The latest Wizard’s Den drama

[Reporter]

A few days ago, someone posted on the r/ss14 reddit accusing Wizard’s Den of covering up sexual harassment from one of the former staff. Mods deleted it. You might think it was someone trying to start shit after they got banned but there seems to be alot more going on here.

The people running Wizard’s Den also run r/ss14, so it being deleted is expected. I’m posting about this here and using a throwaway because Wizard’s Den will definitely want to ban me if any of this is true. What got my interest about the post is that it wasn’t just some random accusation, it came with 2 discord screenshots that I saved (didn’t think to save the whole post but it didn’t have a lot other than the screenshots) and posted here. They got me digging and alot of what I found was enough to keep digging.

What I found

Alot of this looks to have kicked off around when PJB (SS14’s project lead) pushed through two really unpopular PRs (Remove dwarves and Remove bad accents) by self-merging (Remove dwarves and Remove bad accents) both of them.

Keronshb tried to revert one of the changes and PJB blocked it. Some player writes an open letter and alot more add on to it. And I’d bet theres alot more I missed too.

Then alot happens all around the same day:

• The open letter post gets closed by PJB.
• Kaylie (AKA “Moony”) gets a ban appeal accepted. Kaylie/Moony was Wizard’s Den’s staff and if you read the screenshots I saved from the deleted r/ss14 post, you’ll know why this appeal is relevant.
• Chief-Engineer (Wizard’s Den’s former “head game admin, project manager and operations director”) gets banned and isn’t told why. Or at at least thats what he says. He is supposedly the writer of the post in the screenshots.

I can’t find much from Wizard’s Den about either ban even though they made an announcement to increase staff accountability and transparency and reduce toxicity after Chief-Engineer and a bunch of other staff quit over a year ago. I only find vague stuff about the Kaylie/Moony ban and nothing about the Chief-Engineer ban.

And then a few days later PJB seems to quit and some of what happened (Revert “Remove dwarves” and Partially revert “Remove bad accents”) is reverted but not everything.

That deleted r/ss14 post was made after all of this and it looks like Kaylie/Moony is still unbanned, Chief-Engineer is still banned.

Why the screenshots might be real

The screenshots are supposed to be from adminbus. I guess that is where jannies share who to ban so they don’t all have to deal with the same shitters. The post in the screenshots is about Kaylie/Moony and it says it is written by Chief-Engineer. If you read the “Me Too” section of his latest post about his ban it lines up with alot that the adminbus post is saying and really seems to be hinting at the rest.

The screenshots also mention a evidence PDF. Someone in the deleted r/ss14 post basically confirmed that the PDF is real but I don’t know how they know about it.

A jannie got banned sometime in all of this. The appeal says they got told to make a separate one for discord and github since it is the policy. The Kaylie/Moony appeal is for discord and github too but that is only one appeal. It doesn’t prove the screenshots directly but shows possible favoritism since the treatment is different and favoritism is possibly why Wizard’s Den would want to keep quiet about the sexual harassment.

Kaylie/Moony’s ban appeal doesn’t say anything about any sexual harassment at all. Even the person who accepted it doesn’t say anything about it. That means if the screenshot is real then its odd because anyone who played on Wizard’s Den regularly knows they are strict about even IC stuff like ERP so you would think it would get a mention in the appeal.

Wizard’s Den doesn’t want this stuff to get out and they are fighting hard to stop it so be careful what you do with it.

[Myctai]

WizDen not banning one of few nice people in WizDen

mission impossible

Incredible.

[Myctai]

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Hash: SHA256

Do you still want to play on WizDen-affected servers? I think most reasonable
decision with WizDen as player or server operator would be distancing self from
WizDen-affected stuff (hub, auth server, game servers hard-requiring WizDen
auth), given WizDen already has weaponized hub and auth server in past.

My own involvement with WizDen was rather brief as I chose to leave over few
small things like in the screenshot provided.

Network effect provides strong incentive towards interaction with WizDen
hub/auth.

Both Multiverse and Beyond/SimpleStation launchers been banned from interaction
with them (SS:B spoofs User-Agent at this moment as workaround), that alone
could be interpreted as warning to would-be player.

Consider alternative hubs, even if it's few empty servers at first.

Consider MVAuth, as with cryptography there's no hard need for central identity
authority.
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Moony circa 2022

[Skye]

@Reporter Thanks for this detailed write-up + links! This adds a lot of context.

I hadn’t heard Chief Engineer had been banned – certainly that is disappointing as they’re widely regarded as one of the best, most level-headed admins. But it would definitely be in character for PJB to ban CE as a retaliation for CE coming out against Moony. (No idea about current allegations, but in past Moony was notoriously caustic.)

The recent banning of CptJeanLuc is similarly disappointing. Reading their appeal, it seems CptJeanLuc has fair (and familiar) criticism about PJB’s professionalism in dealing with contributors/players. When they pushed back on PJB’s abuse, it seems they got timeout’ed, banned, and kicked off staff. As usual, the rules don’t apply to PJB – complete tyrant behavior.

[notPJB]

The only thing that really threw me off about Jean’s appeal was this:

@CptJeanLuc

And maybe we’ll be ready to get to forgiveness when you’re ready to cowboy up and cooperate with people partner.

Just felt weird that they sent this after Retequizzle only said their appeal was re-listed. It even made Julian not want to process their appeal lmao.

[Skye]

I agree that comment is weird, but also it’s pretty typical for people to get upset and salty when they get kicked out of wizden. It’s one of wizden’s core tactics, basically bait people until they snap and then use the snap as justification for a ban. Even here with Julian’s comment it’s being foreshadowed (I don’t know what github behavior is being indicated that is ban-worthy, I didn’t see anything in a quick scan)

[Reporter]

This makes me think it is dangerous to play on Wizard’s Den servers because if this is real then that means they are going to protect who they like from anything instead of the players.

[Reporter]

Thank you for not deleting it is good there are still people who are brave and will keep this online instead of helping Wizard’s Den hide it.

[Myctai]

Thanks for exposing GS as place I would not want to interact with

[notPJB]

What does GS even have to do with this?