Death of one of the biggest HL2 roleplay communities

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UPDATE:

The promised announcement from the owner came and didn't surprise many: due to the absolute chaos as well as damaged reputation of the owner, the servers are permanently shutdown with the community in "pause/closed mode" with the possibility of Lemonpunch to "come back sooner or later, but it will probably be very different". The link to the article: https://lemonpunch.net/threads/the-announcement.48082/.

Quoted article:

 

Dear Members,

 

Over the weekend, I think most of us have been very distressed and disappointed to see our community get ripped apart and cut open. That may sound dramatic, but for us who saw it all, it’s quite an authentic description. I had imagined LemonPunch’s end as a loving and grateful event where we all peacefully remembered the many good moments together. Tears, laughs, nostalgia, and of course an epic remembrance video. Instead, it went down in hate and distress. While I was bombarded with rather vicious and privacy-intruding personal attacks and threats, my main cause of stress and anxiety was above all seeing the community I founded, and like so many of you had been part of for a long time, end in complete misery.

 

Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. Instead, I hope that we can conclude things in the best way possible going forward. However, I do know that there’s a large cloud of accusations around me that I should clear up before that. Many of you were told that I had “screwed Alex over” and effectively pushed him out of the community. Alex is of course to many here close to a hero. He created the unique and powerful version of Clockwork that we used, helped us fend off against various threats, and supported the community loyally for three years. He’s a nice person to talk to and to many of you a good friend.

 

To me, Alex was more than a fellow Community Director and Lead Developer in the community – he was my fellow company director in Thriving Ventures – the limited company I own. I’ve worked very closely with him for three years, and during that time I have realised that he’s a man of immense talent and potential. However, since about November last year our ability to work together has perished. I would outline specifics, but I don’t feel that’s appropriate or respectful to him. The point is that we couldn’t work well together anymore and I didn’t see us being successful working together in future projects.

 

On Thursday last week, Alex asked me to give him 50% of the shares in my company. He said that he was in the belief that it was to be his and that he felt entitled to it. In my mind, it had always been clear that Alex and I were both directors – which are very powerful positions in a company - but that I was the only shareholder. I had never said otherwise directly, indirectly or by implication. We had at times discussed the possibility of giving Alex shares in the company if we were to pursue a project in Unreal Engine; creating a game of our own. If successful, we could earn a massive amount of money, and then shares would be the only form of proper security for him. The chat-logs that have been shown to some of you, where I discuss the possibility of giving shares to Alex, was in that time-context. However, despite our passionate desire to make a game, it never came close to be actualised and it never became more than a desire. The same goes for the consideration of giving Alex shares – it was never more than a possibility in the future.

 

However, I recognised that Alex was very upset about the matter and on Friday we had a proper meeting about the situation. I wanted LemonPunch to survive and was willing to give Alex a severely generous amount of the company’s money to make it happen; severance pay, contractual continued regular compensation – increased if need be – and in no way or shape less influence in LemonPunch. However, Alex was adamant about wanting 50% of the shares in the company. It took a while for me to get to and properly explain the rather uncomfortable reason I simply couldn’t give him shares; I didn’t see us achieving success working together in future projects. Now “why would that stop me from giving him shares?” Well, I have always had and will continue having an immense passion for creating projects, and I’m determined to continue using my company in doing so. Someone who owns 50% of the shares will have a claim on part of all of the company’s future profits and dividends, and massive influence over any future projects. If I did not want to work with that person and include him in future projects, it would have been a huge road-block for my ability to create new projects using the company.

 

So I couldn’t give him shares. I was eager to find other generous solutions and options for moving forward and keeping everything afloat in LemonPunch. Alex requested that I refined the options and put them in writing. I explained that on Saturday I would be on a date with my girlfriend, on Sunday I would refine and write down options and then on Monday I would present them. Alex, @Rictalspace and @Blackquill agreed, and so when we concluded the meeting I was very optimistic that we would find a solution on Monday and the community would keep running well.

 

On Saturday, just as I was walking to see my girlfriend, I receive a message from @Rictalspace - “Welp, this is pretty buggered up, have you seen the forum recently?” I hadn’t, and when I was home with my girlfriend everything was already a complete storm of drama that couldn’t be controlled. Alex had told some of his friends in the community about how he felt I had led him on about shares and ownership in the company, and they had then perceived it as that I had screwed Alex over. After that, they had incited tons of drama, abuse and a full community riot that tore the community up and stuck it bleeding intensively. I tried to desperately go on TeamSpeak during my date, explain my side of the story and calm the situation down, but I was overwhelmed. By midnight, Alex publicly resigned from the community and many followed.

 

It hurts... Not because some people believe I’m a shady businessman, but because I know in my heart that if the original plan after Friday’s meeting would have been kept and followed, Alex and I could have found a solution together in a discreet and professional manner, and LemonPunch would yet be strong and alive. We all would have benefitted from it, and you all would still have this community that you’ve joyfully dedicated so much time and effort in.

 

Now, we are where we are, and the main thing I want to say is - thank you! Whether you like me or not, I’ve had an amazing three years alongside most of you and I’ve grown enormously as a person and leader. It has made me so proud to see the community we created three years ago turn into a place with so many diligent, talented and passionate people that have come and gone. @Dallas whose passion for creating epic and astonishing events never seems to end. @Blackquill who committedly oversaw the community with incredible ambition. I could name endless people with fascinating and strong records of showing talent and achievement in this community, and I’m so proud to have worked alongside them. Our members were always the most loyal ones. In times of success, they showed ambition, in times of struggle, they showed determination. As a community, we achieved what seemed impossible, and we overcame the most vicious and straining challenges. I’m probably pushing it now, but the historical example of Rome’s rise and fall comes to mind when I think of it all. We achieved and overcame so much – more than anybody would have thought of a Garry’s Mod roleplay community - and yet it was our internal issues and strains that eventually killed us.

 

Now to what all of you have really been waiting for while reading my excessively long announcement:

“What now?”

LemonPunch will end as you know it. It will go into a pause/closed mode. It may very well come back sooner or later, but it will probably be very different in so case. I intend to continue pursuing projects with passion, and it’s possible that LemonPunch will have a significant role. However, I suspect that it will take some time before that happens. So in the meantime, I hope you’ll find other communities out there where you can enjoy the experience you had here. Maybe it’ll never be quite as good, but I will do my best to help communities provide you with a qualitative experience. I’m very open to licensing out assets of LemonPunch that could be helpful in achieving that. I have two goals going forward – continuing my passionate pursuit of large projects, and ensuring you’ll find the experience you had here elsewhere. Thank you for this incredible time! I hope we’ll see each other sometime soon again and remember the amazing journey we had together.

 

Kind Regards

Gurrazor​

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________

The situation:

After leaving Lemonpunch, one of the biggest Garry's Mod HL2 roleplay communities, for several months due to the possibly shady dealings (allegedly doxxing competitors and DDOSing their servers) as well as other rather worrying signs (developers and staff working (and expected to do so) for free despite the community being ran by a registered company) of the owner, I've come back today to check on the community's forums only to see absolute chaos: spamming, staff resigning and calling out the owner for (apparently) his wrongdoings, reports of mass hysteria within the actual servers (no moderation, firefights, essentially the opposite of what a roleplay community should do).

The core issues:

After observing the mess and trying to gather the facts, the tl;dr seems to be that one of the main developers, "AlexGrist", who was doing the bulk of the work, decided to quit after learning that the founder "Gurrazor" (who, in both my experience and many others, seems to have done minimal work) refused to honor a (possible) promise to split the company's shares 50/50 and wanted to keep all 100%. From the founder's perspective, he claims to have never promised such thing and claims that the promised 50/50 was in case the company was going to pursue a bigger project (specifically developing an Unreal Engine game). The twist is that since the promise for the 50/50 was informal, so was the licensing situation in regards to the software the main developer worked/improved on. This meant that since the main developer (who was also one of the server directors) left, the servers could no longer legally use the modified script (though the developer doesn't seem to be trying to push any legal claims) and more importantly they can't (perhaps even legally) patch the script for every Garry's Mod update that (apparently) are known to slowly break various user made scripts, leaving the entire game mode to suffer a slow death as bugs start to accumulate.

 

What unfolded:

The majority (or at least quite a huge part) of the community instantly rallied behind the developer and demanded the founder and owner of the company to step down and transfer over ownership of all assets related to the community over to the developer or one of the voluntary staff. The owner, in multiple Teamspeak discussions with Lemonpunch staff, refused handing it over, claiming to have tried to negotiate some sort of different terms with the developer or suggesting that he will be "restructuring" Lemonpunch into something (possibly entirely) different. He then shutdown the 3 servers operated by Lemonpunch, hid the discussion sections for it, (apparently) banned some Lemonpunch members speaking out against/attacking/mocking him as well as (apparently) deleted several threads criticizing/mocking/attacking him. Afterwhich, he announced that there will be an announcement on Tuesday clearing things up, as, like one Lemonpunch user put it, "Rome is burning".

 

My thoughts:

Although having spent much less time playing on the server than many of the prominent users (though I'd still say I spent at least a hundred hours), I still invested quite a lot of time roleplaying, developing characters, exploring and meeting new people as well as creating a small (failed) faction and posting various backstories of my characters on the forums. Though some parts of the community could be described as "4chan's /b/ lite" (minus the dangerous malice and NSFW stuff) in terms of interaction with other users, it also brought together quite a few talented and interesting people. One of the users wrote such good HL2 fan-fiction stories with interesting characters, their development, meaningful action scenes as well as calm and serene dialogue, that even I, the last person you'd expect to be picking up a book, read them captivated by the plot despite having to wake up early in the morning the next day.

 

In fact, if I hadn't played and interacted on Lemonpunch forums, I wouldn't be here, writing this since I found Ross's videos through a post that linked to a small snippet of Freeman's Mind, intended as a meme. Now I'm an extremely huge fan of Ross's work, having watched nearly all of his videos (save 1 or 2) multiple (possibly up to 10-20 for a few Game Dungeons) times, with every new video brightening up even the crappiest of days (or helping me slog through extremely exhausting studying sessions at night before exams). It really saddens me that it has come to this, no matter whose fault it is. In the end the entire community suffers, unless something magical happens and the promised announcement solves all problems.

 

Sources:

Relevant links:

 

Explanation from a prominent Lemonpunch members (who may or may not have been part of the (paid or unpaid) development team) (requires Steam login, see quote bellow instead): https://lemonpunch.net/threads/the-director-of-thriving-ventures-vs-bastion-2-reckoning.48045/

 

The resignation thread of the developer "AlexGrist" (requires Steam login, see quote bellow instead): https://lemonpunch.net/threads/i-wish-it-could-be-different-goodbye.47729/

 

Teamspeak discussions among Lemonpunch staff and the owner ("Gurrazor"). I suggest turning down the audio since a few of the particpants (as well as the maker of the video at the start) blast really loud and (intentionally) annoying sounds on occasion:

1st / Day 1 discussion:

 

9E8ifMV5WGo

 

2nd / Day 2 discussion:

 

4YcnZ6Xk8y0

 

 

Quoted explanation thread ("The director of Thriving ventures vs Bastion 2: reckoning"):

 

(Just head to the bottom, new stuff is in bold.)

-

After forcefully blocking AlexGrist out of Thriving Ventures

Refusing to make any sort of deal

And ignoring the lack of schema rights to the servers

 

The acting director of LemonPunch has completely managed to take the once popular Garry’s mod forum and server line into a dying heap of confusion and anger over the course of a weekend. But how did this all go down exactly?

 

Thats simple, it was reported on Friday by AlexGrist that he has since been denied any shares to the company thriving ventures, despite the previous verbal agreement that he would have a cut of 50% give or take, however due to the lack of a written contract between them, AlexGrist has been working as a lead developer for thriving ventures since 2013, when LemonPunch was first established. The following events of Friday the 22nd 2016 has since forced the leave of Thriving venture’s lead developer.

The news has not since been taken lightly by the community, with a public backlash almost immediately after the news broke with a mass grouping of community members joining the teamSpeak channel to discuss the situation and later followed by a series of threads spreading the information on LemonPunch’s own forums.

 

The news spread beyond the forums, with other communities finding this information quickly and reporting it on their own sites, it essentially spread like wildfire with the first notice of the news spreading within the first 30 minutes of the first LemonPunch thread.

 

It was later found out that due to the lack of any contract that The director of Thriving Ventures used to block their lead developer out has left a side effect, Thriving ventures had no rights over the code and schema used in Thriving Venture’s assets, these being roleplay servers.

It was expected for an agreement to be made or rejected on the following monday at the latest.

 

Meanwhile the community forums has continued to blow up with threads criticising the director of Thriving Ventures and his decision with his business. While some threads on the issue were swiftly locked by staff, more were quick to replace them, the concept of attempting to silence criticism only amplifies it was clearly in effect.

 

The servers remained up on the weekend although faced some of the lowest player numbers for a weekend in recent records, all while threads continued to be made and discussed on the website.

In the conflict there were some attempts at communication from the director himself, although these were not placed in any space where people could easily see the information, these were a profile post and a teamspeak speech (which has been recorded)

 

Outside of this however, community members had already begun to find new places to join and continue to play their desired game, with a record number of 200 people joining a community that is starting up from the remains of LemonPunch, although is not providing any of the LemonPunch servers that they originally provided.

On monday it was made clear that the director and developer had not came to an agreement as the servers promptly shut down and their sections removed from the LemonPunch website, since this there has been a small announcement made to announce an upcoming announcement regarding the future of LemonPunch, whatever Thriving Ventures decides to do now however will be harmed by the stigma and backlash produced from this behaviour in the past few days.

 

There is no doubt that the events of the past few days has been very unfortunate for everyone involved, as many people will face losing their hobby and others will be losing the time and effort dedicated to the previous servers with only screenshots, logs and word of mouth to present these facts.

 

I hope for the best to every stretch of this community, from the players, to the donors, staff, directors and developers. May everyone go on to do great things, you are potential storytellers, writers, level designers, coders, artists and so much more.

 

-

 

It now appears that continued efforts to control the forums has lead to the removal of the original thread, however the denial of news explains the very quote I mentioned in this thread.

 

'attempting to silence criticism only amplifies it'

 

And as such here I am making a noise mere moments after the original thread was killed.

You may think a ban is in order, its your website, out of my control.

But if you think that is the case, I'll happily accept my first LP forum ban as me fighting against the act of being silenced.

 

Your move.

 

-

 

Your move was to repeat the same deletion of threads yet again.

Guess I'll make my next move.

 

Your poor communication in addressing the situation crippled you from the start.

You've failed to be direct with your message and you've failed to publish any of your original statements on the forum itself except the single sentence on your profile.

Aside that you rambled on for nearly 20 minutes on Teamspeak to attempt Damage control.

 

Your actions have costed multiple people the hubby they loved and wasted their time in character development. Player stories, relationships, groups and the like are all gone due to your move, its rather concerning to see a willing disregard for it.

 

And I guess I can take back one of my previous statements, if Thriving Ventures was to collapse in on itself, fan-fucking-tastic.

 

Seems thats my part.

Your move.

Response from the founder:

Bastion, I will make an announcement tomorrow and after that you'll think what you'll think. But before that, I suggest that you don't speculate too much or make rash assumptions.

Response in regards to thread deletions by one of the (unpaid I believe) staff who decided to stick around:

This isn't Gurrazor, it's us (the last few folk who aim to keep peace and not see forums turn to shit). None of your threads were in fact deleted but rather moved to a section where they won't incite constant drama.

 

Forgive me for not wanting to see constant shit-drama but I don't, I'm someone who wishes to see the forums stay clean and not a total mess, but hey that's just me. Also, no one is blocking your freedom of speech but all this is bringing is drama and it's frankly unnecessary.

 

Quoted resignation thread ("I wish it could be different. Goodbye"):

 

I've been put in a position where I can no longer continue in my role at LemonPunch and this decision isn't what I want, at all.

 

I've been part of this community for over 3 years and it's been awesome, the response from the community since I spoke out about my plan to resign isn't something I expected at all so first and foremost, thank you to everyone (seriously). It's genuinely going to be difficult for me to separate myself from something I dedicated so much of my time to.

 

We tried, we really tried to make Gurrazor see the likely result of his decisions but it did nothing and he seemed to not consider it in any way. It's incredibly sad that I've been put in this position, I had ambitions to continue development in this community in so many ways.

 

I'm sorry that I cannot do more, @Blackquill and @Rictalspace have been a huge support in the effort to try and properly resolve this in a way that doesn't impact the community negatively; They truly deserve a huge thank you from me and the community members for everything they've done and continue to do.

 

All of you are awesome and I want to thank each and every one of you for everything you've done for the community during my time here.