This was covered slightly with this post on Ironmouse but since then it's escalated quickly:
Kson did a stream saying she hasn't been paid for a year and called up the guy in charge of the Japan side to admit they only paid employers not talents, she was going to leave end of the month but she's gone now and I think she's getting her fellow Japanese talents out too.
Michi just released a video saying she's going too.
Don't have X so can't link it but Melody is gone too, Henya is apparently streaming later today where a lot of people expect her to go too (Edit:Henya's leaving Vshojo video). Think by the end of today, Monarch (Amalee), Haruka, K9Kuro will be gone. Hime might leave when Sydney remembers her password..
And in the backdrop to this we not only have the defrauding a charity with the missing half a milion, Shibuya Kaho has alluded to a vtuber agency that has an employee openly sharing real photos and status of their companies talents, many think this is Vshojo since she is close to Ironmouse. Why is this relevant, because Vshojo is based in San Fransico California and their laws FUCK employers over this kind of thing.
So yep, Vshojo crashes out before Nijisanji, who'd thunk?
Update: here's a good breakdown by False, EVERYONE has left even Hime and Froot. Artists and musicians who were commissioned in the past have come forward to say they were owed money, Kaho pretty much admits she was talking about Vshojo, they might not exist as a company by the end of the week.
When ironmouse said she was owed money, I figured they'd either shorted her, or they had mismanaged funds or there were payouts due. But now multiple talents have come forward saying they haven't received money in over half a year or more.
They've been effectively bankrupt for a while. No way are the talent or the charity recouping much of what they're owed either, its all gone.
Yep but at minimum they NEED to get that money to charity or they are CRIMINALLY fucked.
I don’t understand how these creators don’t walk away much sooner. They have a proven talent talent and an audience and even if they had to leave the assets behind you’d think they’d have a pretty good shot at coming up with a new vtuber personality and going independent or finding a new agency or something. I know that I’d be applying to new positions if my employer missed one payday, and these people have been sitting on not getting paid for months?
I know they had to sign some sort of contract, but surely it’s not so crazy that there’s no exit clause for them if their employer doesn’t meet payment obligations? Would that even be enforceable?
They all had exit clauses, that’s why every single VShojo vtuber just left today, but a lot of Vshojo’s vtubers were ex-Nijisanji and wanted to give VShojo time to get said funds to them, as Niji was bad, to say the very least.
Legal Mindset also talking about it.
I listened to that livestream, one point that was brought up which was interesting to me was regarding the charity. They did that the previous year and paid on time, no problem.
This set precedent so they can't use ignorance or incompetence as a defence as to why the half a milion wasn't given to charity.
Given all the issues with Nijisanji... yeah. I would have lost money on that bet, for certain.
Is this just becoming a "vtuber" forum?
We have maybe 3 posts a month when something unusual happens, and you're already throwing a fit about it.
It's nerd culture, a thing that Kotaku might talk about, in their actions. Kotaku... in action...
V-simps are a disgrace
Froot posting the "coming back with pizza to the house on fire" gif seemed so appropriate there. Takes a long sabbatical, comes back, her agency is bankrupt and the top staff facing prison time while every talent flees to the hills.
Yep, completely unsurprised at this considering their business model. It seems very clear to me they were another venture capitalist startup aimed at pricing out the competition and establish themselves as the market leader.
Shibuya Kaho, that name sounds familiar but I can't place it.
She used to be a JAV star
Kson hasn't been paid in a year and said nothing to the fans who kept simping for her? What a bitch.
Vtuber agencies (or at least Holo) tries to select for agreeableness to ensure little to no conflict between its talents, so they basically BSed her for all this time and she took them at face value until yesterday (or two days ago, Japan time, where Kson lives).
Edit: plus the money that they’re owed is merch money, not streaming revenue
Don't know their contract, but it's telling how they are only saying it NOW after they leave. That implies some kind of NDA which was probably only now rendered defunct due to the whole, criminally defrauding a charity...
I remember buying something from Circuit City, before they were in real financial trouble and just trying to close down a few underperforming stores. Back when there were salespeople. I was kind of young, and was looking at a VCR that had a floor model for quite a bit cheaper. I remember asking the dude "ok, but if there's something wrong with the floor model, I can just return it, right?"
The salesguy didn't deny outright that I could return it, but kept saying in quite a few ways how it might be a good idea to spend the extra on the sealed one, and how it cost less overall than buying the extended warranty and paying for shipping. I thought it was odd he would mention "shipping", since without it, it would be less. The conversation stuck out to me as just strange, because if there was something wrong I would just come back here to return it.
A month or so later I was in the area and noticed that the store was in liquidation and it was only then I realized what he was trying to communicate, and I very much appreciated the wink and nod in warning.
(I wound up buying the floor model, it turned out fine, and I didn't buy the extended warranty either.)
* edit to add: remembering this made me sad for those days. Today, even if they would have salesmen on the floor, they'd pay them minimum fucking wage and they'd probably just keep their mouth shut and laugh about "ripping off that dumb teenager" during break, because we no longer live in the society I grew up in.
Maybe I’m being naive about how bad contracts for vtubers are, but I don’t think I’d sign anything that says “by the way, we can fail to pay you for six months and you have to keep working and stay mum.” Surely a contract binds the employer to some payment responsibilities too, right?
Tectone went into an NDA-friendly talk about his favorite (non-existent) arc of Naruto, which entirely conincidentally was right after speaking about Vshoujo, about the robot ninjas from the Black Village, seeking refuge in the village right next door after escaping its toxic and oppressive clutches, who were fooled by genjutsu into surrendering specifically 60% of their ramen and mission rewards to this new village, and how this genjutsu was made more powerful due to the proximity of the Black Village being so obviously evil and so closeby. It was a fasinatingly long story... But most importantly to my view, even someone as third party and detatched as Tectone seems muzzled with this one, speaking in three-layered-deep obtrusive allegory instead of speaking plainly.
Likely because a half-mil in charity fraud is big prison-sentence grand heist stuff and you do NOT want to get dragged into what would likely be a multi-year-long court case.
The others keeping NDA, and even keeping quite quiet after splitting about many things, is likely ALSO because of said grand heist court case, among the countless smaller wage-recovery court cases.
Maybe he was worried about the implication that someone must have broken NDA to give him that picture?
I don't like kson, she has hapa brain. She dennounced gachikois (good) who she called weebs for some reason? But kept silent when troons went after henya for playing Hogwarts Legacy
Imagine being a corporate shill in the first place.