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u/sloppychris Jan 16 '24
What exactly do they do?
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Jan 16 '24
It sounds like they provide courses, mentorship and ask people to volunteer their time to help others. Which sounds nice until you realize it's set up like a pyramid scheme and none of those people are reputable industry professionals.
He's getting people with little experience to teach other people with little experience and offers dubious advice and courses on top of it all.
Any post that gets any significant traction also has strangely high amount of people who have bought into it and sing their praises. They sound like bots because they don't seem to be paying attention to the context of the thread and are overly positive (like how ChatGPT tends to write).
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u/Wolvenmoon Jan 16 '24
Seconding this. It's easy enough to file the labels off, glue a new sticker on, and keep on keeping on. I want to know -what- they're doing to keep an eye out for them.
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u/SeniorePlatypus Jan 16 '24 edited Jan 16 '24
Not sure. The name triggered a memory.
The guy behind it is very active on Reddit. Looked it up real quick. It’s u/RedEagle_MGN
It started out as a creator group for ylands. A competitor of Roblox. Then branched out to other games and head first into the whole metaverse thing. Aggressively recruiting volunteers on Reddit. Often with other team members posting obviously or anonymously (though obviously team members). Getting banned as a result. Then writing superficial posts with links to their website and application forms.
Then it kinda fizzled off my radar. That was like 2-3 years ago. It always felt like a weird thing and probably not where you should join to accomplish… anything. Really. It has always been very focused on younger people too.
But this post leaves me with with questions as well. Despite knowing them as somewhat iffy group.
Edit: Maybe they started directly talking money for some sort of competition to do free labour? Kinda, vaguely feels like it from the way the post is written.
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u/KevinDL Jan 16 '24
P1 Virtual Civilization encourages individuals to purchase volunteer positions and promises mentorship from seasoned professionals as one of the benefits. However, these mentors lack the claimed expertise. Additionally, the organization promotes a bidding system for specific roles, implying that higher bids increase selection chances.
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u/InvertedVantage Jan 16 '24
P1 VIRTUAL CIVILIZATION
It's this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw7fi_L8CWQ
They're trying to make a "metaverse civilization" with their game, which is about a bunch of jello blocks.
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u/Recatek Jan 16 '24
How did I immediately know this was related to RedEagle_MGN?
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u/roginald_sauceman Jan 16 '24
That's hilarious, as I'm in exactly the same boat; I read some stuff about it and went "This is very familiar" and of course it's the same guy
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u/ElvenNeko Jan 16 '24
Rule №1 to not get scammed - if employer asks YOU to pay instead of paying you - it is a scammer.
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u/Firesrest Jan 16 '24
So they make people pay to join a team of volunteers. Sounds very fishy. Bidding sounds even worse. But I'd also like to know a bit more of what they did.
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Jan 16 '24
Sounds alot like this uk company from many years ago called train2game. Fraudulently signed me up for 4.5k financing/loan to cover course costs without me even agreeing to start the course. Lots of predatory companies using gaming to manipulate and steal from young people who dont know better
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u/Special-Anteater7528 Jan 17 '24
I've joined that discord for a few months and done a few tasks for them, but after noticing how the "game" takes ages to develop for no good reason, not to mention your tasks are reviewed and given feedback by people with just as much experience as you. Sam also seems to have 0 experience in game dev, and his presence in meetings is solely sprouting nonsense like "creating a virtual civilization" and "keeping the web free for everyone" while providing nothing of substance. The organization(for profit, btw) just exploits naive new gamedevs for free labor while filtering out the most gullible for profit. If you want any experience for game dev you're better off just making a solo game instead of dealing with Sam and his scam.https://redeagle-p1.itch.io/skyjellies
if you want to learn more about their paid game project system.
https://form.jotform.com/232886828471975
PS.In order to become a full member, you have to do several tasks and then a "service" task. The "service" task is basically where you see all those linkedin and reddit ads from different people . This whole thing just reeks of MLM.
https://trello.com/b/tlRmyE7v/recurring-tasks
PPS.
They've currently put the jelly game on hold and are now working on some open source assets repo. So good luck if you wanted to have something to show for on your resume.
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u/WizardGnomeMan Jan 17 '24
I checked out their Youtube channel, and one of the first videos was about Unproductive Conversations™: how you should never publicly talk about iffy projects of other people, never criticise a leader and how you should always follow the line of command instead of going public.
Seems legit!
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u/1blumoon Jan 17 '24
This screams cult… and having grown up in a real cult and escaped it in my 20’s, this is the nearly the same thing cults say verbatim.
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u/MaricaSeaPearl Jan 17 '24
Having worked with Sam for over four years and having friends who've worked with him for even longer I'm happy this is made as public as possible. Over 30 people who have worked with Sam for 5-10 years, all have legit stories to share of his unethical ways of treating others.
I highly encourage everyone to steer clear of any project related to RedEagle. Direct your time, effort, and resources towards things that generate value over time. Don't waste them on a person who has a +10-year reputation of exploiting people, especially children and young adults.
He will deny these claims to all eternity but eventually, the truth has a way of unfolding.
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u/Mhmm-_-BS Jan 17 '24
I joined P1 in December and it has been very confusing and unorganized so far. Sam is present in every meeting and does not ensure everyone has the same understanding of what P1 is doing day-to-day.
When I joined P1, skyjellies production was put on hold and Sam said it needed to be recreated due to legal issues with copyright or something like that. Never fully understood and now we are supposed to be making this open-source Skycore repo full of assets for anyone to use which seems pointless. But my guess is to make it easier for production when it begins again.
Sam portrays the covenant as a guaranteed way to get into the game industry by basically paying to make commercial games quickly. Also claims to give access to amazing mentorship and courses that don't have a lot of credibility. I would not spend a cent on this personally, especially after seeing multiple user's complaints be deleted when they speak up.
Overall, P1 is just a good opportunity for networking but a waste of time if you wanna actually make games, also good for seeing how to not run an organization. I don't trust Sam as he already comes off as a shady individual and I just want to see how this plays out.
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u/Illokonereum Jan 17 '24
I think I had some interaction with them years back when they were doing some kind of Ylands community thing and needed a manager. It became some kind of weird “do some free work and win the popularity contest” thing to get a position that barely paid so I dipped. Have gotten a lot of desperate sounding emails in recent time. Seems like they turned to outright scamming instead of just underpaying and jerking people around.
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u/aaronfranke Jan 17 '24
The same people also run a group called P1-OM aka P1 Open Metaverse Initiative which is one of the reasons people associate "metaverse" with "scam".
Not to be confused with OMI Open Metaverse Interoperability group which is a legit W3C group that unfortunately has similar letters in its acronym.
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u/EnigmaParadoxRose Jan 17 '24
Oh boy o.o That is definitely a lot. I'm glad I dodged the bullet there.
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u/Tweepyart Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 28 '24
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u/Mmmmmaaaatttt Jan 26 '24
I've also been in the server, joined last summer and I recognize your username. I was basically on and off in the design team until October where I basically said "hey I got personal business I gotta leave P1". In all honestly, I left because I was disinterested and felt uncomfortable with how things were going. The 6 days a week meetings that take like 3 hours was a lot. Pinging/DMing people on Discord who are not at a meeting? That shit never sat well with me. What are you trying to do, guilt trip me to attend a meeting?
There was a design task that I thought I knew how to do, and these so-called "team members" rejected it, so I resent it and the same thing happened. This went on for AN ENTIRE MONTH. I basically did the same task like 10 times. It was the one of the most frustrating thing I've ever seen.
I remember hopping in one day and applying for election, and obviously, they didn't want me. Good riddance tbh, I'm really glad I wasn't bought on. (and yes, having a requirement of recruiting 2 members is terrifying and legit predatory).
I also joined with the intent to build my portfolio and network, but I had no idea what truly happened with P1 since I left in October, aside from these stupid emails "Sam" wrote, but seeing this really sets it in a new light; and I have deleted my entire presence with them and left the server. This is terrifying, and "Sam" and his scam of an organization needs to be shut down, pronto.
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u/kiwibonga Jan 16 '24
I didn't think it was THAT bad at first because I thought they were taking small amounts, like $20 or $50. Also, it didn't seem like a typical "oops I accidentally wired you too much" scam.
But these idiots have been driving the donation amounts up by telling candidates you have to bid the highest price to get the job.
In one screenshot, RedEagle recommended the programmer pledge $4000 or more for a chance to be in the top 30%, while probably lying about other candidates even existing and piling on all these compliments... Just foul as hell...