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On December 05 2025 17:46 _Spartak_ wrote:
I am not a mod on Steam by choice. Steam forums are a bit too much even for me. Steam fprums aren't moderated because mods are not active, not because Valve is preventing us from silencing criticis or something lol.
Show me those screenshots. Or better yet, tell me your discord or reddit name and let's see which of your posts/comments got removed and why you were banned (if you were banned).
You don't moderate on there because you can't ban people there randomly with no recourse.
I'm sure someone will post something for you, I can't be bothered to dig it up since I deleted most of my amusing screeshots when it was confirmed that Tim Morten is a charlatan and a con man, that was pretty much the final nail for the game after all.
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Steam mods are assigned by developers. I could have been a mod on Steam and I could have been way more harsh there than I have been on reddit or discord. There is nothing that prevents harsh moderation on Steam.
You are not sharing those screenshots either because they don't exist or because they won't prove your point of silencing criticism. The existence of the subreddit itself for the last year is proof enough that we don't silence criticism.
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On December 05 2025 18:10 _Spartak_ wrote:
Steam mods are assigned by developers. I could have been a mod on Steam and I could have been way more harsh there than I have been on reddit or discord. There is nothing that prevents harsh moderation on Steam.
You are not sharing those screenshots either because they don't exist or because they won't prove your point of silencing criticism. The existence of the subreddit itself for the last year is proof enough that we don't silence criticism.
You wouldn't because people can actually question your behaviour on steam and get you a slap on the wrist.
You're just not worth the time. The subreddit is proof enough that you do since people are on other platforms talking about your egregious methods and behaviour on that platform.
You would silence them if you could and you do try, but the overwhelming voice about the game is now very negative partly in thanks to you and your fellow mods.
Karma can be painful.
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Oh, no. People are lying about me on the internet. How can I ever recover? I don't care if people are disappointed in a video game and then decide the best way to channel that disappointment is to cry about non-existent suppression of criticism. If you have proof, you would have posted about it already. JimmyJRaynor posted about how I unfairly removed his AI slop for example.
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On December 05 2025 18:32 _Spartak_ wrote:
Oh, no. People are lying about me on the internet. How can I ever recover? I don't care if people are disappointed in a video game and then decide the best way to channel that disappointment is to cry about non-existent suppression of criticism. If you have proof, you would have posted about it already. JimmyJRaynor posted about how I unfairly removed his AI slop for example.
People are telling the truth about you.
People are more disappointed that Tim Morten is a charlatan.
Your woe is me defence won't change either of those facts.
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Ah, the truth. Famously something you can never provide evidence for.
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Well, Tim and his undead minions made fake reviews. This is a Bureau International des Poids et Mesures kind of charlatan(e). So yeah, that's the truth.
Our boy Sparty was defending these immoral practices. He lied that Tim made only 4 fake reviews (we have proof for at least 12, and he knows it), and he said that's not a big deal.
After folks mentioned this is against Steam ToS, Sparty shrugged it off and said that he has nothing to do with it, and we have to bring it to Steam.
You can easily find it on Discord.
Exemplary moderation. Defending ToS violations and scammy practices.
But if you are to formulate a post title in a way that he finds trolly or misleading, you get banned.
Some people have insane problems with power and responsibility. There's no point in arguing with them. You can only point out their bias and incompetence, so other people won't take them seriously.
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That's obviously misrepresentation of what actually happened but whatever. That's still not what is being claimed (ie. supressing criticism). That topic (among all the others) were widely and freely discussed on the subreddit and discord. So that's still a no on any screenshot or evidence of a post or comment removed for being critical of the game.
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Okay, the weird CCU bump is over. The shape of the bump shows that it was entirely artificial; humans do not log in and out in linear patterns like this. Possibly just a bug, but it could be a test. Weird AF though.
Someone on the Discord noticed and said "ooo stormgate had a player peak yesterday lets gooo
gamers rise up" which, like most messages on the Discord these days, is hard to classify as serious or sarcastic.
EDIT: Gobsmack responded with as close as an "official" Frost Giant response as is possible these days:
Gobsmack wrote:
I'll confirm there is some testing happening on our end that coincides with the spike there but it seems very unlikely to account for even half that number of concurrent players.
It looks suspiciously like botting to me too.
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On December 05 2025 18:10 _Spartak_ wrote:
Steam mods are assigned by developers. I could have been a mod on Steam and I could have been way more harsh there than I have been on reddit or discord. There is nothing that prevents harsh moderation on Steam.
You are not sharing those screenshots either because they don't exist or because they won't prove your point of silencing criticism. The existence of the subreddit itself for the last year is proof enough that we don't silence criticism.
The fact that you don't silence criticism now doesn't mean you didn't silence criticism in the past, back when it had more impact. Nobody cares about the game or about the sub now, so it doesn't really matter what you do.
I remember you aggressively deleting any comments (and sometimes even banning entire accounts) that questioned whether or not voidlegacy was actually Tim Morten. That was a big deal, because voidlegacy often set the tone for the entire sub. Later, when it was 99.9999% proven that voidlegacy actually was Tim Morten, you still deleted some of the posts that brought it up.
So there's that.
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On December 06 2025 04:18 Jeremy Reimer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2025 18:10 _Spartak_ wrote:
Steam mods are assigned by developers. I could have been a mod on Steam and I could have been way more harsh there than I have been on reddit or discord. There is nothing that prevents harsh moderation on Steam.
You are not sharing those screenshots either because they don't exist or because they won't prove your point of silencing criticism. The existence of the subreddit itself for the last year is proof enough that we don't silence criticism. The fact that you don't silence criticism now doesn't mean you didn't silence criticism in the past, back when it had more impact. Nobody cares about the game or about the sub now, so it doesn't really matter what you do. I remember you aggressively deleting any comments (and sometimes even banning entire accounts) that questioned whether or not voidlegacy was actually Tim Morten. That was a big deal, because voidlegacy often set the tone for the entire sub. Later, when it was 99.9999% proven that voidlegacy actually was Tim Morten, you still deleted some of the posts that brought it up. So there's that.
Hey, that was me.
This started during one of the recent AMAs where Reddit Legal removed a comment and my account ended up temporarily suspended. After that, Spartak permanently banned my account where I asked about how /u/voidlegacy was calling /u/WolfHeathen a Tencent shill multiple times, or how that account knew the entire IndiaGDC presentation a month before Tim Morten actually gave it.
I was also permanently banned from the Discord for bringing up the silence toward Kickstarter backers. Spartak often says criticism of the game is fine, but in my experience criticism of the company didn’t seem to be treated the same way. This was often off putting since some of the more aggressive defenders of Stormgate often got personal without the same moderation response.
I also remember a case in the Discord where a user casually made a violent remark toward "doomers." That comment stayed up, and nothing happened to the person who said it. Meanwhile, my questions about Kickstarter silence led to an immediate ban. That contrast is part of why I think criticism of the company wasn't treated the same way as other behavior
I’m also genuinely curious whether his tone during the Guardians of the Atlas era was similar. Unfortunately, forums.artillery.com isn’t online anymore, so there may not be a way to check.
I'm curious if DON~ILYA was also perma banned from the reddit because his account went dark from /r/Stormgate as well.
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On December 06 2025 04:39 THIRD_DEGREE_ wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2025 04:18 Jeremy Reimer wrote:On December 05 2025 18:10 _Spartak_ wrote:
Steam mods are assigned by developers. I could have been a mod on Steam and I could have been way more harsh there than I have been on reddit or discord. There is nothing that prevents harsh moderation on Steam.
You are not sharing those screenshots either because they don't exist or because they won't prove your point of silencing criticism. The existence of the subreddit itself for the last year is proof enough that we don't silence criticism. The fact that you don't silence criticism now doesn't mean you didn't silence criticism in the past, back when it had more impact. Nobody cares about the game or about the sub now, so it doesn't really matter what you do. I remember you aggressively deleting any comments (and sometimes even banning entire accounts) that questioned whether or not voidlegacy was actually Tim Morten. That was a big deal, because voidlegacy often set the tone for the entire sub. Later, when it was 99.9999% proven that voidlegacy actually was Tim Morten, you still deleted some of the posts that brought it up. So there's that. Hey, that was me. This started during one of the recent AMAs where Reddit Legal removed a comment and my account ended up temporarily suspended. After that, Spartak permanently banned my account where I asked about how /u/voidlegacy was calling /u/WolfHeathen a Tencent shill multiple times, or how that account knew the entire IndiaGDC presentation a month before Tim Morten actually gave it. I was also permanently banned from the Discord for bringing up the silence toward Kickstarter backers. Spartak often says criticism of the game is fine, but in my experience criticism of the company didn’t seem to be treated the same way. This was often off putting since some of the more aggressive defenders of Stormgate often got personal without the same moderation response. I’m also genuinely curious whether his tone during the Guardians of the Atlas era was similar. Unfortunately, forums.artillery.com isn’t online anymore, so there may not be a way to check. I'm curious if DON~ILYA was also perma banned from the reddit because his account went dark from /r/Stormgate as well.
DON-ILYA's account was banned, not just from /r/Stormgate, but from all of Reddit. Because of this, all his posts were mass-deleted, which seemed particularly draconian to me and not at all deserved.
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On December 06 2025 04:18 Jeremy Reimer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2025 18:10 _Spartak_ wrote:
Steam mods are assigned by developers. I could have been a mod on Steam and I could have been way more harsh there than I have been on reddit or discord. There is nothing that prevents harsh moderation on Steam.
You are not sharing those screenshots either because they don't exist or because they won't prove your point of silencing criticism. The existence of the subreddit itself for the last year is proof enough that we don't silence criticism. The fact that you don't silence criticism now doesn't mean you didn't silence criticism in the past, back when it had more impact. Nobody cares about the game or about the sub now, so it doesn't really matter what you do. I remember you aggressively deleting any comments (and sometimes even banning entire accounts) that questioned whether or not voidlegacy was actually Tim Morten. That was a big deal, because voidlegacy often set the tone for the entire sub. Later, when it was 99.9999% proven that voidlegacy actually was Tim Morten, you still deleted some of the posts that brought it up. So there's that. Again, no actual examples, screenshots or links to speak of.
Like Third Degree said, his comment on the AMA got deleted by reddit admins. Subreddit moderators can't actually delete comments, they can only remove them but you can still access the comments. Even more of a chance to prove me wrong and link some examples of wrongfully removed comments! I did not ban Third Degree. My impression was that we didn't ban him at all and reddit admins banned his account (the account is deleted but he might have deleted it himself). Although if one of the other mods did ban him, I wouldn't say that is unreasonable as his obsession verged on harassment. Similar case with Don Ilya. Either his account got banned by reddit admins or he deleted it himself. Subreddit mods don't have the power to delete accounts.
We don't delete comments just because people speculated that voidlegacy account belonged to Tim Morten. There must be hundreds of such comments on the subreddit by now.
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On December 06 2025 05:08 _Spartak_ wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2025 04:18 Jeremy Reimer wrote:On December 05 2025 18:10 _Spartak_ wrote:
Steam mods are assigned by developers. I could have been a mod on Steam and I could have been way more harsh there than I have been on reddit or discord. There is nothing that prevents harsh moderation on Steam.
You are not sharing those screenshots either because they don't exist or because they won't prove your point of silencing criticism. The existence of the subreddit itself for the last year is proof enough that we don't silence criticism. The fact that you don't silence criticism now doesn't mean you didn't silence criticism in the past, back when it had more impact. Nobody cares about the game or about the sub now, so it doesn't really matter what you do. I remember you aggressively deleting any comments (and sometimes even banning entire accounts) that questioned whether or not voidlegacy was actually Tim Morten. That was a big deal, because voidlegacy often set the tone for the entire sub. Later, when it was 99.9999% proven that voidlegacy actually was Tim Morten, you still deleted some of the posts that brought it up. So there's that. Again, no actual examples, screenshots or links to speak of. Like Third Degree said, his comment on the AMA got deleted by reddit admins. Subreddit moderators can't actually delete comments, they can only remove them but you can still access the comments. Even more of a chance to prove me wrong and link some examples of wrongfully removed comments! I did not ban Third Degree. My impression was that we didn't ban him at all and reddit admins banned his account (the account is deleted but he might have deleted it himself). Although if one of the other mods did ban him, I wouldn't say that is unreasonable as his obsession verged on harassment. Similar case with Don Ilya. Either his account got banned by reddit admins or he deleted it himself. Subreddit mods don't have the power to delete accounts. We don't delete comments just because people speculated that voidlegacy account belonged to Tim Morten. There must be hundreds of such comments on the subreddit by now.
You don't delete these comments now.
It's kind of hard to show screenshots of deleted comments after they have been, you know, deleted. How is one supposed to do that? As obsessive as I've been about following the whole sordid Frost Giant saga, I don't screenshot every Reddit thread. I know what I saw.
It's an aside, but one of the things I really dislike about Reddit in general is the totally lackadaisical approach the software has to deleting comments and accounts. There's no clarity about who deleted what and why, and posts and accounts just seem to vanish with nobody able to explain who actually did it. I suspect this is by design.
This is in stark contrast to most traditional forum software, where moderators must post an explanation in a special color/font before modifying content, and unless the content is clearly illegal (or horrifying in some absolute way) the most common thing is to leave the content as-is, and issue multiple warnings and then an escalating series of temporary bans before doing permabans. This preserves the entire history and also teaches people how moderation works.
Whereas on Reddit, who even knows how moderation is supposed to work? It's entirely opaque. Each sub has a set of "rules" that can be so vague that they could apply to anything. Anyone's posts could disappear at any time, or even their entire accounts, and nobody will ever know why.
Moderation is an important job. With no moderation, things on the Internet descend very quickly into spam, harassment, and total chaos. But it is precisely because the job is so important that it shouldn't be arbitrary.
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As I said, subreddit moderators can't delete comments. Unless reddit changed things recently, you can still see comments/posts removed by a moderator by going through the post history of the user. And if we ever removed any of your posts/comments, you will get a DM with the explanation of why it was removed and a link to the post that was removed. So, as an active member of the subreddit, which of your posts/comments got removed for being critical of the game? That should be easy to get an example of since you are adamant that we are regularly removing negative comments and you have obviously been nothing but negative about the game for a long time.
The change in our attitude towards moderation is also fictional. If anything, I have been slightly less lenient on some repeat offenders recently. Moderation was even more lax in the past. The subreddit always had plenty of negative posts and comments. It is just that recently 99% of comments are negative, instead of it swinging between 30-70% negative as in the past. The change is due to what happened with the game, not because we used to remove negative stuff and for some reason we stopped doing so in the last year.
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On December 06 2025 05:22 Jeremy Reimer wrote:
Moderation is an important job. With no moderation, things on the Internet descend very quickly into spam, harassment, and total chaos. But it is precisely because the job is so important that it shouldn't be arbitrary.
is it though? how much are the MODs paid?
my song, "if I had 40 million dollars" about Stormgate was removed for this reason:
"Rule 2: Do not share off-topic, NSFW, or other inappropriate content. Posts Unrelated to Stormgate, as well as politics, religion, gore, nudity, drug use, child abuse, etc."
obviously, this is a BS excuse to get my post off the subreddit.
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On December 06 2025 07:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2025 05:22 Jeremy Reimer wrote:
Moderation is an important job. With no moderation, things on the Internet descend very quickly into spam, harassment, and total chaos. But it is precisely because the job is so important that it shouldn't be arbitrary. is it though? how much are the MODs paid?
In this world, the most important jobs are mostly badly paid or not paid at all. :<
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On December 06 2025 07:38 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2025 07:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On December 06 2025 05:22 Jeremy Reimer wrote:
Moderation is an important job. With no moderation, things on the Internet descend very quickly into spam, harassment, and total chaos. But it is precisely because the job is so important that it shouldn't be arbitrary. is it though? how much are the MODs paid? In this world, the most important jobs are mostly badly paid or not paid at all. :<
$187B last year. if video game MOD is important then some of that cash should go to the MOD. if not, the publisher places zero value on the job.
you get what you pay for.
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On December 06 2025 07:45 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2025 07:38 Miragee wrote:On December 06 2025 07:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On December 06 2025 05:22 Jeremy Reimer wrote:
Moderation is an important job. With no moderation, things on the Internet descend very quickly into spam, harassment, and total chaos. But it is precisely because the job is so important that it shouldn't be arbitrary. is it though? how much are the MODs paid? In this world, the most important jobs are mostly badly paid or not paid at all. :< $187B last year. if video game MOD is important then some of that cash should go to the MOD. if not, the publisher places zero value on the job. you get what you pay for.
You measure importance solely in how much profit was made?
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Northern Ireland26793 Posts
On December 05 2025 10:16 Kneeb4r wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2025 09:27 WombaT wrote: But the sub became almost completely unusable for anyone who liked the game or wanted to actually talk about it many moons ago. A lot of people were genuinely disgusted by the behaviour of the devs like changing the kickstarter and posting fake reviews. They did the damage to themselves.
I don’t dispute that but at this stage most people who followed development are aware of such things, and the game absolutely bombed.
It’s less flogging a dead horse at this stage, but an ancient fossil that may be the remains of an ancestor species.
It’s not like some of the admittedly shady behaviour FG engaged in (which has been discussed at length in this thread) is something they got away with, and Tim Morten is floating in some idyllic Caribbean island atop a pile of money and beautiful women.
Subreddit regulars (I was active under a different username, so I recognise) making TL accounts to continue to moan, or argue with Spartak seems to me excessive.
The war is over, people are acting like that Japanese bloke who kept on fighting for 27 years or whatever
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/4yBGnRY.png)
