"Something Awful" [sic] is a discussion forum on the internet that wears unwavering douchebaggery as a mark of pride. They make setting the standard of excrement-smeared assholishness their full-time job. But let's not just say things, let's systematically demonstrate how this is exactly true.
I play a game "NEStalgia," which is an MMO that plays like a typical 8-bit RPG. NEStalgia experienced significant success in February 2011, and this game's Developer - Ben Mallahan, or "SilkWizard" - decided to submit this game to Steam through the "Greenlight" campaign, which allows developers to submit games to get a chance to appear in Steam's game catalog. Thus far, it has done very well, and is currently ranked in the 40's amongst nearly thousands of other games. So far, 10 games have been successfully "greenlit," and judging from NEStalgia's popularity, it's not far off. Look at their greenlight page here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92588954 But great success brings dedicated, jealous trolls.
A fortunate result of NEStalgia appearing in Greenlight was that the increased exposure allowed it to be picked up in 17 "Collections," where the authors of which categorize certain games to help browsing users find higher quality games within the massive greenlight database. A certain few of these collections - called "bundles" - are made to sell off collections of games for a price smaller than if you were to purchase all of the games in that bundle individually. One such bundle was called "Green Light Bundle #2." It's page is here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93058753 When NEStalgia was included in this bundle, users began to flood the page's comments section, demanding that the game be removed, under the threat of "downvoting" the bundle. Eventually, the bundle's author DID remove NEStalgia to avoid participating in the debate.
I've included four pages worth of the discussion below, but you can just as well click on the link above to view them yourself.
That's a LOT of people hating NEStalgia for each one that doesn't hate NEStalgia. Let's count the names of everyone who expressed dissatisfaction:
Triple Tooting Tutor
Grammer Dog
Zylche
Palpek
Alucardd
Seorin
Horror Popsicles
Prahanormal
TinyPaladin
a dovah human
Hopterque
tehsid
Scot.Dos
RageQuit
Where did all of this come from? Why did seemingly "so many" users collectively cry for NEStalgia to be removed at the same time? Is NEStalgia really so bad that independent individuals from all over experience hate for it by themselves?
Why, no.
You see, all of the names I circled in red and listed above have something in common. If you click on their profile, EVERY one of them either belongs to the group "SA goons" or have their profile information restricted. "SA goons" is a Steam branch of the "Something Awful" community that not only hates Ben Mallahan, but can be found defaming good developers everywhere around the internet. I did the ground work of citing each one of their profiles to show this fact. The beauty of utilizing "Webcitation.org" is in the fact that if these users ever change or censor their profiles, the Webcitation link will still be there to show what they want to hide.
Triple Tooting Tutor
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMhsdOAzGrammer Dog
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMi4vUbWZylche
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMi7Z0pOPalpek
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiA5KO8Alucardd
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiFfi9kSeorin
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiHxqBEHorror Popsicles
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiKk48YPrahanormal
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiN3NzxTinyPaladin
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiQJjBba dovah human
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiSvPGxhopterque
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiVwh6ftehsid
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMiYjteQScot.Dos
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMjmfODxRagequit
http://www.webcitation.org/6BMk2Yzjs The claims that NEStalgia's developer acts like a paranoid jerk not worth giving money to begin to ring hollow when you realize that every last one of his critics come from the same source. What's more plausible is that this event was a staged attack to damage the reputation of NEStalgia's developer; by flooding the Bundle's comments section, the author and anyone viewing the comments would be led to believe that NEStalgia is developed by an angry person who inspires hate in everyone he interracts with, when in reality, the flood was merely a dozen goons working in tandem. Ironically, this is precisely what two prominent SA goons - Seorin and TinyPaladin - accused NEStalgia fans of doing:
TinyPaladin: "Expect NEStalgia players to crowd in here to flood off criticism, as ordered."
Seorin: "It's kind of sad they would organize an attack like that. Don't they have anything better to do?"
The projection in those two statements is stupidly amazing.
This information is damning enough for now. I'll return later to cover Something Awful's complete history with Ben Mallahan - a tale of bullshit and embarrassing stupidity that goes back for years.
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Something Awful's Awful History with NEStalgia Developer Ben Mallahan
