>>68513157>they’re really only there to give the vtuber a platformThat is straight up factually wrong. They are supposed to be there because they have laid the groundwork that allows a corpo tuber to work more efficiently, and resolve issues indies can't. An indie will have a harder time wrestling with youtube for example, an indie can't be expected to have a legal team, an indie can't have a manager (until big enough), and indie can't just contact large companies and create massive projects that include promos, merch, marketing. And indie also can't be expected to have a professional mocap studio with a team that operates it.
The point of joining a corpo is supposed to be that you get access to things you can't as a solo creator, this is also why they can take a cut of your money, because its fine for them to get paid to provide all these services to their talents. The problem comes when they can't provide even the most basic service like a manager getting an inhouse OK to use your own inhouse IP in an inhouse production of your inhouse talent.
Its fine for talents to front some of the money, for some of the projects, but now we are talking about a company that seemingly was expecting the talents to pay for everything, and they just get to cash in on the success of the project while not only refusing to help, but actively hindering the projects (not sending proper NDAs, not forwarding the payments, not getting perms). And while a talent can be expected to pay for these things, it can still be expected to go trough the company books. So if Millie makes a song that cost her 15k, instead of her paying out of pocket, the company pays for expenses, and she just gets 15k substracted from her earnings.
