help i've been scrambled

(Please note, I'm not a professional or a journalist. This post is half regular person wording things for other regular people who were also regularly confused by corpo-speak and half me writing things down as it helps me remember it lmao)

Weren't staff just volunteers?

Yes! But also no. Basically they had this trial system before you got paid (yeah, red flags immediately, you get it now?) where for one week they did the work unpaid until they were either accepted and paid or weren't excepted and were fired. Volunteers, officially and on the "we're hiring!!!" things posted on twitter, only existed for that trial and were a temporary stage before employment. OR!!! That's what was *supposed* to happen, basically QSMP Studios staff kept making up excuses to extend that one week deadline, claiming stuff like "your behavior is strange, we're just gonna keep an extra eye on you for a while before we make a decision" and then it dragged on and on with people being stuck in the volunteer phase for months in some cases. which is unpaid labor. which is scummy af. think unpaid internships, but with even less safety nets in place.

Weren't the Staff paid and Volunteers unpaid, because well, they're just volunteers?

Ok so basically people had official jobs and what they were being paid for (at abysmally low rates, mind you) and then were also asked to do other not-their-job things, so "artist" staff and "person who did art for qsmp" are not the same thing, translators drew art unpaid, roleplayers did translating unpaid, etc etc. List of QSMP Staff/Volunteer wages: Paid Staff: 150€ (171 USD) per month - Keep in mind that the server was open and had people working on it pretty much 24/7 over a year, someone who was a paid staff member throughout almost the entirety of the servers runtime, a year, would have been paid 1800 euro ($2056 USD) for months of being on call pretty much 24/7 which surmounts to an hourly (on-call or working) rate of about 24 cents. These were the paid ones. Roleplayers/Actors: Unpaid Builders: $5 USD per hour Commission pay for art done by non-artist staff: Unpaid Developers (Unknown what is meant by "developers", could be backend, webdev, modding etc): Some were reported to have been paid as little as 1 Euro ($1 USD) per hour Twitter Account Admins: Unpaid Web Developer: Between $5-22 USD per hour Video Translation: $1 per minute of edited video, (The minumum wage per minute in my country is 5 times that btw, I was gonna give the USA one as an example but its abysmal, but they were paid less than that anyways so ugh) Video Translation done by non-translator staff: Unpaid 3D Modeling (Commission pricing examples from one Model Artist): Small model - ~5-10$ Player-size - ~15-20$ Large - ~30-60$ Unusual sizing - 60$+ Rush Fee - 15$+ This is lower than commercial pricing. Writing: $200-400 USD per month - writers were just as on-call 24/7 as other staff types, last minute changes happened frequently, needing changes a days or even hours before going live. Hourly rate calculates to about 40 cents per hour.

Staff were paid from Quackity's personal Paypal account, rather than an official business transaction. Paypal transaction fees were not covered by QSMP Studios / Quackity. (Side note, one (maybe more) of the QSMP actors were underage, and unpaid due to being an actor so yeah unpaid child labor.)

(Side side note, the "NDA" they had to sign was the first result of typing "NDA" into google lmao)

It's just minecraft, they're getting paid to pay minecraft, they're lucky!

Staff were uber overworked, on call 24/7, and made to do sooo many things outside of their official designated/paid jobs. The idea of an admin with a specific job is nebulous at best. That was what you were on paper, in reality admins did a bit of everything. Actors did art, writers did translation, builders did writing, it was all over the place. Remember the jokes about admins being online for 13+ hours a day? It was funny at the time, "they're being paid to play minecraft, wouldn't be online all the time?" In reality they had no choice.

The staff have been paid now!

I have seen zero evidence of this being the case, the closest Ive seen is a he-said-she-said of posts saying that Quackity told Philza and Tubbo who mentioned it on stream. I have seen zero clips of them saying this, but even if they have, it needs to come from Quackity.

We have, currently, people complaining that they never got paid

(Please note, I'm not a professional or a journalist. This post is half regular person wording things for other regular people who were also regularly confused by corpo-speak and half me writing things down as it helps me remember it lmao)

Weren't staff just volunteers?

Yes! But also no. Basically they had this trial system before you got paid (yeah, red flags immediately, you get it now?) where for one week they did the work unpaid until they were either accepted and paid or weren't excepted and were fired. Volunteers, officially and on the "we're hiring!!!" things posted on twitter, only existed for that trial and were a temporary stage before employment. OR!!! That's what was *supposed* to happen, basically QSMP Studios staff kept making up excuses to extend that one week deadline, claiming stuff like "your behavior is strange, we're just gonna keep an extra eye on you for a while before we make a decision" and then it dragged on and on with people being stuck in the volunteer phase for months in some cases. which is unpaid labor. which is scummy af. think unpaid internships, but with even less safety nets in place.

Weren't the Staff paid and Volunteers unpaid, because well, they're just volunteers?

Ok so basically people had official jobs and what they were being paid for (at abysmally low rates, mind you) and then were also asked to do other not-their-job things, so "artist" staff and "person who did art for qsmp" are not the same thing, translators drew art unpaid, roleplayers did translating unpaid, etc etc. List of QSMP Staff/Volunteer wages: Paid Staff: 150€ (171 USD) per month - Keep in mind that the server was open and had people working on it pretty much 24/7 over a year, someone who was a paid staff member throughout almost the entirety of the servers runtime, a year, would have been paid 1800 euro ($2056 USD) for months of being on call pretty much 24/7 which surmounts to an hourly (on-call or working) rate of about 24 cents. These were the paid ones. Roleplayers/Actors: Unpaid Builders: $5 USD per hour Commission pay for art done by non-artist staff: Unpaid Developers (Unknown what is meant by "developers", could be backend, webdev, modding etc): Some were reported to have been paid as little as 1 Euro ($1 USD) per hour Twitter Account Admins: Unpaid Web Developer: Between $5-22 USD per hour Video Translation: $1 per minute of edited video, (The minumum wage per minute in my country is 5 times that btw, I was gonna give the USA one as an example but its abysmal, but they were paid less than that anyways so ugh) Video Translation done by non-translator staff: Unpaid 3D Modeling (Commission pricing examples from one Model Artist): Small model - ~5-10$ Player-size - ~15-20$ Large - ~30-60$ Unusual sizing - 60$+ Rush Fee - 15$+ This is lower than commercial pricing. Writing: $200-400 USD per month - writers were just as on-call 24/7 as other staff types, last minute changes happened frequently, needing changes a days or even hours before going live. Hourly rate calculates to about 40 cents per hour.

Staff were paid from Quackity's personal Paypal account, rather than an official business transaction. Paypal transaction fees were not covered by QSMP Studios / Quackity. (Side note, one (maybe more) of the QSMP actors were underage, and unpaid due to being an actor so yeah unpaid child labor.)

(Side side note, the "NDA" they had to sign was the first result of typing "NDA" into google lmao)

It's just minecraft, they're getting paid to pay minecraft, they're lucky!

Staff were uber overworked, on call 24/7, and made to do sooo many things outside of their official designated/paid jobs. The idea of an admin with a specific job is nebulous at best. That was what you were on paper, in reality admins did a bit of everything. Actors did art, writers did translation, builders did writing, it was all over the place. Remember the jokes about admins being online for 13+ hours a day? It was funny at the time, "they're being paid to play minecraft, wouldn't be online all the time?" In reality they had no choice.

The staff have been paid now!

I have seen zero evidence of this being the case, the closest Ive seen is a he-said-she-said of posts saying that Quackity told Philza and Tubbo who mentioned it on stream. I have seen zero clips of them saying this, but even if they have, it needs to come from Quackity.

It does not matter to them how abhorrent workers rights violations are, because to them they gain more from supporting and participating in this project than they gain from stepping back or standing in defense. To them the workplace abuse, was an unfortunate incident that probably could have been handled better… but well the fans should have just quit if they were really having a bad time. I mean really it was a learning experience for them all, just getting to be around us was reward enough for them. The admins really could have tried harder, I mean some of them had a good time after all. Are we really sure, it was the fault of the company and not their own fandom driven exceptions.

The fact of the matter is if the backlash is not server enough, if they gain viewers instead of losing them, if its only a few people protesting it they won’t even pretend to care.

Quackity is the only real person in this situation to them, he is the only one that matters. Really he had a hard time too, didn’t you see how much stress he was under? Plus he’s fun to hang out with, and so respectful too. He’s really young don’t you know? How was he supposed to know any better and I’ve just had such a wonderful time with him, you really should just give him another chance.

Sure streamers are a bit attached to their audience, but I mean fans are just one homogenous being to them and there is a lot people really cheering for this. To the streamer those are the real fans, and if those fans agree with them then, they must be right, and everyone else is just a nah sayer.

I want people like Quackity, Tubbo, Phil, Roier, Pac, Tommy, etc to care, I want justification for the respect I have given, fans have given, but they never will because Qsmp was just so fun. And isn’t that all that really matters.

They can destroy their own communities, make them a unsafe, scammy, toxic sludge pile but they’ll never care. They can look their trans audience in the eyes and go well they probably won’t say it again, and then put them on an ad break while asking for new subs.

(March 14, 2026)

As of me writing this, it’s been a little less than a week since I had published this project. Before I say anything else, I would like to thank everyone for the overwhelmingly positive response—I had, surprisingly enough, received pretty much zero hate. There’s been a few responses clearly made in bad faith, which I do not care about—I’m not gonna dignify people who do not care to engage with my argument with a response—but otherwise, everyone has been incredibly kind. For that, I thank you all.

This positive response to the project, however, has been the only good thing to happen in regards to QSMP 2.

Despite my best hopes and the traction this project has received, none of the creators have taken any responsibility or demanded any kind of accountability. Furthermore, Quackity Studios continued to show their ass by using stolen GenAI backgrounds for their announcement posters and inviting known bigots to their server. This, of course, is not surprising in the slightest. As Ana has expressed on Twitter:

the last thing i'll say on the matter is: don't expect someone to foster a safe space for marginalized people and/or care about artists when you saw how they treated people "without platforms" both behind the scenes and publicly. some people only care about their bottom line. this is just what they did before in another font: disregarding people in search of personal glory and financial gain, fuck people's safety and comfort bc who cares about other human beings. someone who treats people like shit, will turn around and do the same to you. trust me, we would know.

A lot of people came out of the woodwork to protest the use of GenAI in the announcement posters—which is all well and good, but, really? You can excuse workplace abuse, but you draw the line at GenAI? Do you think artists having their art put into generative models are the only people having their labor devalued in this situation? Why is that? Why would you qualify the others' devalued labor as not real labor or deserving of lower wages in comparison?

Some of the participants referred to “legal processes” as their reason for not talking about workplace abuse. This is a non-defense. There’s no “legal side” to this. Thinking there is any kind of lawsuit going on is, at best, naive: in what alternate universe can Quackity Studios both launch a massive, (seemingly Twitch-sponsored) project and be in the middle of a lawsuit at the same time?

Some of the participants said that they’d talked to Quackity and were reassured that everything was fine. This is also a non-defense: not only Quackity is (by everyone’s admission!) not part of the administrative team (and is therefore, apparently, not in control of the workings in his company), he is the person at fault here. If you found out someone was a victim of domestic abuse, would you be asking the abuser if everything’d been sorted out? No! Why would the perpetrator tell you the truth?

(And this behaviour is especially gross for the creators who are colleagues with some of the exploited ex-workers—is supporting a server run by people who exploited and abused your co-worker not at least a little bit embarrassing for you?)

At this point, even if any of the participants end up pulling out, I do not care. These creators have proven that they do not care about victims of abuse; that they refuse to engage with any kind of critique; that they’re irresponsible and cannot be trusted even with an ounce of influence. 

Which isn’t to say, of course, that them pulling out would be a bad thing—I still encourage everyone to pressure their favorite creators to rescind their participation and lower the risks of any further workplace abuse taking place. But even if Tubbo decided to quit QSMP 2 tomorrow, I already know how he treats serious issues, and cannot trust him ever again.

I feel very dramatic saying all of this, but this is how I feel. Watching these creators has been a huge part of my life for the past 5 years, and seeing this behaviour feels like having a part of my heart ripped out and stomped on. I am grateful for all the connections and friends I’ve made, but I don’t think I can ever go back to properly enjoying MCYT content after all of this.

With QSMP 2 just around the corner, there's a lot of confusion and misinformation going around in regards to the infamous "QSMP admins scandal" of 2024, and there hasn't been a convenient and accessible way to familiarize yourself with the situation... until today.

How Quackity Studios Got Away With Workplace Abuse provides a timeline of the events that transpired between March 3, 2024 and May 24, 2024, a detailed description of the issues revealed by the ex-admins, and addresses some discourse concerns that I’d seen floating around.

You can read it as a Google document, or watch it as a YouTube video. (Though please note that the video version will not contain any information or changes added to the document post initial release and might have different wording to accommodate for the different format.)