Collapse of Yume+
The talents can exist without the business, but the business cannot exist without the talents.
- Yume+ CEO Dombra
- Yume+ CEO Dombra
Hello! I'm Murray. I have a special interest in small vtuber agencies, but especially studying those that have failed - both so that staff of other small agencies will know what pitfalls they should avoid, and so that talents can recognize potential red flags of an agency which is doomed for failure and can get out early or avoid them altogether. If you can't take my word for that, see my threads on AkioAIR and CyberIdol and my contributions in the NOA Talent thread.
If there is any information you would like to share with me to be featured in this thread and/or correct the record on any errors I've made, I guarantee your anonymity - I have been doing this for a while and have never revealed a source. Email me at vtmurray@proton.me or send a DM to "murrayshinaide" on Discord, or @MurrayShinaide on Twitter. Even if you do not feel comfortable sharing information with me, I may be able to get you in touch with someone you might feel more comfortable with.
Aimee said that you are not under NDA; if that is true, please don't feel afraid to share your stories. Secrecy does not help others in the industry!
If there is any information you would like to share with me to be featured in this thread and/or correct the record on any errors I've made, I guarantee your anonymity - I have been doing this for a while and have never revealed a source. Email me at vtmurray@proton.me or send a DM to "murrayshinaide" on Discord, or @MurrayShinaide on Twitter. Even if you do not feel comfortable sharing information with me, I may be able to get you in touch with someone you might feel more comfortable with.
Aimee said that you are not under NDA; if that is true, please don't feel afraid to share your stories. Secrecy does not help others in the industry!
Yume+ (pronounced as "yume plus," "yume" being the Japanese word for "dream") was a small corpo who debuted their first generation, REMedy, on March 9, 2024. The generation consisted of five talents, Mero Umiko, Mimosa Shirosaki, Rhea Nevermore, Aimee, and Raein Clowd (yes, seriously). The CEO went by Dombra. The debuts had some technical problems, with Mero unable to debut her model until a month after the others for reasons unknown (to me anyway).
Based on what the talents said in their streams, problems began before debut, with one of the two CEOs and unspecific other staff quitting and talent payments not happening on time but nothing seems unsurmountable yet. However, On July 14th, the five members of REMedy aired a concert, and it appears this event was the beginning of the end, as preparing for this was a stressful situation that Dombra was unable to handle, as he would deal with the stress by becoming unable to contact for extended periods of time.
On Friday, August 16, the official Twitter account tweeted a blacktext that the agency would be dissolving on the 18th. The blacktext places blame squarely on the "repeated negligence of the CEO."
Important Announcement on the Future of REMedy and Yume+
Thank you for your continued support for Yume+ and its first generation REMedy, and their members for
the past few months.
We are sad to announce that as of Sunday, August 18th, 2024 we will be officially disbanding Yume+ as
an organization. Along with it, the 1st Generation Talents, "Mimosa Shirosaki", "Rhea Nevermore",
"Raein Clowd", "Mero Umiko" and "Aimee" will be making their departure, effective immediately.
This is due to the repeated negligence of the CEO, wherein communication often had delayed response, if not being ignored entirely. Such communications involve but are not limited to: Payment, Content Scheduling, Deadline Communication, Project Coordination, & Other Contractually Promised Support.
They were offered chances on multiple occasions for multiple avenues of solutions that could help remedy the situation and improve them. Each time they were either met with hollow promises, or no improvement.
It is due to this that the Yume+ Talents and remaining members of staff will be stepping away, and the company will be closing its doors.
The Talents will be given the opportunity to retain their IP and all rights to their content, channels, and likeliness therein. At this time, Mero Umiko, Raein Clowd and Aimee will be retaining their channels, content and likeness moving forward.
Further announcements on the future of the other talents will be made through their personal channels.
End-of-service notice
In the case that any talents do not choose to retain their current identities and the accounts are not retained, the future status of any existing memberships will be addressed by the talent directly through their personal social media channels. Please defer to these announcements for more details.
Please accept our deepest apologies to all our fans and officials for this sudden announcement. We appreciate the time you've chosen to spend with us, and thank you for supporting REMedy for their activities these past 5 months. We appreciate your time you've spent with us.
Thank you for your continued support for Yume+ and its first generation REMedy, and their members for
the past few months.
We are sad to announce that as of Sunday, August 18th, 2024 we will be officially disbanding Yume+ as
an organization. Along with it, the 1st Generation Talents, "Mimosa Shirosaki", "Rhea Nevermore",
"Raein Clowd", "Mero Umiko" and "Aimee" will be making their departure, effective immediately.
This is due to the repeated negligence of the CEO, wherein communication often had delayed response, if not being ignored entirely. Such communications involve but are not limited to: Payment, Content Scheduling, Deadline Communication, Project Coordination, & Other Contractually Promised Support.
They were offered chances on multiple occasions for multiple avenues of solutions that could help remedy the situation and improve them. Each time they were either met with hollow promises, or no improvement.
It is due to this that the Yume+ Talents and remaining members of staff will be stepping away, and the company will be closing its doors.
The Talents will be given the opportunity to retain their IP and all rights to their content, channels, and likeliness therein. At this time, Mero Umiko, Raein Clowd and Aimee will be retaining their channels, content and likeness moving forward.
Further announcements on the future of the other talents will be made through their personal channels.
End-of-service notice
In the case that any talents do not choose to retain their current identities and the accounts are not retained, the future status of any existing memberships will be addressed by the talent directly through their personal social media channels. Please defer to these announcements for more details.
Please accept our deepest apologies to all our fans and officials for this sudden announcement. We appreciate the time you've chosen to spend with us, and thank you for supporting REMedy for their activities these past 5 months. We appreciate your time you've spent with us.
So the story of Yume+ seems to be yet another case of a young and eager CEO had ideas that he was not experienced and/or mentally stable enough to fully see through, and the talents have suffered due to his failure.
A follow-up mentioned the status of goals of recent donothons.
Announcement on Fulfillment of Goals
With the dissolution of Yume+ and the departure of its talents, all ongoing projects such as donotons, physical merchandise, membership incentives, that have not yet been fulfilled will henceforth be handled by the organizing parties involved.
With regards to the "Washed Up Donothon", all remaining donation goals will be handled individually by the representatives of the involved talents: "Mero Umiko", "Rhea Nevermore", and "Mimosa Shirosaki". Expected timelines, progress updates and overall fulfillment will be provided by themselves or these representatives directly moving forward. Further statements regarding this process to be made by the talents involved on their individual channels and/or social media networks.
Future stretch goals previously shown that have not yet been reached will no longer be available. This includes all such goals surrounding the former group, REMedy, the aforementioned talents above or either of its previously unmentioned members, "Raein Clowd" or "Aimee". Due to details that had not been previously communicated, discussed and/or finalized, there was no involvement from either "Raein
Clowd" or "Aimee" or any lingering commitments therein from either surrounding this event.
Please refer to the individual announcements for further details surrounding this moving forward.
With the dissolution of Yume+ and the departure of its talents, all ongoing projects such as donotons, physical merchandise, membership incentives, that have not yet been fulfilled will henceforth be handled by the organizing parties involved.
With regards to the "Washed Up Donothon", all remaining donation goals will be handled individually by the representatives of the involved talents: "Mero Umiko", "Rhea Nevermore", and "Mimosa Shirosaki". Expected timelines, progress updates and overall fulfillment will be provided by themselves or these representatives directly moving forward. Further statements regarding this process to be made by the talents involved on their individual channels and/or social media networks.
Future stretch goals previously shown that have not yet been reached will no longer be available. This includes all such goals surrounding the former group, REMedy, the aforementioned talents above or either of its previously unmentioned members, "Raein Clowd" or "Aimee". Due to details that had not been previously communicated, discussed and/or finalized, there was no involvement from either "Raein
Clowd" or "Aimee" or any lingering commitments therein from either surrounding this event.
Please refer to the individual announcements for further details surrounding this moving forward.
The talents were offered to keep their characters' IP. Mero Umiko, Raein Clowd and Aimee will be continuing as their repsective identities.
All five talents did a brief announcement stream together. Each talent then did their own stream through the night explaining the collapse from their perspectives and their future plans. The streams are linked below in order that they aired, along with summaries of their streams and their YT sub count as of August 16, 2024.
Appeared on Mimosa's channel. Doesn't really say anything that's not in the blacktext above.
Felt the announcement was out of the blue. Says she'll do another stream later to discuss things, but contradicts this later by saying she doesn't want to discuss it anymore. Says there's "technically no NDA," but says she'll avoid showing receipts or going into too much detail on things. Spends a lot of time addressing claims of special treatment or nepotism that had been laid against her. Says the announcement of the donothon surprised her because she did not know of it beforehand and had been doing a lot of unpaid illustration and editing labor for the team. Says she has only been paid once but seems confident she will get what she's owed later.
The next day, Aimee did indeed do another stream (thanks, DanchousLoyalHamster):
I didn't watch all of this one since she spends most of it sperging about Sonic the Hedgehog (and, incidentally, Chris-chan, who she seemed to be greatly familiar with) and other games she loves, but from the two-thirds I saw most of the discussion about Yume+ was in the front anyway. She again victimizes herself a bit, saying she was "done dirty," "I will never see my justice," and that she still feels people will make false assumptions about her. She also continues to make dramatic statements about her time in Yume+, saying she hopes she is able to completely forget the experience. She says she hasn't been able to do much in the two days leading up to the announcement because she and the other talents had been working on a document to try to convince Dombra to give them their characters' IP, but that document ultimately proved unnecessary as he did it anyway.
She did this with a distractingly poorly-rigged model which I guess was supposed to look like she had a hooded jacket on but because no part of it looked like it was in front of her arms, it just looked like she was a double amputee. Also, the heart-shaped pins/clips on the hood kept sliding around like they weren't actually attached to it and her hair on the right side of her head was clipping into… something. Aimee, if you're reading this, please have a good rigger rework this thing.
Rhea says she will be going on an "indefinite hiatus" and is not sure if she will return to streaming. She said she had decided to graduate in July and actually submitted a resignation notice two weeks ago. She had been happy with the business for some time. She also states that she had been hospitalized five times since joining the company, but it was unclear (at least to me) if she was implying that her health problems were a result of working with the company.
Around August 5, Rhea had rebranded her PL Twitter account @grimmlyvt to @NyabiNeko and started showing off a new model and artwork that she must have had prepared for some time. One tweet that she later deleted stated "I love nepotism
," so this may be where Aimee got the accusations of nepotism from (thanks to Bronze as well as Justa_Cannon on the TVAcord). In this tweet Nyabi confirms she was Rhea and says that bullying from "old non vtuber community friends" contributed to her decision to rebrand (it's unclear how she thinks rebranding with a clear connection back to both Rhea and Grimmly will stop her from being bullied).Mimosa was the most critical of the CEO and seemed to give us the first glimpse of the events that led up to the end. She said that about a month and a half ago, while the concert for all the talents was being finalized, the CEO basically decided he couldn't handle the stress, and rather than reaching for help, he chose to deal with it by just going silent and not responding to communication. This eventually led to the talents going into revolt and making plans to leave en masse, but this was made unnecessary when Dombra decided to fold the company, suspend the talents' NDAs and give them their IP. However, Mimosa announced she'd be abandoning her IP and returning to her PL, ruruneneru, who produces adult content. She said she wasn't sure if she'd ever get the money owed to her and that she knew for sure there were also artists who still hadn't been paid as well.
Says she has pay pending and that contract artists may be missing pay as well. Sad she will no longer be part of an agency but happy she was part of the experience. Still plans to fulfill donothon goals and release a cover song with another talent. Stressed about cost of phone she bought for tracking and having to do finals this week.
Emphasized throughout that she is older and more experienced than the other girls. Said she felt that things were going poorly from the very beginning when a staff member (the co-CEO, if I understood it correctly) left before debut and some of her genmates did not have completed models yet, but hoped things would get better. Said the CEO was a nice person but not a competent leader. States she donated her first 3 months of income back to the company, and was only paid once since then. Made an odd statement something along the lines of "I don't like it when someone tries to dox someone else because they have a job outside of vtubing." Will be taking a break from streaming between September 6th through the 23rd. Says the girls are on good terms with each other.
Raein seems to have unpublished her video for some reason but I have an archive if someone needs it.
So what have we learned, kids?
Talents: Not getting paid on time is a huge red flag. This is an industry where, theoretically, handling the money is very easy as far as the talents are concerned - take the money that comes in, slice the agency cut off the top, and send the rest to the talent. Easy peasy. If management cannot do that, then it means your money - your money - is being diverted to some other expense that the agency's cut should be by itself paying for. As soon as the first payment is significantly late, start making plans to leave. (Never accept "oh, the bank made an oopsie" as an excuse. Banks literally handle money coming in and out as their sole reason for existing. Bank errors are a UFO-level anomaly.) As we saw from Idol, othehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4wsJ3ifCBkr contractors like artists not getting paid on time is also a red flag but not quite on the level as the company embezzling from you.
Owners/CEOs/Managers: Please have a realistic assessment of your own skills and budget. If you find yourself over your head in terms of your capability, be forthcoming with your talent about the problems you're having and find someone to help you. Just going incommunicado as Dombra did is immature, unprofessional, and, of course, makes things far worse rather than solving anything - these people are counting on you. Also, do not steal from your talents! If you can't find the money to pay your expenses, consider taking out a loan or even selling your possessions - whatever you have to do besides taking more than your contracted cut.
All that being said… Roll the dead corpo anthem!
- August 19: Added missing summary for Mimosa's stream; added summary for Aimee's second stream; added information for GrimmlyVT/NyabiNeko to Rhea's summary; added "what have we learned" section.
Most complete archive of site: https://web.archive.org/web/20240325180633/https://yumeplus.org/
Interview with CEO:
Interview with CEO:
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