#pressreset

[le-poofe]

00:00:00:00

I spy with my little eye A spiral that has finally reached its end A coffin for a man and his friend A skull atop its mortal confine A candle wasted away by time The shadows of two, bound by time’s machine And a phantom hourglass hidden in between

No more chanting, no more clocks Time is up, and fate is locked Our year is gone, the end is upon us ~ Memento Mori, Unus Annus ~

#unus annus #memento mori #markiplier #crankgameplays #mark fischbach #ethan nestor #fanart #digital painting #pressreset #unus gang #poem #y’all my overthinking was finally put to good use #i put all of it towards the fun little details #there is *a lot* to unpack here #i love and hate painting fabric #this SO different from what i usually post #the end is near babeeyy!! #unusannus #unusannusisoverparty

[lovileigh]

Unus Annus

Ignore the fact that you can physically see my learning curve on this sort of stylization

#unus annus #ethanmark #pressreset #markiplier #crankgameplays #unusannus

[jenniferisacommonname]

Bonus Level Unlocked

This week marks the release of Jason Schreier’s Press Reset, an incredibly well-researched book on catastrophic business failure in the gaming industry. Jason’s a good dude, and there’s an excerpt here if you want to check it out. Sadly, game companies going belly-up is such a common occurrence that he couldn’t possibly include them all, and one of the stories left out due to space constraints is one that I happen to be personally familiar with. So, I figured I’d tell it here.

I began working at Acclaim Studios Austin as a sound designer in January of 2000. It was a tumultuous period for the company, including a recent rebranding from their former studio name, “Iguana Entertainment,” and a related, ongoing lawsuit from the ex-founder of Iguana. There were a fair number of ghosts hanging around—the creative director’s license plate read IGUANA, which he never changed, and one of the meeting rooms held a large, empty terrarium—but the studio had actually been owned on paper by Acclaim since 1995, and I didn’t notice any conflicting loyalties. Everyone acted as if we always had been, and always would be, Acclaim employees.

Over the next few years I worked on a respectable array of triple-A titles, including Quarterback Club 2002, Turok: Evolution, and All-Star Baseball 2002 through 2005. (Should it be “All-Stars Baseball,” like attorneys general? Or perhaps a term of venery, like “a zodiac of All-Star Baseball.”) At any rate, it was a fun place to work, and a platformer of hijinks ensued.

But let’s skip to the cutscene. The truth is that none of us in the trenches suspected the end was near until it was absolutely imminent. Yes, Turok: Evolution and Vexx had underperformed, especially when stacked against the cost of development, but games flop in the retail market all the time. And, yes, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling had been hustled out the door before it was ready for reasons no one would explain, and the New York studio’s release of a BMX game featuring unlockable live-action stripper footage had been an incredibly weird marketing ploy for what should have been a straightforward racing title. (Other desperate gimmicks around this time included a £6,000 prize for UK parents who would name their baby “Turok,” an offer to pay off speeding tickets to promote Burnout 2 that quickly proved illegal, and an attempt to buy advertising space on actual tombstones for a Shadow Man sequel.)

But the baseball franchise was an annual moneymaker, and our studio had teams well into development on two major new licenses, 100 Bullets and The Red Star. Enthusiasm was on the upswing. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention when voice actors started calling me to complain that they hadn’t been paid, but at the time it seemed more like a bureaucratic failure than an actual money shortage—and frankly, it was a little naïve of them to expect net-30 in the first place. Industry standard was, like, net-90 at best. So I was told.

Then one Friday afternoon, a few department managers got word that we’d kind of maybe been skipping out on the building lease for let’s-not-admit-how-many months. By Monday morning, everyone’s key cards had been deactivated.

It's a little odd to arrive at work and find a hundred-plus people milling around outside—even odder, I suppose, if your company is not the one being evicted. Acclaim folks mostly just rolled their eyes and debated whether to cut our losses and head to lunch now, while employees of other companies would look dumbfounded and fearful before being encouraged to push their way through the crowd and demonstrate their still-valid key card to the security guard. Finally, the General Manager (hired only a few months earlier, and with a hefty relocation bonus to accommodate his houseboat) announced that we should go home for the day and await news. Several of our coworkers were veterans of the layoff process—like I said, game companies go under a lot—and one of them had already created a Yahoo group to communicate with each other on the assumption that we’d lose access to our work email. A whisper of “get on the VPN and download while you can” rippled through the crowd.

But the real shift in tone came after someone asked about a quick trip inside for personal items, and the answer was a hard, universal “no.” We may have been too busy or ignorant to glance up at any wall-writing, but the building management had not been: they were anticipating a full bankruptcy of the entire company. In that situation, all creditors have equal standing to divide up a company's assets in lengthy court battles, and most get a fraction of what they’re owed. But if the landlords had seized our office contents in lieu of rent before the bankruptcy was declared, they reasoned, then a judge might rule that they had gotten to the treasure chest first, and could lay claim to everything inside as separate from the upcoming asset liquidation.

Ultimately, their gambit failed, but the ruling took a month to settle. In the meantime, knick knacks gathered dust, delivered packages piled up, food rotted on desks, and fish tanks became graveyards. Despite raucous protest from every angle—the office pets alone generated numerous threats of animal cruelty charges—only one employee managed to get in during this time, and only under police escort. He was a British citizen on a work visa, and his paperwork happened to be sitting on his desk, due to expire. Without it, he was facing literal deportation. Fortunately, a uniformed officer took his side (or perhaps just pre-responded to what was clearly a misdemeanor assault in ovo,) and after some tense discussion, the building manager relented, on the condition that the employee touch absolutely nothing beyond the paperwork in question. The forms could go, but the photos of his children would remain.

It’s also a little odd, by the way, to arrive at the unemployment office and find every plastic chair occupied by someone you know. Even odder, I suppose, if you’re actually a former employee of Acclaim Studios Salt Lake, which had shut down only a month or two earlier, and you just uprooted your wife and kids to a whole new city on the assurance that you were one of the lucky ones who got to stay employed. Some of them hadn’t even finished unpacking.

Eventually, we were allowed to enter the old office building one at a time and box up our things under the watchful eye of a court appointee, but by then our list of grievances made the landlords’ ploy seem almost quaint by comparison (except for the animals, which remains un-fucking-forgivable.) We had learned, for example, that in the weeks prior to the bankruptcy, our primary lender had made an offer of $15 million—enough to keep us solvent through our next batch of releases, two of which had already exited playtesting and were ready to be burned and shipped. The only catch was that the head of the board, company founder Greg Fischbach, would have to step down. This was apparently too much of an insult for him to stomach, and he decided that he'd rather see everything burn to the ground. The loan was refused.

Other “way worse than we thought” details included gratuitous self-dealing to vendors owned by board members, the disappearance of expensive art from the New York offices just before closure, and the theft of our last two paychecks. For UK employees, it was even more appalling: Acclaim had, for who knows how long, been withdrawing money from UK paychecks for their government-required pension funds, but never actually putting the money into the retirement accounts. They had stolen tens of thousands of dollars directly from each worker.

Though I generally reside somewhere between mellow and complete doormat on the emotional spectrum, I did get riled enough to send out one bitter email—not to anyone in corporate, but to the creators of a popular webcomic called Penny Arcade, who, in the wake of Acclaim’s bankruptcy announcement, published a milquetoast jibe about Midway’s upcoming Area 51. I told Jerry (a.k.a. “Tycho”) that I was frankly disappointed in their lack of cruelty, and aired as much dirty laundry as I was privy to at the time.

“Surely you can find a comedic gem hidden somewhere in all of this!” I wrote. “Our inevitable mocking on PA has been a small light at the end of a very dark, very long tunnel. Please at least allow us the dignity of having a smile on our faces while we wait in line for food stamps.”

Two days later, a suitably grim comic did appear, implying the existence of a new release from Acclaim whose objective was to run your game company into the ground. In the accompanying news post, Tycho wrote:

“We couldn’t let the Acclaim bankruptcy go without comment, though we initially let it slide thinking about the ordinary gamers who lost their jobs there. They don’t have anything to do with Acclaim’s malevolent Public Relations mongrels, and it wasn’t they who hatched the Titty Bike genre either. Then, we remembered that we have absolutely zero social conscience and love to say mean things.”

Another odd experience, by the way, is digging up a 16-year-old complaint to a webcomic creator for nostalgic reference when you offer that same creator a promotional copy of the gaming memoir you just co-wrote with Sid Meier. Even odder, I suppose, to realize that the original non-Acclaim comic had been about Area 51, which you actually were hired to work on yourself soon after the Acclaim debacle.*

As is often the case in complex bankruptcies, the asset liquidation took another six years to fully stagger its way through court—but in 2010, we did, surprisingly, get the ancient paychecks we were owed, plus an extra $1,700-ish for the company’s apparent violation of the WARN Act. By then, I had two kids and a very different life, for which the money was admittedly helpful. Sadly, Acclaim’s implosion probably isn’t even the most egregious one on record. Our sins were, to my knowledge, all money-related, and at least no one was ever sexually assaulted in our office building. Again, to my knowledge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure we remain the only historical incident of corporate pet murder. The iguana got out just in time.

*Area 51’s main character was voiced by David Duchovny, and he actually got paid—which was lucky for him, because three years later, Midway also declared bankruptcy.

#gamedev #gaming #pressreset #acclaim #acclaim studios #bankruptcy #midway #midway games #layoff #layoffs #turok #vexx #bmx xxx #game company #corporate shenanigans #all star baseball #quarterback club #penny arcade #sid meier #sid meier's memoir #memoir #area 51 #david duchovny #iguana #jason schreier

[bookerdefay]

Damn Unus Annus really be out here in its last ten days giving me the drive and motivation to do the things I wanna do with my life...

#unus annus #momento mori #unus #annus #markiplier #crankgameplays #pressreset #stoptheclock #ethanmark

[prickly-problematic-programmer]

so, unus annus is ending tomorrow,,, have this playlist i posted earlier

and some cookies i made last weekend to celebrate

momento mori.... unus annus........

#unus annus #unusannus #pressreset #i think i’ve finally reached acceptance? in the five stages of grief? #anyways... hope y’all have a good last 35ish hours #Spotify

[vdearest]

Thank you, Unus Annus

This year has been rough, and especially these last few months. I have fallen into a depressive state, and getting up every day feels like entering a war zone. I am barely getting by in school, just mindlessly sitting in the classes and feeling like a failure after every day, since I do nothing.

Unus Annus has been the ongoing routine in my life since May. I may not have been here for all of the adventure, but it has helped me to ground myself too many times to even count. Every night at the same time, however shitty or lovely the day has been, I open my laptop and greet the two dumbasses that run Unus Annus - Mark and Ethan.

Mark: You have been incredible inspiration to me. I watched you a lot few years back, and I remember finding joy and comfort in your content even back then. If anything, Unus Annus reminded me of that time and brought me happines in times it seemed impossible to find. Your work ethic has made me want to be more – I actually cried during your speech about potential in “Being Brutally honest with each other”. I never knew I needed to hear it. Thank you.

Ethan: You make me happy. As a person with dyslexia and several issues same as you, I find a lot of comfort with seeing you openly talk about these issues and giving them your voice. I remember watching the math video from Unus Annus and thinking “Wow, that is someone who thinks exactly like me. And he’s gotten that far in life?”. I always used to think of myself as a failure for not being able to learn the “right” things. You’ve given me hope and determination to carve my own way. Thank you.

And for Amy and Evan, and the whole creative crew: Thank you for making this all possible. The boys and their goofs are already plenty great, but the way you brought this channel to life through your editing and directing has been phenomenal. I am eagerly waiting for what’s next.

But yes - this is it. 2 days on the clock, and even though I am not ready to let go, I am thankful. Even when everything else crumbled, there was something waiting for me, every night. And there is not enought “Thank You’s” in the world for that. 

I love this fandom, I love this channel, and I know that we’re going to be okay; we’ve got each other.  Memento Mori.

@markiplier @crankgameplays

#unus annus #mark fischbach #markiplier #ethan nestor #crankgameplays #amy nelson #peebles #i am crying at the club rn boys #stop the clock #pressreset #rambling

[i-don-t-believe]

Cant believe it’s finally ending... I always knew it was going to end but it just seems so unreal. I’ve experienced a lot of anxiety over all this, because I didn’t watch 1 or 2 videos due to anxiety over the content, or stressed over my poor memory and the fact that the whole point of the channel to make memories will not last for me. It’ll fade, as well as the channel. What was a huge part of my life for the year will be gone.

before 2020, I had stopped watching youtube as my main source of media. At most i watched a few twitch lives a week, maybe a youtube video if i was looking for a specific subject or my friend wanted to show me something funny. Unus Annus brought me back to middle school and grade 9&10 when my only interests were in youtubers. I’d forgotten how wonderful it feels to be engaged with a community.

the videos themselves have made me unbelievably happy. they’ve stayed on my mind for weeks at a time if I liked them, watching them over 10 times. I’ll miss seeing ethan and mark doing stupid skits every day. They truly made 2020 much better.

thank you. Unus Annus, Memento Mori

#UnusAnnus #Unus #Unus Annus #Annus #Markiplier #CrankGamePlays #memento mori #unus annus #press reset #pressreset

[amaskofmyskin]

There has never been a series of videos that have meant so much to me in my entire life. And perhaps it wasn’t solely the content of the videos that made them extremely special, but the people I spent it with. Unus Annus will forever be apart of my memories, and a core part of who I am. We knew from the start that this would all end, but we still held on hope that we had all the time in the world. We had one year. And what a spectacular year it was, filled with laughter and jokes abound - it was surely something no one could have ever planned for, but something we all enjoyed happily. And though I am sad to see it go, Unus Annus will only be dead physically. Yes the channel maybe gone, but it’s memory will live on, through us. We may not make new memories, but we will always have the ones we made. And though this year was unpredictable at best, it brought us all closer together - not just as fans, but as human beings. Death is inevitable, but memories are eternal. Momento Mori, Unus Annus . . . Tags: #unusannus #pressreset #markiplier #crankgameplays #fanart #unusannusfanart #markiplierfanart #crankgameplaysfanart #momentomori #traditionalart #artist #artistoninstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CHIypmZAKmN/?igshid=rlhfwwakxpuq

#unusannus #pressreset #markiplier #crankgameplays #fanart #unusannusfanart #markiplierfanart #crankgameplaysfanart #momentomori #traditionalart #artist #artistoninstagram

[stupiddogcisco]

𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒊

!!please do not repost!!

Instagram

Twitter

#cisco draws #unus annus #unus #annus #fanart #pressreset #markiplier #crankgamplays #Ethan #Mark #pewdiepie #jacksepticeye #stupid dog’s art #YouTube

[damselflavored]

I’m enjoying @summerfridays Overtime Mask and I followed @sortofobsessed method of application on this mask. I just left it on my face for 10-15 minutes and rinse. The @kravebeauty Oat So Simple Water Cream and Great Barrier Serum are great as well because they’re soothing, and very nourishing. And @tatcha The Silk Peony is love. I highly recommend it if you’re into eye cream. #summerfridays #kravebeauty #glossier #skincare #pressreset #damselflavored #beautybloggers #bbloggers #luxurybeauty #beautygram #tatcha https://www.instagram.com/p/B35DOMMAeuL/?igshid=trzckl6fen4d

#summerfridays #kravebeauty #glossier #skincare #pressreset #damselflavored #beautybloggers #bbloggers #luxurybeauty #beautygram #tatcha

[strengthjitsnc]

When I was younger I loved to skateboard. When it wasn’t ski season that’s all I did. I could never ollie that well which means I never was able to do a kickflip. Something I always dreamed of doing. I am turning 48 in a few days and decided that being I am more than capable of still being able to skate that I would set a goal of doing a kickflip before my 49th birthday. I know a year seems like a long time but as you can see I have a lot of work to do. Thanks @original_strength @tim_sonofander @daninicolea for teaching me all about Original Strength. It’s the only way I am able to still do the things I love to do. . #skateboarding #kickflip #skatingat48 #originalstrength #pressreset #enjoiskateboards #fountainofyouth #nevertoold (at Original Strength Institute) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm2Cd8qlZUx/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1xiw0n09ymkpw

#skateboarding #kickflip #skatingat48 #originalstrength #pressreset #enjoiskateboards #fountainofyouth #nevertoold

[bookerdefay]

In Ten Years Time...

The year is 2030, you and your partner are moving furniture into your new home.

As you both move the sofa into the lounge you begin to quietly sing the Disclaimer Song under your breath.

Your partner halts, gets you to put the sofa down, looks you dead in the eyes and begins to sing it too.

Through the shock and surprise you both begin to sing it at the top of your lungs before collapsing onto the sofa and into each others arms in a fit of laughter.

You spend an hour or so talking about Unus Annus and your favourite moments and videos and the crazy year that it all happened.

You are content, and all is right with the world.

#unus annus #unus #annus #markiplier #crankgameplays #pressreset #stoptheclock #ethanmark

[prickly-problematic-programmer]

i don’t have much else i could make to remember unus annus by, so i put together this little collection of songs. starts off a bit hopeful, thinking about how much you can do in a year or with your life, but then turns to the inevitability of the end, and how we have to accept it. 

it’s not much, but i hope someone at least enjoys it. at the very least, it’s something to help us remember the wonderful year that we’ve had, and to prepare for the ending that’s coming closer and closer with each tick of the clock.

#unus annus #unusannus #pressreset #this channel has made me emo again hasn't it #haven't thought this much about death since i was in middle school

[nerdieforpedro]

Received my @kravebeauty order of #matchahemphydratingcleanser , #thebeetshield and #kalelaluyaha Looking forward to trying it tonight! 🥰 I love the beet shield and I use it daily. 😎 #pressreset https://www.instagram.com/p/CHWaDCZhTEV/?igshid=vi5rfz1esnfl

#matchahemphydratingcleanser #thebeetshield #kalelaluyaha #pressreset

[myskincareexp]

#pressreset #slowdown #slowdownskincare @kravebeauty @liahyoo https://www.instagram.com/p/CBgXM4UBwu4/?igshid=1cllnjrplfeus

#pressreset #slowdown #slowdownskincare

[chrisdashrob]

I am a new subscriber to @pressreset’s channel on YouTube and I LOVE IT! If you like gadgets of any kind please check it out! #subscribe #3dprinting #electricskateboard #gadgets #youtube #pressreset #brooklyn #nyc #art #graphicdesign #hats #glasses #chrisdashrob #graphicartist

#pressreset #graphicartist #subscribe #gadgets #3dprinting #nyc #electricskateboard #brooklyn #graphicdesign #chrisdashrob #art #hats #glasses #youtube