[UPDATE 2/11/2022] PSA on Komugitsune/DemonMadness

there was a time when aug was a dainty mod and i got into some trouble with the cs with my friend group. it was agreed details would stay with the mods and us, and mods wouldnt tell anyone else about it. later, i find out aug WAS talking about it with his friends and twisting what happened, making something small sound like i was out to spread lies and hurt people. He even made a friend of mine at the time scared to speak to me! what i did that he blew out of proportion was tell my friends something i heard from someone i trusted about mod designs, which ended up being false. i apologized when i learned of it being false but apparently aug didnt take it and framed it as me lying to be malicious? it was something like i heard one of them was taking a break from mod designs because people actually fought over their design and it made them feel bad. it ended up being false but it also wasnt malicious like aug framed it to be when telling his friends/nr mods. he claimed i was a liar and couldnt be trusted for anything over me believing a rumor. i was in nr at the time and apparently he wanted to kick or ban me over dainty related stuff? but i left on my own after learning he was spreading stuff about me that was promised not to leave the dainty mod server. this was maybe 2018? when nr was very small and still starting out.

also $100 is not compensation for building a website?? i agree everyone joined as volunteers but as the cs grew and aug made enough money it should have been swapped over to an actual business with real pay, if not for all the mods then for a few main ones like the coder. Because it is in all honesty, especially with all the work the mods put in, without them the cs simply wont function. or at least properly pay the website coder, that stuff is a lot of work! people in the industry make thousands per site so $100 is pennies. there's also no reason to wait until a code is done for compensation, excel sheets exist and it can be manually logged and divvied out until the site's feature is implemented. the fact he shut down every conversation about pay so fast really got me, he didn't even discuss it. like you said, even better items/slots would have been better pay over what you were getting. most cs from what I've seen DO give their mods high ranking items for their work.

I'm going to be upfront. What Kogi has done isn't right, though I can't really demonize them cause this is overall a huge flaw with the ARPG community/closed species community that people see as 'normal'.  I do wish that one day creators will understand they need to focus on compensating and respecting the work of others as much as their own.

That being said, I think you need to step back at this point because you are actively escalating the situation, and also bringing in someone who is hospitalized. I very much question any consent they give to have information shared at this moment if they are in such a state.

I understand why the first open letter to NR was made, but I think now pushing any further until everything has calmed down will only end up harming both of you. I also find the speed at which you guys are trying to push this information out before Kogi can make a public response odd.

Edit: I should probably end this by stating that I hope you both find work in another ARPG or species that _will_ give both of you the proper respect, I have some odd feelings with the speed of which everything being put out, but I think no matter what that you both do deserve proper monetary compensation just as every moderator should. If money can be made then money should go to those helping, even if the cs is only making a small amount. Work is work. 

Aug had several days to respond. The people of NR deserve to know what happened, and it's not fair to say they need to give Aug time to respond because he's currently indisposed. He has clearly ben communicating through proxies from the beginning, so if he wanted to create a post of his own, he's been free to do so.

I think people like Rook are forgetting that NR is a for-profit business. Aug is making money off of myo sales and slots in addition to the designs he sells—and, like any other for-profit business, your revenue should go initially towards paying your employees. that's... how it works?

In addition, it's worth noting that, while yes, it's common for CS to pay their employees in in-game items and things, the in-game compensation given to min was literally a single common MYO ordi slot, a single aspirith slot, and 100$. that's... jack shit. Even the MYO slots were slots that min had to put further work into them in order to utilize. They weren't even special or exclusive slots with mod-only things to show appreciation. It was a COMMON SLOT. Only one, too! That's shit compensation. It's nothing. Aug could have made special exclusive ordis or aspiriths or tuvis or whatever for the mods to have, or at least give a fucking slot higher than a common slot, or maybe, Idunno, more than one? Just a thought.

I am completely fucking disgusted by this. Sure, some of you can argue about ~wah they were volunteers~ and make shitty equivalents to real life situations like food stamps to gacha games, or get high and fucking mighty about ~blowing it out of proportion~, or say ~don't escalate uwu~, but you can't fucking explain away his disgusting comments and entire MINDSET about people with BPD (also called EUPD, which is what I will be calling it for the remainder of my post).

Calling people with EUPD, as a blanket statement, "scary" is the exact same thing as putting another marginalized group in that statement. "Asian people are scary." See how fucked up that sounds? And yes, it's ACTUALLY a proper equivalent, because the majority of people who struggle with EUPD are entirely safe to be around. They are mentally ill, just like Aug, who is begging to be let off the hook because of his mental illness, because he ~uwu panicked~ and ~misspoke~. The illness is not the fucking problem.

You know what's a problem? You know what's a scary behavior? When people don't want to change. When people dig their heels in and abuse you because of their mental illness. When people panic and lash out and hurt people. When someone panics and lies to preserve their image. When someone does ALL OF THE THINGS AUG DID. It's not a mental illness problem, it's a problem of someone not wanting to fucking change their behavior, even if that behavior is based in mental illness.

So fuck you, Aug. YOU destroyed NR.

littlelapin Aug has had several days, yes. He has made public announcements, but they were sparse in information and he decided to lie about the situation in private to people instead. The discord servers were deleted almost immediately after Yolk and Min resigned and left the mod server. To specify, I was a former mod unrelated to the original resignation as I was asleep at the time, haha.

Re: the MYO slot mods received as compensation

I want to first say that Min and Yolk are not the only mods who have taken issue with this situation. Due to the server being shut down I am unable to provide further evidence, but there has been discussion in the past irt compensation that Aug himself has initiated up, as seen on slide 12 of the document. This is not something mods suddenly sprang upon him, but something that he claimed to be planning on implementing.

The document mentions that the only compensation mods have received up to this point was a singular MYO slot, and I feel I should state that this slot was not truly compensation, but a Christmas gift as seen in this screenshot. This was in 2018, 3 years ago. (link to screenshot: https://sta.sh/0100jxy5fiw1)

(sorry this thing is long, had to take this on mobile 😭)

I went to some other mods and asked them to come forward about their feelings and perspective, along with what they were told before they were informed, and this is what they had to say. Y'all can draw your own conclusions from these two, but it really doesn't look good. I don't think someone innocent would strike fear into people they consider friends.

ok now that im properly home i wanna give my two cents on this for anyone trying to defend aug -

for one, yes, this is a volunteer position and in-community compensation is pretty common in cs. however, for one, the in-community compensation provided was super shitty. dainties is a community im very familiar with, and mods are compensated with a free slot for EVERY slot sale, including cb slots! for far less work too (not to say the dainty mods dont work hard, but that aug expected much more for much less). wanting to run a FULL arpg with a completely coded and functioning site filled with things like daily quests, farming, pet systems sounds amazing, but absolutely must be something that is fairly compensated. that is an insane amount of work.

secondly, trying to defend him by saying he had compensation planned frankly... sucks. its a shit defense, sorry. if he did have plans, he should have been transparent about what the compensation would or mightve been, or been honest and said he wasnt sure. he shouldve opened it to discuss, and allow the mods to give their input on what felt fair to them and the others. instead, aug skirted around the conversation and tried to shut it down with a simple "we're working on it". that sort of thing is nothing but an empty promise if theres no transparency. forgive me if this feels like a false equivanlence, but its like when you commission someone and after awhile ask for wips, and instead of doing so they just go "oh im working on it, dont you worry!" like, sure, you can take your word for it, but it'd be a whole lot nicer to SEE the evidence of said work being done. aug planning to have a compensation system in place truly means nothing if he was not upfront and honest about WHAT the system would entail and allow the mods to discuss it among themselves.

Literally begging CS owners to learn being low income does not give them the right to abuse and leech labor for profit. 

I don't know if it matters anymore or if anyone wants to hear this, but I wanted to at least say that the comments I made regarding ACAB a few days ago were wrong, ignorant, and insensitive. (I am the censored person in light blue on the last 1 or 2 slides). I was only looking at it from one angle and will be the first to agree that I shouldn't talk if I don't know the full situation. I was ignoring the obvious (that it isn't a literal statement) and had no idea my words were making people feel unsafe. I am so much more ignorant about this than I even knew and I just wanted to apologize. It was never my intention to hurt anyone.

Thank you for your apology, and statement about this. Learning and growing is an important thing, and I hope going forward that the things you said aren't held against you. Everyone has to learn and start somewhere.

Edit: That isn't to say the people that were hurt need to forgive and forget, of course.