Montreal-based indie workers at Dynasty Loop allegedly owed $2M in pay

Roughly 20 workers at Montreal-based indie studio Dynasty Loop are looking for answers — and money — after months of missed paychecks, four workers told Polygon. Rania Oueslati is the CEO and studio’s chief executive officer. According to people who have been affected, the company owes workers and contractors over $2 million in unpaid pay, bonuses and expenses. Polygon also reviewed the work chats and documents. The employees spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. They told Polygon that they had been asked to return their equipment, and they have not been allowed to use the Montreal office space. The studio told them they were not laid off, but they’ve gone without an expected timeline for repayment or any work to do in the meantime.

Oueslati founded Dynasty Loop in 2020 with the intention of creating NFT and gaming projects at Montreal’s studio. Dynasty Loop hadn’t announced those projects publicly, quietly working through its design projects, workers said. Polygon spoke to workers who said they were impressed by the team’s cooperation. The problems started after a holiday party in December. Oueslati and management originally told staff that payments from November would be delayed due to a change in Dynasty Loop’s financial software, workers said. Employees were not paid until January. They were also expected to endure the financial hardship that this created. It made Christmas season particularly difficult. A worker explained to Polygon how they could not buy presents for friends and family while saving money to pay rent and food. Employees were also periodically locked out of the office and business software like Microsoft Teams, making it more difficult to get work done, the employees who spoke to Polygon said, corroborated with screenshots from Dynasty Loop’s Discord server.

“We had to just keep working through it as if everything was fine,” one worker told Polygon. “It was demoralizing. It was hard to focus.”

Dynasty Loop workers claimed they were paid a lump-sum for their missed January pay. No one else has received this payment since. In the first few days, the January payments were made in chaos. According to the screenshots from the chat, workers questioned the management on Discord about timelines. Workers said that after the office was opened, access to software was restored briefly and then everything was cut off once again. In late February, management told staff they must return all equipment to Dynasty Loop — but that this was not a layoff. Many employees expressed concern about the cost of driving to work to retrieve their equipment. This was due to missed wages of thousands. Beyond that, there was no instruction as to how or when workers were to continue work and, more importantly, when they’d get paid.

“A lot of people were asking, ‘Are we laid off? Are we being fired? What does this mean?’ We had a lot of questions. Many people had to drive quite some distance to reach their destination. After not being paid for so long, people didn’t have gas money or money on their OPUS [transit] cards,” one worker said.

Management informed workers that funds were flagged by the government and frozen indefinitely, allegedly due to Oueslati’s immigration status, workers said. Most employees have filed wage complaints with Montreal’s Commission on Workplace Standards, Fairness, Health and Safety (CNESST), they told Polygon. CNESST representative declined to comment as the results of filings and files are confidential.

Polygon heard from workers that they had stayed because they believed in the team and were progressing on projects. According to another worker, the salary was good when it finally arrived. One employee stated that Dynasty Loop kept hiring new workers despite months of missing payments.

On Feb. 23, management proposed a “lien agreement” between Oueslati and staff, which was intended to ensure that anyone who signed it would get paid when funds were available, workers said, as corroborated by Discord chat logs provided to Polygon. (A lien can be placed on a debtor’s assets to ensure their debts are paid; typically, they’re issued federally or provincially for unpaid taxes, but people can also register liens under Canada’s Personal Property Security Act.) Dynasty Loop’s proposed agreement, which Polygon has reviewed, would place a lien over the company’s assets and bank accounts until the $2 million owed to staff and other vendors has been paid out. According to the agreement, staff could wait for up to six months before filing complaints or taking legal action with CNESST. The agreement also forbade people signing it to discuss the lien or payment issues with prospective employers, media, and on social networks. Importantly, it did not promise that employees would receive their wages. The lien agreement was issued to staff on Feb. 26, and the next day, Dynasty Loop management, without Oueslati, held a Q&A session with staff, giving everyone until the morning of Feb. 28 to sign, workers who attended told Polygon.

“Leadership, who were answering questions, were trying their best. They sounded tired,” one worker said. “It was difficult for everyone involved. It wasn’t just us not getting paid — leads, HR, anyone employed is not receiving wages.”

Employees were left in the dark until March 6, when a senior staff member posted in the work Discord to inform everyone of delays on the lien’s registration, allegedly on Oueslati’s end, according to a screenshot of the conversation. Oueslati replied hours later, denying the delay but stating she would not pay fees for filing the lien’s registration with the government. She also joked that the situation would make a “hit movie,” suggesting the “actor who played Anna” (presumably Anna Delvey in Invention of AnnaTo star as her.

Management, who was organizing the lien agreement, emailed Oueslati along with the whole staff to confirm she wouldn’t register the lien. She also released everyone who signed the agreement. Management also looked to confirm whether insurance issued through the company was still active, and everyone’s upset about the hoops they need to go through to get paid, do their taxes, and file for unemployment, according to the email reviewed by Polygon.

“Since […]Leadership team [has] no control, power, or authority to provide any of the listed above, we are in the total incapacity to do more or provide answers to the employees impacted by your inactions,” management wrote in the email. This email stated that employees were not receiving their pay, as well as the documents they needed to file taxes.

Oueslati, when we reached her for comments, said that she wasn’t the one handling the matter and pointed us toward her lawyer. The lawyer, Bernard Colas, has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment.

Former Dynasty Loop workers are now left without anything to show for their work at the studio — not financial compensation or portfolio pieces to show in job interviews. Polygon talked to several workers who were struggling to provide food and rent for their families. Each person lost more than four paychecks that added up to several thousand dollars. Polygon was told by one worker that they needed to borrow money with their family to provide for their children.

“It’s been rough,” one worker told Polygon. “I had to cut back a lot, part of it because of inflation going up. Food was also cut. My savings helped me. To pay rent, I had to take out a loan with my mother.”

Oueslati is now referring impacted individuals to her lawyer and she has stopped talking directly with them, Polygon workers reported.

“[This situation] has reduced my faith in humanity,” one person said. “Other than having my finances put in a precarious position and straining my personal friendships due to finances, I have become even more of a pessimist. There’s always this looming fear that those words are being used to placate me and manipulate me into excusing or defending someone.”