YanDev leaked tinybuild email

 the agreement accordingly. I appreciate your willingness to cooperate, and I no longer have any grievances with tinyBuild.

I've signed the agreement, and attached it to this e-mail.

Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 12:45 PM
From: "Luke Burtis" <luke@tinybuild.com>
To: "Yandere Developer" <YandereDev@mail.com>, "Antonio Assenza" <antonio.assenza@tinybuild.com>
Subject: Re: tinyBuild Termination Agreement
Hey Alexander,

Thanks for the explanation of your feelings concerning the partnership. It is unfortunate that the partnership did not work out the way either of us planned.

That being said, we have agreed to remove the refunding of the development costs (the $31,000) that tinyBuild has put into the project thus far. So it's just a termination as of here and now.

Please see the updated termination agreement with point 1 (the repayment part) removed.

Luke Burtis
Managing Partner tinyBuild
+1-425-417-5241
Skype: Lukeburtis
Luke@tinybuild.com

On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 10:34 AM Yandere Developer <YandereDev@mail.com> wrote:

I never signed the termination agreement because the terms are unacceptable. I made this as clear as possible the last time I spoke with Alex Nichiporchik.

At the point in time when I decided to sign a contract with tinyBuild, I was in my darkest hour. I was extremely stressed out and overworked and anxious about the project. I decided to sign a contract with tinyBuild because I thought my life would get better as a result. I thought that the codebase was going to be optimized in a timely manner, I thought that the game was going to get unbanned from Twitch, and I thought that the people who harass me on a daily basis would gain respect for me if I had a publisher.

Unfortunately, none of those things came to pass. I only got more stressed out, more overworked, and more anxious than I was before I signed with tinyBuild. The codebase wasn't significantly improved, the game wasn't unbanned from Twitch, and I received more harassment than I ever did before. In short, signing up with tinyBuild did nothing for me, and actually impacted my life negatively in several ways. I would be a happier and healthier person if I had never signed up with tinyBuild.

A big part of the reason why I decided to sign up with tinyBuild was because Alex Nichiporchik expressed a lot of confidence that he could get the game unbanned from Twitch. He tried to do this for a few weeks, and then gave up. Alex Nichiporchik led me to believe me that he had the ability to get the game unbanned from Twitch, but this never happened. In short, my relationship with tinyBuild was built on a false promise.

There was a guy who was making an online multiplayer spinoff for Yandere Simulator. My contract with tinyBuild had "Right of First Refusal", which means that if I want to make a Yandere Sim spinoff or sequel, I have to inform tinyBuild and let them offer to publish it before I publish it independently or let a third-party offer to publish it. When I told Alex Nichiporchik that a guy was making a multiplayer spinoff, he said that I didn't have the option of publishing it independently, and that tinyBuild would have fully ownership of it. This makes zero sense, since the contract only says that tinyBuild only gets to make an offer, and doesn't say that tinyBuild automatically owns all spinoffs I want to make. This bothered the guy who guy who was making the multiplayer spinoff, so even though he had made a tremendous amount of progress with the game, he decided to stop making it. If Alex Nichiporchik had not insisted that tinyBuild should get instant ownership of the spinoff, we would have had an online multiplayer Yandere Sim spinoff months ago, which would have helped to maintain interest in the game.

After I made a video about me being stressed out and needing programming assistance, over 20 professional programmers contacted me and volunteered to help free of charge. They volunteered to convert the game from JavaScript to C# and upgrade the project from Unity 4 to Unity 5 for free. I told them not to bother, since I thought that tinyBuild was going to get me the help I needed in a timely manner. However, tinyBuild was busy with trade shows and Mr. Shifty for two months, so tinyBuild didn't actually put anyone on the C# Unity 5 conversion until 2 months after I signed the contract, and we didn't make the switch to C# and Unity 5 until July, which was 5 months after I had signed the contract. If I had not signed up with tinyBuild and had just let the volunteers help me instead, I think I would have achieved C# on Unity 5 months earlier than we actually did. Not only that, but Unity released an official JavaScript to C# converter in August, so even if I hadn't used volunteers or tinyBuild, it would have happened eventually for free.

The programmer who tinyBuild hired to work on Yandere Sim - Aaron Fritz - didn't actually improve the code in any meaningful way. What he did amounts to busywork and completely arbitrary changes that didn't actually improve the performance of the game in any way. For example, you can type "foo == false" or you can type "!foo". Aaron went through the code and changed all the "== false" to "!" but that didn't actually improve the framerate or make anything better, it just changed my workflow in an arbitary way. He made a lot of these arbitrary changes all over the code, so my own scripts began to look completely unfamiliar and foreign to me. I actually lost the ability to edit some parts of the game, because I didn't know how to modify Aaron's code. Because of Aaron's changes, it actually started to take me extra time to perform operations that used to be simple, so I actually began less productive and made progress even slower than I did before. In short, Aaron joined the project, scrambled all my code, and then left the project.

(It's also worth noting that I received almost no advance notice that Aaron was leaving the project. He only informed me about it a few days before it actually happened. That's not the sort of thing that should suddenly happen out-of-the-blue. That's not the sort of thing I should be in the dark about until a few days before it happens.)

My contract with tinyBuild states that they get a cut of any merchandise sold. I got a lot of offers from companies that wanted to sell Yandere Sim merchandise. I didn't accept any of these offers, because I didn't want to sell merch if it meant that tinyBuild was going to get a cut of the profit. I didn't really want to see tinyBuild making any money off of me when they hadn't actually made the game better, and actually had a negative impact in some regards. So, if I hadn't signed up with tinyBuild, I would have sold a lot more merch and made a lot more money.

There's also some other miscellaneous stuff that I could mention, like the time when Alex Nichiporchik told me to go to Los Angeles to film a segment for a show, and the show was a complete disaster and a total waste of my time. It might seem petty to bring up stuff like that, but the point I'm trying to make is that when I look back at the 8 months I spent with tinyBuild, the only ways that tinyBuild affected my life were negative.

You can get a summary of what I'm saying by reading the parts in bold, but let me spell it out clearly:

1. Probably 50% of the reason Alex Nichiporchik convinced me to sign up with tinyBuild is because he assured me that could get the game unbanned from Twitch, and it never happened.

2. My contract didn't say that tinyBuild gets instant ownership of all spinoffs, yet when I informed Alex that a guy was making a spinoff, he claimed tinyBuild would own it, and as a result, the online multiplayer spinoff never happened.

3. The C# and Unity 5 conversion would have happened months earlier if I had just let a programming volunteer handle it instead.

4. Aaron Fritz joined the project, made pointless arbitrary changes, didn't improve anything, made my own code look unfamiliar and foreign to me, and then left the project.

5. Considering the above points, I didn't like the idea of tinyBuild making money off me, so I deliberately avoided making any new merchandise deals.

My contract with tinyBuild states that if I want to terminate my contract, I have to pay tinyBuild back for all the money they spent helping me develop the game. That would be Aaron Fritz's paychecks, which come to a total of $31,000. (This means that my partnership with tinyBuild was the equivalent of putting a money-eating parasite onto my body, and getting nothing in return.)

TinyBuild spent 8 months damaging my project in various ways. It's not ethical and it's not logical to take $31,000 from me. tinyBuild should have to eat that cost, not me. This is why I consider the terms of the agreement to be unacceptable.

My contract with tinyBuild does not contain a nondisparagement clause. However, it does contain an indemnification clause. Alex Nichiporchik insisted that an indemnification clause is the exact same thing as a nondisparagement clause, and assured me that I'm not legally allowed to disparage tinyBuild as long as the contract is in effect.

However...if you actually read the clause, it only says that Publisher (tinyBuild) agrees to hold Developer (me) harmless. It doesn't say that I'm obligated to hold you harmless. Read it for yourself if you don't believe me: https://imgur.com/yoTqBXS.png

In short, I am currently not under any sort of nondisparagement or indemnification clause. Theoretically, if I wanted to, I could upload a 20-minute video explaining to my audience of 2.4 million subscribers that tinyBuild has massively screwed me over and that no developer should ever work with them. I've had 15 months to do so, and I haven't done it, because I hate drama.

However...the termination agreement contains an NDA. As soon as I sign your termination agreement, I lose the ability to say anything negative about tinyBuild, forever. So, if I want to tell the world the truth about tinyBuild, my only opportunity to do so is right now, before I sign any more agreements with you. Why shouldn't I? Can you give me a reason?

In summary: The termination agreement is extremely unfavorable for me, but extremely favorable to you. Currently, there is no incentive for me to sign it, but a great deal of incentive for me to avoid signing it. Please reconsider the terms of the agreement to make it less unappealing. I suggest removing the section that obligates me to pay you $31,000.

Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 3:54 PM
From: "Luke Burtis" <luke@tinybuild.com>
To: YandereDev@mail.com, "Antonio Assenza" <antonio.assenza@tinybuild.com>
Subject: tinyBuild Termination Agreement
Hey Alex,

We never actually got the signed termination agreement from you concerning our partnership dissolving.

I've attached it again. Please sign asap so we can make sure we have all this legally wrapped up.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Luke Burtis
Managing Partner tinyBuild
+1-425-417-5241
Skype: Lukeburtis
Luke@tinybuild.com