3D artist Anastasia Melnychenko complained on LinkedIn about an unscrupulous employer company that «abandoned» the specialist. According to documents, the company is from Armenia. We retell Anastasia’s story.
3D artist Anastasia Melnychenko complained on LinkedIn about an unscrupulous employer company that «abandoned» the specialist. According to documents, the company is from Armenia. We retell Anastasia’s story.
«Today’s post is atypical for my LinkedIn, as I usually publish only works from my resume with a short description, but the situation is also atypical. I have been looking for a permanent job for half a year. In early December, I responded to the vacancy for a 3D character artist from Epiqure Master Studio on the website https://ingamejob.com. This is not exactly my profile, since I had not worked much with characters before, but the vacancy indicated that experience was not required,» Melnychenko noted .
A few days later, the girl was contacted and invited to an online interview.
«At the interview, they told me about the company, said that the company is from Armenia, discussed the requirements for my work, and also that they don’t have a test assignment, but there is a paid test period of one week, after which I will be officially hired by the company, or they will pay me for a week and we will part ways,» the artist said.
After the interview, a few days later, Anastasia says, she was sent an invitation to Slack, where there were only 5 people — HR, with whom she had communicated before, the lead, the CEO, a girl with an unknown position who advised the artist on documents and company rules, and, in fact, Anastasia herself.
«I was asked to sign an NDA and sent a task for a week. I worked from the bottom of my heart. Since I didn’t have much experience in the character, I worked almost twice as hard for a while to get my hands dirty and do quality work. At the end of the week, they called me and said that they liked everything and I was suitable. They gave me the next task and monitored my performance twice a week during the calls. Another girl was also present at these checkpoints, who, as I understood, was also new and reported with me, but she wasn’t in Slack. In total, during this time I managed to make about 70 models of hairstyles and elements of clothing or accessories for the characters,» the specialist said.
Before the New Year holidays, the company announced a weekend that was supposed to last until January 9, says Anastasia. After the weekend, the girl was promised to be officially registered and added to the main Slack channel, and to be paid for her work on the 13th.
«Over the weekend, I still periodically monitored messages, since I am a responsible employee, suddenly something will change. On January 7, I noticed that I was removed from Slack. Apparently, that’s how it should be and tomorrow I will be added to a new one. Of course, I was not added anywhere on the 8th, nor on the 9th, nor on the weekend, nor today. The only contact I had outside of Slack was the email of the person who wrote to me about the invitation to an interview. I wrote to him and… the email does not exist. And, of course, I did not receive any payment either,» said Anastasia.
The editorial team was unable to contact Epiqure Master Studio.
The girl states: in general, this story is primarily about the fact that if you see vacancies from this company or if the company acts in a similar way, don’t be fooled. She also added the sent «company rules» to the post, «to show how much people have bothered and detailed everything for the sake of free models.»
The girl also posted copies of the NDA document.
In the comments to the girl’s post, they hint that the company has ties to the Russian Federation, and that’s not what you would expect. Users are also surprised that the documents are submitted in Russian.
«If I had read this contract, I would have immediately written a negative review on LinkedIn saying that the company is Russian. How do you start working without a contract or employment? It insures you for the future. But, in this case, you can at least add the work to your portfolio,» says recruiter Viktoriya Mirkevych .
«To avoid such situations, work on the company’s equipment, this is the minimum guarantee that you will be paid for your time,» said graphic designer Svitlana Konakh .
Hanna Labkova states that the company with which Anastasia allegedly collaborated is available on the Internet on literally one website. «It is indicated that it was created in 2024 and that literally these 4 people work there. Someone decided to close outsourced orders at the expense of volunteers, why pay. These contracts and conditions were clearly spied on simply in another company, where one of them once worked or had an internship. It is not a fact that it exists at all, like this Ivan Tornos,» the expert noted.
