 Look, I'm as shocked making this video right now as you guys are. I told myself just yesterday I was no longer going to make videos on GameXplain until Andre responded, but it's impossible for me to ignore new information that came out because guess what? Some more stuff has come and this time major things. If you don't know anything about the GameXplain controversy, you can watch my first video up here about it. And then obviously I eventually did a follow-up video which you can also watch up here. But this video is going to contain more than enough information to show the practices of Andre, the community that Andre fostered with his staff, the separation of church and state, as I'd like to call it, and the authoritative rule of Andre Segers as he appears to look like a dictator that actually was not doing a majority of the work. Yes folks, Andre looks like he was mostly just giving commands from his ivory tower, reaping all the benefits while paying nobody. And while legally he was just fine as he reminded his team, it's not about legalities in a case like this. All right folks, we have statements now from Ash, we have statements from Derek and statements from another member of GameXplain called Brandon. All these statements were posted on Reset Era as they are centralizing a lot of their communication there now versus the GameXplain Reddit. Before I get into this, we are doing a giveaway at the channel. I'm giving away a PlayStation 5, an Xbox Series X or a Nintendo Switch head down to the description or to the pinned comment to find out information on that. Winner will be announced in a live stream at the end of the month. All right, I think this is it. I think this is finally the final video I'm going to make until Andre responds. But there's too much stuff here to not make a third video. I'm going to try to not make this as long as the others. So let's just jump straight into the new information. No recaps on the GameXplain situation because there's enough here to damn Andre for quite some time. Here we go. All right, so this first one comes from Derek. It's posted under Ash's account because Derek is waiting for approval of his account at Reset Era. And he said, hi everyone, Derek has prepared a statement regarding this situation, but he doesn't have an era account. So I'm posting it on his behalf. I'm also preparing my own statement, which I will post later. But for now, I'll just say that I'm fully back. Everything Steve and Derek have said about the situation, it's all true. That said, I would like to echo Derek and Steve's reminders that it has never been our intention to have good vibes gaming compete with or undermine GameXplain. The new crew of Joey, Tris, and Chris, as well as my good friend Tom, who remains at GameXplain deserve the same love and consideration you all have graciously shown us over the years. And we are not asking you to unsubscribe from GameXplain or pull support from their Patreon. We'd also like to remind you that while we understand your desire for Andre to make a statement, we strongly ask that you do not harass him. We appreciate your sympathy and support, but we categorically do not want this to turn into a witch hunt. Here is Derek's statement. Obviously, I've never posted the Reset Era before this, but I wanted to get some things out there that I've bottled up for some time now. I want to provide some more context if possible, but these are just some of my experiences. First, none of us knew how much either of us was making. All I knew was that I was making the most of all the employees I had been the longest. Each year, I would get a raise until I topped out at 5k a month in 2018. Despite asking for my yearly raise, Andre said that the channel couldn't afford it, as by that point John had been brought on. I didn't mind, though, as having John on the team was a lifesaver. I was able to do updates and keep my eye on the channel, lightning my daily work, and load significantly. I fully expected to be on call at times and would be nervous to even leave my home most days, fearing that some random Nintendo news would come out. This didn't really go away until John joined and Amy pushed me to take time for myself. Rarely did Andre handle an update and when it was just him, he would wait until either John or myself was free again to actually handle it. Before then, it always had to be done ASAP. As for GameXplain's income, I was able to see the analytics for quite some time and the estimation is mostly on point, though there were some months where it would dip below that estimation. But the high end always felt massive and I hoped that the rest of the team, especially John, was being compensated with that extra income. That said, I had to handle any work expenses myself for the most part, including consoles and equipment. The only part of my current setup provided by Andre is my mic. I paid for my flights to LA or for E3 or trains to New York for Nintendo events, while Andre would handle the cost of hotels if needed and meals if we worked together. I never said anything as the expenses could be used as write-offs for my taxes and helped at the end of the year, which is totally true to guys. So we get to write off a lot of things that are business expenses. However, this year felt different as the team started talking more. I discovered that John was making less than half what I did, despite doing the same amount of work. Steve's income was already brought up and Ash had stepped back from the channel for only occasional work. He would send invoices that Andre would eventually get to and Andre always had to be reminded to send our paychecks out. We tried to get a calendar started so he could be more consistent, but he insisted the idea. One other thing to know is that despite a discord where we all chatted and coordinated, Andre would often DM each of us to ask specific things. Obstinably, it was so we could see them better, but often it felt like a way to strong arm for videos he wanted. There were many times where he wanted an update on something that I didn't feel was worth the time as I was working on other things, but he would push until I relented. Sometimes he gave up, but that was rare. It got to a point where I would ignore or put off looking at his DMs. If I was busy with something else or be more combative over the updates he wanted to put out. Andre was extremely controlling, seemingly timing things to directly disrupt plans. He gave John tons of work when his YouTube channel took off, making it difficult for him to make videos there. He also asked me to stop streaming to YouTube, as he didn't like old gameplay playthroughs mixed in with our current event style. As a side note, any money I earned from Super Chat had to be totaled by me and invoiced at the end of the year as a bonus, so leaving it to Twitch served as a chance to earn money more immediately, especially with a baby on the way and Amy still unable to work on her own projects due to the effects of COVID. I prepared people for the move for a while as I completed the final playthrough, but on the day of the final stream Andre contacted me and asked that I stream to GameXplain's Twitch instead. His reason was that he wouldn't be able to make me properly full time if I streamed to my own Twitch, something he had been building towards through most of the year. If I streamed to my own Twitch, I would be considered a freelancer and immediately have my pay removed with rates estimated at $15 to $20 per update and $100 to $150 per feature or review. He said I could have full control of GameXplain's Twitch, though it felt strong armed into taking the deal. I still got the money from subs and bits monthly, but I had to go through him. It also felt like he dragged his feet to confirm affiliate status because he thought me streaming would somehow turn people away from the new Game Club tier on the Patreon. Around September he asked me to join a voice call, where he wanted to discuss me at GameXplain going forward. I popped in at the point in time and he asked me to be on camera. It turns out he had prepared a PowerPoint where he ran down several things, how COVID had affected the ad rates and lowered income, how he was still paying me the same despite this, how I was fighting him when updates had to be done, and ultimately how I was bringing in less money for the channel than what I was being paid. It ended with a question of whether I was still loyal and still wanted an official full-time position. Again, with a baby on the way, I was scared to the point of meekness because I couldn't put Amy and the baby in that position. When Andre finally presented me with the full-time contract, I was in the middle of a nightmare moving situation where I could barely focus on anything. He pushed the fact that I had to make a decision as soon as possible due to timing, but I could not change my income situation without messing up my loan application. Ultimately, he gave me the time I needed and talked to the loan offices as my boss to help me get my loan. But in the intervening time, I was able to take a closer look at the contract. There were no defined set hours, no increase in pay, no overtime, no health coverage, not enough full-time employees, and overtime would only translate to, like I had to say in my life, everything had to go through him if I wanted to earn money beyond GameXplain. But worst of all was the NDA included with the contract, tucked in the many points listed as a non-compete clause. Basically, had I signed the contract and left or was fired from GameXplain for any reason, I would not be able to work in the same space for a year. I took this to mean no YouTube, no games media, nothing. I talked to a lot of people around this time trying to figure out what to do. After speaking with all of them, including Amy, Ash, Steve, and John, I ultimately decided to leave with Ash and Steve coming with me so we could pursue Ash's idea of good vibes gaming. It felt better to leave and attempt my own thing rather than deal with the contract in general stress and pressure of GameXplain. Money is tight, but I am so much happier now. I can gratefully thank all of you who have supported Good Vibes Gaming so far, whether as part of our Patreon, watching my streams, or subscribing to the channel. It means the world to me that I can happily pursue my ideas and look forward to sharing them with our fans. Ultimately though, no matter what, I request that you don't harass any of the new hires, Tom or Andre. I merely want to provide context and shed light on the position. Alright, so that is what Derek had to say. And for those who don't know, Derek was the highest paid employee there beyond Andre himself. He did a brunt of the work until John came on board. This is, okay, Andre comes across kind of as an asshole. Well, let's move on to the next one. Let's see here. This one is by Brandon Miracle. Steve posted it. Brandon Miracle, for those who don't know, Brandon was an E3 2019 at a GameXplain fan meetup. Since then, I've become friends with him and partnered with him on some projects for World of GameXplain and Good Vibes Gaming. Alright, so this is Brandon's statement. I worked freelance for GameXplain for a majority of 2020. It started with the 10th anniversary of GameXplain Video. I was elated to be asked to work with my favorite YouTube channel of all time. Unfortunately, my experience wasn't what I hoped for. So this is as a freelancer who just only had a little bit of experience with GameXplain. I put maybe 15 to 20 hours into that video. And me being new to freelance, we settled on $150. I was so excited by the opportunity that I let the low ball slide. This set an unfortunate precedent. Later on in the year, I was offered the opportunity to edit every episode of GameClub. This was some of the most stressful work I had to do for GameXplain, and I asked for a pittance of $65 per video. I value myself higher than this now, but I believe Andre could have stepped in and told me I was low balling myself. But he didn't, with future projects starting sending me invoices, what I believe I was owed to no contest from Andre. Now, most of you probably don't know, I was even involved with GameXplain for as long as I was. That's because Andre made little to no effort to give me credit of any kind. The most blatant instance was when he asked me to edit the Super Mario 3D All Stars review. Which by the way, that review has almost a million views. So that was a really big video. Alright, I worked the entirety of the night, up until 45 minutes before the embargo to get the video done. Andre's Twitter made it sound like he worked through the night when it was me. He didn't finish writing his review, until the evening putting me into a corner, and allowing him to coast through that night while I work. I was furious. At this point, I decided I was going to walk away. I was making no strides in my career, because nobody even knew I was doing the work. Steve thankfully would edit Andre's descriptions and add credits for me, or tag me on Twitter himself. Andre was stealing credit for all night work. Stealing credit! This poor guy working at his favorite YouTube channel. Andre was stealing his credit publicly, saying he did all the work. He was up tirelessly all night long editing. What the hell, dude? What the- he's not even getting the benefit of association, is what I'm saying, right? Because you could argue all these guys at least got benefit of association. Not Brandon. Zero benefit of being associated and working at GameXplain. All right, during the entire experience, I was one of the candidates to be hired for GameXplain. Andre knowingly used this to pressure me into more work for little money. I found out I didn't get the job before deciding to leave, because Steve was kind enough to let me know. I didn't hear this from Andre himself, until mere days before the new hires were announced. And I know for a fact it was decided I wouldn't be hired quite some time prior. I've never felt more used and taken advantage of in my life. It hurt me on a deep level and I still struggle with it. That's right, Andre used and abused Brandon by allowing him to continue to think he was going to be one of the hires, so you better work hard so you can be considered for the position. Even though Andre had already decided, and he found out through Steve, that hey, you're not actually going to be hired. Wow. That is abusive to the extreme. For now, I've been helping out with good vibes gaming, and I've had an incredible time. I feel like I belong and that I'm treated with respect I deserve. I love these guys, and I'm so happy that they're doing good vibes gaming. All right, next up we have Ash's official statement. So, get ready, another long statement, but an important one. All right, Ash says, I've been hesitant to speak up because of the good vibe games brand means so much to me, and I don't want us as individuals, and or our channel to be mitered in internet drama. But Steve, Derek have already rightfully commented on the situation as it pertains to them, and I recognize that things have reached a point that I would be remiss if I didn't speak up as well. First up, I would like to remind everyone, that's new to the GameXplain crew of Tris, Joy, and Chris, not to mention my dear friend Tom, who remains with the channel. I have nothing to do with any of this, and they deserve the same love and attention you've graciously shown us over the years. I and we are categorically not asking anyone to boycott GameXplain or pull support from their Patreon. Okay, well, he kind of said this before, we'll skip past this, but... Um, those of you who are long-time GameXplain fans, likely notice I started to become less visible on and doing less work for the channel as the years wore on. The reasons have been widely speculated, but some folks connected the dots, thanks to my occasional statements here and there that GameXplain didn't pay the bills. That's the long and short of it. Pay was so low and inconsistent for so long, relative to what the channel made, recall what Derek and Steve have said about us being able to see the metrics while we were there, that I eventually stopped being able to justify all the work and energy I put into the channel when I was getting so comparatively little compensation to return. There was no set reliable content rates for freelancers, which by my own choice was what my relationship to the channel was considered to be for most of my time there, even though I was a core staff member. Despite my asking for set rates to be established many times and Andre made it clear it was on me to invoice him for what I thought my work was worth, essentially come up with my own rates for him to approve or not. Still though, as poor and ultimately untenable as this relationship to the channel was as a freelancer, it was a million billion times better based on what I witnessed every day. That being one of its full-time employees, and I was happy and relieved to be mostly able to maintain our own distance from GameXplain in that respect. Let me be crystal clear about this. GameXplain as you knew it and have known it simply would not exist, full stop if not for Derek and John. I will always give Andre all the credit in the world for creating GameXplain and building it up the way he did, but over the years Derek and later John did the absolute lion's share and then some of the actual work in maintaining the channel and putting out daily content. Content they and we had little to no creative control over might I have, particularly later on. Andre gave the content orders and we mostly they just carried them out. There was very little room for negotiation or compromise and especially in the latter part of our time there, Andre maintained a very authoritarian top-down staff structure with him as the sole decision maker except in very rare circumstances. The utterly mind-boggling number of work hours Derek and John were expected to put in relative to their pay especially in John's case and at the expense of their quality of life was just I've never seen anything like it and I hope I never do again. Ultimately we were utterly taken for granted and exploited as Steve would also be when he joined later on but none more so than Derek and John and even thinking about the backbreaking work they put into the channel pretty much every single day for competitively microscopic recompense and basically zero credit fills me with an anger I can't describe. Without them GameXplain either would not exist today or would be far far less successful than it has become. Period. End of story. Acquisitions, accusations that any of us but especially them were work adverse or suffering from the good problem of too much work are patently false, unfounded and ill-informed. Now it has been asked whether we requested better pay and or work conditions before we left. Let me assure you beyond a shadow of any doubt that we did more than once. I'm reminded in particular of a GameXplain team that's in quotes because by then Andre had begun making it clear there was now an authoritarian split between him and the rest of us. Meeting Derek, John and I called for when I was vacationing with my wife. I remember this meeting so clearly because I still all these months and ultimately years later really cannot believe Andre pushed back on and refused the arguably humble concessions we were asking for at the time. For context this was before Steve whose accounts and grievances I totally back up might I add fully joined the team. So the three of us called for a meeting with Andre to ask that a couple things be formalized going forward. Namely, one on time pay each month dictated by a Google calendar reminder for Andre because as has been well documented by now we were frequently had to chase down our pay by repeatedly reminding and almost begging Andre to just please remember to pay us for the work we had already done. Two, a travel budget being set aside that we wouldn't incur personal debt flying to and working shows. We were expected to cover such as E3, PAX West, and PAX East. In the interest of full disclosure and clarity the E3 bit doesn't apply to me as I actually live in Los Angeles. His responses for the first point he outright refused to commit to a hard locked payment date each month and suggested that it was unfair of us to hold him to such an expectation as we had always gotten paid as long as we reminded him. So why wasn't that good enough? Andre your employees want to know when they're going to be paid. Every employer even I've been a 1099 contract freelancer before there's still set days to be paid and let me tell you as someone who is a YouTuber there are set days that you're paid by YouTube. So you know when the money comes in from YouTube you know when the money comes in from Amazon from Twitch from all these various revenue sources from Patreon you know when the money arrives there is zero reason you cannot reasonably come up with an agreed upon pay date to pay your employees. Employees should never ever have to message their boss begging for their paychecks ever ever. No matter I mean Steve was being paid $550 a month and he had to beg you to get that $550. Come on dude. Come on they have the decency to show your employees freelancer otherwise respect. These are the people that built your channel. And remember when Ash and others started joining GameXplain was not the behemoth it was now. It was not a million plus channel. We're talking this channel is at 200, 300,000 subscribers. They joined. They made GameXplain what it is not Andre. It's very clear Andre does so little actual work. Sits on his ass giving commands from his ivory tower and making bank. Bullshit. It's bullshit. I'm sorry. I'm really angry at that. Like I didn't know it was this bad. I thought it was just low pay high expectations he also treated them like shit. So you might ask well why did they stay on? Well we'll get into that in a moment here. So he did say that we would try to do better. He would try to do better going forward and to his credit for me at least he eventually mostly did but he seemed almost offended that we would even think to demand such an outrageous quotes are mine not Andre's thing as reliably on time pay. As to the second point his response to us was that there was technically independent contractors and thus not entitled to work related travel being covered or compensated. So in a word no not happening. Okay pretty reasonable request if it's a requirement of the job you're asking your contractors to perform. But anyways now to be fair he wasn't wrong in a legal sense. None of us had signed any sort of employment contract. Thankfully I would eventually come to realize ratifying such terms as and as such we were not legally entitled to any sort of travel cover. Basically it wasn't in the contract from Andre or to the channel. In a moral sense though considering how tirelessly we especially Derek and John worked for the channel and how key we were to its growth in the whole brand yeah the end of the medium was the first time I distinctly remember feeling angry and resentful and thinking the writing was on the wall and that was years before we actually left. All this said I don't want to make it seem like Andre never paid for or covered anything. While it was not usually offered outright he would eventually reimburse me for most of my game explain related flights and all transit slash rise to share slash onsite food expenses as long as I did 100% of the legwork and invoicing everything and reminding him to pay me again with that reminder stuff. So dumb. He also paid for many post-show and post-event dinners and bar tabs and he never pushed back on any of the invoices I sent him and almost never tried to low ball me any further than I was already low balling myself. It's important to me that I highlight those those exceptions where they exist because it wasn't all bad and I'm not trying to claim it was. So Andre through his credit was giving in on a request that he thought was asinine to even ask and said he's not legally required to basically trying to seem like he's a good guy by by you know what hey I told you I'm not legally required to do this but I mean I'll do it as long as you pester me enough about it. All right. I also want to remind folks that the kind of crunch conditions Andre has been accused of engineering at game explain are not entirely his fault and it was never our intention to imply that they were during the good vibes games discussion on this topic came up in these crunch uh these crunch problems are in many respects endemic to game journalism and YouTube which is totally true uh and indeed the game industry at large Andre does bear some of the blame in that he rarely if ever put our mental and physical well-being above the non-negotiable mandate of getting news updates up immediately and having every single preview in review ready to go live the moment an embargo dropped. That's right Andre Andre stipulated in their contracts that they must have all reviews and previews up on embargo date. So he is to blame. I'm sorry. I know he's trying to be nice here because it's not Andre's fault that they only had two days to review Final Fantasy 7 but Andre could have relaxed on his own requirements because Andre has to know how the how the industry works by now right but he didn't put their mental well-being above the work. Bullshit. I'm sorry it's just bullshit and I know this is true at a lot of outlets it's not right at any of them if IGN does it if Game Informer does it GameSpot it's not right anywhere I don't care what you're being paid there is a certain aspect of mental health that needs to be considered in aspects like this where you can at least give them an extra couple days to get the review done so they can at least get some sleep eat dinner with their family instead of just slaving away for 48 straight hours. Remember when you reviewed a game you mostly did all the work yourself there was hardly anyone else who edited it except in the case funnily enough so I found out I found out this is an aside this isn't part of this part I found out from one of the members that when uh when they reviewed a game they did all the work right so they wrote it they uh they obviously played it they wrote it they recorded the footage and they edited the video Andre reviewed Super Mario 3D All Stars which by the way is three old games relatively easy to do a review of he reviewed that himself but he hired somebody else to do all the editing and then took all the credit for the editing work think about that for a moment he requires his own staff to do all of the work from playing the game to to to writing to editing to all that jazz and getting it up maybe someone else did the thumbnail he in reviewing a game a game that you know is old school and it doesn't really need a lot of conversation about in reviewing that game had somebody else edit it so he's not even doing the like when it's review he's not even holding himself to the same expectations he holds him staffed his staff to he doesn't give them the courtesy of somebody else editing the review together wow all right let's let's get back into this I'm sorry I'm getting really heated right now I'll calm down calm down a bit and get to the actual words here let me see here Andre gets some of the blame but he has no control over the time developers allow for review in preview periods it was Square Enix's fault Steve had two days to fully play and write and produce a review of Final Fantasy 7 Remake before release not Andre's it was Capcom's fault I had five or so days to fully play and write plus produce a review of both Mega Man X Legacy Collection and one and two before release not Andre's but neither was there ever an effort on Andre's part that I can recall to question or soften the expectation that our content had to be ready right at embargo time regardless of any extenuating circumstances in closing there's one thing I can say with absolute certainty had it bed tenable I know without a doubt that all of us at Good Vides Gaming and I think though I won't speak for him John would have absolutely been happy to stay at GameXplain and reap the benefits of its continuing success together with Andre as a team we're incredibly proud of what we help build on Andre's excellent foundation and my first several years at GameXplain when despite any problems I had been being underpaid our team dynamic was more collaborative and a bunch of friends covering games together rather than the authoritarian a boss and his underling setup and morph into later on let me see remain some of the best of my career and I really my life of course we wouldn't we would have loved to stay under better fairer circumstances but end of the day GameXplain fully belongs to Andre it's his baby and he chose to run things in a way that sharply diverged from our needs and wants for too long I want to express very clearly though that I was and still am and will remain absolutely fucking heartbroken over the things that turned out because I think we together could have taken the channel to incredibly new heights and reap the benefits together in fact I'm damn near certain we could have and maybe in an alternate universe we did but sadly that just wasn't in the cards for us and we had to take a chance to move on which as you know we did to Good Vibes Gaming to those of you who have followed us to Good Vibes Gaming and supported our new venture in any way whether you have from the beginning or only are now in light of all of this it can never be said enough thank you thank you thank you thank you for caring and about the people behind the content you've loved over the years and please be assured the Steve Derek and I are all much happier and healthier at Good Vibes Gaming than ever before as we even maintain hopeful the GameXplain continues to be successful under the stewardship of its new team onward and upward so I said this video was going to be shorter but it's not there's just too much I'm sorry Gondre I I need to hear your side of the story all right you need to speak up I know you're going to try to avoid it you're going to hope this all blows over it's not going away it's clearly not going I didn't want to make another video on it it's just not going to go away you need to comment on this because you are being accused of some absolute dumb shit and the thing is it sounds like if Andrei could have swallowed his pride there was a chance he could have kept this entire team together and GameXplain could be bigger than ever he could have kept Ash he could have kept Derek he could have kept Steve and he could have kept John okay Brandon's story is sad as well as he was used and abused but those four core members I'm sorry they were Derek and John especially Derek and John were so freaking core that you should have made them co-owners it should have been an even revenue split at the top between you three arguably they should get more because they did all the work but yet you're the owner it's your channel okay fine get get your 33 and a half percent cut or whatever but seriously this to me is absolutely insane it is Asinine Andrei destroyed a good thing I think the writing's been on the wall for this for a while no offense to the new people there you just you can't bring on somebody else to expect them to do what those other people did because they injected their their heart personality and passion into the work and well absolutely the people you hired and Trist, Chris and Joey are able to mimic that and put in their own heart and their own passion their own thoughts they are not Derek they are not John they are not Steve or Ash they're different people so yeah people are going to feel what the quality dropped because they followed GameXplain because of Derek because of John because of Ash and because of Steve they did not follow GameXplain because of Andrei at least they haven't for a long time what GameXplain became before they left is what Derek John Ash and Steve made of it even though Andrei was the one giving commands from an ivory tower you guys remember the bit block the channel is now closed he did his final video now he's got some some JT style or JT something or other channel so there was a little bit of a stirrup when Justin Thomas left GameXplain and at the time people kind of excused you know the follow up between him and Andrei as well they have widely different political views right like like Justin Thomas is a Republican basically Andrei is a staunch Democrat and ideals conflict politically too much for them to make it work that sucks politics shouldn't really have anything to do with the workplace but it happens and because people didn't like some of Justin Thomas's political stances they just said well you know what good riddance and he went on to have a successful channel on his own so whatever but it turns out that that was just the tip of the iceberg of who Andrei is for someone who has argued in the past for fair wages and no crunch practice what you preach practice what you preach right now it seems like Andrei has put on an affront for years to hide himself from the realities of how he was running his channel and he's basically no better than some of the worst game developers out there all right folks I am the Tanner Open Chance from the Tanner Prime I want to say again that this is the last video but it feels like I just lied yesterday because I just made another one so I really want to be done with this situation I'm going to I'm in fact I'm going to promise you I'm going to get out at least one or two other videos today that are not related to this to show that this isn't all I care about but man this is part of my livelihood growing up like I not livelihood I guess part of my inspiration growing up I was such a fan of a game explain up until those four people left and I didn't know what happened heartbroken I guess that's all I could say and I didn't even work there all right folks I'll catch you guys in the next video