 Alright, oh boy This is going to be an interesting one See we're talking about game explain now. I generally don't talk about other youtubers unless something bad happens Every now and then I'll shout out youtubers in a video You know whether it's super mental day for being a source on something or or you know player essence or spawn wave or whatever Like I give youtubers credit when they are my inspiration for something but this time around We have a controversy and I kind of knew this controversy was brewing It was just a matter of time before things became public So you guys probably know what the largest fan made Nintendo kind of core Nintendo they do cover other things Just like my channel covers other things but core Nintendo YouTube channel is right. It's game explain I mean beat them up might pass them someday, but it's game explain right game explainer up for a long time They have excellent content in general great discussions great live streams usually halfway decent reviews And one of my favorite things is maybe like the trailer analysis videos They do I find these to be very very entertaining very informative, especially when it comes to the Zelda series, but at the end of last year Or towards the end of last year pretty much everyone that matters that game explain Left and they all left right around the same time three of them went on to form a new YouTube channel called good vibes gaming I'll put a link down in the description of their channel. They do a lot of discussion posts with occasional reviews Love discussion videos like our long podcast videos. I should say and then they obviously have the game reviews here and there and then there is John Cartwright. He was another major member. He left to go join over at Nintendo life We're you know, he works a nine-to-five over there making a pretty decent wage according to himself now This is all fine and dandy employee turnover happens. Who really cares what happens at game explain? Well, I do because I'm sure like many of you you've heard of game explain You've watched their content. You've enjoyed these content creators I have other other newer content creators that I am friends with that now work at game explain And this is no offense to them But the quality of game explains content is just not the same Which isn't a surprise because they had some very passionate workers there But now we have found out from these former employees work conditions were not great work conditions were horrendous and For many of these people this wasn't even their full-time job They had to do this in addition to their full-time job and I know what you're gonna say nobody has to do YouTube You are 100% correct. Nobody has to be here on YouTube fat in this video I'm gonna explain everything that goes into different types of videos because I've done game reviews I've done guides. I used to work and make walkthroughs for crying out loud. I've done video walkthroughs I have done news videos and podcast videos and I'm gonna explain all the work that goes into this stuff and Just how little money is made from it Which is why I always tell people don't ever look at YouTube as a career if you get lucky great But do it for fun But when you're a channel as big as game explain you do tend to make enough money for it to be a career for at least someone So let's get into what the accusations are This is the three members of Good Vibes Gaming who brought this up on the very first New daily no today's news tonight Podcasting they do here is Their take on what happened to game explain. I'll let them just talk For a moment here Like what can we even say about this game that we haven't already and that wouldn't you know derail this discussion for hours? Oh, seriously about this game. Oh ever in terms of everything it did right. I can tell you some things This was a nightmare to cover Final Fantasy 7 remake was the worst experience. I had reviewing a game in in 2020 and that is because Do a no-soul part to square They so the review embargo for Final Fantasy 7 remake was April 6th We got the game on April 4th and That is so it was originally our intention to have Derek review it It was just like hey, you know, this is definitely gonna be Derek's game And I mean they just didn't give us time and I don't know if it was Lunacy or what it was, but I was like, yeah, I guess I could do it I could probably beat the game in that amount of time and I did not sleep I Powered through this whole game in two days basically and I mean I Don't think I've ever suffered more to make a video than I did for this game I mean, yeah, I sent Derek my draft of the review. I was oh, I need to basically rewrite the whole thing Yeah, it was I mean, yeah, I had I had a jumble of thoughts But I mean I literally thinking back on it right now. I can feel my eyes burning like just The incredible pain I was in to just get it done and I remember like my wife God bless her She was like she was like I love you. I'm glad this is over go take a shower and leave me explain as soon as you can like she I would be the first to admit that this is where she just turned on game explain She was like, uh-huh. You need you need to get out of there. She's like never do this again And I was like, yeah, yeah, I probably this is not defensible Hey, I said all my stuff I was going through and the thing was I was loving every minute of playing Final Fantasy 7 remake By the time you were doing your review, I think it was at wall market I just I felt so bad for you guys though because that is especially for you, Steve I I wouldn't that's I would never have wanted to experience that game in such a way Oh, yeah And of course that that was not, you know, I was still doing plenty of work for game explain by that point But I had certainly By that point, you know, my wife had kind of turned on game explain long before this For for similar reasons in terms of the you know work being put into it versus what I was getting out of it And nothing quite so well, I did have one really what was it? There's a game that I reviewed that I had to beat it in like two days or three days and it was pretty rough but but uh I would not have wanted to experience ff7 remake like that and that just but that also Is testament to just the game's quality that you were still able to love it and appreciate it the way you did So as you heard them say That doesn't sound like they hate Game explain, but it sounds like they didn't like the work environment, right? Like Given two days to review a game you can blame square, but you can also blame Game explain and the person who runs it for those who don't know Andre Seegers is the one who founded and runs game explain The fact that he didn't allow there to be a longer leeway on the review is interesting I get the review embargo goes up on the sixth but Late reviews are sometimes better than rushing a review In fact, there are many late reviews out there from other youtubers that have more views than game explains one We're getting to that in a moment and some of the logistics behind The video because i'm not exactly sure how the contracts were constructed at game explain How payments worked, but even if they were paid say 100 for the video content Which there has to be a split because Um, there's you know in terms of the work for a game review You have the person playing it you have a person writing it then obviously a derrick up there who was editing the written part Then you have the voice work done Which you know whatever you can do that voice work yourself And then obviously you have all the gameplay recorded clips and all the editing and all that that goes into it Typically a game explainer is probably a two or three person job Although at many other youtube channels. It's just one of us that does all that work although We obviously then get to skip the whole peer reviewing and and editing aspect because we don't have anyone to peer review but It's worse than this So john so these three left and they formed good vibes gaming good vibes gaming has 36, you know almost 37,000 subs Good people they clearly are not doing good vibes gaming for a living It is something they do on the side and of note many of these people had jobs the entire time They were working at game explain because game explain did not pay enough despite being a massive channel For these people to do it for a living yet you wouldn't know that based on the amount of videos that had their voice work and uh, you know editing put into it because Obviously they were doing a crap load of work. Well having wives and children and everything in between And obviously they were paid for it. They were paid employees They weren't really paid that much So john carright was another major game explain person who left Uh, and it says so I don't know so this one guy matthew banky operation starfall says I don't know how many people out there have been following the drama on game explain subreddit because we're going to get to that in a moment Uh, but basically during a discussion on good vibes gaming today's news tonight The former game explain employees briefly talked about how rough their jobs were and then the one guy says TLDR they quit because we had a lot of job At the kind of weird english there sadly the oversaturated work will come again when good vibes gaming goes big And the natural course of youtube channel So he's basically saying that hey, you know whatever happened there is just going to happen to him all over again At good vibes gaming if it ever gets big john carright who used to work Uh a game explain to who left said i'm doing a healthy 9 to 5 at nintendo life and doing better than ever for myself I don't think anyone at good vibes gaming will ever need to lose sleep and family time working And that was a huge thing they lost sleep They lost family time and they weren't paid hardly anything for it In fact, some of the accusations are as low as one to two dollars per hour for work So this is the the the game explain subreddit It's just a mess right now because what happened is as this story was breaking on here A moderator of the channel user game explain when it had and started deleting posts that talked about this And that user is an official user account been confirmed of the game explain youtube channel And It's highly likely that andre seegers himself Was the one shutting down these posts now a moderator above his head has gone ahead and basically booted Andre off of the subreddits even though this is game explain subreddit andre abused his powers to silence criticism And that is not allowed in reddit's terms of service So he's been booted out and lost his mod powers on here So he can't stop people from basically exposing what's been happening at game explain behind the scenes Instead of responding respectfully like he could have and maybe explain the whole youtube landscape like i'm about to do He could have gone about this differently now before i get into more of this I do want to remind you we are doing a giveaway right now I'm giving away a playstation 5 and xbox series x or nintendo switch information how to enter is down in the description I wish everyone luck only thing i really request obviously out of all of the the ways to enter is that you're subscribed to the channel Because we're trying to grow here ourselves And maybe avoid some of the one to two dollar an hour thing in fact it's actually worse in my channel, but We'll get into that in a moment I'm actually going to complain about it because I make my content whenever I damn well feel like it and don't hold Myself to really strict schedules Like it happens at a channel like game explain which is known for putting out You know sometimes a dozen plus videos in a given day. All right So here's the this post that originally got things banned Um, and we're we're just going to read some of this stuff So the good vibe gaming group consisted of former game explain members ash steve and derrick have finally given a full confirmation On why they left the channel and it turns out it was due to similar things shared earlier when they made good vibes gaming There was just too much work and pressure to put out news updates reviews However, it wasn't until yesterday that we finally got a full idea of how bad working conditions They had to deal with and hang with me some of this are tough to deal with Steve commenting reviewing final 57 remake was a nightmare We talked about that the time span to play and review it was so small that he did not sleep at all And he crunched himself to finish it on time So other competitors didn't steal their views His wife turned on game explain because of this and told him to leave game explain as soon as possible at it partially Of this is due to squares ridiculous review embargo, of course The game game explain still obviously wanted the review ready for the embargo So take that as you will derrick's comments agreed with steve and spoke about making guides ruined games for him because of the Repetitiveness ash said agreed with steve was glad. Uh, he weren't in his shoes Even his wife basola had turned on game explain talked about that already There may be truth that there may have left on good terms though Andrei may be attacked for his work conditions since he is the boss and responsible for this However, there are as you have to be more proof Etc. Etc. Etc. And then andrei went ahead and deleted the whole post pretty much verifying that These conditions are real and exist and he wants to hide that from the public So you might be like, okay, so what what what else is there? What else could there be? Well, how about this from ash, so there were some accusations accusations that These people because they mentioned their wives specifically were manipulated to leave game explain I think game explains work conditions were so bad Because of their wives their wives are the problem not andrei The wives are the issue not the job the wife Or wives in this case. So here's ash's response to that lol at manipulated by their women like were property I'll say this if steve was treated like a person instead of a machine and paid Fairly for the amount of work he was expected to put out I would have fully supported him staying on at game explain However, for what worked out to be around one to two dollars an hour between playing through games Writing producing videos and maintaining and growing relationships with developers Working to get codes for games, etc I would have been a terrible partner not to encourage him to find a way to continue What he loves in a healthy way as far as him being a workaholic He also maintains and has since before game explain a corporate nine to five career Will also helping raise four children. Trust me. He's extremely hardworking Oh boy, uh Let's just say This is not good. So the accusations are basically this from the former employees They work to the bone They were asked to work a ton in addition to their actual nine to five jobs that supported their family They were compensated by crap for it. They were asked to give up. They were given unrealistic expectations unrealistic boundaries Yeah, some of it's on on getting review codes late But some of it's also on hey find a way to have your reviews come out later But not lose viewership now the final fantasy 7 review Uh at the time uh a recording had about 89 90 thousand views And people are like well, well, okay. How you know, let's say he spent 40 hours to beat the game Let's say uh that uh after that 40 hours um, he he went ahead and uh, you know, I had to do all the writing and note taking while he was doing it So probably took more like 50 hours or whatever. Let's throw in another 10 hours for uh producing Writing the review uh rewriting the review editing, etc Let's just assume one person did everything for that review and spent about 50 hours to make that review Uh, and then let's assume this is a very big assumption But let's assume that andre gave 100 of the profits off that video 100 to You know the guy who made it in this case, all right So let's just assume that that's how that's how it works, right any video you create you get the money for That's a pretty good deal to be honest I highly doubt that is the case, but I would say that that that would actually be a pretty good deal That you know if andre came to me and said hey instead of making your videos for your channel If you want to make your videos for my channel And then you know, I'll reap the benefits of having more views on my other videos But you'll reap the benefits of getting all the revenue Great, that's actually not that bad of a deal, but that's highly doubtful That's actually the actual arrangement, but even if it was I want to show you guys something So let's go to my channel because I can only use my channel as a basis and let's find a video There are some videos on here. Let's find a video that has a You know around 90,000 views 80 90,000 views So I'm going to give you guys a comparison of just a video I can I can't go back to some of my higher view videos because there was a youtube apocalypse on my channel at the time But let's find something that isn't in october and go to something more recent Let's say like someone 21,000 views here To give you an idea you can times it by four to get an idea of what they made Whoops that video details My bad my bad I wanted to actually view the stats on that video. All right, so I'm this 21,000 video I made about 73 bucks in revenue. So let's say, you know, get off the calculator here, you know times that by You know, let's let's be A little less generous and let's let's just go this time to buy three So say the review made about 219 bucks The guy spent about 50 hours working on it And you know, let's just assume he gets all of the revenue that works out to about four dollars and 38 cents an hour Now you heard that it's really more like one to two dollars, which means it's probably not a direct cut like that It's probably a percentage cut. So there's probably like an overall percentage that goes to you know, if they do a buy video There's an overall percentage that goes to the channel And then maybe there's a percentage cut of that video that goes to the creator Also, it's entirely possible. That's not how this works at all I don't know a game explain has things structured. Its chances are there's like a set flat rate You get paid per month. So say You know, you're you're an employee And I have you under contract and I pay you say 1500 2000 bucks a month or whatever But within there you need to fulfill all of these duties and these duties include all these hours spent And you start to spend an insane amount of hours that works out to where you're working a ton Maybe more a game explain than your nine to five job And you end up making fractions of money compared to what it sounded like when you got hired on I know to me it would sound great if andre approached me and said, hey I'll pay you $2,000 a month to be a host and make videos and news videos At my thing, but then all of a sudden I'm outputting three four videos a day And I'm putting in, you know, two hours or so minimum for a news video into each video news video Next thing, you know, I mean, that's eight hours a day. That sounds great. But then you consider that includes weekends So Yeah, and then that's still not enough money to support my family. So I still have to have a nine to five So I'll be doing that in addition to my nine to five while trying to find time to spend with my family Oh, and god forbid that andre says, hey, I need you to review this game If you don't I'm gonna nullify your contract. Oh, and by the way, you have two days to review monster hunter rise Are you kidding me? No way No way And when these kind of deadlines happen, you know, who should take on the responsibility if they really want it to come out andre Now look I'm not gonna sit here and and pretend that andre's this big evil conniving person That is the devil and you know, it just Shouldn't be On youtube andre. I'm sure is a fine person. I have had conversations with him in the past He's been incredibly friendly and it doesn't seem like any of these former employees Hate andre and they don't ever accuse andre of not working hard game explain is andre's baby It's what he does for a living obviously, uh, they are On pretty good terms with him But They definitely don't like that youtube grind. Let me explain what that youtube grind is So I gave him a rough estimate on what I think he he did for final fantasy seven remake I don't actually know but my videos in case you didn't know my videos make an average of say five dollars To ten dollars if it's a video that blows up as you saw sure you can make 50 70 bucks on that video But there's no guarantee my videos will up. I pretty much expect to make anywhere from, you know, five to eight bucks a video that I make Even if I pulled off that video in an hour Which I mean this video alone has over an hour worth of recording in it Let alone the research and the reading and watching the content like that's, you know, not much now I don't do youtube for a living. I do make money doing it. It is nice But it's just a hobby I have attempted to do youtube for a living and it's very unrealistic for just me let alone if I was paying somebody else You know, I had some really professional thumbnails being made for a while But uh, you know, no offense to the person making it, but he wants, you know Say eight ten twelve bucks a thumbnail And that's fine But it only takes him about 10 minutes of work Because he's really skilled at what he does takes him about 10 minutes of work to make that thumbnail Whereas I could do a couple hours of work on a video and not even make that 12 bucks See what I'm saying like it's kind of a I understand his pricing and value in his time But I don't even make that much and I'm the one putting all the time into the video itself It's it's one of those situations where being a youtuber is not a realistic venture for most people Unless you are working for a massive channel, which game explain is massive. I think what needs to happen If I could suggest anything to andre is Instead of hiring a group, you know, three four people, right? Um hire one or two others pay them a livable wage So I don't know, you know, I don't know if that's 50 000 a year 60 000 a year whatever you got to pay them, right Find a way to pay them a livable wage and then just have them do game explain full time That's what I would do. I don't know what kind of revenue they have I don't know what kind of sponsorships they're working with if they're not working with sponsorships They absolutely should andre should find a way to make his employees full time So they're not working other jobs. See this Ask of you know doing beating this game in two days new Okay, get rid of the daytime jobs and it's really not that bad of an ask So if these were full-time jobs, this is fine in my opinion It would be getting paid one to two dollars an hour though if it was their full-time job They andre needs to find a way to And I think all big youtubers that that want to rely on others time They need to find a way to compensate them Uh and have them feel as if game explain is a real job that they could support their family on Sounds like andre is the only one who really makes enough of it to do it for a living And I understand he might want a larger team He might want a larger set of editors But you know what if you narrow it down to two or three people You can end up producing a lot higher quality content And I point out to tech tubers all the time because tech youtubers that are around a million subs or so That are the same thing they have like one or two other Full-time employees full-time, you know, they might have a cameraman and an editor and then themselves You know Linus tech tips is massive and they have like a huge team, but they're different They have a whole bunch of different channels when I'm just talking about an individual channel I you're gonna have a hard time pressing me and convincing me that game explain can't afford to have one To two other full-time employees and that's just what they should do That that to me is the best step forward for game explain Based on the work being asked because I know how much work it takes to make youtube videos to make reviews to make guides to Do analysis videos even news videos, which admittedly I do news videos and they are the easiest video Content type to make they require the least amount of editing and the least amount of research and all like They're not that hard to do. They're fun But I'm not going to sit here and pretend my videos are difficult This video I'm making now is maybe one of the longest and more difficult ones. I've I've made in a little while now and But still it takes time Time away from my children time away from my fiancee time away from other things I could be doing like playing games Um, and I know some people are going to say while playing games shouldn't really be considered part of that It is if you're doing it for a job if you're if you're reviewing a game You absolutely would not be rushing through a game in two days. Would you? Would you if you were just playing it on your own would you be rushing through breath of the wild in two days? Maybe oh, maybe you're that crazy, but most of us are going to take our time We might play it a lot. We might play it for six or seven hours in a day Well, we're not trying to beat that game in a day or two or three We're trying to experience as much as we can as much as we want So I don't know just me. I don't think game explain is evil. I think they need to change Personally, I feel like they need to change their business strategy to create a healthier environment long haul I think some of my friends that are working at game explain right now They're probably happy in the moment But the grind is going to be real over the years and is going to beat them down as well And I hope that they learn from that as well And I hope andre learns from this whole experience and trying to silence people talking out about game explain To me is probably worse than anything Andre You've created a behemoth You've created a behemoth where despite bad work conditions these former employees still have nice things to say about you So you are generally a good person. Just change your business strategy You know and move on These they're all moving on. They're all happier for it You move on and create a better business moving forward. We all need to learn as we go. This is why I personally I'm not even considering paying someone for thumbnails or hiring or doing anything crazy until my channel is at a point that I can Support my family and if I could support my family At you know a livable wage Great Then I need to get even bigger than that before I can even think about hiring editor and all that I do all my work myself I do all my research. I do all my own research on my own writing all my own editing All my own camera work, which is why there's been issues now and then with the camera audio work Everything's on me And I'm learning as I go just like many other youtubers are But I'm also not trying to do this for a living. So yeah This video is probably only going to make me a couple bucks because most people aren't going to care It's all right Because we're all here because we want to be right. I am Nathaniel Robeljantz from Nintendo Prime Thank you so much for tuning in help this channel grow. Let's hit 70 000 as soon as we can. Heck if we hit it this month I'm giving away two PlayStation 5s xx series x's or nintendo switches this month Good stuff. Good. Good stuff. I'll catch you guys in The next video. Oh, by the way, go subscribe to good vibes gaming if you like a fan of that original Game explain crew, you know the the people beyond andre because they've got some good stuff going on there So does nintendo life, you know what? John's working at the nintendo left youtube channel. I'll put a link down to them as well I love alex over there the guy who who runs all that and also they have this guy named zion over there zion girl of the 25 zion girl, but uh Dude, he's a good buddy of mine. Uh, he actually used to work for me back in the day at zelden former That's right. I used to be his quote unquote boss He's a good guy. We've been to e3 together love him as well, man He's doing great work over there, too So shout out to those two youtube channels They will definitely be in my there when the tunnel i spend on my regular watch for a while I'm gonna add good vibe gaming in as well Because i'm really happy for those people that have uh pretty successful careers So yeah, there you go. All right. I'll catch you guys later. Peace