[Announcement] Change to the Directorate & a Statement Regarding GFL's Previous Owner

[Auralanity 1,097 / 19,948]

I'll give tldr for people who don't want to read...

 

   ○ Benroy got demoted for leaking council chat. The leak was of the expressing of airing all of Roy's shitty decision making through his rough departure in GFL. And this is the reason this thread was aired now (along with being in the making already( 

   ○ Roy went crazy through a drunk (ish) rage and threatened GFL through hijacking PayPal if he wasn't banned (along with being an asshole to higher ups in the process).  This was unwarranted because the higher ups attempted to maintain friendly terms with Roy, even when Roy made his own community and got some GFL staff to join. 

   ○ Roy is now permabanned for his abborant behavior and Benroy is blacklisted and demoted from staff due to his leaking...

    ○ A couple of GFL staff got yeeted for actively sabotaging or mishandling user information. Not for joining another community, despite the popular belief. 

   ○ GFL higher ups are gamers for how they handled the situation with Roy in a professional manner despite the shit they got from him.

 

Keep gaming!!

[Big Man Fatty 22 / 1,313]

Just now, Beaker said:

Any lore masters? Just came back from a trip from Venezuela.

like from cwrp 🤓

[MutedMike 151 / 4,188]

Damn, I played runescape with Benroy for a little bit too, mighty unfortunate he went in this direction.

Couldn't be me tho

[Rick 1,651 / 17,972]

[Vauff 965 / 17,001]

Considering my initial impression of this thread when I first saw the leak, I'm happy that this write up seems to be mostly fair. I believe your initial apology here is adequate, but I do find it strange how the #council message screenshot you're apologizing for isn't even linked here when all the Roy screenshots are. It really should be included as well for transparency sake.

 

While I do personally believe Roy is sorry, I'm not going to try and argue that anybody needs to forgive Roy for the bad things he did, especially not GFL itself. With that said, I have still taken a lot of issue throughout this (especially as a server manager) with how GFL seems to view "poaching" staff volunteering their free time contributing to a gaming community as a legitimate issue. It's completely expected that someone who was well connected in the GFL community as the literal former owner and had relationships with many players/staff is going to have some of them join their new community. Staff have the right to decide where to volunteer their time, and GFL isn't entitled to claim poaching simply because Roy and someone who he offered a position to initially knew each other through GFL.

[Dragoon 385 / 10,460]

21 minutes ago, Vauff said:

With that said, I have still taken a lot of issue throughout this (especially as a server manager) with how GFL seems to view "poaching" staff volunteering their free time contributing to a gaming community as a legitimate issue. It's completely expected that someone who was well connected in the GFL community as the literal former owner and had relationships with many players/staff is going to have some of them join their new community. Staff have the right to decide where to volunteer their time, and GFL isn't entitled to claim poaching simply because Roy and someone who he offered a position to initially knew each other through GFL.

I feel like this may not have initially been an issue back when LBG started. However, when he took actions that were either a surefire or inferred threat towards GFL, the whole poaching and conflict of interest issues became more legitimate problems. Because the people who were really involved in these documented incidents can't really forgive him for his actions, they can't hold trust when someone with a high enough position in GFL joins LBG because something like the incident involving Ben could happen again (Though it is fair to note that Ben is not in any staff related role there).

Edited September 10, 2022 by Dragoon

[TheJitFace 699 / 18,162]

lol

[BestKevin 89 / 1,644]

2 hours ago, Vauff said:

Considering my initial impression of this thread when I first saw the leak, I'm happy that this write up seems to be mostly fair. I believe your initial apology here is adequate, but I do find it strange how the #council message screenshot you're apologizing for isn't even linked here when all the Roy screenshots are. It really should be included as well for transparency sake.

 

While I do personally believe Roy is sorry, I'm not going to try and argue that anybody needs to forgive Roy for the bad things he did, especially not GFL itself. With that said, I have still taken a lot of issue throughout this (especially as a server manager) with how GFL seems to view "poaching" staff volunteering their free time contributing to a gaming community as a legitimate issue. It's completely expected that someone who was well connected in the GFL community as the literal former owner and had relationships with many players/staff is going to have some of them join their new community. Staff have the right to decide where to volunteer their time, and GFL isn't entitled to claim poaching simply because Roy and someone who he offered a position to initially knew each other through GFL.

 

I think that is a pretty fair take, would be nice to see the screenshot in question that got leaked but who knows if that will happen.

 

I don't know how it went from "We don't have anything against LBG" or "LBG isn't a threat/problem" to poaching being some major issue.  I seriously doubt Roy offered them anything extravagant (probably literally nothing), let's just be honest and say that most people here either had more loyalty and/or trust in Roy and his community than they did here. 

 

As Vauff said as unpaid volunteers it doesn't really matter why they left, and I also think there is fault on the DL/Higher Ups for even letting an old SM hold server content after resigning.  Does GFL expect old staff to still help them patch together everything they made as SM?  From what I have seen on GMOD all of the SMs put in a lot of work to make their servers successful and usually do not have much support, so I doubt they want to support GFL after their departure.

 

I also saw in one of the screenshots Infra told Roy he was under the impression they were friends, but to be honest every time I brought him up near any GFL higher staff everyone shit talked him to no end (Infra included), even before some of these "incidents", so it is possible some of his chats/VC's got back to him and soured the relationship even more.  Although I agree he was somewhat irrational and probably drunk, I don't see Roy entirely at fault here.

 

Regardless this is the most transparency and detail I have seen on a topic from GFL so props for that.  Hopefully after all of this both sides can just focus on themselves,  they have communities to run after all.

[Sir_Ross 42 / 3,192]

Jesus would forgive Roy

[Joshy 4,364 / 44,945]

We don't need any insulting or name calling.  Thanks.

[CobalshMcGee 44 / 1,372]

On 9/9/2022 at 12:42 AM, Anathema Device said:

Guys can somebody please tell me what a buttfor is

butfor who the bell tolls, it tolls for thee

[Joshy 4,364 / 44,945]

Hi!

 

This thread is meant to be informative.  I can totally understand some criticism and opinions on different points...  totally okay and we're not removing any of that, but we cannot be having people discussing off topic things that isn't helpful for the thread, name calling, or (baselessly) accusing people of certain actions that isn't even relevant to this thread; that type of activity will get removed.

 

The right place to make reports is abuse reports or staff feedback where you can back your claims with evidence.

[hdscorpio 90 / 1,438]

This thread makes me ashamed to be a gamer.

[Rexy 47 / 2,974]

You either die the Roy or live long enough to become the Soja.

[SirAdair 97 / 4,635]

20 hours ago, Rexy said:

You either die the Roy or live long enough to become the Soja.

YIKES but true

[willywilson 199 / 5,570]

Preface: This probably isn't the best place to post this, but I want to air some thoughts I had reading this post after having not been active in a while.

 

While sure, LBG doesn't have very active servers and what Roy did threatening the paypal and his other actions surrounding this mess have been reprehensible, this sort of overcomplicated structure and internal drama really doesn't help, I haven't played gfl as long as a lot of people in this thread, and a lot longer than some here, but I only really played gfl starting in 2017. Since starting, I'm incredibly disappointed in the complete mess of convoluted bullshit this community is and is the primary reason why I personally have never engaged with the gfl community outside of playing zombie escape.

 

I honestly don't understand how the focus can be so far removed from the gaming aspect of the community despite being it's namesake, it seems to me like gfl has two distinct categories of members, individual members who choose to spend time gaming on their servers and this amalgamation of a community that chats about management of aforementioned servers and communities. I have never seeing anyone aside from three people here play on those servers, despite having been admin to two of the more popular servers in the community for multiple years, and while sure I get if it's not your cup of tea if you're seriously going to take an administrative role, you need to buck up and take a lay of the land, it's like a king who never ventures outside of his ivory castle.

 

I think this is the bullshit that's driven roy away and mad to the point of threatening to turn into soja, and I think this overcomplicated hierarchy hurts gfl as a whole and I think gfl isn't taking the time to reflect and learn from roy leaving to improve their own methods of running a community. I think vauff made a great point about the staff volunteering their free time, and I feel like there's a valuable lesson to be learned here regarding just simply being a little bit more 'laid back'. How should gfl be keeping their staff? By safeguarding them or by keeping their community, light, fun and enjoyable for the staff to administrate? At the end of the day you're all just running a gaming community, stop taking it so fucking seriously, have fun. I personally haven't actively played on gfl in a while and while I left primarily due to irl reasons, this sort of bs is what always stopped me from engaging with gfl outside of zombie escape. I've been an admin to three different gaming community, gfl, nide, and syndicate gamers, and I have to say this is by and large the most drama filled and negative community I've seen, and so much of that stems from people that don't even seem to be actively playing and keeps many would be players away from the community.

Edited September 12, 2022 by willywilson

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,845]

@willywilson I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the operational size of GFL as well as a flawed understanding of GFLs goals and who carries them out. I do not mean to cause offense to your experience in other communities (NiDE, Syndicate) or the communities themselves but they are simply smaller (smaller communities are way nicer than big ones in many ways, and vice versa, but our ways of operating are different due to this (and other things, of course, but I don't think they are nearly as influential as operational size)).

 

In regards to our hierarchy; if you think you have a better idea, or better ideas for how we should operate as a whole, please create a suggestion topic: https://gflclan.com/forum/39-suggestions/

 

And to combat the whole "You don't even play on servers!" narrative... we have server staff (Server Admins, Server Managers, Division Leaders, etc.) and other types of staff (Technical Administrators, Team Leaders, Directors, etc.) for a reason. The server staff handle server stuff while people like me handle other stuff and we communicate with each other to achieve whatever goals we may have. A little bureaucratic? Sure. But what is the alternative at our scale? I don't think there is a better one sadly. Though, you know where the suggestions forum is if you have a better idea 😉

 

Finally, you said you don't like convoluted bullshit, and the post could only create convoluted bullshit or get ignored... I didn't ignore it. I took the bait. I know. Sorry.

[Snoopy 1,480 / 15,610]

Wow did not expect to see this when I was just randomly checking on GFL to see how you all were doing...

[willywilson 199 / 5,570]

14 minutes ago, Liloz01 said:

@willywilson I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the operational size of GFL as well as a flawed understanding of GFLs goals and who carries them out. I do not mean to cause offense to your experience in other communities (NiDE, Syndicate) or the communities themselves but they are simply smaller (smaller communities are way nicer than big ones in many ways, and vice versa, but our ways of operating are different due to this (and other things, of course, but I don't think they are nearly as influential as operational size)).

 

In regards to our hierarchy; if you think you have a better idea, or better ideas for how we should operate as a whole, please create a suggestion topic: https://gflclan.com/forum/39-suggestions/

 

And to combat the whole "You don't even play on servers!" narrative... we have server staff (Server Admins, Server Managers, Division Leaders, etc.) and other types of staff (Technical Administrators, Team Leaders, Directors, etc.) for a reason. The server staff handle server stuff while people like me handle other stuff and we communicate with each other to achieve whatever goals we may have. A little bureaucratic? Sure. But what is the alternative at our scale? I don't think there is a better one sadly. Though, you know where the suggestions forum is if you have a better idea 😉

 

Finally, you said you don't like convoluted bullshit, and the post could only create convoluted bullshit or get ignored... I didn't ignore it. I took the bait. 

 

 I'm not going to post anything in suggestions as it's not transparent as no one will read it aside from motorstreak's eighteen cousins i.e. those with weird color names who take gfl positions of power. Additionally Syndicate was bigger than gfl until around 2016 yet gfl still had a much larger administrative component even at that time.

 

I'd suggest a matrix system of management between server managers and district leads with a council serving to make large decisions that impact all servers. If I'm being honest as gfl isn't nearly as large as you think it is, with probably 300ish admins between all servers and 50 server managers and 7 division leaders? That's nothing, most businesses with that size still manage with a small governing body of a single boss spearing the division leaders. Due to this being a volunteer position you could realistically do with a council who help with various things and individuals serving as technical assistants. You don't need a whole fucking graphics teams or marketing team. Maybe one or two people tops.

 

Additionally you sound condescending throughout your whole post and don't seriously address any of my criticisms i.e. why not try to keep admins happy, or just generally relax with the stringent rules and let servers be more independent (again meaning less administration). So to conclude, get off your high horse you boring bureaucratic prick. 

 

 

[AtomicHeadphones 270 / 6,326]

GFL IS OFFICIALLY BANNED