I think there's a combo of "I like doing this work", maybe not fully grokking a residual structure, and ultimately feeling like all of the work is contractor base.

It's kind of like how everyone in games was so underpaid, but since everyone was like that you just kind of accept that as the status quo (especially if you're just out of college and don't even really grok that you can't live on a ramen budget forever)

> WHY are they agreeing to this?

Because they don't know that they won't actually get any money at the time they agree.

The "creativity industry" scamming people is a tale as old as the industry.

In the cases where theres scamming involved, thats scamming. If the industry generally has a high scamming %, then demand upfront pay. This might result in some lost work, I have had a couple of clients I demanded upfront pay from, and I have also lost some due to it, but I will not be scammed

> It could just be that im out of touch with reality, but WHY are they agreeing to this? arent they the very problem? just demand money for a service.

My guess is desperation.

There are a lot of people that want to be artists. Some of these people find any other type of work to be unbearable. So they're either deciding to roll over and take it, since the alternative of working any other non-art-related job is too painful, or they're incorrectly thinking that if they do a good enough job on one project, they'll earn a name for themselves and get paid handsomely on the next.

> "I don't feel like it" doesn't sound like desperation to me. It sounds more like entitlement.

What a condescending attitude towards someone trying to break into a difficult industry, who has probably been aiming for this for some time, and likely went to college for that express purpose.

Long-standing entitlement is still entitlement. Expensive entitlement is still entitlement.

> but WHY are they agreeing to this?

Probably did not.

As someone else pointed out if your are contracted to a studio, and the studio goes out of business, you will not get paid.

It does not have to be like that...

demand upfront pay. I have done that myself. I have also lost business to it, but such is life.

Cause people want to feed their kids

Not everyone has the luxury of waiting around for a nice gig to pop up after being fired or having a contract end

But working for literally nothing doesn’t feed the kids.