after talking about this situation with a friend who hadn't heard of any of this before, she brought up that she was surprised the info was only confined to toyhouse, possibly because she's mainly on twitter. she brought up maybe bringing this psa or something like it to twitter- would that be something worth doing? i have no idea how much of his following is on twitter, and i'm not super active in the art community there so i'm not entirely sure how to go about posting a callout on the site
This is here in case the original letter is taken down from Northern Ruins.
Before delving into the details, keep several things in mind.
This all happened because two staff members, Min and Yolk, quit after not being allowed to discuss the idea of compensation for hundreds of hours of work in just the past few months. We just quit after leaving behind a notice of resignation with grievances in only the mod server. The goal was never to hurt Northern Ruins because despite all this, we still dearly loved it and, above all, its community. Northern Ruins contained so many friends that we would not want to hurt just because we were quitting. The only one who had the power to delete the servers was Aug despite what he has been relaying to people. And keep in mind, he has yet to release a comprehensive statement just explaining things to the people caught in the crossfire of his decisions.
Also note, Aug has not made any attempt to directly contact Min nor Yolk after quitting. Min has not been available for contact since the stress of the situation has landed them in the ER so lack of contact with Min might be excusable. However, Yolk has always been open to civil conversation and has told such to each and every messenger Aug has sent his way. Almost every messenger seemed to also think that Min and Yolk were at some fault for the servers being taken down or for the supposed destruction of Northern Ruins. As said previously, we merely quit because of lack of compensation. The only thing that was directly changed was that Min repossessed unpaid decorative code that they wrote and are the rightful owner of. Min left a lot of the code they themselves paid for along with other things on the site despite everything to make sure the site stayed perfectly functional with the database intact.
All destructive actions are by Aug’s hand only.
Plus, it was by his suggestion Yolk quit initially and Min followed soon after.
While Aug will repeatedly say he would have given compensation if he had known, he was the one who did not even want to discuss it in the first place. That is an undeniable fact. The issue is not a matter of money but rather a matter of fairness, transparency, and attitude. Aug does not entertain the idea of compensation in a transparent manner but instead opts to try to push it off till later. Compensation desired wasn’t even necessarily monetary but since he did not even want to discuss it, he would not have known. Min, who spent hundreds of dollars out of pocket, deserves monetary compensation especially considering their personal situation that Aug is completely aware of. Yolk did not want monetary compensation but rather wanted pets, items, and/or slots that were higher than common. But, again, Aug did not want to discuss compensation and therefore would not have known by his own choice. Note, previous staff-wide compensation was a single common slot. The only scaled compensation was a single Aspirith slot for Min. Compensation was not repeated nor otherwise scaled per work time. ONLY slots for compensation is a slap in the face since it requires work to truly get the benefit. Those bogged down by work by Northern Ruins or otherwise or even personal life would not really get any benefit from the slots at all. He also claims that the privilege to do adopts when he chooses to do them is compensation ignoring the fact that creating the adopts in itself is work. The price of an adopt pays for the adopt’s creation. It does not pay for the cost of the assets done. It does not pay for the cost of the site. It does not pay for the time spent on work for Northern Ruins outside of the adopt.
But, these words are nothing without the evidence to back them up. Aug, we know you keep telling people your version of the truth. So, we will tell our truth with the evidence to back it up.
If you wish to know the truth behind the issue at hand, this link will take you there.
If any questions come up, feel free to comment on the linked sheet. Since some of the images may be small, it is recommended to view it in presentation format. Imgur links will be added later to ease reading. For the sake of not overwhelming people, please do not DM any party involved! Additionally, please do not harass Aug. Even if we have issues with him, we do not want to cause him unneeded trouble in that regard. To be transparent, this letter and the attached compilation of evidence have been created and curated by Yolk. In order to ease the reading process, I have been referring to myself in third person. Min has had a limited amount of input regarding this because they have been hospitalized and are still ongoing treatment. Further details regarding their personal health will not be given at this time to respect their privacy.
Thank you for your time in reading this.
〔Edit 9-May-2021〕
Steve from Gumroad finally learns to read.
"If you haven't gotten your refund yet, you purchased through Gumroad, and you are being ghosted or dismissed by Komugitsune, please email [email protected] directly to get your refunds. They will process the refunds for you."
‣ Gumroad is now giving out refunds!
---
! ! ! ONGOING BREAKING OF TOS AND POTENTIAL SCAMMING ! ! !
Aug is currently upselling several designs despite not adding to their value via commissioned work or through any other valid means.
‣ NotDamien's Statement on Sell Value of Designs
‣ SnorkMaiden's Statement on Sell Value of Designs
‣ Heelies's Statement on Sell Value of Designs
If you wish to keep track of what he is attempting to sell and to see if anything might have inflated sell values, the link to his trade/sell thread is below. If you find something that may have inflated value, please report it and make a comment on his thread about it so more people can know. If you wish to, you can also comment here and I will add it to the list here.
〈Komugitsune's Trade/Sale Thread〉
EDIT: Image Transcription of Slides
PDF Version of Slide (Note: this will not be updated as fast but will be updated alongside the original.)
〔Edit 3-May-2021〕:
I'm adding this edit here since Aug decided, in a relatively confusing move, to lie blatantly on his site about the situation. Considering that, the following links will be added for ease of access to emphasize what he has had a direct hand in. This has gone beyond an issue concerning former staff since it has deeply affected many people unrelated to the original grievances I wrote. I sincerely hope this will help open more eyes to the issue.
I will preface with two important links.
This form is to collect formal evidence against komugitsune (Aug). As of right now, we are prioritizing gathering evidence of financial malpractice in order to strengthen cases against him in PayPal and Gumroad. However, if you have evidence of him doing any unsavory acts, we welcome that as well.
〈Please share this twitter link on the issue.〉
I have been informed that the issue is not well known outside of TH so it would be wonderful if you can spread the word outside.
Please note for posterity that this was done in a midst of a spike in anti-Asian crime. Both Min and I are Asian. Threats of police, in itself, is not a joke. But threatening it in this climate is horrendous especially considering he knows both of our addresses as well as the addresses of many others.
‣ Min's statements against Aug's allegations
‣ Persistent lack of communication
I would like to note that Aug has still never attempted to directly contact me and has blocked me everywhere instead.
‣ Cutting off communication avenues
It has been documented that Rook has been aiding with refunds as well as trying to be an avenue of communication between Aug and everyone else since he refuses to communicate directly. Since they have been cut off, Aug has effectively decided he would rather not face the allegations against him. Aug seems to have been using them as a scapegoat for failed refunds.
‣ Proof of selling traced Picrew design
He sold this to me when we were still friends and he had the picrew image hidden.
‣ Chargeback issues as well as Aug's indecision regarding NR
I don't know why Aug doesn't seem to be settled on what will happen to NR. But I will note his waffling on it seems to correlate with his waffling on refunds.
‣ Proof Aug said despeciesing applies to Official designs
‣ Aug lying about refund issues
I, and others, have experienced this. Aug has repeatedly been trying to lie on paypal about "nobody" trying to communicate with him. He's blocked most people seeking refunds so the only avenue of communication is PayPal where he, again, seems adamant on lying.
‣ Aug blocking those requesting refunds
It should be noted this wasn't a chargeback but a formal request for a refund. Basically, chargebacks seem to be the only valid avenue at this point.
would you mind dropping a link? i don't exactly have a big following on twitter either but i'd still like to retweet it- and if anyone else on here is interested they could as well
that's great, thank you- i've retweeted it and i'll pass it along. not sure how much i alone can do but i just really don't want anyone to have to go through putting up with his bs
two of my disputes are still pending, but the third has closed in my favor, so i feel comfortable posting here now. aug never responded to any of my disputes, i'm not sure why mine were different than the other two posted here, but for anyone who is able to and is seeking a refund, i highly recommend you go through a dispute - and include as many screenshots as you can. i'm under the impression he's never going to freely give up refunds.
there is no reason he shouldn't have been able to refund me ASAP after i asked. i had a custom commission with him, and without even asking me, he refunded me for the custom on the SAME DAY i inquired about refunds for my slots. after he refunded me on the custom, he unfriended me on discord and made himself impossible to contact. he had my email, and my email associated with my paypal account is the same as my username, so there is no way that it can be claimed that i gave the wrong email. after seeing that he was refusing refunds on slots past paypal's dispute dates, i felt forced to do a dispute because two of my slots were about a month or so away from expiring, and i did not feel safe waiting around in case he tried to fight my claims. my hand was forced, and now i'm banned from the northern ruins site, which is genuinely kind of heartbreaking as i loved NR and the time i spent in it.
instead of trying to refund others, he has been active on dA and here on TH, updating the profiles associated with the group multiple times, even while avoiding contact with rook, who was his only point of contact regarding refunds. here are multiple examples of the changed profiles throughout the week or so this has been going on (which isn't even all of them, but you should see most if you scroll through the replies of this thread): 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 (this isn't every comment, just a small section to show the two dates he has been active on the profile) - these screenshots don't show the multiple rewordings on his TH and the dA group showing that the ARPG and species WAS discontinued, and only recently has it been claimed it's only 'on hiatus'.
i'm also going to include some personal accounts with aug under a spoiler so i don't clog up the thread. sorry for being a bit word heavy, i'm just trying to be as clear as possible in my experiences;;
personally, i was never friends with aug. i was just a fan and part of the community, but i still had some mildly concerning interactions with him. i had bought two batches from the valentines event, and had issues with both. these could both be considered minor issues, but with the evidence of his disorganization and not knowing his own rules, i felt it should be mentioned. with the first batch, there had been a mixup with the payments of myself and my friend who contributed to the batch, and was expected to pay again. i don't feel comfortable sharing screenshots of messages he sent me just in case, but i will share my response (i've blocked out the name of the artist of the batch and the mod who originally messaged me about payment for their privacy): link - in response, he asked me about my email so he could check his payments, because 'i think it mixed it in a bunch of others n forgot'. there's also a screenshot on slide 8 of the doc above that shows the lack of responsibility in payments for the guest artists of the valentines event.
for the second issue, now that i know the entire situation i feel more comfortable coming forward about being the person mentioned on slide 8 of the doc above. i had wanted to purchase a second design from said batch, and got mixed messages about the price. my original message showing i knew the price. i was told to grab another was $55, even though anywhere else i had checked beforehand said $45. this next bit is a personal issue, so i don't attribute it to the main point, but personally i only wanted to purchase the second design because i was uncomfortable that it looked a lot like my character who was one of the parents of the batch. nothing was an exact copy, and i felt it was different enough that i never brought it up to bother him with any changes so just opted to buy the design myself and not worry about the discomfort of anyone else owning it. i figured there would be some big overlaps with a batch of adopts inspired by existing characters, but the tracing and design 'inspiration' has me thinking twice about the similarities. here's a comparison of what made me uncomfortable, similarity wise: link - you are absolutely free to disagree on this point, like i said it's a personal issue and one i didn't even bring up to him because i thought it was only on my end, but i wanted to mention it in case anyone else could spot the similarities that i did. at best i think it was just a bit lazy, but no one can really say but aug.
originally, when all of this went down and before this post was made, he contacted me about my custom and i had confirmed i wanted to continue with it even if it took a while (this was before i knew the situation). when i offered him support and words of encouragement, and said that i didn't know what was going on, he responded with 'tbqh i don't either haha'. this could have been nothing, but i don't understand why he felt the need to try and say he didn't know what was going on to someone who also had no idea what was going on and was a bystander. him saying that made me concerned and jumping to conclusions about NR and what happened, especially after i had spent a lot of money on the group, when he could have simply said something like 'we're getting it handled' or simply not responded to my confusion at all. considering his twisting of words and manipulation i can't help but think this was a tactic to try and do damage control even tho i was never even involved in the situation. for clarity, he refunded me on my custom two days after i had confirmed i wanted to continue with it, without even asking me again if i wanted a refund on it in the first place.
my final real issue came from one of the slots i am seeking a refund on. this is mentioned in a comment on slide 2 in the doc, but i will copy paste the section i'm referencing for simplicity's sake: "aug has been consistently both unclear and somewhat scummy when it comes to rules and myo slots. he will change his mind about how those slots work [AFTER] people spend their money. he has on multiple points left outdated descriptions of items or perks in the myo slots description(.)" i can attest to this. back when there was i believe the second sale of mythical slots, aug had left in the description a mention of a holiday trait that you could give to your ordi. i had bought the slot under the impression i would be able to make a mythical ordi on top of giving it a holiday trait. when i reread the gumroad description, i realized i was a bit confused on what the exact limits were, so i asked in the server what the limits on the slot actually were. i was told that it was either a mythical slot or a holiday trait (which could have been my own misunderstanding of the wording), but that the holiday trait didn't even apply during this sale and that it was left over from the last sale. as the server is deleted, i don't have proof of this, but i have a screenshot of myself asking a friend who was in the server at the time if i was understanding what was being said correctly, because i was surprised, and frankly, upset: 1 - 2
i won't mention who (for their privacy), but this caused an issue with people who had also purchased mythical slots and the response, from what i can remember, was less than stellar. this wasn't an issue only for the mythical slots either, and i remember there being a lot of confusion over another NR species, tuvi, and the vagueness of what you could or couldn't do with a slot, as it included traits of a higher tier slot in the description that you couldn't even buy at the time.
i stand by everyone affected entirely and i'm so sad and disappointed this is how its all gone down. i held onto hope that things would get better, and NR would come back, but if it ever does it isn't a place i want to participate in.
oathfell Ah, so that's why you're banned on the site now. Thanks for coming forward, and I can confirm that there were a good number of people who were confused about both the holiday traits thing AND the tuvi description, which led to a lot of bad feelings and some money issues, while Aug insisted he was being perfectly clear on what you were purchasing. I'd told him previously about the tuvi description and told him how to make it clear, and instead he just kind of shuffled it around and didn't clear up anything at all, then removed the tuvi slot from the gumroad when it was brought up again later in a hissy fit. This was also what caused him to go behind my back and tell people that I was being rude and manipulating them into agreeing with him while never actually coming to me and telling me what he'd thought. I was, in fact, just speaking professionally, which is extra funny given him yelling at people for not being professional lmao
this is a small thing, but i want to attest to oathfells issues with aug, as well as the paypal disputes and chargebacks. i encourage those who are able to do so to do it asap. me nor ven encountered disputes from aug, and i have reason to believe it is due to the sufficient evidence provided as i allowed him to use the screenshots i took that very clearly detailed aug's lack of transparency and the issues regarding refunds. if anyone would like, they can dm me for said screenshots for their own case. i cannot guarantee this will stop aug from disputing the claim, but it WILL make for a stronger case should you try to open a chargeback claim against him.
The chargebacks may be affected by where you purchased? I filed a dispute for a slot I purchased through gumroad and have gotten nothing from aug response-wise. My evidence wasn't anything but stating he killed the business and screenshotting the "feel free to despecies" comment on the group page. If that doesn't effect anything than I really am lost on why he's responding to only a select few.
Gucumatz yeah, it was really surprising finding myself banned but i suppose it's his choice, i have no intentions of participating ever again. and yeah, it was definitely very unclear, but what was more surprising was the amount of people who also seemed to have absolutely no idea what they were actually purchasing, just goes to show how unclear it actually was. if i had any idea what i was truly purchasing, i never would've spent the money on a mythical slot in the first place. if they're needed, i think i might have some screenshots of the tuvi listings somewhere that i can dig up, but i never took a screenshot of the mythical slot i don't think.
i am actually one of the people alluded to in oathfell's personal addendum with regard to the mythical slot sale confusion over holiday traits. during the conversation in-server, i mentioned that if i'd known the slot i purchased actually wasn't a holiday trait on top of a mythical ordi myo and in fact was only one or the other, and that i apparently was supposed to specify which at time of purchase (which was not indicated anywhere,) i may have chosen not to do the purchase if my heart had been set on the holiday trait i had in mind for my mythical design, but that despite my disappointment i was keeping the slot because i wanted an myo mythical for a specific concept i'd had... and without contacting me first at all, aug sent me a refund for my myo slot. this then caused a lengthy bout of confusion because i immediately sent him the slot price back since i'd intended to buy it after all, however aug had refunded a paypal that doesn't exist via gumroad (has to do with email suffixes, tl;dr, it's kind of pointless to get into it) and i was very concerned but let it slide—especially when i did eventually get the refund that i "refunded" aug for sending me when i hadn't wanted the refund done to begin with. this is incidentally the only reason that i was able to do a chargeback for this one slot; because i was able to chargeback the refund-refund.
since i'm aware that whole story may be a bit meandering and thus confusing, here's a more concise play-by-play, spoilered.
- after oathfell asks about the sale slot description, i mention that i may have wanted a refund too if i hadn't already had a design idea in mind
- without asking me, aug sends me a refund and dms me to tell me he'd sent me a refund for the slot
- i respond that i didn't need that refund actually, and i send him via paypal the same 75$ i'd originally spent, since the refund was presumably coming
- a series of shenanigans ensue that take about a month to resolve, in which (through no fault of aug's, to be 100% fair) the refund aug sent me sort of got lost in the sauce for a little
- at this point, all is well and i have my slot and payments are all up-to-date and all money is in the right hands
- all of this shit goes down, and i decide to check if i can file for a refund on any of my slots
- due to the aforementioned series of shenanigans, the 75$ i sent to aug to 'refund' the refund he sent me without prompting was still within the chargeback time period, so i file a refund request
- aug insists in response that the item is still usable and he does not need to refund
- i escalate to a paypal chargeback, results forthcoming
I have an alright following on Twitter, made sure to re-tweet cuz this is beyond serious. ALL the situations Aug has done. Hopefully It will be read by more people than strictly just on TH.
Regarding the twitter post I’d really recommend a dedicated thread on Twitter that is at least a condensed version of this post, with the evidence screenshots on the tweet (especially of his behavior).
because while this may sound very blunt I don’t think people are bothered to click a redirect link without getting a visual grasp of the situation first. I’m not a direct victim of aug, so I don’t think I have the right to make it, so I would really like to help re tweet it if it gets made.
On a side note, to be honest I’ve been struggling alone with the fear of ‘being known’ to aug and was scared of any possible interactions with him and had to really push myself to file a chargeback with the help of some people on this thread (thank you!), but that only makes me realize more how dangerous he is.
I have returned to say that even as an outsider who has never been in NR, I KNEW Aug couldn't be trusted so much (something felt suspicious about him reading all of this) and see how this situation has escalated, my worst fears came true. I don't have that much of a big following on Twitter, but I can and will retweet this situation. Perhaps may I quote tweet and encourage my followers to spread this around? I really hope this can be solved once and for all!