How Over 25 People Got Scammed Into Working at a Nonexistent Game Company (kotaku.com) 110
An anonymous reader shares a report: Brooke Holden had all but given up on breaking into the video game business. [...] "Professionally inexperienced but passionate team manager looking for a hobby project to help support and manage," she posted to a subreddit for assembling game dev teams. It was just a lark, yet a half dozen replies accumulated under the post. One in particular stood out, from an account with an active Reddit history on developer recruitment boards. The poster's name was "Kova," and he told Holden that his small team of three developers had recently ballooned into a 48-member operation that needed a manager "on everyone's arse." Holden was exhilarated. On June 22, 2019, she signed a contract with Kova's company Drakore Studios, accepting the position of junior production manager at $13 per hour.
There was just one problem: Drakore Studios didn't actually exist. Over the course of a month and a half, "Kova," real name Rana Mahal, convinced at least 25 people to join a game studio that was not a registered company, and develop a video game to which he did not own the rights, in exchange for no pay. Six of them came forward to tell their story to Kotaku. The story they told was one of deceit, exploitation, incompetence, and hope, and one fuelled by gamers' desperation to participate in an industry that has stoked their imagination, lifted their mood and forged friendships since childhood.
There was just one problem: Drakore Studios didn't actually exist. Over the course of a month and a half, "Kova," real name Rana Mahal, convinced at least 25 people to join a game studio that was not a registered company, and develop a video game to which he did not own the rights, in exchange for no pay. Six of them came forward to tell their story to Kotaku. The story they told was one of deceit, exploitation, incompetence, and hope, and one fuelled by gamers' desperation to participate in an industry that has stoked their imagination, lifted their mood and forged friendships since childhood.
Guild Wars 2 (Score:3)
for no pay?? why not have them fill out W-4's (Score:2)
for no pay?? why not have them fill out W-4's and get a few SSN# + other info from people who are working at your fake office.
Re:for no pay?? why not have them fill out W-4's (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably because the whole thing was more or less simply incompetence and over-the-top business bravado rather than outright scamming. It looks like the guy instigating the whole thing was hoping to bullshit his way into an operational business, but he fucked up royally.
Lied about money he didn't have. Lied about business contacts he didn't have. Failed to get his business name registered with the gov't in a timely fashion (which shouldn't have been hard, in the USA you just fill out a small form, submit a small payment, and boom you're a registered LLC for life). The non-existant business name registration torpedoed his one real chance of getting funding for his start up.
Ironically, a lot of these people he "hired" (without paying) are still working on games development without pay. If he had been upfront about not being able to pay, many of these people probably would have still done work for him, the games publisher might have actually taken him seriously, and he wouldn't have been shut out of the group for being a fraud.
The takeaway: honesty is the best policy, even if the truth is you're broke as fuck and don't have a whole a lot going for you at the moment.
Re:for no pay?? why not have them fill out W-4's (Score:4, Insightful)
She (Brooke) wouldn't have been scammed if she had been honest with herself. No industry experience, no real domain knowledge whatsoever, and she thought she was somehow qualified to manage? We already have far too many of these self-entitled shitheads in IT:
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I lost so much faith in humanity. Like how the fuck did you sit through this class and come out dumber?
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What does IT have to do with development?
Re:for no pay?? why not have them fill out W-4's (Score:4, Interesting)
Team management skills are transferable and $13/hour feels low for someone with a degree and a year's experience.
It's not as though she was seeking a job paying £40k/year, even those she was qualified for one: https://careers.lidl.co.uk/en/... [lidl.co.uk]
You shouldn't be blaming the victim when they agreed to take on a role for which they were qualified, accepting substantially lower pay than they could get elsewhere in recognition of their own inexperience.
long story short (Score:3)
I don't get it (on several levels) (Score:5, Interesting)
"Professionally inexperienced but passionate team manager looking for a hobby project to help support and manage," ...
How can a person describe themselves as a "team manager" when they don't actually have any experience?
On June 22, 2019, she signed a contract with Kova's company Drakore Studios, accepting the position of junior production manager at $13 per hour.
I think fast food restaurants pay their managers better than that. They may even pay their line workers better than that.
Re: I don't get it (on several levels) (Score:1)
Professionally inexperienced CEO looking for high paying job with golden parachute, please contact me.
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On June 22, 2019, she signed a contract with Kova's company Drakore Studios, accepting the position of junior production manager at $13 per hour.
I think fast food restaurants pay their managers better than that. They may even pay their line workers better than that.
I think her focus was on building her experience, not the 13 bucks an hour.
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How can a person describe themselves as a "team manager" when they don't actually have any experience?
The same way as anyone who's done a course can write their chosen profession on a cover letter. Management like many fields has two paths to entry: Trial by fire (experience), and bits of paper (schooling and courses).
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She had experience, just not much. From the linked article:
one year into a job as an office manager, Holden, 26, was still dreaming about getting into games
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Debt is zero reason not to go to college. You either go to college and hope for some prospects, or you get no education and truly have no prospects. Better off in with 50k student debt and a degree in a decent field. This is possible. I know people that have done just that and they didn't even get stem degrees, so it's very doable if you put yourself on the college path while in high school.
Believe me, I only have a silly two year degree in computer networking and I'm essentially stuck in my retail job. It'
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These days it’s pretty easy to be hired anything IT, there is such a shortage. The problem you have is probably that you want to start out in IT at 52k with a pension, healthcare, vision, dental, 401k and 5 weeks vacation. Not going to happen, your union job is going away because you practically cannot be fired before the company going completely bankrupt.
If IT is your passion, then start at the lower rung at whatever money that is (it’s probably half that) but within ~5 years you’ll make
Character Sheet: (Score:5, Funny)
WIS: 3
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INT = Intellect, WIS = Wisdom. Implying the person was intellectually smart, but not wise enough to see that this was not real.
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You know /. is truly dead when someone thinks they need to explain that reference.
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You know /. is truly dead when someone thinks they need to explain that reference.
Yes, that's right - it's not the pervasive racism or misogyny that's the problem, it's having to explain a D&D reference.
Re: Character Sheet: (Score:2)
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WIS: 1
Brooke Holden hasn't given up on the dream, either. She is staying on with Lycanic Studios while still working at her part-time office job.
Perseverance 99 (Okay so I don't play D&D)
Re: Character Sheet: (Score:2)
She started studying CS and half-way in discovered she does not like coding. Your number for INT is way too high as well.
Scripted, it sure seems like it (Score:2)
The story they told was one of deceit, exploitation, incompetence, and hope, and one fuelled by gamers' desperation to participate in an industry that has stoked their imagination, lifted their mood and forged friendships since childhood.
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I'm thinking, "And they all lived happily ever after" is what's missing. But perhaps they will and it's all for the best.
Maybe I should sell some tech shares... (Score:3)
This is the kind of thing that gets more common when things get frothy and randos imagine they can just YOLO and make things work. They see all of the activity happening in the market and imagine that it mostly happens because someone just wanted to do it REALLY REALLY BADLY, and, well, they can't imagine anyone wanting it more than they do, so obviously it will work out, right? Except you still need the fundamental capabilities in place to manage it, and, of course, the guy running this has no idea what any of that is, so...
Also, the statements from the guy running things remind me a great deal of a dude I worked for back in the 90's, who always paid two weeks later than promised, and stiffed me for four or five weeks of work (on a four-month gig). Same kind of routine of "We have money coming in on Friday at 2pm, we'll get that in Fedex to you over the weekend", and then the justification of "Well, how could I be scamming anyone, when I'm working so hard myself?" My guess is the main guy probably has a nice sporty car and some decent furniture in his condo.
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"We have money coming in on Friday at 2pm, we'll get that in Fedex to you over the weekend"
Yeah, I've been told that too, and no, you're not getting that FedEx package. I've since learned that the moment that kind of talk starts, I just need to collect my stuff and leave right then.
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I had that in my first job. Except that I was running their accounts (in my spare time; I was half the development team and a third of the technical support staff too) so I knew exactly how little the company had and that they could cover salaries, just not 'today'.
The owners sold the company to their main competitor a few months after I got a job paying 50% more elsewhere.
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Reminds me of Internet provider startups in the 90's. Wired (back when they were an interesting magazine) had a story about this guy that went from selling bottled water to dial-up service. Why the Internet? Simply because he saw it as the next big thing to sell. We've all met his type. Wheeler-Dealer guy. Anyway, the article mentioned how creditors were constantly knocking on his office door (sometimes he'd tell the staff to go silent and pretend no one was there... really), and the one constant that EVERY
This says it all (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: "Brooke Holden had all but given up on breaking into the video game business. She had gone to university in the United Kingdom to study game development, but realized partway through her degree that she hated coding. "
That's all too common an occurrence with today's "you need to learn to code" mindset, and far too common even with students who major in Computer Science.
I knew from that one sentence that this story would have an unhappy ending. How can you be a success in an industry where you can't stand to do the one thing that is fundamental to it? It's like someone wanting to be a lawyer who can't stand the idea of writing or reading legal documents.
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It's like someone wanting to be a lawyer who can't stand the idea of writing or reading legal documents.
That matches plenty of lawyers.
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there is plenty other stuff to do that involves creating games; art, music & (level) design, those things don't require coding.
then there other bits like marketing that don't require coding either.
and if all of these fail, you can still be a manager without knowing how to code.
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Coding is only a small part of game development. These days much of it is design, writing, art and producing. Most of these game development courses I have looked at include basic coding in the first year, so students at least gain the ability to do scripting and maybe decide they want to pursue it in the 2nd and 3rd years.
If you don't like coding, you opt to study other aspects of game development. I know someone who did one of those courses, he ended up being an animator and also hated the coding stuff.
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"That's all too common an occurrence with today's "you need to learn to code" mindset, and far too common even with students who major in Computer Science."
Yep. Midway through college, decades ago, I was a history major when I took a CompSci 101 course out of sheer curiosity. I had no idea what "computer science" was at the time. Back then, 90% of the major was "here, learn C and then all these other programming languages", with a few discrete math courses and such thrown in. I had no idea what I was in for
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How can you be a success in an industry where you can't stand to do the one thing that is fundamental to it?
Does your HR manager need to be a fluent Rust coder? They aren't working in the HR "industry" they are working in the coding industry too.
Industries have a big scope to their names, and many people would argue that it's better *not* to have some professional coder as a manager since that often leads to micromanaging.
The maths (Score:2)
Hmmm... 1/5=20%. 1/10=10%.
.2 * .1 = .02 (Or, about 1 in 50)
Reads like the story of most startups (Score:2)
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Idea guy (Score:2)
This is a next level "ideas guy".
Generally they only bother you with "hey! wanna do MY super duper hyper mega game? i won't pay you but we can share the profits!" before flooding with awful art and pretty dumb or bland ideas like "medieval anime MMORPG"
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You stole my idea. Sir, you shall hear from my lawyer.
$13 an hour?? (Score:2)
Seriously, $13 an hour??
My goodness, what would I do with allllllllll that money?
That's only $27K per year, so I'd probably do is starve to death in the street.
Where in the US can you live comfortably on $27K a year?
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She was doing it as a hobby, not for the money.
Well then she certainly came to the right place.
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Quite a few places, actually. Perhaps not in the manner you envision for yourself, however.
Yeah, having food and clothing and a place to live is kind of how I "envision" living, so you may be right.
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Lower your standards a bit.
Why should I lower my standards? So I can scrape by like a common wage-slave and live paycheck-to-paycheck?
Sounds intriguing, but I'll pass.
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In the UK I could live comfortably on $27k/year. Other than holidays and large purchases (e.g. a car or a £3k computer) I pretty much already do.
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In the UK I could live comfortably on $27k/year. Other than holidays and large purchases (e.g. a car or a £3k computer) I pretty much already do.
I'm happy for you, but what I had asked was, "Where in the US can you live comfortably on $27K a year?"
And my guess is, "very few places". I'm sure there are some economically-depressed places in the US where $27K would be enough to survive on, but I'm not sure I'd want to live in any of those places.
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Luckily we're discussing someone in the UK not the US, so your question becomes entirely fucking irrelevant if you really want to be an anal twat about it.
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Time to up your meds sweetheart. It seems like you have little, if any, self-control over your emotions. I hope you feel better soon.
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If you moved to a state like Texas or Georgia,
Yes, but then I'd be in a shithole like Texas or Georgia. I'll pass.
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Where in the US can you live comfortably on $27K a year?
The Midwest.
Not Surprising (Score:2)
Brook is Finnish but lives in the UK.
If he/she [ I say that for a reason] is willing to work for 10 quid an hour on a game project they are either very desperate, very gullible or both.
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If he/she [ I say that for a reason] is willing to work for 10 quid an hour on a game project they are either very desperate, very gullible or both.
...or wants to get some experience and look for a real gig next year.
Quit working on proprietary software for free! (Score:1)