I didn’t know all of this, but I knew enough to believe the rest.

I am bitter. The Smash world would have been so different - more stable, more safe, thriving instead of struggling - if they’d given even a second thought to us at any point.

#SaveSmash https://twitter.com/anonymoussmash2/status/1331031597647355905

Also. The stuff about PM breaks my heart. My spouse was involved with its dev and wouldn’t even tell me why when it shut down. Now I know. What a horrible reason.

Adding to this thread further:
The #1 problem for the COC was resources. We lacked people-power, training/education, funds to give people the ability to put in the time, formal accountability of TOs (bc as it stands TOs can run their events or ban/not ban people as they please).

In a perfect world, those resources would have come from the big N. Because they want to be seen as squeaky-clean family-friendly, they would’ve been invested in tracking, training, & holding accountable TOs & events; permanently banning exposed predators; hiring/funding ppl; etc

Alternatively if N didn’t want to be involved themselves, N would have allowed major investors to provide resources that could have stabilized the community: more official public tournaments instead of basement drunk Smashfests, more permanent careers/wisdom in the community.

Instead, we are in the worst case scenario. N won’t support us. N won’t let anyone else support us. So as the scene grows hugely, it remains a Wild West where vulnerable and/or underrepresented folks like children & gender minorities are not protected but taken advantage of.

Yes, every person who does harm is individually responsible for that harm. Yet to truly fix the issue of abuse going unaccounted for, we also have to ask: what gave them the opportunity? What structures failed our community that abusers got to keep coming back?

I’ve typically hated the idea of a Big Brother company telling a game community what to do. But one absolute benefit of N involvement would have been player safety. Would there still have been abuse happening and even covered up? Probably. At the same scale as July? No. /thread