Hello, all. Faiona and I wanted to take some time to publicly discuss the ongoing concern regarding the sudden absence of a handful of high profile players. To cut to the chase, they have been permanently banned for promoting or participating in conduct that is purposefully detrimental to the game, its players, or its staff.

This may come as a shock and be unbelievable to many as this group of players are often seemingly very nice and helpful on the site. However, for months now, we have had access to their offsite discussions and have been able to see the various ways that they've talked about going after other specific players, ruining core aspects of Sylestia (such as its economy), and taking revenge against myself and also Faiona. This has been an ongoing issue since last year. In December, we ended up banning a couple of players for crossing the line. Sadly, this only emboldened the rest of the group and things have been escalating since.

Once again, lines are starting to be crossed so we have decided to pull the trigger and initiate bans. This has now caused further escalation, which has resulted in more bans. This is why suddenly a bunch of high profile players have "disappeared" from the site.

We are also aware that those who remain unbanned are now massively trying to recruit others to offsite communications, such as Discord, in hopes of swaying them to their cause. At this point, we have no choice but to come public with the information we have so that everyone can understand why we had no choice but to permanently remove these players from Sylestia.


The Beginning

These issues first culminated late last year. It was brought to our attention that a group of players, who were well known here on Sylestia, were utilizing offsite Discord groups to create black lists, to target and harass specific Sylestia players that they did not personally like or agree with, and to work together to cause grievances to the Site as a whole, myself, and Faiona. The latter included creating fake social media accounts to impersonate Sylestia and attempt to post damaging content, contacting us with harassing messages on our personal social media accounts, and searching for our personal information online, such as home addresses, to share in their group. These episodes also include dozens and dozens of offensive messages regarding other players, myself, and Faiona.

From the start, through various means of authentication, we have always known exactly who has said what and who they are on Sylestia. There has never been any doubt who is who. We would not take actions against anyone on Sylestia using evidence found off-site if we were not 100% certain who the person was.

We have known now, for months, who the main conspirators are and have watched them continue to put on a show here on-site, while then going off-site to show their true colors.


The Current Issue

Edit: As stated in various replies throughout this thread, we received these screenshots from a group of players who willingly came to us first due to their concerns from what they were seeing discussed in various off-site chat groups they were members of. All of these screenshots were given to us voluntarily by concerned members of the community.

Upon being made aware of the situation, we began our investigation 4-5 months ago and have been actively following it since then. We have only now taken action out of necessity due to the escalating actions and statements of those involved.

Regarding these recent bans, the core issue is that this group of players (about 10-20 players make up the main group of instigators) has been taking both short-term and long-term measures to destabilize the game's economy in order to cause grievances to me, personally, and the game as a whole. But don't take my word for it, here are some of the many things that they have said in recent weeks/months. All of these screenshots were corroborated with actual in-game actions. There is zero doubt on our end what the goal of these players is/was and how they were going about acting upon it.

We have removed the screenshots as
we feel that there is no more benefit from leaving them up.

In addition to their motives regarding just the game's economy, that is not all that they talk about. Here are two examples of them talking about specific people - myself included:

We have removed the screenshots as
we feel that there is no more benefit from leaving them up.


Regarding Sylestia Extension 2

If you are using Tigress' Sylestia Extension 2, please continue doing so at your own risk. We will be removing public mention/support of this extension as it has been stated that it will be used for malicious purposes. I highly, highly recommend that players cease using the extension.

If you don't believe me, you can read more about it below:

We have removed the screenshots as
we feel that there is no more benefit from leaving them up.


Regarding Homophobic Accusations

I am also being accused of being homophobic and only banning LGBTQ+ players. This is absolutely ridiculous and offensive. I am a firm believer that a person's sexual orientation is their right, and their right only, to be. We have never considered anyone's sexual orientation, or other personally identifying characteristics, in any administrative decision that we've made. As an employer, we have hired multiple people who identify as LGBTQ+. A massive portion of Sylestia's community is of the LGBTQ+ community. To accuse us of being homophobic is nothing but unfounded slander.

We have removed the screenshots as
we feel that there is no more benefit from leaving them up.


Our Reasoning

In light of reading literally hundreds of messages for over 6+ months now, I hope you can clearly see why we literally have no other options but to remove these players from Sylestia. So many lines have been crossed on behalf of Sylestia, other players, myself, and Faiona.

Time and time and time again, have these players feigned innocence to myself or to other players and then we literally see them admitting/discussing those very things 5 minutes later as if nothing is wrong. I would hope after sharing some of these screenshots, everyone else can see through their facade.

There is no place in Sylestia for these people. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, and there is no better reason to refuse service than for what these players have done and are still doing.


Conclusion

We will be leaving this thread open for comments. We imagine a lot of players may have questions or concerns about what is going on, and we want to be as transparent as we possibly can. Hate and toxicity will never be tolerated on Sylestia. Those who seek to do us, other players, or the game harm will always be met with a denial of service; no questions asked. If your whole purpose of being here is to cause trouble and ruin the experience for others, go somewhere else.

Thank you for doing what it takes to keep Sylestia a safe and welcoming place. Although some of these players did a fairly convincing job of acting innocent on the game, I have personally been harassed by several of them to a point that significantly impacted my mental health, so I just wanted to say a personal thank you to you for removing them from the game.

I also know as someone who administrates a large fan community myself, that things like this are incredibly stressful, and you never know how the rest of the community will respond. So I wanted to let you know that at least speaking for myself, I fully support yours and Faiona's decision here. And as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I don't believe any of these accusations of homophobia. It sounds like you were very fair in how you handled this.

I hope you, Faiona, and everyone else working behind the scenes is doing okay, or as okay as you can! (:

Krin, this site has been hacked before and I do not think it would be beyond the means of those types of people to impersonate these players and send nasty messages. As for what was on their private discord, I'm sorry but that's private for a reason. When a site decision makes players upset they go to their close friend groups to vent and make jokes in bad taste to soothe themselves. I am uncomfortable with the level of offsite watching this displays and I will have to step away and consider if I will ever feel comfortable coming back.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=1#4 Author: Zekotan Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 2:01 AM Krin, this site has been hacked before and I do not think it would be beyond the means of those types of people to impersonate these players and send nasty messages. As for what was on their private discord, I'm sorry but that's private for a reason. When a site decision makes players upset they go to their close friend groups to vent and make jokes in bad taste to soothe themselves. I am uncomfortable with the level of offsite watching this displays and I will have to step away and consider if I will ever feel comfortable coming back.

Sylestia has never been hacked before. There were one or two instances where a bot logged into a bunch of accounts using, presumably, some sort of username/password known list. Since then, we have added two factor authentication.

None of the actions here occurred via hacked accounts. The players involved were the ones making the decisions and deciding for themselves.

Regarding the off-site thing, this is not really anything new in today's world. It is extremely easy to take in-game circumstances to off-site locations via Discord, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and numerous others. To state plainly for the record, no, we do not care what people's personal opinions or conversations are. However, when the actions of users of my business are taking direct actions to harm my business and/or harass other customers of my business, I am absolutely fully within my rights to figure out who they are and deny them future access to my business. Literally, any other game (or business for that matter) would do exactly the same.

In this specific instance, we were able to figure out who the conspirators were without any doubt. They are causing harm to the game and other players - again, without any doubt. At that point, there literally is no other recourse for us to take but to remove them from the game - our business.

My only real misgiving about this is how many pets have now been pulled from the gene pool because of this.
I don't know how many people were banned, but if they're all BIG names, that's taking a lot of big breeding groups outta' the picture.

I know this is silly compared to the ACTUAL issue here of abusive players, and I wouldn't want them to stay anyhow, but it makes me sad that their bad actions cause consequences toward those who love the game, both by what they were PLANNING to do, and now because they have been banned and access to their pets has been lost.

Hey guys, I wanted to chime in here too. I'm a site artist, openly bisexual, and Krin has been nothing but good to me for the last decade I've worked with him. Many past and current artists here have been openly LBGT+. This anti-LGBT conspiracy has been going on for months now. The comments about this being an anti-LGBT brigade are shameful, when this is truly about the actions of a few individuals who are grasping at straws trying to shift blame to anything but themselves.

There has been off-site harassment on staffs private social medias by some of these members. I know they are denying this, but I've seen it. It's hurtful and out of line to take your venting out of the private discord and into harassment.

This clique has largely been toxic, bullying members and staff alike. I think this decision is for the best. Krinadon tried to be accommodating for as long as he could, but there have been serious accusations, along with off-site and in-game actions that warranted consequences.

I understand venting in private, everyone does it and it's healthy. What crosses the line is taking your anger out on staff socials, trying to harm their real lives by getting people "cancelled" for bogus accusations, and trying to sabotage the game itself. It isn't innocent, funny venting anymore when it gets to this point.

It's really hard to believe that all of these players could have done that. That's just... a lot to come from people I thought I knew.
Just my little brain trying to latch onto anything so that my world view doesn't have to be so turned, but is there any context surrounding these messages that may point to them being jokes or just people being dumb and angry?
I know I often say things or make jokes when upset to help myself feel better. I could see how the whole "Crash the economy" thing could just be frustrated jokes due to high prices in game, but without surrounding context I just don't know.

sorry, it's late and I'm just upset that so many people I was friends with would do this to a site I thought we all loved.

Yikes!
This is pretty crazy. It is upsetting to know that such individuals would ruin the game for other players that spend so much time relaxing and having fun here. I hope you and yours are doing well despite all that. I feel your judgement was fair especially considering the innocent players that would be affected by such actions! Thank you for creating and maintaining Sylestia!!

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=1#8 Author: Oiseau Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 2:24 AM It's really hard to believe that all of these players could have done that. That's just... a lot to come from people I thought I knew. Just my little brain trying to latch onto anything so that my world view doesn't have to be so turned, but is there any context surrounding these messages that may point to them being jokes or just people being dumb and angry? I know I often say things or make jokes when upset to help myself feel better. I could see how the whole "Crash the economy" thing could just be frustrated jokes due to high prices in game, but without surrounding context I just don't know. sorry, it's late and I'm just upset that so many people I was friends with would do this to a site I thought we all loved.

I completely understand and we have felt the same way. Some of the players who became involved in this are longstanding players that we never would have suspected would join in on this. It is very saddening and depressing to see - especially to see a bunch of these players proclaim to love the game while actively trying to harm it - even if "for jokes", actions are actions and actions have consequences.

Regarding the economy-based screenshots, yes, the things that they were referencing were things they started actually doing on the site. This was ultimately the main catalyst as to why we started taking action and issuing bans.

However, even if there weren't traceable actions, we still have would have no interest in providing services to an individual who thinks and acts that way towards our business, its other customers, or us. Why would any business owner want to serve customers like that? Nobody wants to be treated that way. There are a hundred other pet sites out there. Go play one of those instead if you are so dissatisfied with ours. But if your sole purpose of existing on here is to cause trouble for us or others - why would we want you to remain here?