3D artist | I mess around with 3D Instagram: https://xitter.cf/t.co/kwG463Fxa0
Joined April 2022
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Caesar_theartist retweeted
Here's a snippet of the timelapse of a level i worked on for a mobile Third/firstperson shooter game. it's a map based on the makoko slums in lagos nigeria #blocktober26 #blocktober #LevelDesign #gamedev
Caesar_theartist retweeted
There are some points that are being made about the whole salary saga.
wdym if you were head of the company, you would arrest the people coming out to talk about being owed based on technicalities of the terms in place ?
Na NDA and legal contract cause all these ones, in which the other party have breached, that’s why all this is happening.
There has been no communication from Mazerance with me for months now not even after the recent tweets about unpaid salaries. When are we getting paid @TheObiLeonard and @Mazerance? It’s been months already, give us a clear answer.
Now we are talking about @TheObiLeonard again, as much as I am looking forward to the resolve of these concerns I raised, I discovered that Elvis left WhatsApp.
No one has reached out to me from @Mazerance to discuss the salaries owed to me.
I am hoping that this @Mazerance matter would get resolved. It’s 5 months already.
Yes. Enough grace has been given to @Mazerance already.
I’ve stayed quiet about this for months because I genuinely believed there was still something to protect and that things would be handled internally.
But at this point, what reputation are we even protecting?
Employees are owed money. People have continued working, meeting expectations and carrying responsibilities while trying to survive without payments they are contractually owed.
We’ve asked questions privately. We’ve waited. We’ve given the @Mazerance room to address things internally.
Months have passed.
And now people outside the company are fighting publicly for employees who are actually inside the company and being owed.
So why shouldn’t we talk about it too?
I appreciate the people trying to help and In as much as fingers are being pointed, I appreciate the efforts the community is putting to get the employees paid, but we shouldn’t have to depend on public pressure before they get clear communication about money we are already owed.
We stayed quiet because we wanted to protect the company, because we really believed in what we were building. We stayed quiet because we also believed an internal solution was really possible but there comes a point where staying silent stops protecting the company and starts hurting the people affected.
It’s been months. We deserve answers, accountability and our money @Mazerance
Caesar_theartist retweeted
This looks like a lot of word while also saying we took advantage of vulnerable developers but we have a contract 🤣🤣🤣
This is a very dicey situation, as some of the documents that I would love to share to debunk some of the statements made, are all internal documents and I don’t consider it professional sharing those documents here.
There are documents that contain an agreement between some of the staff members (about 5 of them) and the company on a deferred pay (read as salaries owed) before they were employed, and they all signed this.
These debts were tied to a Kickstarter launch and a fundraising event which even when these milestones weren’t met, the company kept funding the team through multiple delays.
Some of the other staff members were then later re-engaged earlier this year on an agreement split across three choices: Leave the company with no debt as we couldn’t finance all staff payments any longer, stay with the company and get 50% of your pay (we fulfilled as much of this as we could), stay with the company on a volunteer basis with deferred pay until our Kickstarter or Merch store launches.
None of the staff members' pay were held back last year (asides those who had deferred pay written into their contracts, which they all signed and agreed to)
Number of months of debt owed (3 months, between January 2026 and April 2026 for the majority of the staff and these were tied to milestones and deliverables, which were not met).
Mazerance’s biggest problem was a lack of clear communication and I fully recognize and acknowledge this.
I know emotions are high and that the recent trends in the ecosystem has posed a trust issue, especially with startups, but facts should never be misrepresented to sell a story that isn’t true and this does not show any acknowledgment for a company you once claimed to fully support when things were running smoothly.
Businesses face issues, founders make mistakes, and Mazerance and I are not immune when it comes to the chances of these things happening.
This is not to remove any accountability from me or Mazerance, but facts should never be misrepresented.
Caesar_theartist retweeted
The people speaking up because they are owed salary are not wrong. They have every right to ask for what they earned.
As a founder, your first and most sacred obligation is to the people who trust you with their time, livelihood, and careers. Your team is just as important as the product itself.
In a crisis, communication is everything; specifically empathetic communication. People want and deserve to know what is happening when it directly impacts their lives, and you have too loop them in. You have to make them feel and know that you actually care.
Your team trusted you with their time. That trust must be kept. If there is an issue, please speak up, founders. It would help yourself and everyone around.
Before celebrating leadership transitions, perhaps we should also talk about unfinished business.
What happens to the people who worked for @Mazerance , fulfilled their responsibilities, and were subsequently left waiting for compensation and salaries they were promised?
Interesting to read about the people who “made it possible” while some of those very people are still waiting to be paid salaries owed for over 4 months.
What happens when the promised deadline passes without payment, without meaningful communication, and the people affected are eventually told that the matter is no longer in your hands?
There are people who gave their time, skills and commitment to building this company who are still waiting for what they are owed.
So when I read public statements celebrating the people who “made it possible,” I can’t help but question how truthful that picture really is.
Some stories sound very different from the inside.
Elvis, This is not how to go about things.
Caesar_theartist retweeted
There is a double standard worth calling out when a governor owes workers months of salary without proper communication, people are quick to condemn the governor. But when your favorite does something similar, some people suddenly become sympathetic and start praying for the person to “get through the situation” without confronting the management decisions that created it. If we demand accountability from politicians for poor financial management, we should be willing to demand the same accountability from founders we admire. Accountability should not depend on whose side you are on.
Another artist that worked at Mazerance.
Caesar_theartist retweeted
"They were paid in dollars"
"They earned far more than what they have earned in their life"
But at what cost? At what investment?
At 4 month of no pay, and nearly 5 month of poor communication and unclear pathway for the issue to be resolved.
5 month is enough time to
Caesar_theartist retweeted
“They were paid more than they’ve ever been paid”. Yes, that’s what it takes to to get such level of talent and dedication. He was not doing them a favour.
They probably worked harder than they ever had to. You people are just somehow.
Caesar_theartist retweeted
You’ve said a lot without actually acknowledging their concerns. This is more of a damage control while conveniently sweeping the situation under the carpet. I personally know one of those involved, and what you’ve explained here is just PR to save face.
Caesar_theartist retweeted
what exactly is the logic behind spending all that money on marketing and collabs and owing full salaries for this long?
omo I don't even understand this space again
Okay, so this is all sweet and all Elvis but about our unpaid salaries? You talked about the people who worked with you on the project but you blatantly left out the fact where you and @Mazerance have been owing us unpaid salaries for the past 7 months.
Caesar_theartist retweeted
Okay, I think I need to clarify something. I meant we’ve been chasing this matter of months of unpaid salary for about 7 months now, not that 7 months of salary is owed.
Just wanted to put this out there to avoid any confusion.
Okay, so this is all sweet and all Elvis but about our unpaid salaries? You talked about the people who worked with you on the project but you blatantly left out the fact where you and @Mazerance have been owing us unpaid salaries for the past 7 months.
I have stepped down as CEO of @Mazerance.
Mazerance began with an idea I had early last year. Together with friends who loved puzzles and escape rooms, we set out to build a story-driven co-op strategy game, and to show what a game studio out of Africa could look like on the world stage.
That idea became a studio registered in Australia, Nigeria and the United States, with a team that brought everything they had to building the game and the company behind it.
Eighteen months ago, none of this existed. No company, no team, no community, no world to build a game in. There is now, because of everyone who made it possible: the team, family, friends, my co-founders and the people who backed us from the start.
We built a community of roughly 20,000 people and generated over 8 million impressions on this app alone.
Through Project 9, Rancers Remix and Pass It On, we became one of the most talked-about budding game studios in Africa, earned more than five press features and made our presence felt at Moonshot, one of Nigeria's largest tech conferences.
More than 25 people across three continents have worked on Mazerance, and in the first eight months alone that team produced over 600 pieces of brand, world and community work, from characters and lore to artwork, videos and campaign content. That is close to three assets produced a day, every single day; working closely with these talented individuals has been the highlight of my career.
The studio is also set up on Steam and Kickstarter, which as a company registered across three countries is harder than it sounds.
None of this was one person. It was everyone who has put something into Mazerance, and leading that team every day for eighteen months has been nothing short of a privilege.
There is still a lot of work ahead. I do not count any of this as the finish line, but the effort and the outcomes deserve recognition.
The game is still in development, and delivering it would be the best outcome for me, the team, the community and our stakeholders. The foundation is there, and whoever leads the business next has something substantial to work with.
I have poured almost everything I have into this company for eighteen months. I need to step back, look after myself, and go back to the work I love. I am a designer and storyteller before anything else.
Leading Mazerance has been one of the most difficult and beautiful things I have ever been in service of. I believe I did it well, and I am grateful for every moment of it.
But design is where I do my best work, and what I build next will reflect that: experiences that transform how physical products understand human interaction and change how people live with them.
As for who takes the seat, the company has chosen an interim successor.
To the team (past and present) and my co-founders, thank you. To the Rancers, our investors and everyone who backed us early, thank you for believing in what we set out to build.
I remain on the board, and will continue to support Mazerance in whatever capacity it needs me. This is my child and I have its best interest at heart.
More on what is next for me soon.
Well said, man.
This reminds me of when I worked for an animation studio in 2024 for about three months. I invested money into transporting myself there every day, and for the entire three months I worked there, I didn't get paid shit.
I kept holding on to the hope that I eventually would, until the "CEO" announced that he was shutting down the studio because the YouTube channel he was trying to build for the children's content we were creating wasn't generating revenue quickly enough.
It sucked, because one person's unrealistic vision left a bunch of 3D artists without a job. I remember one of my colleagues even leaving a stable job to devote himself to this so-called studio, only to be left without work a month later because of the promises of pay the "CEO" kept making.
I'm not sure why some people with money assume that because artists are passionate about what we do, we don't care about the money we're working our asses off for.
It's unfair.
We can love what we do. We can be passionate about animation. We can believe in someone's vision. And we still deserve to be paid for our work.
If you can't fund your vision long enough to sustain the people you're bringing on board, then think twice before bringing dedicated 3D artists into it in the first place.
Artists aren't free labour just because they love their craft 💯
Caesar_theartist retweeted
owing staff their livelihood without any certainties is so abusive.
Before celebrating leadership transitions, perhaps we should also talk about unfinished business.
What happens to the people who worked for @Mazerance , fulfilled their responsibilities, and were subsequently left waiting for compensation and salaries they were promised?
Interesting to read about the people who “made it possible” while some of those very people are still waiting to be paid salaries owed for over 4 months.
What happens when the promised deadline passes without payment, without meaningful communication, and the people affected are eventually told that the matter is no longer in your hands?
There are people who gave their time, skills and commitment to building this company who are still waiting for what they are owed.
So when I read public statements celebrating the people who “made it possible,” I can’t help but question how truthful that picture really is.
Some stories sound very different from the inside.
Elvis, This is not how to go about things.