QUOTE (Dwight @ Apr 3 2010, 03:46 AM)
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If Topps management has any belief in this statement, especially if CGL happened to be so foolish as to turn around and send dummied up data anyway, then I'm not sure how it could not become lights out for CGL on the Shadowrun and Battletech licenses. At least under current ownership and management.
If CGL is reduced to sending fake figures to Topps, then the problem is not that they tried to send fake figures to Topps (that's just stupidity), the problem is that they need to. It doesn't bode well. Of course they could just be greedy and be trying to get more money out than they ought, but the lack of payment of freelancers suggests necessity.
QUOTE (AHonestPerson @ Apr 3 2010, 03:48 AM)
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and your making your accusations do to, because even if what you say is true, making these accusations in a public fourm has proably hurt your ability to get a job, but hey, you and these other "disgrunted freelancers" won't need to worry about that when you set your own company up. which is the real reason you're trying to sink CGL isn't it?
Okay, I'd like to ask who you are. This was your fourth post on DS, you appear to have registered under this account purely to have a go at these people (people who we on DS have long benefited from their contributions, btw). You accuse people of trying to sink CGL when firstly CGL could make the whole situation go away by paying the modest amounts that it owes these people and secondly, these people have for a long time shown strong professionalism by avoiding spilling the beans on what's been going on. Your posts don't contain anything substantive, just ad hominems and snide suggestions. So in order to lend them any weight, who are you and what's your involvement in this?
QUOTE (Ancient History @ Apr 3 2010, 03:56 AM)
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Anything I've already been paid for, which is everything in print except Vice, belongs to CGL (or is part of the SR property, if you want to define it that way). Everything that I wasn't paid for at the time I terminated my contracts remains my own property, and Jason Hardy has been busy as a beaver assigning various BattleTech authors to rewriting several of my chapters, from what I hear.
This is weird. Aside from the concern about your work being re-written by less experienced writers (in Shadowrun, I mean), it just doesn't make a lot of sense from a business point of view. You'd written the work and it was ready to go. I don't know if layout was done or not (if so, then the situation is even worse). In any case, CGL would rather pay others and pay for the whole editing and proofing cycle to be repeated (which is going to be a pain for something as number-crunchy as PACKs sounds). And additionally there's the uncertainty of delivery times which is always a pain for a business too. Additionally they've drafted in writers from BattleTech (though JM says they've written for SR before, so I'm really curious to know what their writing credits are). So anyway, they'd rather all this than pay you your money. How does this make sense?
You terminated your contracts, so if they want to press ahead with this they have to either approach you with a cheque in hand and ask you nicely to re-sign. If they're bitter about you leaving, then perhaps they don't want to do this and that is the reason, but it's poor business sense and spite is a bad master. Besides which, they knew you were threatening to leave over the money they owed, so really this decision was theirs to make before you left. If they could pay you, then why would they let your completed work go so that they could spend more money on a copy product from less experienced (in Shadowrun) writers. So this one doesn't really make much sense.
It could make financial sense if the replacement writers were going to cost a lot less than you were owed, but this seems unlikely. As stated in the prior hypothesis, repeating proofing and editing has costs which means the margin of savings has to be even greater and there is the delay this adds to release. Also, you weren't paid a great deal in the first place (not saying it's irrelevant to you, but it's not high as hourly wages go) so if there can't really be much room to pay them less. What would that be? 2cents per word? And finally, the amounts that you get paid are small proportions of the money these products should reap. If you have a product that would make you $60,000 proft, you're unlikely to say "I'm going to try and jeopardise quality and release dates by saving $800". So this one doesn't make much sense to me.
Third explanation is that this is just such small potatoes to them that they don't really care. ("Oh, yeah, um, just stick one of the BT writers on it, it doesn't matter"). I hope that's not the case but given what we've learned about CGL's circumstances it doesn't seem like they can regard anything as small potatoes right now.
So I really only see a few options that explain this. One is that this is genuinely just spiteful behaviour from the people at CGL despite the harm it does them. Two, they're planning to do to the new writer (and perhaps any proofers / editors) what they've done to many others which is string him along until they've got the work on the promise of payments "soon". Three, they didn't have the money to pay you then, but now either do have the money or expect to have the money and so are re-starting with this money. In the case of three, it would still make more sense to make amends with you, but depending on how you left that might not be an option. However, the amounts are pretty small compared to what we can estimate their sales figures must actually be like so if they were struggling to raise a few thousand over a long period of time, it doesn't fill one with hope. So really, thinking they can get away with non-payment or tardy payment with the new person seems one of the few explanations that stands up. Although there is a fourth, and it goes like this:
If CGL were trying to deceive Topps about something, then it was presumably to do with how much profit they made out of the line or their ability to make a viable business out of the line. Assuming that it were the latter, then CGL would be under pressure, especially with the upcoming licence renewal, to demonstrate that they still had products being produced and ready to go out of the door. If Topps is suspicious by this point (fools if they're not), then the simplest thing to do is to throw a few authors at a product and say: "look - we're making this, it'll be ready by X and make Y". In this scenario, none of the problems that exist with the approach CGL has taken to re-writing products matters, because the aim is simply to show that they're producing product, regardless of what's going on under the hood. Sort of like when you haven't done your homework but you say "look, I'm doing it now!"
Anyway, just some reasoning. I'm interested in other hypotheses.
QUOTE (Bob Lord of Evil @ Apr 3 2010, 04:38 AM)
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We have a single mother of two young children...a fellow Shadowrun fan who could use some assistance. Do NOT tell me that you guys are not willing to give up two days of Starbucks to help one our OWN!
Lets get this ball rolling!
Instead of spitting into the wind...we can actually help somebody.
I would donate and be happy to do so. I get a lot of use out of my Shadowrun books and I'd like to see reward go to the right people for that. But you should PM Jennifer Harding and ask her what she feels about this. Also, I don't know what response you'd get for this - not because people don't care, but because people often aren't very proactive and because DS is only a part of the general Shadowrun player base. If you did this, it would need to be done properly, with a sticky thread, a simple statement that you're asking people to click a link and give $5." Also, it should be locked as there are some ill people around here who are just looking for threads in which to have a go at people. It would also need to be left up there for a while because people often take a long time to do even what they intend to do. But as I say, you should contact the lady herself.
K.