Akella

[cliffski]

edit ==> It showed up today <===

[Pkeod]

We can at least let everyone in the industry know not to ever go near them if they don't pay up :)

[JoKa]

Cliffski, I must admit Akella was on my list of noteworthy publishers, especially because of some older, positive comments of you. Sad to see things have changed this way.

[cliffski]

me too, to the tune of lots of money. And I know from other developers that I am not the only one.
DO NOT work with akella. repeat DO NOT sign your games to these people.

To anyone reading this from akella, You know my bank details. stop mucking around and act like professionals.

[Desktop Gaming]

You could contact the International Law Association.

http://www.ila-hq.org/

If you want to get in touch, click on "headquarters" on the dropdown list - its in London.

[MerscomMan]

I am not sure what the issues here are but we have had very different experiences with Akella. THey have co-published with us more than 20 titles and have always paid promptly and sent royalty reports when due. We got paid by them as recently as last month. Again, I don't know the details of Cliffski's situation but we they have been one of our best partners for many years.

[cliffski]

they used to pay me, now they just keep making excuses saying my bank details are wrong, despite giving them 2 different accounts, and being willing to accept a check or paypal, and numerous other publishers paying me fine.
they can pay me, that much is clear, they just don't bother. I'm not the only one.
DO NOT deal with them.

[Pkeod]

So, it is a bank account problem (apparently)? Have you tried to apply for another international bank account so that they can transfer money to you?

MerscomMan: Could you contact Cliffski with the name of the bank that you work with so that he could try his luck there? (If you're willing, Cliff :D I actually think Oleg is an alright guy and this is just a misunderstanding, though they could do more to correct the situation, I think )

[cliffski]

been there, done that, even arranged for an intermediary to accept the money on my behalf...

[Pkeod]

When you do get your money, Cliff, could you please confirm with us here?

For the record, if anyone is looking to work with Akella, please do not think foul of them at this point :D I really am sure that they are an alright company... at least from my perspective.

[zoombapup]

I dunno, I think cliff's been pretty reasonble in his efforts. Given the money is HIS money, not thiers.

Its just too easy to say "oh there's a problem" when a company is in the crap and cant pay its rent and use staff or customers funds to cover the shortfall.

Once this kind of thing starts happening, its a slippery slope. DOWN!

[MerscomMan]

I actually agree with both of the last posts. From personal experience, as I said Akella is good to work with, pays our bills on times and provides accurate and timely royalty reports (and actually sells beyond the initial guarantees). Some other developers and publishers I know have also had good experiences with them.

That said, I agree with Phil that it is a slippery slope. A lot of time when a partner slow-pays or makes excuses, the underlying reason is cash flow. You need to be really, really careful and move quickly.

For me, I will give Akella the benefit of the doubt because they have been so good, I believe they are very well financed and have not run into developers with similar issues with them.

[zoombapup]

Sorry, I've just had a lot of friends in the position that the company they work for has been going bust and stopped paying them (and any other parties) and robbing one project to pay another. It probably isnt the case here as Lloyd mentions, but I can see how this would play out if it were.

Sensitive? me?? :)

[Natalie]

Have been working with them for rather long. They are doing fine for us..

[dankevich]

Hi everybody!

This situation really needs our comments left.
I will explain you what had happened previously.
We recieved bank info of Cliff and proceeded a trasaction as we usually did before. After some delay we got a message from our bank that it can't be completed.
Our account attempted to do it several times! All the transactions returned to us. While solving the sitauation we got an email from the bank that said the account details we used were wrong. If you like I will be able to post that letter to prove my words.
Now after such a delightful discussion we could observe here we were given the correct bank details by CLiff! It helped us indeed ;)
Since this moment the accountant can even see Cliff's account over the Internet.

If any questions left unsolved or somebody has some good games to offer welcome to talk it over with me :)

[Andy]

If...somebody has some good games to offer welcome to talk it over with me :)

Yep. You've chosen correct topic to publish this your invitation bud... :D

Hope you both will find a way to solve the issue and Cliff will change his opinion about my country and peoples living here. At least a little bit. ;)

[dankevich]

As for me I don't see any reason why not... You don't either, Andy,do you? :D

P.S.
Bad PR/ Good PR/ Still PR :)

[ggambett]

Since this moment the accountant can even see Cliff's account over the Internet.
Cliff, I told you 1234 wasn't a good password!!!

[Mike Boeh]

Cliff, I told you 1234 wasn't a good password!!!


Crap! I better change the combination on my luggage!

[Pkeod]

... way off topic but ...

President Skroob: What's the combination?
Colonel Sandurz: 1-2-3-4-5.
President Skroob: 1-2-3-4-5?
Colonel Sandurz: Yes.
President Skroob: That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

[Pyabo]

lol...

Still waiting on the update from Cliffski. Until then...

[cliffski]

Got it today. At last. Sheesh.
Feel free to delete this thread.

[Pogacha]

I don't think that deleting this thread is the right answer. The experience is valuable. What you may do is to edit the first post and relate the complete story (if you want to be helpful).

[Polycount Productions]

Got it today. At last. Sheesh.
Feel free to delete this thread.

Great to hear that you got your money.

The lesson of the thread: if people don't pay you money, make it public :D

[lennard]

Agreed, keep it public.

[Natalie]

Really happy to see that the problem is fixed.
Akella are nice guys :)

[dankevich]

My congratulations to Cliff! Finally you got what supposed to be yours.
The lesson of the thread: if people don't pay you money, make it public :D
To my mind, the most impornat lesson all of us have been taught -
Be more carefull while managing your finance. A simple mistake in bank details can ruin the whole deal.

[cliffski]

There is NO mistake with my bank details, a LOT of different companies pay money into it every month. My bank is not a 'clearing' bank, so the wire instructions are more complex than normal, but nothing weird.
I ended up being paid into an account which was not my business account, which complicates matters at my end.

[Frozen In Ice]

Hi everybody!


If any questions left unsolved or somebody has some good games to offer welcome to talk it over with me :)

Might want to update your website. It still shows the copyright as 2006 ;)

[ErikH2000]

I don't like this thread to conclude with an impression that Cliff just made a few mistakes getting his payment information to Akella. Cliff's not unreasonable. He's not a guy that likes to raise a stink to get attention. I believe his account of what happened.

Also, in the past, I've had a very similar experience receiving payment from Akella. I would provide payment information to make a wire transfer, and they would respond by saying things like this piece of information was missing or some new paperwork needed to be filled out. It took over 6 months to get paid past the time when we delivered the localized master. Lots and lots of e-mail volleys. To be fair, some of the delay was probably caused by a large change in Akella's company structure happening at that time.

After we were finally paid on the first product, Akella was really great after that. They paid royalties beyond the initial advance and sent on-time royalty reports. I haven't had any problems with them since then, and I figured they'd turned over a new leaf. But then I heard that Cliff was having the same problems again, and I felt really bad. Bad, because I wanted to believe that Akella was done with this delayed payment nonsense. Bad, because I'd been through the same trouble as Cliff, and it really eats at your soul. It's not just getting the money--it's the stress and anger involved in dealing with the mess. Like some days you feel like giving up on getting paid, because there's about 50 other important things you could be doing instead of talking to bank representatives and writing carefully-worded e-mails.

To Akella... I think you guys should figure out how to streamline your payment system or do whatever you need to avoid incidents like this. Don't just write this off as the developer's fault in not providing correct information. Like Cliff, I had used my account with other publishers before Akella's and encountered no problems until using it to receive payments from Akella. Maybe there are ways that you can collect the wire transfer information more efficiently and correct problems with less need of trial-and-error and follow-up communication. I don't claim to know your business, but I do compare the process to other publishers I've worked with and think you could make improvements.

From my overall experience with two titles distributed though Akella, they seem like a basically good company to me. From what I've heard, they are pushing the game industry ahead in the Russian territories and making it a better place to sell games. Just keep treating the developers right, and we'll keep coming back to you with our games.

-Erik

[dankevich]

Sorry guys for inconvenience. All our efforts of possible changes in the company structure aimed first of all at making the process of cooperation easier. We hold an interest in drawing into business more good companies and have this work as much profitable as comfortable.

Recently banks have made instructions of gathering payment details from beneficiaries more strict. So that we had to get as much valuable info as possible otherwise the transfers could be performed. We make sure that in the future we will be more careful to developers with their problems in any appear accidentally.