We’ve all be fascinated by the thought of growing up to do great things in our lives. Some of us want to be Astronauts, others want to be a Doctor or a Nurse… and then there’s those of us that want to lead and develop a future in technology, creativity, and innovation.
My purpose for creating this article is to shut down rumors spread by certain members of the current site’s management. Additionally, I’d like to shed light to my fellow community members that are concerned with actions that have taken place throughout the last few years.
My journey with Brick Planet (formerly BLOX City) began in the early morning hours of January 22nd of 2016. My partner and I decided that we were going to create something great. Our idea of great, at the time, was developing a 3D social website to grow alongside another major competitor… also known as Roblox. Little did we know how inexperienced and silly we were at that thought.
BLOXCity.com was the beginning. It really didn’t take long to come up with that name either. We put the end of Ro-(blox) + the word city together and BAM — a website was born! Despite previous blog posts by my partner, BLOXCity.com was always meant to be released to the public. From its creation it was meant to be a social platform that directly competed with Roblox. It was never a special project or “coding practice” that was to be kept behind closed doors.
I purchased the BLOXCity.com domain with my own personal money, on my own personal time, with absolutely no benefit. It was originally registered on January 23rd, 2016 with a domain registrar I was previously using with several of my other domains. My purpose for purchasing the domain and holding it was to keep myself with around 50% ownership of the website. My partner ran the servers and data, I ran the domain. As co-founders, partners are supposed to equally (for the most part) have a say in the way things operate. It’s good to separate powers in order to balance decisions.
For a while, that trick really worked out. The only problem is that I was working with a bi-polar, fat, mentally insane psychopath that wanted everything ran their way. The thing about developers (as we all know) is that they believe they are right... and always right. My partner is a developer (a slow one at that), not a leader or a CEO. Each person has their own way of doing things, but developers tend to stand firm on their decisions over most others. I suffered through months of antagonizing and belittlement to my character in public chats in front of community members and website staff (as the second in charge!) over basic decisions I made. Often times I was called a redneck, a Walmart bag boy, a hick, etc. I’ve been threatened with swatting… I’ve been told I was going to get my a.s kicked if I was ever seen in real life… there’s just a lot. As you can probably tell, I used to fight with my partner all the time. We cussed at one another more than we talked reasonably. It just wasn’t destined to work and I’m not sure why I stuck around for as long as I did.
Eventually, I got tired of the harassment and my partner refusing to listen to me and took measures into my own hands in order to get his attention. Some of you 2016 users may remember that for a short period of time in April of 2016, BLOXCity.com went offline. By this time we had about 100–200 users online (we’ve always hyped up the number larger than it was, we’ve never really been that popular). I was at work, being barraged with insults via text message and getting spam called by my partner, so I disabled the DNS settings causing the website to immediately go offline. This has been my partner’s #1 run-to accusation throughout all of our fights, so I decided to talk about it here because there’s been a lot of lies behind it. I did it simply because he was an a.sshole and he needed to realize that we were partners instead of me being his puppet.
I received emails and text messages stating that I was going to be sued by my partner for owning the BLOXCity.com domain because he ran off and trademarked “BLOX City” after I made the purchase. Not sure how the legalities worked at the time, so I ended up giving up and allowing him to buy it from me. The domain, BLOXCity.com, was purchased from me for $250 by my partner after he single-handedly threatened me with lawsuits. This isn’t profiting for me, I originally renewed the domain for 6 years and the $250 was the total cost of the fees for that. I broke even essentially.
Though I co-founded BLOX City, my partner decided to put another bastard’s name as the co-founder on the company documentation simply because we weren’t talking at the time. He forfeited 15% of the company stock to the ‘documented co-founder’ who still holds that 15% to this day. This ‘documented co-founder’ was a Roblox friend of my partner’s whom its apparent he had dated at the time, or sometime in the past. They were also part of an online Grand Theft Auto server for years together which granted special perks for showing off certain body parts to the site’s management team — an overall disgusting cesspool.
…walk ahead a little to March of 2017…
March 6th, 2017 was supposed to be a special day. It was the day of our 1 year open-aversary(?/.) Our admin team was as strong as it ever had been in the past (despite a turnover rate that looks like a mountain), our community was doing well, and my partner was making tons of money! Later that day, I got a message from my partner saying he didn’t want to continue the project anymore. Wasn’t quite sure why it came so soon, but there was not a vote about it. He simply fired everyone and set up a blog post stating the intentions (which was a shutdown). In the blog post it was stated that partial refunds would be issued (very few [if any] were), other funds would be used to dissolve the company (it wasn’t), and the rest would be donated to a charity of my partner’s choosing (it wasn’t). In short, he made off with your money and you let him get away with it. I’m really not sure why any of you came back to begin with. Don’t get me wrong — you guys are awesome — but he isn’t. Most of the money earned throughout these two years has been spent to pay off my partner’s car, buy him a house, and smoke all the pot (weed/marijuana) in the world. Don’t fool yourselves.
The website was re-opened because my partner was drained of his funds. He told this to an executive admin at the time, he simply needed money so he reopened the website. Bad part was that our admins admin-attacked and destroyed the economy and he couldn’t reverse the damage. We ended up resetting the website and transferring it to a new domain seeing that Roblox had trademarked “BLOX”.
…and now we’re in late 2017/early 2018 with Brick Planet…
Earlier this week, I was pulled into a Discord call with my partner and a co-worker. My partner offered the entire Brick Planet company to me (known as BLOX City, Inc. because he is too lazy to buy or trademark Brick Planet) because he wanted to pursue his own project called DashTrade. I was hesitant of the offer at first because I knew it had to have been a trick — after all, he was a manipulative, bi-polar, fat, mentally deteriorating psychopath right? He insisted it was 100% true and that as soon as he received funding for his project (from a VC firm) that he would hand the company over to me.
A few days ago by and I get a message from my partner saying that he has been advised not to give his majority stock (~60%) to me, but I can still be CEO if I wanted. Obviously that isn’t how a business works and whoever said that is a complete and utter f.cking moron, right? Right! We talked it over in a voice chat and ended up agreeing that I would receive 100% stock (once the company is dissolved and re-opened to get rid of the original bastard with 15%) and he would receive 5% royalty.
…and then came the pesky YouTubers!
The YouTube attention that Brick Planet received was tremendous. We’re talking about ~7 YouTubers with anywhere from 200,000–1,100,000 subscribers playing Brick Planet and driving extra traffic to the website. With extra traffic comes extra money, and what does my partner love more than DashTrade? Money!!! He messaged me letting me know that he wouldn’t be forfeiting any stock and I could still be “CEO” if I wanted to (what the f.ck is this, a SANS site?). This means that he would have still been my boss even with me a CEO — which wasn’t going to happen. My partner is a liability to the company. His ownership of it will kill it. What I haven’t told you is that he has committed $100,000+ dollars in credit card fraud on Roblox.com (this has been confirmed with admins). They even sent the cops to his house once, but I’m not sure why they didn’t actually press charges on him. They might be waiting for the day Brick Planet gets really big.
So do the staff get paid?
Brick Planet averages ~$10,000 dollars monthly. This month it received ~$20,000 dollars because of increased traffic. My partner pays his staff (mods) $50 gift cards from Amazon each month. That may sound like a kind gesture…right? Wrong! Let’s see:
16 staff members, minus 2 leads (they aren’t paid), minus 2 devs (they aren’t paid), and we end up with 12 staff members getting paid. 2 staff members (asset modelers are paid hourly [about $400 a week total]), 10 are paid in gift cards. 10 times 50 = $500. If we add site-expenses to that ($200 monthly for a $4,000 dollar domain) + ~$200 (probably way over-estimated) for server/storage cost, we come up with a grand total of $1,300 monthly!
$10,000 minus $1,300 = $8,700. Where’d that go? I’ll leave that up to you to decide because I have yet to see it.
…back to DashTrade…
What is DashTrade (DashTrade.com)? In short… (and feel free to take this idea, he works as slow as a turtle and it hasn’t been copyrighted/patented)
[“It will be a marketplace (app & website) for second hand goods. Just like Craigslist, so my partner would be competing directly with them. On Craigslist, you have to meet the seller in a public place, or their home. Things can go south. It’s inconvenient to have to drive to meet them, and then also wonder if you just got counterfeit cash. It will have delivery drivers (vetted by the company and contracted to work) meet the seller and verify the item matches the info in the listing. Then the company would either immediately deliver it to the buyer or have it scheduled for a time of their choosing. It will be stored in a storage unit/warehouse managed by the company. The company takes a cut from the seller, 10%. As for bigger things such as furniture or appliances, they will be transported in a ford transit, which the company can rent hourly to start. Cost of those are higher so the money the company makes will cover it and other fees. Pickup/delivery drivers make a base fee plus tips. Payments will be handled in app or on the website, like credit card, Paypal, and bitcoin. As for payout methods, it can be done to bank accounts, Paypal, and bitcoin.”]
Morale of the story and in short…
[1] Your CEO is a (suicidal/disowned) pothead who spends your money for his own benefit. [2] Your CEO treats his staff like sh.t (literal sh.t, doesn’t even know half of their names) [3] Your CEO has it in his head that he will be a billionaire with your money, don’t let him be it. [4] Your CEO has committed $100,000+ dollars in credit card fraud on Roblox.com and they will take him down eventually. Trust me. Ask Lilly (hi Lilly!). [5] He only pays hourly wage to outsourced 3D modelers (which is fine, they are awesome), and he gives his moderators a monthly $50 Amazon gift-card. This is piss-poor considering that in the last 23 days the website has made ~$20,000 dollars. [6] He’s planning on replacing staff (most, if not all) with one of those automated Amazon image detection bots that can’t tell the difference between an ice-cream cone and a boob. No need for any of those underage people who want pay anymore!
There’s a lot I missed, but it would be hard to include every piece of information that has been said over the last 2 years. Enjoy Brick Planet (if you still can) — hope my partner changes one day.
See you ‘round!