Competition Winnings not in yet!

[ClayC 21]

I am writing this as myself, not representing any group or organization, this is what I think and how things are from my perspective

I am here to spread the word about how untrustworthy Tencent is, I am part of a larger group who won prizes in the latest competition, the total prize money Tencent owe us is of $10,000. This should be pocket money for the company but for us, this is a large sum, we worked very hard for this competition, some of us putting in over 100 hours of pure labour ( totaling in the thousands of man hours all together ) into this to get the best build, best game etc.that 

First bad move by the company was that prizes were reduced, some prizes were lifted and basically the overall amount went down significantly.

Next, we won and the announcement was quick, as it should be, then we were told that the money should be transferred to us within 45 days, but most likely to be before.

When 45 days were over, we were told that on November 1st, we will receive half of the money, which is $5,000. We accepted to receive half now and half later down the line.

Now do note, I am writing this on November 2nd, the money is not in yet, which is unprofessional to say the least, but to be asked another extension, till the 7th is a whole different level of unprofessionalism, Tencent is the biggest company in china, A multi billion company, and they are taking this long to pay winning of a competition!!!!!

 

I feel betrayed by the company,

I feel that no company should put winners through this hasle, especially, being that we are the biggest community on Ylands! This is how they are going to treat us?

 

I demand my money within 48hrs.

No more extensions! No more excuses, PAY UP TENCENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Arktic_P1 1]

I am writing this as myself, not representing any group or organization, this is what I think and how things are from my perspective

Yep, 100% with you on this one. I'm sure all of us from P1 are. Tencent, however would prefer to sweep this under the rug. It's our responsibility however to keep pestering them about it, otherwise it will be swept under the rug. It seems as though they aren't happy that the promotion of Ylands through the competition did not deliver the results they expected, by that I mean, P1 winning most of the competition and so the prize money they now owe us is a grievance that they feel they don't want to give up. That's the only thing I can come up with anyways. 

Edited November 3, 2018 by Arktic_P1

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hi,

we are really sorry about this situation. Tencent and Bohemia Interactive have been cooperating on bringing Ylands to China, but we not have any direct control over Tencent's non-development activities, such as this competition.

That being said we want Ylands to be something that reminds players of time spent exploring, creating and having fun in general and not being frustrated for whatever reason... We have already contacted Tencent in this  matter - I believe it was about two weeks ago.

We were told that unfortunately in the company this big all the payments to creators take usually a very long time to process - from what I heard it can be up to three months. I believe that whoever promised you 45 days tops might have been a bit too optimistic. 

This doesn't mean that you don't have a very valid reason to be frustrated - it has, no doubt, taken very long. But at the same time I believe that there's no ill intention behind this, nothing "shady". I can only speculate, but it doesn't really make sense for a company that is trying really hard to help us make Ylands a success to intentionally harm its forming community.

For our part I can promise that we'll try to do anything in our power to have this resolved this as soon as possible. We will use our contacts to once again ask for this to be resolved asap or at least to be given some more information. We will do it either this weekend or on Monday and I hope that we'll have some answer.

Thank you for the patience you've had so far.

 

 

[Oliver Hope 261]

Hey all 

 

This message is my opinion and I am not representing anyone or group. However i am part of a group that entered a competition hosted by tencent, here is my disappointing experience...

This reply is very similar to the above post but i wanted to bring my personal experience into it.

Most of you will probably know that quite a while back Tencent hosted a Ylands competition with prizes adding up to 30 000 dollars, thats a lot of money for most of us but not for a company like Tencent.

Sadly everything did not go to plan, Tencent did not make our life easy.

Firstly they changed the deadline, pushing it back, which messed with our plans and we stood to loose a couple thousand dollars.

Secondly they removed many of the prizes it went from 3 places in second in game design to 1 and  from 5 places in third for game design to 1- that is the removal of 8 000 dollars worth of prizes.I felt that my second game could have possibly won one of these prizes and it felt totally unfair to have these prizes pulled from under my nose.

All this was annoying and unprofessional but the worst was still to come.

Regardless of the added competition and loss of prizes we still one big 1st in builds and games and 2 second in builds as well, that is 10 000 dollars, thats a lot of money to our group but barely anything to a huge company like tencent

This is a link to the competition results http://ylands.qq.com/cp/a20180510jianzhu/prize.htm Heres to hoping they don't get changed

That felt well earned after over a 1000 hours of work from us all but this was not the end.

MORE THEN 62 days (+2 months later) we have not been payed a cent 

We kept getting told we were going to be paid by X date but it never happened. 

That's just one of the examples...

Recently we were told we would be payed half the cash on November the 1 and the rest the nect month then they asked for yet another extension until November the 7 this has kept happening and at this point i cant trust them anymore because this could go on forever

I want pressure on Tencent to pay us, 10 000 dollars is a lot to us. PAY UP TENCENT

Tencent is a massive company with HUGE resources and im extremley annoyed with their unprofessional behavior,

i myself contributed 80 clocked hours(in reality i worked more) to make the 1st place game, i stayed up till 2 am a couple nights because of deadlines changing, all this in between school work;

Of course all my hard work for has not been rewarded.In conclusion I'm extremely unimpressed by Tencent and will never respect them as an honest company, they need to be held responsible for their actions so im making there actions transparent so everyone can see how they have been messing with us. We need to put pressure on them!

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

1 hour ago, Aleš Ulm said:

I believe that there's no ill intention behind this, nothing "shady".

 

1 hour ago, Oliver Hope_P1 said:

the removal of 8 000 dollars worth of prizes

Something just does not add up here.

Edited November 3, 2018 by RedEagle_P1.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Did Tencent communicate/explain in any way the removal of those prizes? 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

31 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Did Tencent communicate/explain in any way the removal of those prizes? 

I have replied privately on the matter. 

[Oliver Hope 261]

Some more evidence 

[FraCornelius 1]

Hello! I am from Russia and my English is not very good (in most cases I use Google translator). But since I am part of the P1 community, I cannot ignore the fact that after all our work, someone is trying to deceive us.

I accidentally found out about the competition, but spent more than two weeks of my vacation to make an interesting game. I studied the editor, communicated with my community mates. Gosh, I had a great time in August!) I am grateful to the creators of the game for this.))

But we had a goal to win. And we reached it. I believe that taking away our achievements Tencent is doing wrong. I understand for a big company this is just a contest. Perhaps one of many. But for us it is our strength, our creativity. (God, well, send us at least a letter?) By devaluing its word, Tencent devalues all our efforts.

I have nothing to say.

Edited November 3, 2018 by FraCornelius

[ClayC 21]

@Aleš UlmI thank you for sharing your opinion here, but I cannot go without replying, I understand Bohemia Interactive is not Tencent, and this is why in my post I spoke directly about Tencent. I respect BI a lot as all the developers and managers who are responsible for ylands have been working hard, taking the right decisions about the little things that we didn't even know we'd like. But they investigated and implemented.
 

However, the problem is, when a company/individual asks for a delay, one will expect that the extension they are asking for would be reasonable and well thought. This shows that Tencent first said 45 days. Even though this is a lengthy time for us, we accepted, then they asked for an extension, till the 1st of November, we accepted. But now they are asking for another extension. I prefer if they came forward and said, we will deliver the money within 6 months and then surprise me with early transfer of 4 months.

Hope that you can understand what I mean.

To add more insult to injury, They have also removed prizes from the competition. What sort of a company will do all this crazy maneuvering if they want to help launch a product? This will scare away people!

[Miguel Preguisa 443]

I'm not a part of P1 but I totally understand you. When you invited me to join a Ylands competition organized by Tencent I didn't even know what Tencent was. Due to some of my IRL problems I couldn't join you even though I wanted to. But I was kind of a glad after all after I got some more information about what Tencent is. Now, I'm trying to be polite in most cases and I don't use much of a harsh language at all anywhere. 

This is now just my opinion (but I know many of those who share this opinion with me) that's not based only on this one event.

F Tencent. 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

Good news, we got our first payment yesterday! 1000 out of 10,000 -- 1000 more came this morning. Looks like it will reach 5K this month. Then another payment of 5K sometime later. 

 

 

[ClayC 21]

Just as a small update in regards to this post, we have received half the funds, we are still waiting for a word on the remainder half. Perhaps they will follow soon,

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

For those still wondering, we got paid the full amount long ago.