‘Showtime!’ is a fan magazine about Persona 5 and by fans of the Japanese role-playing game. It has come to light that the creator has squandered over €20,000 in pre-order funds for personal purposes, including gambling on Genshin Impact.
Lovers of Persona 5 wanted to bring a so-called ‘fanzine’ (that is, a fan magazine) about their beloved Japanese role-playing game to the market. With beautiful illustrations and popular characters, the fanzine ‘Showtime!’ promotes itself as a “fan anthology focusing on the rivalry between Joker and Crow from Persona 5, containing illustrations, comics, and fanfiction.”
This was well received in the community, and the fanzine was able to raise a lot of money through pre-orders in advance. However, it has now come to light that the creator and head moderator of Showtime, Teresa “Ree” Dube, has spent over €20,000 of leftover funds for personal purposes. This includes rent, plush toys, and prayers in Genshin Impact.
In this video, you can see which characters are worth spending real money on in Genshin Impact:
“She lied to the moderation team”
What was the money used for? Ree is said to have spent pre-order funds from her own fanzine amounting to 27,625.10 Canadian dollars. This is approximately €20,420.
In an official statement, the other contributors of the fanzine said the following:
She has lied to the moderation team and went so far as to assure individual mods that nothing had been stolen, and provided misleading and outdated banking screenshots to indicate that all funds were available. Ree only admitted to spending the money for personal use after she had completely depleted the funds and could no longer fulfill other moderators’ requests for shipping costs.
The official statement from ‘Showtime!’
In an interview with GamesRadar, Ree admitted that she did what she is accused of. She states that she spent part of the funds on Genshin Impact, as well as on food, rent, and other “frivolous products” like plush toys and other fanzines. Showtime stated that Ree has refunded 3,000 Canadian dollars of the money. For this, she had to take out a loan.
From the other responsible parties of the fanzine, it is said, “it should not be mentioned that Ree has been removed from the project and will have no further connection to Showtime.”
Fanzine starts donation campaign after fraud
What are the consequences for the magazine? It is unclear how much money the fanzine was able to generate exactly before Ree spent over €20,000 of it herself. However, the official statement states that 850 pre-orders went out, but the outstanding 763 could not be produced immediately after the funds were embezzled. This suggests that the stolen €20,000 corresponds to about half of the money raised.
To deliver the remaining fanzines to the buyers, the Showtime team is organizing a fundraising campaign. They want to use this money to fulfill the outstanding pre-orders from the fanzine.
This apparently worked: another 750 zine orders and enough donations for the group came in to pay more contributors who will help with shipping the orders.
By the way: After the great success of Genshin Impact, the developers are working on a new gacha game with beautiful anime graphics. You can see how their new action RPG looks in motion in this impressive trailer.
