A message to Igor, and the entirety of the Bugsnax Speedrunning Discord.
3 years ago
Virginia, USA

Hello everyone! You guys know me as BmaN, moderator for the Bugsnax Speedrun.com leader board as well as (apparently) ex-moderator of the Bugsnax Speedrunning Discord.

From day 0, Igor_, Dannyb_, YuriSR, and I built the leader boards and the discord server together. Danny and Igor worked on creating the server and everything within, while Yuri and I worked on getting the leader board approved and setup as well as finding stuff in the game. It eventually evened out with all 4 of us being both Discord and Speedrun.com moderators, and working on strategies for the speedrun. However a couple weeks after release as the community started to grow fast, Igor and Yuri willingly resigned from moderation of both platforms and distanced themselves from the community because they were just disinterested, leaving Danny and I as the remaining 2 moderators. 

However Igor held a strong grip as server owner of the Bugsnax Discord, not giving full moderator privileges to the rest of the moderation team. Such as the ability to view the Audit Log, talk in admin restricted channels(#announcements, #rules, #welcome), edit/add channels, revoke invites, and even early on banning users and giving out roles. Igor also strong armed his way through conflicts, outright banning people when they had not broken any rules, deleting messages that weren't in accordance with his way of thinking (that also didn't break the rules), and as you will see below, banning myself from the Discord for not conforming to his will on moderation.

Before all of this happened, I had a few thoughts about resigning as a moderator because of the way I was treated from select few in the community and generally being overwhelmed with irl events. 

However, on Feb 20th in time for Addio's ESA Marathon run, I @here'd the link for the ESA stream. Not being able to even talk in the #announcements channel, I put it in the #live-streams channel instead. Igor, who has removed himself from the community, took offense to me using @ here for a time sensitive announcement. On the night of Feb 23rd, I went on to let out how I felt about him running the server in (I admit) not as a professional manner as I should have been.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/550662907457961995/813974740075020298/unknown.png

After not giving an answer to whether I would resign or not, I was subsequently banned from the server by Igor. With no reason given, and no actual argument made against moderator privileges except "No, I'm the owner". It leads me to believe this was a very childish move from someone in a position of power who was scared and annoyed at the request that the 2 active moderators have full access to moderation tools in the server.

After this altercation and being blocked from all contact with Igor, I had even more of an inclination for resigning. But after being reached out to from multiple members of the community who genuinely cared for my wellbeing and supported me as moderator it made me realize. 

As with Ape Escape, I love Bugsnax and the community that we speedrunners have built, and I personally want to be involved as much as I can. Whether it be 5 people or 200 people, I care for the Bugsnax community as a whole, and I will continue fighting to hold this pillar that I carry for as long as I possibly can. Every community has it's highs and lows, and I plan to stick with it at any point in between. I will NOT resign, because the community deserves people who actually care.

Sincerely, Bugsnax Speedrun.com Moderator BmanRulesYou21

Edited by the author 3 years ago
grnts, MattatoChips and 15 others like this
Virginia, USA

I feel it is only fair to give an update on this situation, now that things have progressed. After I made this post, I received overflowing amount of support and messages from friends that only reinforced my will to stick with this community.

After creating a new server and having a good portion of people migrate, Igor relinquished full ownership of the original Discord server to @Dannyb_. He has fully removed himself from the community, but he did not go out without a bang. Specifically, he ran a script to remove ALL of his own messages, as well as completely nuked #general-chat, #speedrunning-talk, and other more resource/information based channels. Danny and I are working hard to restore the server back to the state it was in before this entire mess. I hope everyone can find it within themselves to move past this and continue on like how we were before the entire thing started.

The server is now under new ownership, and with that comes a couple of changes. All discord links have been updated back to the original discord, and keep an eye on it, we are looking for feedback from the community on a couple subjects. Thank you everyone!

Edited by the author 3 years ago
grnts, Addio and 4 others like this