Mass banning on Godus Steam forum

Hi Simon,




Thank you for your response. In your words I see you threading the needle carefully between conciliation and avoiding blame on either side. Moving forward constructively requires leaving grievances in the past and I see the wisdom in your doing this. This is something I, however, find difficult to do in this instance. In terms of future interactions I will not be litigating this any further although I will probably post this response to you (but not your correspondence with me) to various relevant threads. I suppose you could see that as an accepting of terms but really I'm just continuing with my previously stated position of giving your new leadership a fair chance as I have done for every major staffing change at 22Cans. I hope you are also aware based on my treatment of Aynen and Muir when they visit these forums that I have never accosted them despite my concerns about their moderation behaviour.




There are a couple of points that I want to make and leave on the table not as a request that I will be pursuing but merely as recognition of issues that I do not believe your response addresses. This is my way of saying I accept your response and move on but I don't cede the ground on which I stand:




David is a representative of 22Cans and as a representative of that company he took to these forums and the Steam forums to make the following statement:




"As of yesterday, Mandrake, Mindless and Hardly took to the steam forums and practically bullied one of our newer members for liking the game. Just because someone likes the game doesn’t make them a troll, just because some disagrees with your opinion doesn’t mean you can hurl abuse at them.

Bullying is completely unacceptable and downright shameful in any culture. This is something that we will not stand for."




I have previously said that this statement is slanderous as it mischaracterises our behaviour and ascribes an intent and coordination that did not exist. His response suggests we behaved in a socially unacceptable way. For my part the frequency and tone of my responses I believe refutes his characterisation. One does not conclude an abusive bullying rant with "But if you enjoy the game that is great. Keep playing it, keep doing your videos and keep posting constructive feedback for the development team. Our experience is that it will be flat out ignored and not even responded to but I wish you luck. " Whether or not he believed these words at the time (as you state in your response) you need to consider whether 22Cans under your leadership stands by those words now in light of what you've read about this incident. If they are not the strongly held views of your company you should renounce them and apologise. I appreciate this would leave Dave somewhat exposed and that you may not want to do that but ultimately he should have been more careful about what statements he made and what evidence he posted in support of those statements. In seeking the fairest outcome I don't think it is reasonable to expect Mandrake, Mindless and me to let stand factually incorrect statements and as such Dave should be the one to give ground. I hope you agree that relying solely on characterisations of a person's statements without referring to their actual words is dangerous and strong allegations should be backed by strong evidence. That Dave chose to do this and declined opportunities to retrospectively support his statements with evidence is in my opinion a poor decision. A brave and honest man with the courage of his convictions would own his statements or renounce them. It may seem harsh to accuse Dave of cowardice and dishonour and I don't believe he is such (in fact he very likely is protecting somebody else) but we are left with the fact he has refused both paths (apology and evidence) away from this situation and as such he has stained his own character.




I also have the following suggestions for improving the steam forums:



•Consider refreshing the moderation team. I don't say this out of malice or seeking revenge but the team needs more diversity of outlook. The situation would be much improved by appointing an additional moderator who the community sees as one of them and respects. Don't take this as an application for the job, I have no interest, but there may be others who are suitable.
•We need codified rules for the steam forums that everyone understands and supports. The basic tenant should be that people should feel safe to post their opinions positive or negative without being banned, edited, deleted, insulted or attacked. In developing and implementing such rules the community should be encouraged to self moderate. It is better for a community member to rush to a person's defence than for the moderator to have to do so. People should be encouraged to post in the appropriate sub thread but if they want their post on the front page that should be their choice. The practice of terming disagreeing with someone as "flamebaiting" and strongly held opinions as "rage posting" needs to stop.
•Where moderators feel like someone is being unfairly criticised for their views such that they may feel unsafe those moderators should invite people who have made contrary statements to clarify their opinions such that they are less accusatory and critical of the individual as opposed to their views. Ultimately people need to defend their own opinions on forums but those debating should be prepared to make clear that their arguments are directed at a persons opinions and not a person.




My last point on the steam forums is that there are some serious ass hats there and people who need to express themselves in different ways and I'm not ignoring that reality. It will be much easier to improve the standard of argument if we move beyond the question of banning and deleting and focus on debating the quality and tenor of people's words.




Ultimately, as you have noted in your response, what will move the community/22Cans relationship forward is new meaningful information followed by delivery of concrete results. We've been here before and I hope you don't take offense when I say we have every expectation you will fail. This should not be taken as an insult, we have assessed the difficulty of your task, the resources you have to call on, and the barriers standing in your way and I believe I speak for the majority when I say you will almost certainly come up short. However, as I said about Moo when he took over the reins as lead designer - there is great honour in knowingly taking on an impossible task - and so as long as I see you striving to redeem GODUS I will see your quest as honourable. If you are successful we as a community will be here to sing your praises and if you fail we will observe that too. I believe this is fair and I hope you agree. Communicating openly with us is a great first step and I hope you continue in this vein. It would be great to get more 22canners back on the forums and if there are changes we can make that would allow that to happen perhaps you or Colin can post about that in the future.




It should be about 9pm where you are (give or take) so I hope you have a good weekend.

Consider refreshing the moderation team. I don't say this out of malice or seeking revenge but the team needs more diversity of outlook.