The Drama

'''Do not hate on anyone involved Dan has his side and Stephen has his side.

The Drama started on January 4th, 2020. It was about the mistreatment and underpayment of the personalities (mainly Stephen) and the animators. There are three videos and several comments right now on the situation.

**Stephen's Side**

Stephen wasn’t part of the official DanPlan crew back when they were a gaming channel, it was mainly Dan and Hosuh until Hosuh wanted there to be a third person. So, he asked Stephen. He agreed to join, and you know the rest of the story. They turned into an animation channel, and their view/subscriber count skyrocketed. All seemed good for a while, until this year. Stephen didn’t see YouTube as a job, but a hobby while Daniel saw it a different way. All the editing, contacting/hiring animators, and managing the channel was done by Daniel. **Stephen learnt that DanPlan earned 40,000 dollars of which he earned less than 350.** Which amounted to less than ~~1~~% of the revenue generated. He later confronted Daniel regarding this issue. They argued for hours. The fight was impactful for both parties and left both hurt. Stephen wanted ~~20~~% of the company's share, for which he worked less than the employees or animators, which is the origin for the infamous quote, "you're just an employee." In the end, Dan thinks that the percentage was too much to pay someone that only records once every two weeks, although Stephen was a permanent member of DanPlan who attracted numerous views via his humour and various personas . Daniel refused the 20% Stephen asked for and continued with the $100/video. Stephen decided to script a video calling out Daniel as prior attempts at confrontation failed. Stephen says that the three things that made him stay were the fame, Hosuh, and most importantly the need to prove that he was an integral part of DanPlan.

**Livestream**

Stephen said at the beginning of the stream for Daniel to at least say something and resolve it with him. He also talked about the financial divide with the team members. He said that he used to get ~~$25~~ per hour of recording. Each recording took about 1-2 hours, the most are 4. So, he got around $200 a month. Hosuh and Dan got 50/50 in finance until Daniel made it 85(Dan)/~~15~~(Hosuh) because Hosuh was not animating anymore, but still was a starting member. He asked Hosuh how much he made, and he said $42,000 from two years. Now, if we consider that is actually ~~15~~% of the total, we end up at $280,000 in total revenue (w/ merch and sponsorships). He asked the animators on how much they make each, and they said ~$450 per month. Taking this into consideration the channel gets about $~~20~~,~~000~~ per month, which is different from Daniel getting all that money because it is the company's property, and Dan said that he never took profit out of the company because all the money was for future investments for the channel.

## **Fan response**

This is the first instance of a member of the channel saying things about this situation. The fandom immediately showed love and support to Stephen. There were lots of fanart, fan videos, even something just as simple as a Twitter statement. But, some people took anger out on Dan. Most of it was mild, just a twitter statement or YouTube comment. But, some took it too far. They attacked him directly. They harassed him to get a response. Some even sent death threats to him. But, others were trying to inform people to not harass Dan. They just made memes most of the time. Others made official statements in the comments or on Twitter. Some even created videos. To the channel itself, people unsubscribed, making the channel lose 80k subscribers in only a few days.. Many people want to hear Daniel’s response to: show his side, explain everything, want an apology, and make the fandom chill again.

The response was mixed. Some people took right back to Dan's side and spread some love. They told him to keep going and not listen to the haters. Some people even started to hate Jay and Stephen. Some people were still skeptical of Dan. Some people looked at inaccuracies in Dan's video, stating that it had more inaccuracies than Jay and Stephen's arguments. Some people wondered who was lying. Overall, this response did not fix the fandom like some hope, some might say it made things worse.

**Aftermath**

Stephen, Stephen's brother Gavin, Hosuh and Jay began live streaming games on Stephen's channel 'Actually Stephen.' These videos are doing well on the channel, and continued after Hosuh left for the South Korean military and after Jay left. As of the 11 of May 2021 he has not rejoined.

On the 19th of April 2020, Daniel posted his first video after the Drama, which began a new format of video on the channel, filming vlogs, challenge videos and reactions. While the first video (as of 11 of May 2020) has done relatively well, these new videos are not performing as well as the previous 'By the Way' videos the channel is known for. The view count is slowly dropping to just above 100,000 views, which is significantly lower than their subscriber count of 2.03M (as of the 27 of May 2021), this could be due to the Drama, but also due to the lack of Hosuh and Stephen and just content that subscribers didn't subscribe to see. DanPlan has continued to release new videos, which usually get 300K views. They seem to be going back on track with animation, having hit 2 million subscribers.