Felik, on 01 October 2014 - 07:53 AM, said:
W.A.C., on 01 October 2014 - 04:59 AM, said:
Wow. I wonder what happened. o_O
Probably Lange did something injudicious or insulting again, considering he's banned (or deleted his own account) there... again.
Jassbec, on 30 September 2014 - 06:39 PM, said:
Just a small announcement.
Sonic Overture is not going to be in any future SAGEs due to some issues we had with the site that organizes it
I don't know what happened between you and Sonic United stuff but that's a silly thing to do if you want your game to get noticed by more or less general audience. And your game is shaping up to be a game worth getting noticed.
You seem to be a reasonable person, Jassbec, and should understand that this decision will not do you any good in the long run. But that depends on how much pride matters to you compared to recognition of course
Thanks for the insulting assumption Felik.
Actually they banned me and deleted my account over someone's claim that I was going to hack the site. Someone meddled with my account, did manage to hack the site, stole IPs and emails, and faked a Skype chat log with my name passing out this information. There were several other names in this log talking about how they want to take down other Sonic sites. Jass was one of the names in this log. The log was recently proven fake and everyone's names have been cleared. We're still trying to find out who's responsible for all of this happening.
When this happened, no one outside of SFGHQ staff were aware of the situation. They refused to say anything on the matter and began feverishly censoring and banning anyone who asked about or even mentioned my ban or the strange activity. Some people were banned just for being associated with us having done nothing wrong on the site. Jass was also banned for mentioning my ban. With me and Jass having both been banned combined with the prior events, it was agreed that Overture should be removed from SFGHQ. In his place, PicsAndPixels tried to post an announcement on the thread renouncing Overture's place on the site. The post was deleted, PicsAndPixels was banned, and shortly after the entire Overture thread was removed.
Two administrators posted announcements accusing all those who were banned of being responsible for an attack on the site and real life threats. There was a community uproar as this sweeping accusation was made and none of it was true, and because of the bans and censorship, no one was able to defend themselves, which painted a picture to the public that the innocent members who were banned were a danger to sites and even other people. With the staff cutting people off at every turn, they effectively made it impossible to resolve the situation, which put people's reputations at serious risk, including my own.
As of yesterday, administrator Perfect Chaos Zero arrived and learned of the events, and came clean publicly with information on the situation, which lead to us being able to prove the claims and chat logs fake and learn that someone or some people have a vendetta against me, the Overture team, several others, and/or likely SFGHQ itself. We had finally learned that there was a site hacking attempt and that my name and several others' names were attached to it.
While this does explain the staff's behavior and we understand why the did what they did, we're still outraged by how horribly they handled the situation. If they had been transparent and actually interacted with their community instead of living in their own private world and attacking us for the illusion they were wrapped up in, the whole thing could've been solved before anyone was banned and innocent members' reputations were smeared. We don't want Overture on a site under staff with that kind of judgement. However, we except PC0 as he was the one who handled this situation properly and resolved it, and we extend our thanks to him.
There's more details to the situation that have factored into this decision that I cannot easily cover in this post. These are things that have happened over the course of the past week and prior complications with SFGHQ and its staff.
For the record, myself nor any of us have ever had any intentions of a site attack, and never would no matter the circumstances. Despite our problems with SFGHQ, we still respect it and care too much for the community to ever put it at risk. We would never resort to malicious actions against anyone or any website. We only attempt peaceful resolutions, or failing that, leaving the matter alone. Despite our issues with some folks, even if we don't like them, we certainly don't hate them, we don't hold grudges, and we have no ill will towards anyone. We have long histories with these sites and they're very dear to us, and we would never sabotage the communities we're closely attached to and have tremendous respect for, nor the sites that have been a home for our projects and many others that we love very much.
Bear in mind that these are the decisions we have made right now given the existing circumstances. Things may change in the future.
Mr Lange 
08
