Dr. McCoy to Captain Kirk: “It’s dead Jim…”
“CEO Justin “Gunrun” Ignacio made the announcement days after VTuber talents began leaving the agency and relaying their personal stories after one of the companies biggest talents (Ironmouse), came forward about how the charity she had helped to raise funds for, had not been paid by VShojo, and that she was leaving. Ignacio’s statement:
Apology aside (which may not have been a good idea without advice from legal counsel), the above is no excuse for any of the executive “leadership”. One of the other VTuber talents (Kson) had talked to VShojo’s Japanese branch CEO who basically reported to the main team in the U.S. and he himself replied to Kson that he had been told “that everything was good and taken care of”. The following is the stream VOD when she also calls him up (I’ve made a backup in case).
VShojo’s COO (Chief Operating Officer), Daniel “Apek” Sanders was a digital media attorney (while his legal expertise is specific to digital media, I’m referring to the overall premise of the professional rules of conduct those in the legal circles try to subscribe to if they believe in acting ethically for themselves, fellow officers, and the overall business) which makes this whole thing even more of a “not so good” look. Ignacio himself was a former broadcast production manager at Twitch (back in the StarCraft II days when I was playing it, he was a commentator/caster for competitive SC2 live streams and ran GLHF.tv). Company reputation aside (now that it is gone), these guys just dumped their own reputations into the trash can. They aren’t old either; Ignacio is only 35 — they are looking at serious legal repercussions. This looks like a bunch of folks who got in over their head with some of the early money inflating the corporate bank account where they might have thought they had a good racket going.
Regardless, that operational cashflow is something you do not let get to this point where you can no longer pay the talent that has been recruited (I’m sure it does not help that the company still had recruiting efforts ongoing on their website). It also does not matter if these VTuber talents are classified as contract workers or employees (the former not being protected by labor laws including getting paid in a timely manner while the latter being protected by labor laws). There is a point with contract workers though where not paying them for services rendered, is just exploitive behavior. And then to state he wasn’t fully aware that some of the “money spent by the company was raised in connection with talent activity” (aka Ironmouse’ charity fundraiser), is very much difficult to believe. There are proper channels plus internal financial controls that should be in place.
While it is nice to see he is taking full responsibility (versus the normal “I did nothing wrong” deflection), it should not only be him who is held accountable. Something like this falls on the entire executive team and the senior management that directly reports to them. Because it sounds like they knowingly weren’t running this company properly as a group, and not just one incompetent person at the top (IMHO).
