Resignation

[Astrum]

I'm not sure if this is one of the hardest posts I've ever had to make or one of the easiest. I've been here at SteamGamers for years now and have grown very fond of the people here and those who have long since left. I did take a sabbatical some time ago for personal reasons but I still loved the community, for all its faults and promise, and still felt welcome. This time is different. It's hard for me to accept that this is the end of an era, although part of me realizes it ended long before this. This decision was made easier by recent events which have severed any notion of camaraderie I felt towards the community, although not necessarily individual people within it.

 

I've always been one to focus on the technological progress of the community rather than the political progress. The thought of unifying our ban management system with our forum database, or creating a web application to administer servers whilst providing useful information for players thus increasing the usefulness of the website beyond general conversation excited me. It was a labor of love, one that most of us understood. We never thought the community needed to be profitable, merely self-sufficient to attain its goals. With this recent change I can no longer ignore the political farce that SteamGamers has become.

 

Truth be told I haven't done much work for this community since GarfieldH bought it. Now you may be asking why even though the answer should be plainly obvious to most people. This was never a labor of love for him. This was a challenge, a challenge to attain power by buying his way in. Once he "owned" the entirety the challenge was met and bested, and he cut and run.

 

For Haggard this was a passion, a passion which unfortunately collided with his personal life forcing him to make a tough decision which ultimately ended in the sale of the community. Haggard was a true joy to work with. I remember staying up late talking to him and various others about how we could make the best community we possibly could with the funnest servers we could muster for the members. GarfieldH was the equivalent of an MBA with only a vague inkling of the technology that kept the community running, the kind of person who wants feature X, Y, and Z at the expense of the engineer's soul who is working 80 hour weeks but only being paid for 40. With Haggard it was like working with an artist, with GarfieldH it was like working for a clueless boss. This is the reason why SteamGamers doesn't have feature X, Y, and Z. I have the time and the knowledge, just not the will.

 

I personally have no qualms against either Amit or Charles. They have a business venture and it's their prerogative. They arrived in a storm. However, be careful about how strongly you flap your wings lest you cause a storm yourself. This community is the marrying of both forums as well as game servers, a self-contained ecosystem where friends can discuss the latest news and play games on well regulated servers. The down side to this is that this community has extremely high maintenance requirements. With a forum you can set it up, gain a user base, and allow moderators to clean it up. With this community you need to constantly improve the servers, offer new options, and keep the website relevant to the gaming. I personally can't put in my free time to do this when I know someone else is getting paid. Especially not when access has already inexplicably and silently - and poorly - been revoked without prior discussion. Even though Haggard had the final decision in this community, it was never run like a dictatorship. You posted that not much will change in the operation of SteamGamers, however, your actions have thus far proven otherwise. Be very wary of what you do.

 

In all of my time in this community I have never had a true problem with anyone. I'm even still friends with Suri. Perhaps it's my congenial nature. This changed with the sale of the community for the second time though. As a personal message to GarfieldH I'd like to say you have betrayed this entire community. Not only that but you betrayed the people, past and present, who poured hundreds if not thousands of hours not into gaming, but into building upon this community and keeping it running and relevant. There was no prior discussion with us or the community to see if this is even what we wanted. You took the community that was entrusted to you and made this decision on our behalf without our consent, opinions, or advice. Your unapologetic and quite frankly cavalier attitude towards this sale has sickened me. I honestly don't care about your reasons for doing this, it's unforgivable.

 

I own SteamGamers.com all it's content and everything posted on it. Feel free to waste money trying to hire a lawyer!

 

You absolutely do not, nor have you ever, owned everything on SteamGamers. Posts are copyrighted by their respective authors and the copyright is not transferred to you merely because you wish it. Do you also think that you own the maps on the servers that were picked up from fpsbanana, or even the maps that Paul made for Minigames, or the scripts and mods that I wrote, or the countless other pieces of work created by other people? No, you do not. We own the copyrights to our respective works and you have been granted the ability to use these, but have never received the copyright for them and hence do not own them.

 

The web server is located in Canada, the game servers in the US, and you are in the UK, all signatories of the Berne Convention. You fundamentally misunderstand what you bought and what you sold. You owned a lease to the domain name, web server, and game servers, a license to vBulletin 4 (although not vBulletin 3), and you also currently own (copyright) your own works which mainly consist of posts. What you bought was a pre-built community, not the content. You're granted the same abilities that were granted to Haggard, but you do not own the vast swaths of content that has been generated. Don't misconstrue this as a legal threat, merely a correction to an incredibly vain and ignorant statement.

 

In closing I'm not going to beguilingly say I wish SteamGamers the best in the future. I have made my peace and closed that chapter in my life and no longer care if it succeeds or fails. Neither will bring me joy or remorse at this point. I'd like to personally thank those of you who I have grown close to over the years and that I will cherish the memories I have, the joyful as well as the tragic. Many of you have had a deep impact in my life, some of who will never read this, and for that I'm grateful.

 

Regards,

Astrum

[PotshotPolka]

Well ladies and gents, it's make a big post and expose Garfield for the witless cur he is time, not that it hasn't been done before. If you have trouble investing more than 3-4 minutes of your time to read this and Astrum's resignation before posting, I kindly suggest you eat glass.

 

What I did, not how I ran the community. So I'm still confused by your post before... Of course people are going to moan about it, I never expected they wouldn't. I expected just what I got. Amit, Charles, myself will make a great new team.

 

For their sake, they should cut you off like the cancer you are, but my inner anarchist says it'll be lulzy if you stay onboard to mismanage every attempt they make at reeling in this place. I would have been willing to sit on the bench to observe and critique what Amit and Charles do here, but now I’ve decided fist-pumping in Russian bars should be how I spend all my free time. Your decision to retain an actual administrative post here after throwing us to the wolves has changed all of that, so I think this is now the appropriate time to share a little pent up rage.

I’ll leave the niceties of explaining why the work many of us have done here has gone without implementation or reward, I’ll just go for the jugular.

 

 

Exactly what I mean. Ungrearful. I should of let Haggard sell out a long time ago. This community has changed so much. Me and the team worked our butts off to get SG back from the shit. This is how you thank us. Welcome to SG 2011.

 

Yes, you're clearly no different from Haggard. His decision to prioritize feeding his CHILDREN over a gaming community was clearly unethical, as was listening to the BDs suggestion to transfer the community to a senior member rather than to compromise us by selling it off. I'm glad you lived up to his legacy.

 

Many AOs and even some BDs (as the above post can clearly attest to) had given up on you months ago, seeing as how you laughed off all attempts at discourse, reforming rules that had been defunct since their inception, but only came of importance after certain people attempted to begin exercising executive power to ban dissidents and perceived rivals.

 

But how we should thank you though? That you are insane enough to demand thanks for creating virtually no changes in the year you owned the place, and then trading it all for a laptop worth less than a fraction of all the funds and man-hours pumped into this community by others is simply mind-baffling. I think besides getting rid of HGs and LGs (something we CAs/LGs lobbied for first, but inexplicably took months for you to implement) you accomplished nothing of tangible value (I take that back, I LOVE our twitter page).

 

To list a few reasons why I hope your cat gets dropped in a wheelie bin by some disgruntled cunt:

 

Your pathological aversion to criticism: I think I've received somewhere in the ballpark of 50 PMs from AOs complaining (or laughing, or both) about you passing the buck on virtually every criticism that comes your way onto someone else, like for instance the BDs, or the AOs, or Totally Censored Gamers, or even the unwashed masses. This could be, of course, them just slagging off. In fact that's what I think you ALWAYS say it is, thus chalking up all dissent to ad-hominem slander.

 

T-N-S (the fact that it's actually censored speaks verses itself): I quite honestly don't give a flying fuck seeing as how the management never went out of the way to prove allegations about information theft and attacks on our servers even at the BD level. I liked Suri personally, but we butted heads constantly and as an administrator he shared your pathological need for supremacy, which explains the schism. Why you then took it upon yourself to begrudge not only Suri's personal friends who went over to manage his community but the members themselves as a whole can only be explained by your goal of dominating (cough, extensive talks with EGO elders about buy out, cough) the gaming community "market". I'd give an explanation of why I use the quotation marks for our new overlords, but they're smart guys, let them figure it out that this place is a black hole for money.

 

The fact remains you spent more time and energy angrily defending your actions against us than on any other issue. The CAs and AOs, were forced in many situations to challenge your treatment of Suri and Co. Not because of any personal sympathies, but rather because banning people on the pretext of "I don't fucking like them" is equitable to wiping your ass with all prior forum rules and norms on impartiality towards users, and we weren't fucking having it.

 

Admin Applications: After nothing but constant complaints on our part that the entire "apprentice" program was mired with useless red tape (ALSO BLAMED ON THE CAs), many propositions for new, more intuitive admin programs (culminating in the approved one that's been virtually ready for use since FUCKING NOVEMBER) were advanced by CAs/AOs for the betterment of the community. You on the other hand suggested that you should simply pick admins you personally like, and remove them as you please. This wouldn't be a problem I suppose in a perfect world, but you sort of proved yourself incapable of being the messianic figure of our dreams.

 

Admin complaints and punishment: Nothing really changed here, besides of course that selective punishment often violated the three strike rule entirely.

 

Servers: If there's one thing we HAVE done well, it's giving the BDs and AOs free reign on server upkeep. They deserve medals for actually coming down enough to listen to and reply in full to every suggestion (yes, even the fucking stupid ones) of how the servers can be improved. For a fucking wonder it often resulted in lots of innovation. Who would have thunk consensus could produce something unilateral dictation couldn't?

 

This community has changed so much.

 

Nothing fucking changed (unless you think registering minecraftgamers.com makes you responsible for all the work that others put into setting it up, especially since the server was originally privately hosted no less.) The only striking difference between then and now are certain users pathological need to turn OTF into /b/, an issue that in ALL seriousness was ignored by you and was allowed to fester to the point I think it began seriously discouraging forum use.

 

Your answer to this problem? Disproportional and selective banning of users of course. Let's ignore the fact that the CoC rules are still vague, open-ended, and generally difficult to enforce, and that they were demonstrated to be so in a thread you deleted somewhere in the ballpark of SIX MONTHS AGO.

 

I could be nostalgic about ZM, and the days of Haggard as Prez, but truth be told I'm not. We had virtually the same rules back then, and the same complaints that have existed about their inadequacy only really gained speed after the guard changed. I can defend Haggard in that not only did I enjoy his company personally, but his willingness to cooperate, and even defer to others is what kept this place operational. Take that kind of character away, and replace it with someone who refuses to accept responsibility for his own actions or step back and let those willing and able to intelligently reform the community's rules and fiscal problems, and you have the gridlock that resulted in a year of nothing happening.

 

------------------------

I really don't have much else to say, I'm simply bitter now. It’s not that I no longer care how things pan out here, but my sheer displeasure towards Garfield's bullshit has finally bested my will to salvage this community from chronic mismanagement. I could end this with warnings of future tyranny, or even a call for a general strike on donations to force this not-quite-hostile takeover from essentially doing EVERYTHING Garfield wanted to do, but of course with less derp. You all have fun deciding whether or not that's a wise decision, and then realizing your opinion is for all intensive purposes, irrelevant.

 

 

On that note, remember that it was all for the lulz, even the really shitty parts.

 

 

 

 

And seriously, fuck furries.

[Irish]

NOOOOOO Astrum bad

[ScubaToaster]

=[

[Dracula]

Well writen.

[Kennith]

Exactly what I mean. Ungrearful. I should of let Haggard sell out a long time ago. This community has changed so much. Me and the team worked our butts off to get SG back from the shit. This is how you thank us. Welcome to SG 2011.

 

Rofl, and how about the people who brought it up? The only thing really to remember them by was the LG group and you took that away. Nobody gives a shit anymore about how this community started or who put their time and effort to get it to what it was today. Yeah, we all appreciate what you've done by buying it from Haggard and trying to keep it from the hands of a stranger, I back you upped on that decision plenty of times before, but you don't listen to any of your own trusted BDs + AOs (former included). SG got to where it was for a reason, it was because those former admins knew what they were doing. I thank everyone 2007-2009 for making what SG is/was.

 

There is countless amount of money you did spend on the community, but you have to know, you can't just run it on money. You can't go everywhere with just money.

 

Many AOs and even some BDs (as the above post can clearly attest to) had given up on you months ago, seeing as how you laughed off all attempts at discourse, reforming rules that had been defunct since their inception, but only came of importance after certain people attempted to begin exercising executive power to ban dissidents and perceived rivals.

 

QUOTE FOR FUCKING TRUTH

 

 

Later SG. FEB2007-FEB2011

[Amit]

No one needs to resign..... really.

 

Everything can be solved easily. It's not even a big issue. GF isn't buying you guys out....I'm not buy SG anymore....

 

It's status-quo as you always wanted.....I hope you work together and grow SG. It's got tons of potential and great members.

 

I'll be in touch on MSN + Steam ... and bore you lot with my occasional posts...

 

Cheers.

[Afamad 2.1]

No one needs to resign..... really.

 

Everything can be solved easily. It's not even a big issue. GF isn't buying you guys out....I'm not buy SG anymore....

 

It's status-quo as you always wanted.....I hope you work together and grow SG. It's got tons of potential and great members.

 

I'll be in touch on MSN + Steam ... and bore you lot with my occasional posts...

 

Cheers.

 

You think I'm a great member? That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me! Seriously! Thank you! :bigsmile:

[TheVirus]

You think I'm a great member? That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me! Seriously! Thank you! :bigsmile:

 

Read between the lines.

 

No one needs to resign..... really.

 

Everything can be solved easily. It's not even a big issue. GF isn't buying you guys out....I'm not buy SG anymore....

 

It's status-quo as you always wanted.....I hope you work together and grow SG. It's got tons of potential and great members.

 

I'll be in touch on MSN + Steam ... and bore you lot with my occasional posts...

 

Cheers.

[Afamad 2.1]

Read between the lines.

 

If you need me I'll be crying and eating a gallon of ice cream...