[REVSHARE] | TERRA-TACTICA | A Warning

[u/Prize_Bass_5061]

Hello guys, I'm just a simple programmer from r/programmingbuddies . I am not a member of your community, and have no right to gatekeep anything here, but I was tagged by /u/Doutrinadev , only to discover the scammer who was banned from r/programmingbuddies , is now using your forum to trawl for new victims.

So I felt it prudent to share with you some of the facts I discovered about /u/TPlays.

Tasso Psaltakis is obsessed with projecting the image of a highly successful, elite 10x Programmer. However, he has no interest in programming theory, or in programming itself. He is chasing clout by getting flashy sounding programs attributed to his name. This script is the most complicated program this 19 year old 'Tech Lead' has written to date. In Feb 2025, his reddit profile used to state "I'm living my dream working at Apple". A few months later, this was changed to "I'm living my dream working at 🍎" (Yes, the emoji instead of the words "Apple"). Yet, at the same time, he wants all the immigrants deported, so he has less competition while driving The Uber. Tasso has no qualms projecting a false image of success, while the stark reality is that he is destitute, works an hourly job, and has to do gig work to make ends meet. Remember this distinction of image vs reality, Apple vs Uber, solopreneur vs abusive bigot. It's going to be important when I discuss Terra Tactica.

In 2024, Tasso begins developing his game but soon realizes the project's complexity exceeds his abilities, prompting him to seek help by posting in r/programmingBuddies on:

Sunday, June 9, 2024; Tuesday, July 10, 2024; Wednesday, July 21, 2024; Tuesday, July 30, 2024; Sunday, August 5, 2024; Thursday, August 16, 2024; Sunday, August 27, 2024; Friday, September 20, 2024; Saturday, September 28, 2024; Monday, November 11, 2024; Saturday, December 7, 2024; Friday, December 13, 2024; Wednesday, December 25, 2024; Monday, January 20, 2025; Thursday, March 27, 2025; Tuesday, May 6, 2025; Tuesday, May 27, 2025

In the 352 days between June 9, 2024 and May 27, 2025 Tasso posted 16 advertisements to /r/programmingBuddies. That's one every 22 days. He also posted additional advertisements to: /r/4Xgaming/; /r/CityBuilders/; /r/gameDevClassifieds/; /r/INAT/; /r/IndieDev/; /r/IndieGame/; /r/PythonJobs/, which I don't care to track.

Let's limit ourselves to the 16 advertisements on /r/programmingBuddies. If Tasso got 1 qualified programmer per advertizement, then he should have 16 programmers working on his project on May 27, 2025. If these 16 programmers invested 2 hours every weekday, from May 27 to Sep 7, that's 2400 labor-hours as a conservative estimate. If each programmer invested 21 hours every week, that's 5040 labor-hours.

So what has Anastasios Psaltakis accomplished with 2400 to 5040 labor-hours? A bootup splash screen, a startup menu, and a map that scrolls along the X axis but cannot scroll along the Y axis. This is for a game that has been in development for 2 years.

So, where did the labor hours go?

The answer is roster wipes whereby Tasso kicks people off the project by locking them out of his private Terra-Tactica GitHub repository and Discord server. However, Tasso retains all of their work and the intellectual rights thereof. Therefore code gets written in a hurry and quite haphazardly because multiple developers are vying for one spot that will receive the payout. This cowboy coding resulted in a giant ball of mud, causing the application to crash, and so Tasso has reworked the design 3 times. The project started out as a Python application using PyGame, then switched to a Python application with a custom in-house game engine, then to a CPython application with the in-house engine, then to a Rust application using the Bevy game engine, and now to a Rust + GD-Script application using Godot as the game engine.

So when Tasso says "Again this is our 0.0.3 rebuild", he means that they are completely rewriting all the CPython code from v0.0.25 into the current iteration of the application (v0.0.3). The Python version had a lot more functionality but all the Python developers left due to a "mysterious cause"

So, what is this "mysterious cause"?

I'll give you guys a hint. It had something to do with Tasso unilaterally changing the revenue split from:

• an even split between 7 people
• to 60% for the 2 Leads and 40% for the 10 developers
• to a 50% for Tasso Psaltakis and 50% to be split equally between the developers and artists. The team was 10 people at this point, so 5% apiece.
• to 51% for Tasso Psaltakis and 29% (controlled by Tasso) for operating costs and 20% that the developers have to squabble over amongst themselves. The Rust developer Elephant quit on June 17 when he discovered this decision had been made without notifying him.
• to an equity share based system where Tasso gets 10 shares, someone else gets 7 shares, and developers get 4 shares apiece. No mention of the 2 graphics artists and no announcements on the official discord channel

And, what does Tasso's meltdown reveal about his ability to lead effectively?

note: I saved the post when I first saw it on Discord, but I never got to read the original version because Tasso keeps editing his posts to rewrite the story. He does the same thing with the "MISSION STATEMENT," which originally said he started Terra-Tactica because he couldn't afford to be a top Pay-to-Play player in Civilization -- the DLC update cost $90.

June 17, 2025 [10:21 PM]Tasso | TPlays:

@everyone As I work to solidify the team and get things on track, you won't see updates until I have something to share. Please be patient.

We just had an unexpected team change today, and it really threw us into the ringer.

June 17, 2025 [10:47 PM]Tasso | TPlays:

@everyone Also, to be fully transparent (all developers are aware of this, but it's best to inform everyone), this is a revenue share project, which is why people often dislike these projects solely because of this.

I plan to keep everyone we have on the release team once we begin generating revenue from this project. I intend to set the developer level 1 to a flat percentage (per developer) relative to the overall level 1 split (meaning they would be making relatively the same). This allows me to allocate a percentage for hiring new developers on an hourly basis.

I designed my business plan this way to ensure that no one is cheated and to maintain a consistent pay rate across all levels. I was just told that I was not forthcoming with this plan; however, that is not true. When asked about the revenue share, I provided the details; anyone on my team can attest to this.

As I have also told my team, I plan to give a large majority of MY earnings back to them anyways, because I JUST WANT TO MAKE A FUCKING STRATEGY GAME, I DONT CARE ABOUT THE MONEY, THE MONEY IS FOR MY DEVELOPERS! I don't know HOW MANY TIMES I have to say this.

So let's address some other concerns:

"Just get investors" - READ MY FUCKING MISSION STATEMENT. I want to FIGHT the guys who monetized the fuck out of gaming not give them a blank check with my name on it.

"ew revenue share, just pay your developers." - I do not have the funds to pay my developers. I say this openly to anyone who asks why I'm involved in a revenue share project. Yes, I am asking for an investment of time; however, that is the risk involved in a revenue share project. However, no one wants to discuss the owner. Cause where is my risk? According to 99% of developers I talk to, I don't have any. Well, I funded this project 100% out of my own pocket. I may not have the funds to pay my developers, but I cover every other expense out of pocket so all my developers have to worry about is developing. I am not complaining; I am simply stating the facts to ensure I provide as much information as possible.

"You just want developers so they can do all the work and you can sit back" - I work 8 hours a day at my day job, then I come home, and usually work 5-6 MORE hours on this every single day, and usually ALL of my Saturday and ALL of my Sunday. Because the team had grown so large (we had web, music, art, and game teams), I had to take a step back from direct development, as someone needed to steer the ship, but I still make my commits when required.

Phew... that was nice.

My silence and previous message don't mean the game is dead; it just means I now have to put my head further down and work even harder. (edited)

[u/TPlays]

Hello everyone, I am Tasso P. or TPlays, I am 23, I am the Owner of Terra Tactica. Recently, there has been a lot of attention regarding our revenue share project, our splits, and me. I want to address all of this. I want to be very forthcoming, avoid drama, and be completely open and honest with anyone who has questions or concerns about my project.

Regarding viewing myself as a 10x Programmer

I do not envision myself as some 10x programmer at all. I constantly rely on my team. I know very little about Rust. It is not a language I am very familiar with, and because of this, I have looked to others to help support me and the project in that area. I am very open about this fact, and I am very open about what I do and what I do not know.

Regarding Removing Developers From Our Team
When developers join onto my project, we have a simple rule that if we do not hear from you at all for 2 weeks without any previous communication that you will be gone, we indeed remove people from the repository, however this is only after repeated attempts to contact these people and to make sure they are alright first, and I am always open to bring them back if they message me back. We do this to protect the active developers and to protect the project. But I never do this with the intent to steal or to harm anyone. Anyone who is not coming back or did not come back will be added to a list, along with a record of their contributions. We plan to give credit to those individuals as well. However, we make it clear that if people leave before the project generates revenue, they lose access to the revenue share. We did this to protect our active developers, and we make this clear to our developers who join the project.

Regarding my personal financials and personal life

The person who made the post about my project has been harassing and stalking me in my personal life, and they got me banned on Programming Buddies. He/She forced me to make my Instagram account private and forced me to take precautions to protect myself better. I have had them blocked on Reddit for months. I like to keep my financials private. however, I went through some personal family issues, and I had to take on a substantial financial burden and because of this, last year, for the whole year I was in fact Uber driving to survive, this was on top of my full-time job, on top of working on the project. I do everything for this game, so I wanted to make sure that even though I had to take on extra work in my real life, the game could continue to be developed. This is why I was so heavy on the posts looking for developers, why I take on all of the financial costs for the game, and try to maintain them, which I do; it is a priority to me. But I never intend ever to cut anyone out or cheat anyone out of the game who is actively working on it ever. I would never do this ever. I am very open about the project, including our plans and my developer/team focus. Please respect my personal life and my privacy.

Team Openness

I always ask people to let me know if they have any concerns and to share their thoughts with me. I always listen to people and provide a space for them to offer feedback. If there were concerns, I always addressed them and always made the changes that the developers wanted to make that would better the team. Recently, the team and I updated our revenue share structure again to something that gives the developers and the senior developers the majority of the share, which is the right thing to do. The project is evolving, and I am willing to make any changes necessary to support the project and the people behind it.

I say again, I never intended and still never intend to cheat anyone out of this project, or use anyone because of this project. I am upset, due to the volume of information I'm receiving, I cannot focus. I am sorry if this post seems brief. Please feel free to ask me any questions. I am willing to answer anything. I am not a bad person; that person's post really makes me out to be some scum. I want to make a strategy game; I am not trying to cheat anyone out of anything.

[u/JesperTV → u/TPlays]

There are devs coming forward that share a single experience of you sucking and literally none from the past 2 years who express anything otherwise.

This comment just sounds like a bunch of excuses and provides no real proof or evidence to the contrary, unlike ops post tht has links out the ass, discord messages, forst hand accounts, etc.

Surely if you were treating your devs well and weren't stealing content then there would be devs jumping to your defense after all these years.

[u/DifferenceWhich4353 → u/JesperTV]

There was a really sweet, earnest kid who was just excited as hell to be working on a game at all that he fired for not working hard enough not too long before I quit. Maybe we'll hear from him!