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October 03, 2018, 07:59:36 PM |
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MobileGO is a scam! Their new logo and publicity image "the second gaming revolution is coming" well where has the first revolution been hiding? It has been well over a year since they raised between $53 million and $106 million in the ICO and there is no actual product. The "owners" have been using ICO funds as they please and this project is dead, simple. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1792451.msg46224707#msg46224707The sooner all token holders sell up and get out the better for them because this "project" could collapse any day. As soon as the "owners" give up on scamming more money with the token swap and more fundraising by accepting their reputation is in tatters they will sell up and let the rest of the "project" sink. Jack Kuveke was a dev at MobileGo and only left after he realised the whole thing was a scam and that he worked for around a year with no salary and empty promises. Read what Jack Kuveke had to say about the MobileGo scammers here: https://www.reddit.com/r/GameCredits/comments/92warz/jack_kuveke_july_30th_transparency_ama/===================== REDDIT POST STARTJack Kuveke July 30th Transparency AMA
Hi everyone, this is going to be the thread where I will answer as many questions as possible about GameCredits/MobileGo. As many of you know there have been ongoing changes at the organization. I would like to provide a summary of what is happening before I jump into the AMA:
As many of you know, I’ve been working for GameCredits since October of 2016. At the time I was one of the first 10 members on the team, and had been a community member for about 6 months prior to that. I joined the team because I always believed in the idea of GameCredits being a universal currency for the gaming industry. However, since the MobileGo crowdsale which ended around June 1st of 2017, things have been changing for the organization.
To begin with, the Sholom brothers Sergey and Maxim took over as CEO and ‘Product Director/Financial Director’ (in actuality Maxim has acted much like a CFO, managing the finances for the company). Sergey and Max decided to put Alex Migitko as the COO, and Alex appointed his own CTO named Nikola Djokic. These executives began expanding the team quickly. Into the late Summer/ Fall of 2017 (August-September), they realized that their applications wouldn’t be ready to go to market, so the original roadmap was pushed back. At the same time they launched the idea of GNation, which was to be a gaming brand to help the cryptocurrencies get partnerships without being labeled 100% crypto focused. In this same period Sergey and Maxim began traveling extensively, and would only come to the Belgrade headquarters for a couple days at a time leaving the company in the hands of Alex and Nikola.
In April of 2018, a faction of developers came forward and said that Alex and Nikola weren’t doing a proper job. Alex had created a number of side projects such as Blinking, a crypto wallet management application called Prometheus, a crowdfunding application called Real Market, and more. These projects were supposed to help with ‘GNation’s” goals but resources were being spread thin, and many of us were very concerned efficiency was not optimized. Alex and Nikola were removed, and a new C-Level team was put in place to help turn things around. Sergey and Maxim also decided to stay in Belgrade more often. However, as they stayed it became apparent that they had a larger vision that they weren’t sharing with the rest of the development team. We still believed and had been told that we were focused on creating universal payment opportunities for GAME and esports applications for MGO. Sergey on the other hand wanted to focus on charity which confused and disturbed many team members, myself included.
Things became even more complicated in May when Sergey told the team that the GameCredits and MobileGo currencies weren’t going to be used extensively in the Mobile Store (GPlay) or GShare. This alarmed many of us, because our entire development team was building products with the idea that GAME and MGO would be the focus of the application. GShare was still paying out GAME to users and was only designed to pay out GAME, and our beta esports applications were paying users out MGO. Sergey then told the development team that GAME should not be in the GShare application by June 12th, or E3. They were told to remove GAME just three weeks before the event, which alarmed many of us even further. It didn’t seem like Sergey had a good grip on the scope and challenges of implementing major developmental changes in only a couple weeks. Instead of using GAME/MGO as the universal payment method, Sergey wanted to create a ‘GNation’ coin (a regular virtual coin like you would find in candy crush) as the non-crypto payment method for “legal reasons.” The GNation coin could be purchased using XSolla which accepted GAME/MGO as a payment method, but as just 2 payment methods out of more than 700 options. Sergey believed that offering discounts for purchasing GNation coins with GAME/MGO would be sufficient for creating demand for the cryptocurrency. The blockchain team and I objected to this move because the mobile store was supposed to be crypto focused: that was the basis for the community’s investment and the express purpose outlined in the original Mobilego Whitepaper.
Given this unexpected turn of events and deviation from the original mission, a portion of the team (myself included) wanted to see the currencies split from GNation so they could have separate and concentrated focus placed on them. However, Sergey and Maxim didn’t like the idea of this and maintained that their “new” vision would lead GameCredits/MobileGo/GNation to success. Our group didn’t feel this was rational thinking given the leadership’s repeated failures meeting timetables and deliverables over the year and nine months since they took over.
As you may know, I was a 19 year old full-time college sophomore in the Fall of 2016 when I began working for Gamecredits from my dorm. The leadership at that time, including Nele and Jon Comer, agreed to pay me monthly in Gamecredits for my work as the Community Manager. As the community was not yet built, I worked round the clock building a following and a social media presence for the coins. As the community grew and the crypto-markets took off, I worked more and more on the projects and less and less on my schoolwork. In the spring of 2017, I devoted myself to supporting the MobileGo crowdsale and the same leadership team paid me a lump sum (which was agreed upon before the crowdsale began), for the countless hours I worked to ensure its success and manage the technical difficulties encountered along the way.
Following the MGO crowdsale, the old leadership handed the reins to Sergey and Maxim Sholom. Although I continued performing my increasing job functions as Community Manager for GAME AND MGO, my monthly pay stopped abruptly. When I tried to question Sergey about this, he made excuses always promising to work it out soon. I continued to do my job without any ongoing pay through the fall of 2017 and into the winter. Sergey told me during that time that I would receive an ownership interest in Game and as a owner, should not expect any salary. However, I never received legal acknowledgement of my ownership in the GameCredits company or any pay for my ongoing efforts for Game and MGO.
In October 2017, I accepted an invitation from the Gamecredits team to visit the office in Belgrade. My father accompanied me and we met Sergey and the rest of the team face to face. During that visit, everyone was supportive of me and encouraging about expanding my role. As a result of that encouragement and my personal commitment to the projects, I decided to drop out of school and go to Belgrade to work in the office for a while. At that time I had not been paid, and in hindsight I should have been more skeptical. However, my father met with Sergey in New York in January of 2018 and during their meeting, Sergey assured my father that I would receive compensation, perhaps in the form of a greater percent ownership in the company than originally contemplated. In fact, this never occurred. I worked for Gamecredits from June of 2017 to April of 2018 without receiving any compensation. To make matters worse, the pay I had received earlier was in cryptocurrencies which had decreased in value. In April 2018, while I was in Belgrade working with the team full-time, Nele managed to get me a one-time payment which I needed to pay taxes on the prior compensation. While the price of the cryptocurrencies had declined significantly, my accountant advised me I owed U.S. income taxes based on the values at the time of payment.
Despite Sergey’s failure to pay me, I continued to work with the team doing my best. However, as Sergey’s leadership drifted off the original roadmap, he failed to inform me about his activities and he refused to provide me much needed support. Sergey & Co. never hired cryptocurrency experts/marketers requested for the GAME/MGO team. Instead, I was left to bear the responsibility of managing the community, writing all of our social media, managing branding, coordinating ad campaigns, coordinating graphic design, writing all newsletters/blog posts/articles,taking over as Product Owner for the GWallet, and expanding the team (which was nearly impossible to do when already doing 15 things), all without any compensation for my efforts.
I tried my best to convince Sergey that he owed his investors, represented by our community, an obligation to use the ICO funds raised for the purposes set forth in the Whitepaper roadmap to the extent the plans were viable, and to full transparency and logical alternatives if not. Before leaving Belgrade on July 14, I met face to face with Sergey along with a number of team members who were similarly concerned with Sergey’s leadership and the future of Gamecredits and MobileGo. We suggested a split of the organization and a share of the funds be allocated to an opensource Gamecredits Foundation. To date, Sergey has refused to cooperate in the split or share any of the funds. He has also not committed to investor’s demands for an accounting of the ICO funds despite the promise to do so in the MobileGo Whitepaper used to attract investors.
Recently, Sergey and Maxim denied much of the foregoing and blamed me, a recently turned 21 year old volunteer, for all their failures and their complete lack of transparency. I want to assure all of you in the community, that I did my best in the face of impossible odds and despite being fed misinformation/lies from them. I was likely naive along the way, but I sincerely believed in the project throughout. I personally lost almost all of what I made and I bear responsibility for losses incurred by many of my family and friends as well. The hardest part is that none of this had to happen. The original projects remain viable and many incredibly talented team members believe in the vision.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve stepped back from the communities as I waited to hear what would happen regarding separating cryptocurrency from GNation. However, it seems that the Sholom brothers are not genuinely interested in providing a fair split, so I would like to provide transparency ASAP. Please feel free to ASK ME ANYTHING. I will answer as many questions as I can starting 10:00 AM EST Monday July 30th.
P.S. Right now there is a group of long time community members, blockchain developers, whales, and other former team members who are in the process of establishing the ‘GameCredits Foundation’. The purpose of the foundation is to create a transparent and independent organization that builds blockchain resources using GAME for the gaming industry. This organization will most likely be self funded through a mixture of contract work (potentially helping other blockchain projects) and donations (either from foundation members or community members). GNation will continue to maintain MGO because they control the crowdsale funds and because they are working on the existing esports application/store.
Thanks:
I would like to formally thank all of the people who have helped and continue to help GAME. First I want to thank Nele (one of GameCredits founders) for constantly providing me with resources, time, honesty, and generosity. When people at GameCredits would be slow, Nele would foot the bill with his own money, or pay salaries out of his own pocket.
Thank you to the community members like Samad (N64) for giving their time, money, and personal resources to help GameCredits.
I want to thank the entire blockchain development team (Filip, Uros, Vuk, Divic, Rade, and more) for their dedication to the GAME/MGO cryptocurrencies despite being asked to pivot from project to project or being tasked to do maintenance work.
Thank you to Coa, the newer community manager, who took on helping our community despite facing a lot anger/hostility (due to the lack of transparency). You did a great job being as honest and as transparent as possible despite being drastically underappreciated/underpaid.
And thank you to everyone else in the company who remained unnamed to the community but constantly fought an uphill battle to service our investors, improve efficiency, and better the company.
I’m proud to have been a part of this organization, and have made many lifelong friends/connections both inside the company and among the community. I may be stepping out of a direct role with GameCredits but I’ll always stay on as an advisor/supporter to the initiative and do what I can to promote the original goals we all envisioned.
EDIT: As I said, I am locking the thread since questions here have slowed down. Please feel free to continue to ask questions in the various communication channels.===================== REDDIT POST END |
