Below I will summarize a series of events that led to publication of allegations on the Shadowboards by a member of the community. This was preceded by a Staff Complaint against Shalooonsh by that player.
A Staff Complaint was made on February 14. It was mostly an account of intertwined real life and in-game occurrences over a number of years. While some of the details were the same, it differed materially to the post made on the Shadowboards on February 24. I am not going to go into the details, it is not my story to share and I have no desire to feed the popcorn eating folks.
The request asked that Halaster be the one to investigate and reply. After the background details, there was a list of things that community member wanted:
What I want from this is for -
-Staff to seriously vet other staffers
-Staff to pursue transparency
-Actually allow players to occupy roles of power and support them instead of giving this to other staffers either directly or by proxy
-Be honest with the players
-Make the game 18 + since its all themes of sex, drugs and violence and protect underage people
-I don't need a big public debacle or Shalooonsh necessarily "canceled" or "retired" but I do feel this behavior needs to be checked and reigned in. I (and I know many others) are tired of being subjected to it
The account that led up to these questions did paint a picture of general harassment, but not necessarily sexual harassment, in the game over a long period of time. Nor was the complaint clearly an allegation of sexual harassment.
On February 16, Halaster responded. It was mostly a response to the above questions, along with some sympathy for the negative real life things that had happened, but also a statement that as a video game personal lives are largely irrelevant to the game itself.
-Staff to seriously vet other staffers
While we do what we can to make sure we're bringing on the "right" people, we can only do so much. We're not going to check into someone's personal life or background. We judge them based on their time with us as a player, as that is really all we have. Ultimately how we bring on new staff is up to us.
-Staff to pursue transparency
We feel we are currently the "right amount" of transparent with the community. I know you probably won't like that answer, but that's what it is. We are much more transparent than previous staffing groups, but we're only able and willing to go so far with it.
-Actually allow players to occupy roles of power and support them instead of giving this to other staffers either directly or by proxy
Our policy today is that we do give these roles of power to players when they volunteer to fill them. However, it's not unheard of for us to put out a rolecall and get no takers. In these cases, when we want the role occupied but no players are interested, we'll let a staff (if they're interested) to play the role. After some amount of time, we'll do another rolecall, and if a player steps up to volunteer, the staff must store in favor of the player.
-Be honest with the players
I understand where you're coming from. As much as we can be we are honest with players, but there are scenarios where we simply cannot let the community know something.
-Make the game 18 + since its all themes of sex, drugs and violence and protect underage people
We've discussed this and I believe our ultimate consensus was: We have no ability to determine this, but we are going to put up an ESRB style notice, just like any other video game about the content. That's on me for dropping the ball for forgetting to put that on our home page. I'll get to that soon.
-I don't need a big public debacle or Shalooonsh necessarily "canceled" or "retired" but I do feel this behavior needs to be checked and reigned in. I (and I know many others) are tired of being subjected to it
I will not comment on if and how we discipline staff, but I appreciate you bringing this up and letting me know.
On the same day that this was answered (and closed), another complaint was opened up, as the player did not feel it was actually resolved. They made a somewhat more cohesive argument and added in details that were not in the original complaint. Among those new details, they brought up that other players had complaints about Shalooonsh's behavior as well as relaying IC comments his character had made. As policy, we do not let player's file a complaint on another player's behalf, which was noted. There was a little back and forth which seemed cordial enough and the request was closed.
In the background, Halaster was already concerned about Shalooonsh's behavior towards various players. The comment "I appreciate you bringing this up and letting me know." was not made lightly. Removing Shalooonsh is the sort of thing that would take all three of us on board. He made what in retrospect were probing comments to me at least, getting the temperature and setting the stage for going beyond what had been asked for by the player. However, we hadn't gotten to formally talking about it before the post was made on the Shadowboards on February 24.
After that came out, Halaster had very clear, pointed conversations with Shabago and myself. These conversations did not focus on Sexual Harrassment/Harrassment but rather how Shalooonsh was interacting with players. It was decided that Shalooonsh had kept coming back to a place we did not feel comfortable with, so we let him go from staff.
I want to make clear, the original complaint we received was not what was posted on the Shadowboards. It was not a straightforward Sexual Harassment complaint, in that while it detailed things that could be considered sexual harrassment, both in real life and (in the second complaint) potentially in game, those were more elements of the background that was given in support of the questions above. There were multiple themes in the complaint, from general harassment, to not wanting Staff to play in positions of power, concerns around transparency and concerns given the background given how we bring on Staff. And we treated it as a general complaint with several different components.
While the original complaint stated, "I don't need a big public debacle or Shalooonsh necessarily "canceled" or "retired" but I do feel this behavior needs to be checked and reigned in. I (and I know many others) are tired of being subjected to it", ultimately the Producers felt that the only way for Shalooonsh to be "check and reigned in" was to not have them on Staff, and we agreed this was necessary.