Why you should make sure that you trust your project lead

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#1

This is half a story, and half a warning to all of you new developers out there who want to start working in projects in teams.

I will not be namedropping the name of the game or the owner of the group.

This whole story revolves around one project that I was introduced to at the beginning of 2020, it was to script a roleplay type game. Now, I generally dislike working on projects like these, but I was asked by a close friend of mine I’d known for years who was a modeler for that game, so I decided to help out.

Here’s where it starts to get a little off course,

  • Red Flag #1: There was no guaranteed payment, they didn’t have the group funds so it was understandable, but that meant that there was huge risk for me and the other developers if the game were to flop.

This Red Flag didn’t make me too nervous, as I have worked on projects where I’ve gotten paid a while after the release (albeit on games I actually enjoy to make), but I decided to test my luck and have fun working on my first game for a while with one of my friends. This is where the next problem comes up.

  • Red Flag #2: The development team is extremely toxic (except for a few), and the people on top know the least about game development (and do the least with the game)

This is a problem that struck out in my mind, but I decided that I would push through, I would say by this time I really should’ve left the project but I just really wanted the funds to pay for my personal project games that I would be working on.

During development, there was a smaller GUI designer who was, yes, extremely annoying but he did great work, the leaders didn’t like them so they contributed to the next red flag…

  • Red Flag #3: There are extremely willing to fire, keep your assets, and not pay you a penny, for the reason as small as they just kind of don’t like you.

I decided that I would just get the scripts done quickly, I got done within about a week and a half (consider I have to balance school and a job with the game), and It was done.

Not really a red flag, but this development team constantly touched and renamed the models that were linked to scripts directly and broke them constantly, blaming me every single time for making faulty scripts. But, once the release came along I got the next red flag

  • Red Flag #4: The owner has no idea about anything, he didn’t even know where the menu for running a sponsorship was, and didn’t know how to resize advertisements since the gfx designer made them a small bit too small.

  • Red Flag #5: The owner withdrew all of the group funds for “advertising” and spent 2k of our budget on god knows what.

However, by this point, I was too invested to leave, and I couldn’t really do much at this point, if I were to quit I would just not be paid. I didn’t want to count my losses just yet, so I pushed forward and got to just yesterday.

  • Red Flag #6: They fired our head modeler and builder, for no real reason, and kept switching up the reason every time he rebutted.

The first reason was not being passionate enough and slacking, which, he hadn’t been, the game was just done. The second was that he was not mature in the development discord server (which, he was one of the more mature people, and the leads were the least mature [including Dox and DDoS threats]), The third was that he was asking about payment, the fourth, was that he was lying to get rehired.

The leads then told him that he would be removed from team create, they told him that they would not remove his models, and that they would not be paying him at all for any of the work he’d done.

Now, I have not been removed from the team (yet), but I will be immediately leaving once (or if) I get my payment, we have already had multiple investments fall through and it just looks like a train-wreck.

In the end, my message is to any people who are working on a project and are not one of the heads, please, either ask for upfront/guaranteed payment, or work with someone of which you know you can trust with your time and skill and not to make a mistake like me.

Thank you,

-JoinMyWorld

[UPDATE]: The owner of the group sold the game and group and left without paying anyone.

24 Likes
#2

CASE 1:

I can agree with some of the points here, Couple months back i fell for one of these, and it made me lose over 2 months of profits to just pay the stuff off. It started off as a “Payment per asset” original payment was made at the time from another group. Then the owner said he wanted it on the $15 VPS Plan (since it was a bot and he wanted it to be online and responsive better to handle the loads it was getting, Every 5-10 seconds). Couple months went buy (left the vps running and went for some personal time) came back to get the previous months payment and in the end he just “Fired me for AAing” when i wasnt even online for the previous months but he still used my bots “After i was fired”. It ended up costing me over $140+ to pay the Hosting provider the money back + their fee on the top of this. Even to this day the group is still using a remake of my bot which they had “Bought” from me. (had to give one of the developers access to use this to change out the cookies if they expired etc). In the end it was not worth any of the developers time, the “Project leader” was just full on toxic. didnt know how to run the group at the time, I asked him many times to pay but he never responded back.
The group is still using my scripts till this day (in their other projects etc) but Roblox cant do anything about it. so :man_shrugging:

Just a Tip for other people: Always get some kind of payment first / Agreement. And dont just fall for the stupid tricks. even if they are “Famous / Popular”.

3 Likes
#3

I think you may want to edit the title since its kind of backwards

Good read though

1 Like
#4

There is no guarantee that any deal you agree to will not be ignored. The only safeguard against being abused is to sign a legally binding contract so that you have legitimate legal recourse. Roblox will not help you, they do not officially endorse collaboration.

If that all sounds too formal and personal for you then your best option is to only work with your own friends. You don’t know who’s going to give you trouble, but there are certainly red flags as you’ve pointed out. Just keep track of how easily you can be taken advantage of and try to minimize that risk.

2 Likes
#5

Pro tip: sign contracts even with friends. There’s no reason to leave yourself vulnerable, no matter how much trust there is.

If they refuse to sign, that’s a red flag.

9 Likes
#6

Yeah, I really should have noticed what was going on and left before I finished my job.

1 Like
#7

Agreeable. However, I haven’t encountered any suspicious developers that cross my mind on these red flags. I have always found trusted leads.

Perhaps I’ll save this for a protocol whether to join a project as a precaution.

#8

In the future, for sketchy products like this, you can make all your code in modules on your account. Leave said modules public (or otherwise group-accessible) and if they don’t pay you, remove or change the modules. It sounds petty, but it’s honestly most important to pay your scripters because they have every tool needed to mess you up.

#9

The exact same thing happened to me while working on a game, with all of the red flags. Here’s how it went down:

PAYMENT
They said the payment was “based on revenue”, and there were no group funds.

TOXICITY
The owner knew nothing about game development, constantly asking me to add things that would take days to make, even while working on another feature. If I didn’t do it, he got mad.

WILLINGNESS TO FIRE
The owner wanted me to pump out UI, features, and bugfixes at a fast rate, while telling me that the team should just stop working on the game if I don’t finish.

KNOWLEDGE
The owner was a professional marketer, and not a game developer. He didn’t want me to add features that may be slightly different from his views because “it would make more money”.

“ADVERTISING”
People spent money on an barely finished simulator game by announcing it in his Discord server, and then withdrew the 4k that he made for “advertising”.

STARTING A NEW PROJECT
The owner abandoned the game, scamming his employees and his players. He then started a new game that also got cancelled.

All of this repeated until I quit.
(EDIT: I stayed because he had a lot of power over me.)

1 Like
#10

Hello I read all this and I’m pretty impressed!
Also what you just said everything, firing someone and not paying them and keeping models it’s Scam and many examples like what happened to the owner of Weight Lifting Simulator 3 he got banned after not paying his builders.
I also recommend like you said always have advance pay or for the one your working needs to be a pretty recognizable person in roblox because famous people does not scam.
Also yeah some few Robux in advance helps out and hope you make an awesome project and succeed with them.

#11

Working with people who have no past success or establishment is almost always going to end in failure. This itself is not a problem, because that’s just the dynamic of the community, but people who are surprised by this trait are only fooling themselves.

If you sign up under someone with no experience because you feel like you can’t make your first successful project on your own, you’re really only setting yourself up for disappointment, most of the time. That time would be better spent individualizing and mastering your craft as a solo dev.