleet of shills supporting an over-extended marketing budget tasked to stretch the achievements of underfunded studios making games that reliably fall short of offerings from their predecessors from over a decade ago.

Trying to implement Sega/CA affiliate marketing on top of Amplitude GAMES2GETHER community consultation is two separate business models that seems incompatible with conflicting interests.
For the record, I only gave Sega marketing the benefit of doubt because of Amplitude GAMES2GETHER.

For recent proof of Sega/CA's Code Of Bullies and false advertisements
just look at the shitshow going on with CA's abuse scandal and Total War censorship;

S*xual Abuse Scandal for UK's Biggest Game Developer.. Creative Assembly:

And speaking of false advertisements Sega/CA are still marketing this studio as "best places to work"

https://www.creative-assembly.com/careers

So more often than not, marketing is based upon a foundation of lies. The sooner Content Creators realize this, the safer we'll all be from these overrated marketing people.


The next time you hear Relic/Sega talk about "Code of Heroes".
Please ask Sega to be specific. Are we talking about CA's Code Of Bullies?.

In short, be careful out there and never put anyone on a pedestal.

Typically Unions tend to kill the industry/job you are attempting to unionize so it shouldn't be taken lightly.

However, wouldn't this thread be better served in another, thread?

I almost believed this post from Ace until I read this line "surprised at this immense lack of professionalism and great disrespect". Really? Surprised? From Relic? The Lords of Clown Town?

Putting your faith in Relic will always equal disappointment.

I have never, ever, ever, once talked to someone who worked with Relic and said they were professional and on point and they could not wait to work with them again.

Fake news

You have no rights with Relic. They can say or promise anything they want and if you dont like it they take their ball and go home crying. Why would anyone in their right mind join their "creators" mess knowing full well .... its Relic. It will be a Low Down Clown Town Fiesta Supreme with extra Guac!

Typically Unions tend to kill the industry/job you are attempting to unionize so it shouldn't be taken lightly.

However, wouldn't this thread be better served in another, thread?

American spotted!



On topic though:
It is difficult to judge without knowing what the deal exactly included or what was policed exactly. It is a business deal and AceHiro should be aware of it. If he said something that hurts the trust between both parties or that AceHiro only adhered superficially to the deal but otherwise tries to circumvent it (e.g. breaking an NDA is also not okay in private chats), it is his fault. If Relic generally polices private chats and bad talking about CoH3 or any CoH game in general, they are overstretching their competence. I slightly doubt that this is the case though, due to AE regularly trash talking bugs in the game. On the other hand AE has also more influence than probably any other streamer, so maybe he can dare to say more because dropping him would actually anger the more active part of the community due to his tournaments and range.

I get the impression though that AceHiro is disappointed that the codevelopment is nothing more than a marketing stunt and free game testing for Relic. I find that quite naive. It can serve well for the community and the game, too, but primarily it is a marketing stunt. Obviously Relic will present it differently, and it is good that AceHiro calls them out on it. We've seen their shoddy community and ocmmunication handling multiple times in CoH3: First, promising weekly dev diaries that were good for the first few weeks, then became a meaningless wall of text and finally abandoned quickly, and then revived after months of nothing but only for very few entries. Relic and IGN starting their video campaign before initial launch, only to embarrassingly move the launch date 1 month before when all videos were published.
That's not to say that they completely ignored the feedback at all, they did address some problems that were pointed out during their tests. But as usual, if you promise full transparency and top notch communication with a large community, putting one single person on the job is not going to cut it.

Overall, this reads as AceHiro being too naive to really think that a big studio will not try to control the information flow of their main product. And Relic on the other hand being incompetent or at the very best overpromising due to marketing and then obviously underdelivering.

On Reddit AceHiro wrote this:

I didn't sign an NDA and I did not talk about confidential content about coh3 simply because I didn't know anything lol. The discord servers that I'm part of are huge, more than 200 people, obviously not all of them are friends.

Calling a 200+ people discord server where you probably know the vast majority vaguely at best "private" is utter nonsense. Relic might have still made a mistake, but pretty sure AceHiro is leaving out crucial info.

If you're interested in american politics I recommend the YouTube show and podcast "Breaking Points". Populist politics that are quite pro-union because when you're an average Joe you're happier when you make more money and unionized workers make more money.

On topic:

I'm not sure what Total War creators' statuses are. Paid videos? Revenue sharing codes? 3rd party contractors? I can't imagine them being official employees with benefits so any "union" they'd try to form wouldn't have legal standing under British law. But hell, I ain't a lawyer either. Seems like quite a mountain to climb when you can easily offer one person or a few a nice carrot to come around to the other side.

that I was kicked because of my behaviour and comments towards other players and members of the community.

I don't think Relic monitor everything said by any content creator on stream, so this had to come from a complain from someone watching it then I also don't think Relic would ban a content creator from a single mistake so it has probably been at least 2 occurrences OR one really problematic case of bad comment, racial or what ever at the same level.

Relic's wrong behavior here is the lack of notification which is a huge mistake but we can imagine how busy they are at the moment 2 weeks prior the release so it can be understandable.

I didn't read all your comment but the comparison with AE stop there, AE has a quite frank speaking toward the game BUT is respectful of any other players.

Hello, thank you for the support some people shared and thank you in general to everyone for talking about this topic.

I wanted to clear some doubts and rumors that I have seen both in this post and on other platforms.

It's been a few days since I have been kicked and I managed to collect enough evidence and proof that allows me to say what exactly happened and who did it. Some messages that I sent in private Discord channels, and by private I mean that only people who were invited can join, were taken out of context and sent to Relic as a formal complaint. I did get one warning in October of last year, and in that case John was kind enough to send me a screenshot of what wasn't ok. Sure enough it was a screenshot of me making a joke about a fellow member of the community in my own private discord. From the screenshot in question I was able to quickly identify who was it, when and, subsequently, why. I won't say who it was because I'm not a snitch like them but the reason why he did such a thing is a small argument that we had which turned into a personal vendetta to "destroy me".

The more recent event seems to be another screenshot that was taken on a separate server, yet still a private one, and appears to be an edgy joke that I made that was taken, again, out of context and sent as a complaint.

It goes without saying that this whole thing stinks, I should be able to make jokes or say what I want in a private setting without the anxiety of knowing that anything I say can be used against me and hurt me. It's also quite concerning how Relic didn't even bother to verify the claims, if they did they would have known the screenshot in question was deliberately taken out of context. It's even more concerning to know that anybody that uses my profile picture and my name on Discord will automatically be considered me. Meaning that literally anyone can falsify screenshots and Relic will simply not verify.

I will say a lot of people here are right, I was quite naive to think that Relic would treat me any better than their precedents and that their promises would be kept. I was very optimistic about the game up until mid november, when the facts presented to us all pointed to a doomed release and I have been very critical of the game both in a private and a public enviroment since, another reason to take me out I guess XD.

With this said I appreciate all of your kind messages and I hope this whole story will bring some change to how the community is handled.

Lesson learned I guess.

I didn't notice you saying he was wrong though

Some things go without saying.

...
The more recent event seems to be another screenshot that was taken on a separate server, yet still a private one, and appears to be an edgy joke that I made that was taken, again, out of context and sent as a complaint.

It goes without saying that this whole thing stinks, I should be able to make jokes or say what I want in a private setting without the anxiety of knowing that anything I say can be used against me and hurt me. It's also quite concerning how Relic didn't even bother to verify the claims, if they did they would have known the screenshot in question was deliberately taken out of context. It's even more concerning to know that anybody that uses my profile picture and my name on Discord will automatically be considered me. Meaning that literally anyone can falsify screenshots and Relic will simply not verify.
...

Depending on what you said/wrote, I think it is okay if Relic can decide to end your contract depending on the severity of the case and potential damage to them. I personally also would not automatically call any chat private because all the users were invited. If it was one of the 200+ users discord servers where you don't even know everyone, it is kind of public as well. If it was a private chat with 2-3 friends its a different case obviously, because the damage to Relic severely decreases the less people there are and also the "more private" the chat is.

I fully agree that Relic should have done more verification checks. It is a business agreement after all, also for Relic, and they should handle it seriously. Obviously they have the WAY larger leverage so they can act like this in the sense that they don't need to care neither from a reputation point nor sales, income, publicity or whatever. They're just the bigger shot. Nevertheless it shows shitty behaviour and code of conduct from their side. If they don't want to invest that work, they should not offer the contract to streamers that are "too small".
I can tell from my own experience here as a mod that it is sometimes very difficult to judge if something crosses a red line or not. Due to time, context etc constraints you just have to make your best guess based on what you can see. Sometimes you'll just get it wrong, no doubt about that. But this ties in to the point above: I am doing this for free in my spare time, and while I still try to make a fair decision, there's naturally restrictions to how much time I can invest. Relic did a business agreement, and they should take it way more seriously. It sounds pretty believable that they did not invest much time into verification of users and the overall claim. If I were you, I'd write John about it, but probably there's not a high chance of response and more in-depth review due to the release of CoH3 in a few days.