In quick succession, videos and informed comments from industry insiders alert us to the situation at EKWB. If we have to quickly summarize the link between these videos and the various comments made by the company’s partners, EKWB seems to be finding it increasingly difficult to pay its service providers. So the alert comes first from Gamers Nexus and then from Jay2cents. Let’s be clear, we took our time before making this brief, because we’re not always comfortable with the way Steve sometimes tries to gain position or respect by using his audience to apply pressure. But in this case, he’s not the only one, as a number of others have agreed with the content he recently published.
EKWB in trouble: what’s really going on?
The fact remains that, on the whole, those who have brought EKWB’s potential problems to light are media outlets (YouTube and others) who have contracts with the company and are complaining that they are no longer being paid. In the accusations made by these protagonists, it also seems that EK has tried to put pressure on certain media outlets to prevent the information from getting out. GN’s video goes further, however, claiming that not only subcontractors but also company employees are having trouble getting paid. While some of these rumors have been circulating for several months, we have never been able to cross-check them .
Earlier this year, we were able to meet EKWB at CES, where the team was set up in a vast suite to welcome its customers and the media. We understood from our discussions that the company wished to stop investing too much in traditional hardware media advertising. In all transparency, as we’ve seen this trend coming for some years now, we haven’t drawn any particular lessons from these decisions. As our business model is different from that of most hardware media, we may not have perceived the burden EKWB was placing on its service providers…including certain media outlets.
We contacted EKWB to try and get a reaction from the company on all these latest statements. With this factual brief, we wanted to inform you and present you with the elements we have, while remaining as cautious as possible on the subject pending our research.
