honestly as long as the mods are happy & content going forward, who the fuck are we to complain?
yea, sure, cerium getting 4.5mil & mods probably not seeing a cent of that sucks to see from the outside. but if the mods are happy & rightfully don't wanna do all that hassle to most likely only get paid peanuts for work they do voluntarily & prefer to still be able to walk away whenever they fucking want to without feeling obligated to always be here modding & making sure everything runs smoothly - which you 100% wouldn't be able to do if you'd have to sign a contract & pay taxes on what you earn & all that - , then once again, who the fuck are we to complain lmao?
also, voluntary work has been a thing for ages, i've done some myself. sometimes you just do not feel like getting compensated would change shit (especially with the amount of harrassment directed at the mods either on the forum, in pms or from off-site, you think having slurs hurled at you wouldn't hurt anymore if they'd get $10/hr or smth?) & you're genuinely doing things because you just want to help & make a place better. i don't believe that people like
Nepenthe or
Royalan or quite frankly anyone else would ever lie about dumb shit like that, because there's absolutely no reason to. & i know how fucking annoying it can be when you have people come at you & annoy the living shit out of you telling you you're an idiot without any self-respect for not wanting any money again & again, even after outright saying that you're happy doing this shit for free 10 times before.
anyway. money shit aside, yeah, a company who's other forums are all focused on riot & acti-blizz games owning era now is a bit worrisome & sister forums ripe with transphobia, racism, homophobia, ableism & other shit are
very worrisome. that said, i trust the mods to be good people & am sure they would be the very first ones to voice their concerns if the owners would want them to tolerate more bigoted bullshit & do promoted/sponsored/paid ots for acti-blizz games or some shit. they're no babies without voices, they're grown ass adults who care for era & it's community even if there's been fallouts with several communities over the years for various reasons. give them a fucking break.