Seriously, do not donate on the livestreams for TSBS, TSaMS, TLaES, etc. That money only goes to Blackshore, the parent company. Not to any of the actors, writers, body actors, etc. Blackshore does not care for anything except money. It's the writers and actors you should support. Can't stress this enough.
Hi. Stumbled on this post and I know it’s older, but I wanted to argue this since it has a lot of notes, and I have plenty of knowledge as someone who is friends with the VAs and involved in some business things behind the scenes.
Support the VAs and creative talent behind the shows for sure! Enjoy their personal content, donate to their personal streams. Hell, I’m one of Reed’s editors, so I definitely hope you enjoy his content! 💜
HOWEVER. A couple things in your post that are a problem and need to be addressed to avoid harming the very people you hope to help:
- Blackshore is a company. They need to pay the people working for them on the Shows and views aren’t what they used to be, so view revenue from videos would be down. Of course they need money, that’s how businesses work! I wish everybody could be paid basic income and spend their time doing creative projects that don’t need to make money, but that’s not our reality.
- The money donated on streams goes right back into the channels, not to the company as profit. This has been explained multiple times live, I guess not frequently enough though! Money donated goes towards paying the newly added VAs, other channel’s VAs for cameos, paying for new maps and new models, paying the editors, the thumbnail artists, and now paying for more expensive merch items like plushies that cost $250 just to get one sample going. These are costs that 2022 SAMS didn’t have, and they need more support to keep up this quality of production.
- This is something I’ve noticed in general, not just with a post like this, but with other “don’t support the shows just the VAs content” posts. Removing support from the VAs jobs, their source of income, directly negatively affects them. If the channels are not making enough money through views and streams, they will not be making profit with all those costs listed above, and the shows will be stopped. This is not a passion project, this is not a purely creative outlet, this is a job. The VAs and company cannot reasonably be asked to spend money and time and energy working on something that is not making enough money for rent and food.
I’m a biased source, but I am well informed in both directions and obviously pretty heavily invested in my friends’ wellbeing. Please support their private content too for SURE, I will always advocate for that (Flora streams, Reed has cool videos planned, Davis and Kat have wonderful Minecraft roleplay series, Mitch streams, Mario streams, etc etc etc). But please do not encourage boycotting the job that pays their rent. 😅
I'm one of the thumbnail artists. While I have a job irl, working for TSAMS is the only way I have enough money to pay my bills each month without nearly emptying my back account. Without TSAMS I'd be screwed
PLEASE donate to the livestreams and buy the merch - I cannot emphasize enough how much time and work Ken has put into making official merch possible in the first place - if you can. It truly does help all of the talented people who help bring all the shows to life. That being said, you're also under no obligation to do so if you can't afford it, or simply don't want to! Simply watching and sharing the latest episodes when they release helps!
Go support the VAs' personal content too while you're at it! All of their stuff is really good and they're super cool people! 👍
