Destiny: Own3d paying streamers late, not fulfilling contr…

Hi. My name is Destiny, and I am one of the most prolific streamers in the world at the moment. I stream League of Legends, primarily, and I used to stream Starcraft 2.

In December of 2011, I was approached by own3d.tv to switch over from twitch.tv. I wrote a relatively detailed article explaining that my decision was primarily motivated by financial reasons. Basically, own3d.tv promised me more money for advertising plus a cash incentive for signing up with them. According to the contract, own3d.tv would pay “within 30 (thirty) days of receipt of revenues from advertising.” I was also promised “60% of all Premium Subscription” revenue, referring to the people that subscribed to me via the $5/month system on own3d.

Let’s look at a few different things that I was promised as part of my contract:

Signing Bonus
Upon signing up with own3d.tv, they agreed to pay me a cash incentive bonus for signing up with their service. According to the contract, “50% upfront payments for the first month” was to be paid out. I also had a smaller amount ($5,000) to be used for an event of my choice, such as hosting a tournament or showmatch series, that own3d.tv would put up for me. In requesting whether or not the cash incentive would be paid out, I contacted Oleg (CEO of own3d.tv) multiple times [1] [2]. After the first three times, he said that it would be wired to me next week, back in April. I inquired again about it and received no response, then was assured sometime in May that I’d be receiving it within the week. Finally, on May 25th, Oleg assured me that the signing bonus was wired to me. Of course, later I’d find out it was only 1/3rd of what I was owed, and that I’d be receiving it in 1/3rd “chunks” over the next few months. So after 7 months of streaming with own3d, I was finally paid my cash incentive for signing up with them. Not the greatest, but at least I received all of it.

Event Bonus
I was given a certain dollar amount “to be managed by own3D.tv to run events for the Publisher.” As time went on with own3d.tv, my paychecks gradually came in later and later. They were incredibly unreliable with paying me, and I was incredibly uncomfortable trying to manage an event with them being responsible for paying anything out. I wasn’t willing to risk my name and reputation with them in regards to paying out prizes or payments. As a compromise, I inquired about using my event budget to schedule a trip to Poland to stay at the Ministry of Win with my family. Although this wasn’t in the contract, Oleg assured me it would be okay via Skype on June 12th. At this time, I told Ministry of Win I would be coming to visit them and entered contract negotiations with them for my stay. I messaged Oleg later asking how I would go about booking the plane tickets, but (as usual) received no response. Eventually I received an e-mail from someone working with own3d.tv that it would be impossible to use it unless I signed another contract with them to “unlock” the money. Since they were incredibly shaky with payments (among other things) I imagine they were worried that I would be switching streaming platforms upon the expiration of my contract. That’s just conjecture, of course. Finally, Oleg told me on Skype that it would be impossible to use said funds for traveling.

As of January 17th, I haven’t been able to use this event money for anything, and I assume that I’ll never have the opportunity to.

Paychecks
By the time August rolled around, I had to pester Oleg fairly often on Skype about when paychecks were going out. When we got to September, paychecks were being paid months late. Oleg became increasingly less responsive on Skype. At this point I was stuck in Poland after having exhausted a large majority of my savings. I could barely afford food and necessities for my child and his mother while staying there.

The last paycheck I received from own3d was marked for July. I don’t believe I will ever be paid for the last 5 months I streamed with them. I’m trying to keep this as formal and non-sensationalist as possible, but it’s hard to imagine the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get from even typing that out.

Subscriptions
On own3d.tv you had the option to subscribe to my stream for a fee of $5.00/month. I was promised to be compensated for 60% of the revenue generated from subscribers. I love and appreciate all of you guys that subscribed to me more than you will ever imagine, but I was never (and probably will never be) paid for anyone who subscribed to my stream. own3d.tv literally pocketed that money and kept it for themselves. I pestered numerous times on Skype for it, but was never given a flat answer.

Other problems
Among all of the other silly problems that came along with such a newly emerging technology such as streaming, one of the most pervasive and disruptive problems I had was with transcodes. The transcodes on my stream (the ability to watch in a lower resolution at a lower framerate) were consistently laggy or otherwise unwatchable. Based on my estimates from when I’ve streamed in the past, about 40% of a person’s audience of a 1080p or 60fps stream is watching transcodes. My transcodes were consistently broken and I feel as though it impacted my viewership, especially during my later months with own3d.

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To summarize, during the first few months, aside from not being paid for subscriptions or my cash incentive, things were relatively okay. As the year continued on, however, things became unbearable for me. Everything came to a head when I was essentially forced to switch from own3d.tv to twitch.tv before my contract end date in December. I hadn’t received a paycheck in so long that I was becoming worried about my ability to provide for my family while in Poland (or when we returned home) so I switched to twitch.tv 2 weeks before my contract’s end date in order to pursue a more reliable paycheck.

This was the conversation I had with Oleg in regards to leaving earlier than planned -





Of course as I’ve already left, now all of the promises are being made in regards to fixing the transcodes and what not. And of course my payments were late due to both hurricane Sandy and CBS not paying own3d.tv on time. I’m not sure how that affects all of the previous months of being paid so horrendously late, but whatever.

Penalty for leaving the contract early
The reason I left my contract early was because I was well aware of the penalties for leaving. They were expressly written in the contract I signed and agreed to, and a simple cost-benefit analysis would show that it was worth it for me to bail on the contract 2 weeks early.

My penalty for leaving the contract early is as outlined, quoted from my contract -

“In case of termination without good reason and without any breach of obligations – the terminating party is obliged to pay a termination penalty. The penalty fee amounts to 60 percent of the average monthly revenues (including sponsorship fees) that have been generated before termination for the remaining months of the Agreement. For example, if the contract is terminated after 10 months and average monthly revenues have been $1000 during this period – the terminating party is obliged to pay $600 for the remaining 8 months of the contract or $4800.”

That means that I should have owed own3d.tv half of ~60% of my average revenue for a month. This penalty was nothing considering my last paycheck from them was marked for July.

Here is my final conversation with Oleg, where he threatens that his lawyers had frozen paychecks to me (because I’m sure he was just -just- about to send them out) due to me leaving the contract early -



Of course at the end he assures me that I will be paid eventually, but that was early December, and he has since stopped responding to my inquiries.

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My motivation for writing this is that I hope to dissuade others from signing up with own3d or making any kind of agreements with them in the future. I am in an incredibly tight bind, financially, as I’m finally coming to accept that I worked entirely for free for half of 2012. If you subscribe to streamers on own3d, I would hope that you check with the streamer to make sure they’re actually being paid, otherwise you’re essentially shipping off $5/month to own3d with no benefit (actually, a detriment since you see no ads) whatsoever to the streamer. If you’re an aspiring streamer or a member of a pro team and you’re looking to set up a stream for yourself or your team, I would highly encourage you to stay away from own3d.