delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Feb 28, 2023 16:24:30 GMT -5
Elect the next producer by vote from the players. I'll go ahead and nominate myself for the position. I'm sure someone will second the motion?
Will I be the first democratically elected Overlor- I mean Producer of Arm? Only you all can make that happen. Grassroots movements for the people by the people.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Feb 28, 2023 16:27:08 GMT -5
After seeing AI-Delerak's answers I agree
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bebop
Clueless newb
Posts: 106
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Post by bebop on Feb 28, 2023 16:28:20 GMT -5
I’ve read Halaster’s post, and I just want to reflect on it for a moment.
This post immediately (and unfortunately, to me), highlights one of the key problems that led to this entire debacle. Staff have entombed themselves into an airtight echo chamber. The player's outcry is muffled from the outside. Starting off the plan posted here states that staff have been invited to decide how staff can do better.
This is painfully tone deaf. There seems to be a continued lack of acknowledgement that staff’s inability to police themselves is exactly what caused this entire situation. The entire thing starts out very staff-centric in the wake of player hurt and outrage. There is only a minor acknowledgement about that in pieces of this announcement. The players did not do this to the staff, the staff did this to the players and they’ve finally had enough.
Point two about reopening the Discord channel is obsolete because again, they’re having a conversation within a vacuum. They’ve effectively banned the dissenting voices who whistle blew their behavior. Staff don’t want to have a discussion with players who don’t fear being removed from the community, because staff can’t levy power over those players. Players aren’t asked to keep things civil in equal measure. Once again the tone is frameworked with more authoritarian threats. Act a certain way or we will ban you too.
The post ends with Halaster thanking staff for enduring this, and other players encouraging them. As a person victimized by staff behavior, reading this is sort of an out of body experience to witness. Once again, it seems completely irrelevant to them that players were abused, treated unfairly and even sexually assaulted by their staff members in person at Armageddon player events or over the very Discord server they’re chatting on. Instead, they continue to put the focus on how staff are of import, frameworking them as the one’s enduring this entire mess that they themselves created.
It also stands to reason that those still trying to play the game are going to once again be in a position to compromise with staff instead of demanding any real change because staff still hold keys to the kingdom and have proven they'll revoke those unfairly. It's not a fair dynamic on which to have a conversation. And I'm not having anymore conversations with tilted power dynamics that shelter sexual predatory behavior.
As for actually fixing things and if it’s possible.
I admit that I was very reluctant to expose this issue with the proof that I had. I tried multiple times to rally staff to action through the proper channels and finally gave up. I was very worried about the playerbase turning on me, how I would handle this with my trauma and the fear of encountering very real life repercussions by the person in question who has proven they will engage inappropriately. However, I now see that this was a bubble that needed to pop. The influx of player solidarity and outrage has been a long time coming and well earned by the staff behavior that led us here.
I can’t overstate my gratitude at the support of the players that have reassured me. Quit the game beside me. Advocated for me and been brave enough to share their own stories and screen shots of mistreatment and sexual harassment. I genuinely hope that the players will stand firm, and not allow staff to over generalize and minimize this issue after a very brief closure of their Discord channel. I am so mystified that staff are choosing to act oblivious to the fact that there was rampant cheating staff-side. Nothing in that announcement even alludes to women players being sexually assaulted and groomed in person with their game as the gateway. Were players obsessively harassed within the context of the game, using OOC information? You’d never know from this post.
Before I even begin to speculate on how the game could be saved or fixed, staff have absolutely got to take accountability for enabling this behavior. They need to apologize and condemn this. They should not be ostracizing, bullying and banning players that choose to speak out to protect themselves and others. The dialogue should include those who have been banned. People should not have been banned in the first place.
(They banned my husband too, by the way. Guilty by association I guess.) They need to take accountability for the rampant cheating and meta-gaming that occurred. They need to take accountability for the fact that they enabled it to a game breaking climax while lying to the players about what kind of roles staff were able to occupy as avatars while creating a deceiving illusion of player agency.
It’s absolutely insulting and a poor choice to continue to act like they cannot understand why people are infuriated or the many ways in which they have obliterated player trust. If this isn’t a put on to try to save face, if they genuinely cannot understand what they’ve done wrong without a Discord chat --- then the echo chamber is no longer a chamber but an echo atmosphere on some other planet that the rest of us don't get to occupy. I don’t know how any staff member could look at a screenshot of a dev who has been accused of harassment many times, read that he’s trying to lure a woman that blocked him back with sponsored roles and say - no problems here!
Stop beating around the bush. Condemn this cheating and harassment. Bring back the players you unfairly banned. Show some genuine remorse for what they’ve endured because you gave a predator a platform with your game.
Then we can talk about how to fix it.
Many of us love the game, but I love my sanity more and I’m not going to participate in a community that abuses me. Banning victims of sexual harassment and bullying them and their spouses on your forum in response to them trying to bring to light what they’ve endured is an absolutely horrible approach. More of the same can’t be the foundation for any real change or protections. You can’t claim to put protections in place for people being abused, when you literally exile those victims from your community.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I did something different this time. I hope staff will too.
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delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Feb 28, 2023 16:36:50 GMT -5
After seeing AI-Delerak's answers I agree What's up with that? Someone sent me a screenshot on discord. It looks fucking hilarious.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Feb 28, 2023 16:38:23 GMT -5
Some guy put your quotes into a chat program and now it mimics it. It eats up GPU like crazy.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Feb 28, 2023 16:40:38 GMT -5
Nail meet head. More than that, I realized that by continuing to participate, even with the intent of avoiding staff interaction and focusing on entertaining players, I was perpetuating a community that refused to acknowledge a cycle of bad behavior, and risked giving those toxic staff members more potential victims.
It was time to make a choice and take a stand, and as much as it broke my fucking heart, it was clear what the right choice was:
Leave.
The only power they left players was to vote with their feet, and that's the power we need to seize until they make things right, or until their ignorance drives the game into the grave.
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Post by nottriste on Feb 28, 2023 18:14:02 GMT -5
Meh, just leaving is so defeatist. It's kind of flattering how Armageddon staff ass kissers obsess over people like Delerak (making a chat bot of him) or triste (accusing all new player accounts of being triste to the point of shutting down their own discord server).
Becoming a bogeyman to a bunch of inbreeding swine means you actually might be the hero. Almost all war heroes are vilified by one side and beloved by the other. I'll continue to call out idiotic behavior as long as these people act idiotic. I really give no shits about what anyone thinks of me, it's the right thing to do, and at least we no longer have a known abuser, Shalooonsh, haunting his victims as a staffer. That is at least one victory for this week.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Feb 28, 2023 19:41:15 GMT -5
I think you're confusing "not playing the game" with "remaining silent" and I very obviously have not been silent.
That said, I've spoken my piece and I deserve some peace, so unless there's some kind of Startling New Development, I'm not interested in repeating myself, or further rehashing the negativity associated with all these memories.
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Post by jcarter on Feb 28, 2023 21:07:57 GMT -5
The stark contrast between this announcement and Halaster's tone after the fact is aggravating. This just happened about an hour later in a group DM. (Halaster = Mukutep) I don't suppose you can somehow conjure evidence to prove this isn't just faked. I don't want to disbelieve you but god it literally looks like the 'Everything we would want if we hated Halaster' image. thanks for asking for verification and calling this out and helping expose it. there's been enough shenanigans over the years. from staff banning the wrong people out of paranoia, tracking pixels, decades+ of sexual harassment and abuse covered up, etc that we don't need to make things up or support false information.
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Post by latrineswimmer on Feb 28, 2023 23:17:17 GMT -5
I do totally believe the Shaloonsh stuff, to be honest. Also his noble was supporting his own staffed clan at all cost, weird play man.
I don't stress too much about the game, nowadays, and only play roles I will enjoy. Some staff hate my guts others are very supportive of the time and effort I have put in.
In the end it's just a game. Play only if you want.
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TedCruz
staff puppet account
Posts: 13
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Post by TedCruz on Mar 1, 2023 5:21:38 GMT -5
"Play only if you want" comes with the caveat that most people don't actually get to play Armageddon. They get to sign up to be a plaything of Armageddon, as shown by the mounting evidence against Shalooonsh (sex pest), Halaster (banned critics and thought about ending the game rather than admitting he worked with a sex pest), Shabago (covering up for a sex pest), Gynesis (allowed to remain on staff after using her relationship with a sex pest to boost her PC), and the other staff (doing absolutely nothing to protest any of this - no resignations, no work stoppage until things are resolved properly, nothing).
So yes, play if you want. Work to become one of Armageddon's few "players" -- the inner circle that gets to mess with decent people that think they are playing the game, but are actually just toys to be manipulated and abused by the actual players.
If you decide to become a "player" of Armageddon then you're not a good person. You're like Bast, who spent the first hour of the official Discord reopening bashing Bebop and blaming the victim. You're like FantasyWriter, Armaddict, Hawke, etc. who choose to bow out at the first sign of conflict and look away, focusing on playing the game while the people they're playing with are being hurt. You're like mansa and many other vets who could use their seniority to protect and advocate for the mass of people harmed by all of this, and put themselves on the chopping block that many others have, only to get banned from the game, but they just sit around proposing minuscule changes so as to not rock the boat too much and draw staff's ire. Or you could apply to staff, who have proven time and again that they are just here to toy with everyone else, and for whatever reason, you want to be a part of that.
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boopsie
staff puppet account
Posts: 4
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Post by boopsie on Mar 1, 2023 5:24:32 GMT -5
It was mentioned in the discord Gynesis is in fact not promoted to prod, just (allegedly) reshaping the discord.
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TedCruz
staff puppet account
Posts: 13
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Post by TedCruz on Mar 1, 2023 5:25:30 GMT -5
It was mentioned in the discord Gynesis is in fact not promoted to prod, just (allegedly) reshaping the discord. Thanks for the correction - fixed my post.
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