A lot of this is attributed to new leadership in 2023 under “Andy”. Ultimately this seems like a pretty tame “scandal” where the business end did not maintain a good relationship with their creative team and their creative team suffered as a result.
Work for participating artists became less consistent with lower commission rates in 2023.
New leadership wanted artists to sign an exclusivity deal with
Working with Sanrio was difficult because artists would produce art that Sanrio would reject for brand control reasons. Artists would not be paid for art that got rejected.
Artists were pushing for salary in addition to commission if they were going to be exclusive artists for MetaZoo since the existing contract rules were unsustainable. These requests were not met and artists chose to stop working with MetaZoo.
Andy is described as “threatening” and “manipulative” who “played favorites”. He is also indicated to have been in a romantic relationship with one of the artists on the MetaZoo payroll.
Artists did not offer anything negative about “Mike”, another leadership figure.
Andy made conventions “invitation only” for artists, preventing artists from being part of the community and making money from booths at conventions. Andy’s significant other was “always invited.”
Artists did not want to be the first person to come forward and damage the brand or the community but were comfortable talking to this Youtube creator to get their grievances out there.
MetaZoo responded to the artist exodus by saying publicly that the brand was going to move “in a different direction” - which was not supported by the narrative the artists offered of leaving on their own volition.
I was recommended this video and normally wouldn’t bother watching as I don’t buy or play the game. However, my curiosity got the better of me…
There was quite a bit discussed about a half dozen or so artists leaving Metazoo. I figured some people might find the video topic interesting as Metazoo really had a moment for a bit and now seems to be struggling. (check tcgplayer box prices).
TLDR for the video. A lot of this is attributed to new leadership in 2023 under “Andy”. Ultimately this seems like a pretty tame “scandal” where the business end did not maintain a good relationship with their creative team and their creative team suffered as a result.
Work for participating artists became less consistent with lower commission rates in 2023.
New leadership wanted artists to sign an exclusivity deal with MetaZoo.
Working with Sanrio was difficult because artists would produce art that Sanrio would reject for brand control reasons. Artists would not be paid for art that got rejected.
Artists were pushing for salary in addition to commission if they were going to be exclusive artists for MetaZoo since the existing contract rules were unsustainable. These requests were not met and artists chose to stop working with MetaZoo.
Andy is described as “threatening” and “manipulative” who “played favorites”. He is also indicated to have been in a romantic relationship with one of the artists on the MetaZoo payroll.
Artists did not offer anything negative about “Mike”, another leadership figure.
Andy made conventions “invitation only” for artists, preventing artists from being part of the community and making money from booths at conventions. Andy’s significant other was “always invited.”
Artists did not want to be the first person to come forward and damage the brand or the community but were comfortable talking to this Youtube creator to get their grievances out there.
MetaZoo responded to the artist exodus by saying publicly that the brand was going to move “in a different direction” - which was not supported by the narrative the artists offered of leaving on their own volition.
(I don’t know who Mike and Andy are. TCG people all seem to be on a first-name basis with people on the business-side of the hobby.)
Pretty much everything about Metazoo just turned me off from day 1. The unnatural nostalgia vibes and ‘investor’ push just felt so forced and inorganic. If it would have just came out in a more genuine way I may have been interested, but they made it way too obvious and agenda based that I can’t stand it. This just sounds like another nail in the coffin .
@pfm Your addition of receipts always makes me respect your comments. Id give you E4 gold if I could… or you know if it was a thing.
I dont think I can be mad at the guy in general, kinda living a dream. Went from crapping on a product, to working for them, now leading it. Not my style but good for him I guess, sucks for the artists though, anytime a company is making it tough for smaller artists I have a hard time supporting.
I remember making people upset because I was trying to troll a little hard on Andy. But fr I would have made far better strategic decisions attempting to help Mike get it together. But here we are. Pee pee poo poo.
He probably made a decent amount of money ultimately so I’m sure he’s laughing regardless of how it plays out. As much as E4 [especially the discord] likes to give metazoo a hard time, they did blow up for a minute. Ultimately the end result is pretty predictable.
I didn’t realize this Andy was that Andy. That’s crazy. I remember him just not being in the discord server anymore, didn’t know all of this follow up.
Also I’m very shocked this is the direction MetaZoo is going in. Who could have predicted something like this would happen besides literally everyone?
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