Content creators, overall, are beneficial for a game. They produce guides, make videos about and stream the content they cover, and generally help attract more attention and interest in the game. Amazing Seasun Games, the studio responsible for Snowbreak: Containment Zone, certainly seems to think so, regularly advertising their content creator (CC) program online in hopes of attracting participants. It promises “substantial” in-game rewards and even the chance to receive “promotional support” and “opportunities for direct collaboration,” certainly enticing prospects. Once upon a time, when Snowbreak’s CC program was better-managed, this may have been true. However, recent changes have reduced rewards and made existing shortcomings that much more obvious, making the reality much less glamorous.

What Makes a Good CC Program?

To understand the failings of Snowbreak’s CC program, we must first identify what makes a CC program successful. Content creators and the developers of the content they cover have separate goals, but ones that align to allow for a symbiotic relationship. Content creators want support in producing content and assistance in furthering their personal careers as content creators, while the developers want promotion of their product or brand. What CCs bring to the table has already been established, and the developers, through their CC program, should enable them via two main methods:

• Distribution of in-game rewards to assist CCs in accessing in-game content to produce content with. For example: in-game currency and battlepasses
• Assistance in the promotion of content. For example: content showcases and contests.

Of course, there are other methods by which a successful CC program can enable and reward its participants; these are just the main and arguably most important ones. Unfortunately though, the Snowbreak CC program fails to provide its participants with sufficient support in these metrics.

Reduction of Rewards

In the past, the CC program distributed rewards based on a tiering system, where creators would receive rewards based on the performance and quality of the content submitted for review:

Tier	Reward
Tier 1 Top 10 CCs	• Digicash x2,800 • Manifestation Echo Covenant x10 • Weapon Modding Agreement x10 Equivalent to 6,000 Digicash
Tier 2 Top 40%	• Digicash x2,000Manifestation Echo Covenant x10 Equivalent to 3,600 Digicash
Tier 3 Top 40-75%	• Digicash x2,000
Tier 4 Top 75-100%	• Digicash x500

In addition, all CCs received the highest tier of the premium battlepass, which contains 680 Digicash and 4 limited operative banner tickets among other rewards.

However, prior to the v2.6 Blossoms in Ruins patch, a change to rewards structure was announced:

Tier	Standard Rewards	Advanced Rewards
Tier 1 30,000+ social media followers	Video: Digicash x1,000 Livestream: Digicash x480	Video: Digicash x2,000 Livestream: Digicash x1,440
Tier 2 5,000 - 30,000 social media followers	Video: Digicash x800 Livestream: Digicash x320	Video: Digicash x1,600 Livestream:D igicash x960
Tier 3 < 5,000 social media followers	Video Digicash x500 Livestream: Digicash x160	Video: Digicash x1,000 Livestream: Digicash x480

These changes meant that almost if not all CCs would be receiving drastically fewer rewards no matter their follower count. As well, the rewards being based on follower count explicitly punished smaller CCs (almost 70% of participants in the CC program had fewer than 5,000 followers) by further reducing the rewards they could receive. In the old system, a smaller CC could theoretically work hard, maybe even get a little lucky, and fight for a spot at the top. But under the new system, they would be confined to their rewards bracket, which ensured a smaller payout no matter how hard they work.

Furthermore, the premium battlepass was also no longer a base reward, but only awarded to the top ten CCs. Even considering that this was provided to the top ten CCs in each of the video and livestream categories, this still left over half of all CCs without a battlepass reward.

Overall, this system spat in the face of smaller CCs for having lower follower counts while rewarding larger CCs by… reducing their rewards as well. It’s truly baffling how someone could look at this and approve it, knowing full well that it would not be positively received. And it was not. Backlash from CCs was immediate and intense, clearly signalling discontent with these announced changes. Despite this, the changes went through, with only a promise that it would be changed in the future.

A Second Try

One patch later, with the v2.7 Abyssal Dawn update, another change was made, introducing a new system based purely on submission performance metrics:

Tier	Reward
Tier 1	• Opal Voucher x300 • Large Stamina refill x1 • Silverbuck x10,000
Tier 2	• Limited operative banner ticket x1 • Large Stamina refill x2 • Silverbuck X20,000
Tier 3	• Digicash x640 • Large Stamina refill x3 • Silverbuck x30,000
Tier 4	• Limited operative banner ticket x3 • Limited weapon banner ticket x3 • Large Stamina refill x4 • Silverbuck x40,000
Tier 5	• Premium battlepass • Digicash x800

With each rewards tier being cumulative, a CC could receive up to 1,440 Digicash, 4 limited operative banner tickets, 3 limited weapon banner tickets, and the premium battlepass. Certainly a relative increase on paper, but this was still less than the rewards available under the original system for high-performing CCs, while the tiered reward system kept the vast majority of the truly valuable rewards out of reach of CCs with small followings which, again, comprise the vast majority of participants. In practice, CCs who got up to 50 pulls under the original rewards system were now just getting 5, and many other CCs got even less, making it clearly still an objective downgrade from the original rewards system.

This new system also came with other rewards: up to 100,000 Silverbucks, 10 large stamina refills, and 300 Opal Vouchers. While not nothing, these are largely worthless fodder to the vast majority of CCs, who have developed accounts and a surplus of these materials. It begs the question of why the premium battlepass, which already offers all of these resources and more, was no longer a reward to all CCs if the goal was to provide these resources. Inactive CCs were already being regularly removed from the program (or at least that’s how it's claimed to work), so it’s not like there should have been cases of “freeloading,” if you want to look at it that way.

Many CCs rely on these rewards to allow them to pull for characters and weapons to make guides, reviews, and other gameplay content with. This is especially important in Snowbreak, where the time-gated nature of Manifestation farming incentivises pulling for a character on day 1. Reducing rewards only hinders a CC’s ability to produce content, reducing the quantity and quality of the content produced of the game.

Reduction in Support

Promoting the CCs that produce content for your game seems like an easy win-win situation: the CC gets more traffic to their content and the developer gets more playerbase engagement and a more active community overall. So for Seasun to reduce their promotional support for CCs is truly an interesting decision.

To be clear, it’s not like they were doing much to begin with. Admittedly, Snowbreak does have a Twitch drop campaign every patch, but this should be the bare minimum for a competent CC program, not something exceptional. The only instance of Seasun actively promoting a CC in the program that I’m aware of was a single tweet when Nonpon got featured on the front page of Twitch. This was a feat which he achieved through his own efforts and not through any assistance from Seasun, mind you, and honestly kind of comes off as Seasun trying to piggyback off of the success of one of their CCs.

At around the same time as the CC rewards were being reduced, the official Snowbreak Discord server also removed the channels where CCs used to post their content and advertise their streams. The space on the channel list has seemingly since been replaced with channels for users to interact with MEE6, a bot that allows users to acquire, spend, and gamble with virtual currency that has no use outside of those two channels. I really have nothing to say about this, I think it speaks for itself.

Alongside the removal of the CC media channels, though, was the removal of a private channel where CCs could provide feedback directly to our CC manager to pass along. It was well-used by CCs, and I personally used this channel multiple times in the past to bug report issues with the game.

While it’s impossible to tell what exactly they were thinking when they removed these channels, the impression it leaves on an outside observer is that they don’t care. That they don’t care about our feedback anymore, and that they don’t care enough to put in the zero effort it takes to keep pre-existing channels for CCs to promote their content in.

Salt in the Wound

The official statements regarding these changes have not been what I’d describe as helpful. After the removal of the CC media channels, an announcement told CCs to just post their works in the public media channels instead. At the same time, it promised cash incentives for creators who “continue to produce high quality works” while also offering to “provide content guidance to creators to help [them] achieve better works in the long term.”

After weeks of backlash within the CC discussion channels regarding all of the changes that took place and many CCs announcing their departure from the program, one final announcement was made as apparent damage control:

The rules and reward standard of "Abyssal Dawn" creator program is nearly the final version for the future creator programs. It's a pity if anyone eventually decides to quit the creator program. We truly thank you for your contributions to Snowbreak in the past, and wish you a brilliant creator career in the future! (ps. If you have made up your mind, please kindly inform me of your leaving via DM instead of in the chat channel.)

For many others that will still stay accompany with Snowbreak, we appreciate that a lot. As said before, we will use other forms of reward events or cash cooperation as reward supplement to build connection with our creators in a long term. With the increasing exposure of Snowbreak in the future, I believe your channel and video performance will also benefit from it. Thank you for your support as always!

The announcement ended with a link to the public fanworks contest that was running at the time, sending a very clear message (and one that I have explicitly been told in personal correspondence with other Seasun staff) that if CCs were unhappy about their rewards being reduced, then they should look to a fanworks contest to supplement their rewards. Ironically enough, this fanworks content offered better rewards than the CC program itself:

1st Prize (5 Winners)	• DigiCash x1,600 • Manifestation Echo Covenant x5 • Weapon Modding Agreement x5 3,200 Digicash equivalent
2nd Prize (10 Winners)	• Manifestation Echo Covenant x5 • Weapon Modding Agreement x5 1,600 Digicash equivalent
3rd Prize (10 Winners)	• Manifestation Echo Covenant x5 800 Digicash equivalent

This announcement, which claims to appreciate the CCs still in the program while simultaneously telling them to compete in a public contest for the rewards they used to receive from the CC program, is nothing short of a slap in the face. To then promise the benefits of the “increasing exposure of Snowbreak in the future” on one hand while actively removing avenues for CCs to promote their content on the other, all the while having the nerve to ask that CCs not publicly voice their discontent, is a level of disconnect and tone-deafness that is quite honestly incredible. It reads like something written by a suit and handed down to the CC manager to post, because for anyone actually involved in the management of the CC program to genuinely believe this statement implies an impossible level of incompetence.

I feel this needs emphasis, so I’ll say it again. Despite all of Seasun’s promises and claims, I have not heard of or seen any CC in the program receive the special incentives that are supposedly available. I have not seen any “promotional support” or “opportunities for direct collaboration,” nor have I heard of any instances of CCs receiving “cash incentives” or “content guidance.” Well, there is one instance on technicality, but we’ll get to that later.

So overall, you could say that they aren’t exactly handling things well.

My Personal Experiences

As someone who Runs A Website™, I have the privilege of being one of the more prominent Snowbreak content creators. As such, I have received special treatment and perks, like a monthly 3,000 Digicash bonus reward for the upkeep of snowbreak.gg and on one occasion, merchandise rewards.

As well, you may have noticed that within the CC reward structure, there was no category for written content, the medium that I primarily work in. To get around this, I was given special permission to submit my articles and guides under the “fanart” category. Though at some period in time, this special edge case was retracted, and the monthly Digicash “bonus” that I was receiving became the base reward for the written content that I submitted (I actually only found out about this yesterday while compiling information for this article). Still, between that and the reasonable amount of views that my Neural Sim run videos got on Youtube, I was comfortably among the better-rewarded CCs.

Incidentally, I was approached by a Seasun staff member two months ago (not the CC program manager), demanding that I sign an NDA and manage two of the channels in the official Discord server as conditions for my continued Digicash “bonus.” Obviously, I refused. Expecting me to do additional moderation work for the same payment (of fake video game currency!) I was already receiving is quite frankly ridiculous, and the requirement of an NDA was in itself a red flag. While this was supposedly “company policy,” nothing I currently do would require an NDA. It’s not like I receive insider information, and based on my previous experiences attempting to get access to such information, I’d imagine that it would be a cold day in hell before that ever changes. The only use for it that I could think of would be as a tool to suppress any content I produce that they don’t like.

For example, this article.

Despite refusing these terms, I’ve still received the bonus payments as of last month, but whether that changes going forward is something to be seen. I can’t imagine this article will make them particularly enthusiastic about it though.

So why make this post if, relatively speaking, I’m pretty well off? I’ve got mine, after all, so who cares about anyone else? I have little to gain personally from speaking up, and much to lose. It’s because as someone fortunate enough to have the platform that I do, I believe that it’s my duty to use it for the benefit of others. This means producing guides and covering news, but also pointing out things that are broken and advocating for them to be fixed. Because while I receive special treatment, others within the CC program don’t, and they don’t have the audience and reach that I do to meaningfully speak out and be heard.

But Why Make These Changes?

Honestly, I don’t know. It could be a disdain for the global side of the game, gross incompetence, or outright sabotage, but without any evidence, it’s hard to say for certain (though I have been explicitly told that global wasn’t allowed access to CN-side beta content on two occasions). But one thing that I’m willing to say is that it probably isn’t because Seasun is cheaping out. Or at the very least, I hope so.

As of version 2.5, the last patch that used the old rewards system, the CC rankings and rewards distribution were made available to all CCs to see. Using this data, it could be determined that even under a worst-case scenario, the “cost” (keep in mind that this is all fake video game currency at the end of the day) of all CC rewards distributed was less than $3,400USD. The ethics of attempting to make money off of content creators you’re supposedly supporting aside, is Seasun really so stingy, or is Snowbreak doing so poorly financially, that they need this small amount of revenue that they might receive from CCs making out-of-pocket purchases to cover the difference between their former and current CC rewards?

At any rate, it costs nothing to not remove Discord channels for CCs to promote their content in. I know this sounds like an extremely trivial and petty thing to be hung up about, but that’s exactly the point. It’s such a small perk, but Seasun still went out of their way to remove it.

Many other games have CC programs of their own, with substantially better rewards and special perks. To name one example, Hoyoverse games (Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero) offer beta server access to CCs, allowing them to preview new characters and content, and produce guides and reviews ahead of time. But we don’t have to look to major blockbuster games to find examples of how to run a CC program well. Consider Crystal of Atlan.

Despite being only about a month into its global release and generating roughly the same amount of revenue as Snowbreak, it is somehow already able to actively feature guides produced by content creators, right in the game itself!

You probably have never even heard of Crystal of Atlan, but that’s exactly my point - if even a relatively obscure, niche game like this can put in the effort to do well by their content creator community, why can’t Snowbreak?

And for all of their stinginess, it seems that Seasun has quite a bit of money to spend, because even as they cut CC rewards, they've also been busy paying big names in the gacha space - Tectone, Stix, and Braxophone, to name a few - to host sponsored livestreams and produce sponsored Youtube videos. This is that exception to the “nobody has received any opportunities for direct collaboration” thing I mentioned earlier, by the way, as Stix is technically in the CC program despite not regularly producing Snowbreak content. Of course, I have no ill will towards these creators, nor do I lay any blame at them for accepting these offers. By all means, get that bag. And to an extent, I can't blame Seasun for wanting to get some more established creators to help promote Snowbreak, either. But to cut CC rewards while spending massive sums of money on influencer marketing (Tectone himself is quoted as being paid one dollar per viewer per hour on sponsored streams, making his 5,500 viewer-average streams quite pricey, I'd imagine), at least to me, says that Seasun doesn't actually want a CC program, they want already-popular personalities to do advertising for them. And that really sums up what the CC program feels like now. CCs in the program don't feel that they're wanted or that their work is valued, and when they're treated how they are now, can you really blame them?

It’s true that Seasun has no obligation to provide any rewards or other assistance at all to content creators, and that content creators are not entitled to any special treatment. However, Seasun is also not entitled to content creators that produce Snowbreak content, and content creators are free to choose to cover a different game instead. Why should they spend their time, effort, and sometimes even money producing content for a game that doesn’t appreciate their work when they could instead cover a game that will treat them better and reward them more? Indeed, that’s what’s happened since these changes were pushed through. Many content creators have already quit the CC program, and I can only imagine that more are to follow.

Despite all this, there has been one consistently excellent aspect of the CC program - the actual staff managing the day-to-day operations. I have had the pleasure of working with four different CC program managers and one other staff member that worked closely with the program. All of them have been highly competent, professional, and pleasant to interact with. They truly understood what made for a high-quality CC program and often advocated on our behalf. I couldn’t get the current CC program manager to directly admit it so I can’t say for sure, but speaking in private, it certainly did seem that they didn’t approve of the changes that were made either. So for these changes to be made and for the attempted damage control to be as disastrous as it was, at least to me, sounds like meddling from corporate suits higher up in the management hierarchy, forcing through changes regardless of any protests from the actual “boots on the ground” with direct experience. But that’s just my two cents.

History Doesn’t Repeat, But it Sure Does Rhyme

This is actually not the first time that the Snowbreak content creator program has had systemic issues. Last year, it was going through its fair share of troubles as well:

• The CC media kit, which CCs relied on to have access to splash arts and other resources to produce content with, was not being updated. This reached the point that I ended up personally enlisting the help of a dataminer so I could produce my own media kit to provide to other CCs.
• CC rewards were not being distributed remotely on time, with one set of rewards being distributed so late that the premium battlepass reward (this was when all CCs got premium battlepasses, after all) was only days from being already expired. This led to multiple CCs paying out-of-pocket to upgrade their battlepasses, which should have been a program reward.
• It was difficult to contact anyone managing the CC program, because there was nobody assigned to managing it - our best point of contact was the Mechabreak CC program manager going above and beyond to also help out on the Snowbreak side in their free time.

Concerns about these issues were raised as early as January of last year, but nothing was done for six months, leading Nonpon and I to make these issues public. Just like magic, a public statement and promise to do better was posted one week later and changes were made, at which point I personally wrote about the positive changes and endorsed the new state of the CC program.

For reasons that you can probably guess, I am no longer able to stand by this endorsement. To anyone looking to apply to the Snowbreak CC program in its current state, all I can say is this: unless you are already an extremely large and established content creator, your work will not be valued, and you will not receive the support that the promotional recruitment material promises. Take your talents and apply them to a game that will properly reward you for your effort. It breaks my heart to say this, but Snowbreak: Containment Zone, in its current state, is not that game.

Unlike the current situation, the original issues with the CC program leaned more towards general dysfunction rather than a seemingly intentional dismantling of a system that was already functioning well. The ship had been righted, and all that was needed was to continue things as they were. Nothing needed to change. Unfortunately though, it appears that less than one year after issuing a public promise to do better by their CCs, the lessons learned have either already been forgotten or intentionally ignored. But just like the last time the Snowbreak CC program ran into issues, it seems that nothing will meaningfully change for the better unless this is brought to light for all to see yet again.