If you’re reading this, you probably got sent here from Signtunes. This post explains the current situation with Signtunes & r/Sideloaded, this will explain how we (Rayan, Panguin, Wayne, and I) met and what the drama is about, with proof. There are a lot of claims being thrown around, so after a discussion with other team members, I decided to write this.
How we met
A year ago Wayne ran a Discord server (IPA Center), I (Quix) was a moderator on that server. Wayne decided to make a signing service, but he didn’t know how. So he created a team with Rayan, Panguin, Blood, THK and I. Wayne didn’t know how to make a signing service, so we were the ones developing it.
Our issues working under Wayne
We had to work under unrealistic timelines and fix non-issues, we were verbally abused if we failed to meet Wayne’s unrealistic expectations. Whenever we (the developers) would discuss the project, Wayne would interject, delegating tasks without even understanding what needed to be done and who was capable of doing it. Whenever we’d discuss possible methods of adding certain features, Wayne would arbitrarily choose one without understanding the pros/cons and abuse us for not being able to come to an agreement, even though we were literally discussing the different solutions, trying to see which is best. He would frequently remove our permissions and degrade us for even suggesting other options. He even added a widget to his home screen to know exactly what time it is for each of us, talk about micromanaging.
It was, for this reason, we created a group chat without Wayne. That way we could actually discuss possible solutions and have the chance to come to an agreement on which is best, without Wayne interjecting and making us work on a clearly less optimal and time-consuming solution that none of the developers actually wanted.
Our falling out with Wayne
Once Wayne found out about this group chat, he went on a rampage and started deleting everything. As soon as we noticed he was deleting our work, we started backing everything up, and removed his permissions to delete the rest of our work (that we had spent months on).
Continuing the project without Wayne
At this point, we were already in an early access release, and none of the developers supported this, because simply put, the website wasn’t functional yet. Wayne had also told us the wrong price for the service and wouldn’t tell us the real sales numbers, he was making over double what we were told. Wayne had also used a scummy trick of lying to us about how much everyone was getting paid. Rayan was told he was earning 50/50 with Wayne, when he was in fact getting paid a lot less. I was told everyone was earning 10%, whenever I’d question this I’d get verbally abused. After all this, none of us ended up getting paid.
Wayne deleted his whole presence and claimed he was unable to send refunds to customers because his account was suspended (PayPal lets you send refunds with a suspended account), we didn’t even get paid a single cent for all our work.
The whole team mutually agreed to work on the project without Wayne, we agreed to divide the pay equally between the 5 of us (Rayan, Blood, THK, Panguin, and I). As we started work on finishing the project, we noticed Wayne was attempting to sell our code, he had asked a friend to tweet asking if any developers wanted to buy the project. We had to DM Wayne’s friend and explain the situation to ask him to delete the tweet. After this, Blood got busy due to school work and stepped back, which left the 4 of us. We each had our own responsibility and were working away at the service.
Taking charge of Signtunes
We got news that the old Signtunes owner (Masterpwn) had plans to shut down the project. Rayan and I got in contact with him and offered to pay him a percentage of future purchases in exchange for Signtunes, which Masterpwn eventually agreed to. Rayan and I were 50/50 with Panguin helping us run the service. Rayan kept working on our other project, not helping with Signtunes. I had to get Signtunes working all by myself. All future changes and feature additions were solely done by me.
Taking charge of r/Sideloaded
Panguin then pitched the idea of taking ownership of r/Sideloaded. Although it was planned for Panguin to take ownership, Rayan went behind his back and took ownership himself. I was unaware he had even applied for ownership till days later. Reddit accepted Rayan’s request and Rayan gave me and Panguin perms, though he didn’t give Panguin full perms, and made him third in charge.
Panguin getting kicked out & Wayne coming back
All this time, Panguin was in charge of the Discord server and support. After a while, Panguin got busy for a couple of weeks with school work, so we got Sultan to take over as head of support. At this point, Rayan was trying to push Panguin and I against each other. Every time something went wrong, Rayan would tell me it was Panguin’s fault, and tell Panguin it was my fault, classic mental manipulation technique. Rayan eventually got his friend, Tom, to take charge as Signtunes’ manager, which in turn added a 2nd buffer between Panguin and Rayan. Panguin got pushed down from an equal say partner to management, then from management to employee.
Wayne then joins back, he replaces Tom as the manager. Rayan’s anti-Panguin sentiment suddenly spiked, he started complaining to me about Panguin continuously and telling me he wants Panguin off the team. A few days later, I woke up to like 30 messages, as usual. Someone had made a bunch of Discord accounts insulting Wayne through their account names, and Rayan was certain it was Panguin. Panguin had gotten banned at the request of Wayne. The person who was responsible for it, Barry, had even told me Panguin wasn’t involved. Anyways, I had to talk to everyone involved (Panguin, Rayan, Wayne, Barry) to figure out what happened. Turns out Barry had made these accounts, Wayne banned him as a result. Then Panguin made a joke about one of the names not being wrong (the name was “Art Wayne loves bbc up his ass”). Wayne kicked him out of the team for the joke.
Me (Quix) getting kicked out
A few days later I joined the AppValley™ and TutuBox team as CTO, that was used as an opportunity to say I’m not dedicated to the Signtunes and r/Sideloaded team, even though Rayan was in support of the idea of working with App Valley weeks ago. Rayan removed my perms on the r/Sideloaded subreddit and the Signtunes Discord server. He also took the app we were working on and claimed it as his.
After this, I discussed with him about coming to an agreement where I am bought out and transfer everything to him without any drama. At first, he agreed, but later he consulted Wayne and decided against it. Wayne contacted Colton (AppValley CEO) threatening me if his demands weren’t met. These demands included me getting kicked off the AppValley team, me transferring ownership, me hosting the website, me not getting any future revenue from the store, and much more. I was instructed to shut down the Signtunes website, a demand that I refused due to the paying customers who wouldn’t be able to use what they paid for. They made other demands designed to break the service too in probable hopes to blame it on me.
Many people started asking me questions about what was going on, which I would, of course, answer explaining the situation. When Wayne heard about this, he instructed all customers to send me refund requests, in a hope that this would silence me in fear of losing money.
Rayan and I’s issues (uneven workload, me covering expenses, etc)
Originally Rayan and I were supposed to be 50/50 with everything, this included ownership, expenses, earnings, and workload. If this were true; he wouldn’t have been able to kick me out, I would’ve earned the same amount as him, I would’ve spent the same as him, and I would’ve done the same amount of work as him. All support staff’s payments came out of my cut. Most expenses such as developer accounts came out of my cut. When I’d send Rayan his payment for his cut, he’d complain there’s a lot of money missing. I’d have to keep explaining; x% goes to Masterpwn, x% goes to the support staff, we spent $x on the developer account, and $x went to server hosting. He would never listen and would make me send the rest. See Signtunes was 50/50, we got 50% of the revenue each, but all the expenses came out of my end, so it was more like 80/20. With most businesses, costs like refunds are deducted from earnings, if we’d sell 10 slots and 2 refund, that’s 8 slots worth of profit. Rayan expected the full payment for 10 slots, which was more that came out of my cut.
Finishing up
I’m not allowed to talk about any of this, but I think you guys deserve to know. Panguin and I have decided to work on our own App Store, we’ll actually be 50/50, you can join here. We’ll be continuing Signtunes ourselves.
- Discord: https://discord.gg/vMtXgdUaFH
- Website: https://signtunes.co
As I was writing this, I got news of many support staff getting fired, any support staff who’s been fired from Signtunes is welcome to do support for Panguin and I.
Update
After our falling out, I removed Rayan’s perms on my Discord servers. Little did I know that the bot he kept begging us to use was made by his friend. He has used this bot to ban thousands of members (proof). He used the bot to unban himself and Wayne, got Jaffa (Wayne’s friend) to get them an invite link, then joined on an alt account pretending to be Panguin (to try split us up). This alt account was then used to add a webhook, and ban every user. You can join the servers here:
Update 2
Wayne has revoked the certificates for many customers. Wayne and Rayan have also had a disagreement. Wayne has left the old Signtunes discord server and deleted his own Discord server. Rayan claims this is because he added a levelling bot to the Signtunes server, but I doubt Wayne would do all this because of something so small.
Rayan’s also kicked out more support staff, as well as banned customers from the old Signtunes server for asking about the situation. He’s also made the list of moderators on the r/Sideloaded subreddit private.
