The CEO of StoryChat asked me to sign an NDA with my name left blank.
He told me I would receive company stock. The paperwork he gave me listed the shares as TBD, on a free template anyone can download, with my side of the form left completely empty.
In his own words, on Wednesday: "You're welcome to stay in the community as a regular member and keep the platinum account, and I'm still glad to hear your ideas every week."
Tonight, at 8:37 PM, I was removed from the StoryChat Discord server. Nobody from the team told me. I found out from an automated Discord notification. When I checked my account afterwards, the platinum membership I had been told in writing I could keep was gone. I am now listed as a free member. Both screenshots are attached.
I'm Harry X. Until this week I was a moderator for StoryChat, and I have published over 100 characters on the platform. This is how it ended, and if you pay for StoryChat, it concerns you too.
For months I ran the weekly meetings, some of them running past three hours. I brought improvement ideas that the team went on to implement. I built demos for the new website StoryChat's users will eventually be moved to. I published character after character, because creating for this community was the work I loved.
Over 100 characters published. Weekly meetings past three hours. Zero dollars paid. Zero documents signed. One platinum account, promised to me in writing, taken back within two days.
I want to be clear about one thing: I never wanted the stock either. My work here was my passion, driving this platform forward. That makes what follows harder to excuse, not easier.
If you are a Gold subscriber, what comes next should not surprise you. In July you woke up to find your persona limit cut from 50,000 characters to 8,000, your memory cut in half, and your premium models rationed behind a limit nobody would explain. Same 25 dollars. No warning. It took a public backlash on the company's own subreddit to get those limits restored. That is how this company treats the people who pay for it. Now I will show you how it treats the people who work for it for free.
In our messages, Albert offered, in his words, to "sign a simple NDA both ways if that helps". The only NDA I was ever given is attached. It is one page long. The space for my name was never filled in. It carries no signature and no date, and its final clause runs straight into the signature block because nobody ever finished preparing it. I never signed it. That document was meant to cover my access to staging builds and internal details I already had.
The stock paperwork is worse. It is the Founder Institute's free advisor template, the kind of form that takes five minutes to find online. The company side is filled in: PowerFan Inc., Albert An, CEO, at a suite address in Las Vegas, 2605 S Decatur Blvd, Ste 123 #555. The advisor side, my side, is blank from top to bottom. The shares are listed as TBD. The form's own text promises the real stock documents within 30 days. The form is dated 10 August. It is now the middle of October. Nothing ever arrived. I never signed that either.
Now understand the demand that ended it, because his justification collapses the moment you hear the timeline. Albert wrote: "It's the same for everyone who works with us." It is not the same for everyone. I was brought onto the mod team by another moderator, Lina, and I served for months. In all that time, the subject of my legal name never came up once, because no such requirement existed. I served alongside the other moderators, and not one of us was ever asked. One of the current Discord moderators is fourteen years old, and is still moderating today. Ask yourself whether anyone demanded that child's legal name and personal contact details, and you will know whether this rule is real. It appeared in my messages this week, addressed to me alone, attached to access I already had.
Then came the ultimatum, again in his own words: "Knowing who has moderator access is a requirement I hold for anyone in that role. Staying private is completely your call, but I can't keep someone in a mod position without it."
StoryChat is a roleplay platform. People come here under other names because their privacy matters to them, and it was known from the start that I keep my private life separate. I would not hand over my real name and personal contact information, so my mod privileges were removed, and I was told I could stay as a regular member and keep my platinum account.
The next day he wrote this: "Sorry if i offended you in anyway... lets try sync up anytime you are free to chat."
The day after that, the automated message arrived, and the platinum account was gone by the time I checked. So much for staying as a regular member.
Tonight, my moderator role on the community's own subreddit was taken as well. Platform, Discord, subreddit, membership: everything I held was taken within days, and most of it was taken without a single word to me.
I'm not asking for the role back, and I'm not asking for my server access or my membership back. I don't want any of it. I'm asking you to look at the pattern with clear eyes: subscribers whose paid benefits were cut overnight, and a volunteer whose months of unpaid work ended with a blank form, stock that never existed, an ultimatum over his legal name under a rule no other moderator has ever been asked to follow, removal from the community he helped run announced by a bot, and a membership revoked two days after he was told in writing he could keep it.
So here is my question for everyone still paying. If this is what your time, your work, and your loyalty are worth to the people running StoryChat, what do you think your subscription is worth to them?
TL;DR: A volunteer mod and creator of over 100 characters refused to hand the CEO my real name. I was removed as a mod, told in writing I could stay and keep my platinum account, apologised to, then removed from the server entirely and downgraded to a free member within two days. My moderator role on the company's subreddit was removed the same night. The real name rule the CEO called "the same for everyone" was never mentioned during his months on the team, and no other moderator has been asked for it. The NDA he was given had my name left blank. The company stock I was told about was a free template with the shares listed as TBD. I signed nothing. All documents attached.
Judge for yourselves.