UPDATE! NeoGAF Owner accused of sexual abuse, site officially back up and statement

@jg4xchamp: It used to be, sure. But now? The place has turned into an absolute thought-policed shithole where nearly every gaming thread gets turned into some virtue signaling soap box about race and gender. Most of the industry folk turned away from the place long ago and are now on places like Reddit, where I find much better discussion about games than what GAF has become... by a country mile.

@pinkanimal:

Thanks!

@oliver8114:

That seems like a parody of what happened over there. There was a lot of criticism for there being statues of people like Christopher Columbus and Confederate generals (as there should be), and there was zero-tolerance policy for people that promoted views that harassed and bullied women and minorities (like GamerGate and the alt-right), but they did not have a history of internet detectives doxxing people (people got instantly banned for doing that, that's something you'd expect out of GamerGate people) .

There's a reason all the mods, admins, and posters burned the place to the ground when Malka's allegations resurfaced, any other place would probably downplay those allegations to keep the site together; however, the best part of GAF was zero-tolerance for that stuff.

IF every thread was that, sure, maybe you'd have a point, because I'm not a fan of how overtly soft they can be. But, nope. The games difficulty thread you had people like me n durante pointing out how "not all art is meant for you" is totally valid conversation point. We've had discussion on how there are totally objective things you can critique games on, and that the media has done an awful job for decades teaching their community how to discuss games on any academic level.

OTs, spoiler threads. I find it fascinating that every twit who didn't want to be generalized by gamergate goons (because I agree you don't generalize an entire group of people because of the rotten apples), are now all of a sudden generalizing an entire forum that had a wide range of posters n opinions.

Admittedly I was never as active on SW as I've ever been on System Wars by comparison. But my selective posting got me into plenty of good reads n convos. And I'm the furthest thing from overly politically correct.

mmhmm gamers are too stupid to even have decent opinions about their own hobby, why the **** would you expect better when it comes to real shit? lol

@airraidjet said:

Polygon:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/22/16516592/neogaf-tyler-malka-evilore-allegations-shutdown

See that line in the sand? You're current 6 miles away from it.

Neogaf sucks. Really makes me appreciate coming to GS all the more. You have to do a lot to get banned here. On Neogaf, you can be banned for literally nothing, just because they feel like it. All the admins and mods left. And the site is in chaos right now. It's pretty much burning to the ground as we speak.

K

I find it funny how all the mods left when they were as bad as he was. The mods were the biggest problem with the site because they flatout ban people just for having different opinions than them.

@airraidjet: This is a great example as to why that website banned people like this.

@jg4xchamp: Of course there are some great posters there and not all topics became hijacked with that shit, but in general the forum came to follow that sort of narrative more and more and far too many topics devolved into such discussions than should have ever been allowed. It just became beyond toxic and if you did not follow the narrative of the ultra progressive hugbox, then you got banned. It's nothing like it was back in 2011 when I joined and especially previous years. Not even close, which I why I finally bailed and actually requested a ban awhile back. **** NeoGAF. Nothing of value was lost.

@Willy105: I wish it was a parody but it cerainly was not. I would seek out reccent quotes (Without names of course) but since the site is down it is pretty hard.

There was not only a lot of criticsm which is totally fine. People there celebrated criminal acts and encouraged violence against people. And yes the stalking is true. Especially in these kind of threads when you actually tried to play the middle or try to argue how its not ok to use violence on people etc. Some people digged older posts up just so people could judge you past on your post history and make your opinion obsolete. And I am not talking here about mods I am talking about user while the mods simply allowed this in many cases.

And yes they did not doxx peoples personal information and when they did mods were strict there and removed it but digging up older posts went to an absurde level quite reccently until some mods finally stepped in and went harsh against it. Also this so called Zero policy did not help these people who actually tried to reason and try to discuss sensitive topics. These topics were for many "progressive" people an either for us or against us matter.

Against some stuff BLM does = racist

Against modern femininsm = sexist/MRA

Trying to argue about people like Johntron does a voiceover for some game = Gamergater

It was all about the extreme. Gaf had still some middle people but they were often bullied out of conversations or the other party went so hard on it that threads had to be closed.

I doubt neogafs politics correctness has anything do with devs no wanting to be there if that is what you are applying. More like how asinine some can get regarding the devs video games

@oliver8114: Looking up past post history is not doxxing. Doxxing is looking up real names, phone numbers, addresses. Calling one out for something they said before it fair game everywhere, including here on Gamespot. If someone went into a thread saying it wasn't a big deal a black man got shot in his car because the police officer thought he was scary, and it turns out in a past post he complained the protagonist of a new installment in his favorite game/movie franchise was black, of course it invalidates their opinion.

I remember a lot of Gaffers being really happy that Wolfenstein's ad campaign gloated about being able to kill Nazis; I'm sure that could be considered offensive to those that identify and relate with Nazis, I agree. But at the same time....Americans beating up Nazis was uncontroversial until this year, so the whole ordeal seems political from the very beginning, not as literally inciting violence against others.

I never heard the term modern feminism before, but it's uncommon to find someone criticizing BLM and defending someone like JonTron to not be using those wedge issues to defend some even more dangerous stuff instead.

That's sad. Lurked there pretty often. Good discussion and some hilarious memes/gifs, like the Banderas stuff during the start of the gen for example.

I'm not a fan of mobs shooting down people like this, so I'm just gonna wait for more facts to come forward. I'm also a big believer in forgiveness in general and this crime does not strike me as being unforgivable (after proper punishment). Perhaps it's still best if the guy sells the site, should be worth a few mill-balls.

he had an offer for 10 million and declined. probably wishing he had taken the offer now

I already said they did not doxx and when people did it mods reacting normally pretty fast. And we are not talking about these kind of silly examples. They were posts about these posters being a conservative, or voting for trump, criticizcing femininsm etc. They used everything against them.

And they were not only happy about the Wolfenstein add. They were happy when some australian Politican got punched for being pro life. In threads people asking about advice about some racial issues at work etc. The most common answer was punch him in the face. Also as a German I think thanks to places like Neogaf the word Nazi has lost so much meaning. Now almost everyone who disagrees with certain stands or topics has become a nazi. But thats just me.

As for modern feminism: Some also call it Third-wave-feminism. Like every group or Ideology BLM also should be allowed to crtitizised. I for example find it really stupid when they try to barricade highways with 20 people. the only thing it does it makes common people angry. And BLM has some really shady people in there as well. I remember this BLM toronoto leader who had some really racist views how her race is superior to white people etc.

But this goe way beyond Neogaf and is probably pretty offtopic. I am jsut saying there are always reason to crticize groups or ideologies. Neogaf was one of thee places who did not allow any of it.

Yeah 10 million = retirment money. Wonder how much it made him per month then.

Well, crap. GAF was my go-to forum for years and years. It wasn't perfect but it was the place to go to discuss literally every aspect of games and they had zero tolerance for gators.

Now I'm stuck with forums that thinks photoshopping "NeoGAF" onto a picture of the burning WTC is funny.

@effec_tor: When someone goes way too far into championing social justice, they're projecting. They think by going extreme-SJW they are correcting their own shitty behaviour towards other people.

Reddit, Twitter and forums like this have replaced gaf for me it was a bice place if you gp to the good game OT's and Off Topic topics but yeah i agree with everyone who found Neogaf to be a bit too on the elitist side.

No wonder the owner was the most crazy one. I hope the good mods and members find a new place for good gamig and off topic communities but yeah neogaf has been going downhill for a while.

Also but not least i wish much luck to the girl who had the courage to speak up, Evilore deserves what he gets his site is tarnished and can't be sold like the millions he first bragged about anymore.

Hopefully the name Neogaf stays dead even if IGN or something buys it why come back lol. It's better to make a new one or find a new place and learn from what was wrong and improve on that.

That said screw Evilore:P he was such a prick tbh. Always was.

even if the political opinions of many of it's members were incredibly partisan and any deviation was looked upon with scorn and likely a ban, GAF was a great catch all forum for every piece of gaming related news and coverage. it's disheartening that the site owner is allegedly a pervert but let's not poison the well; the place was an absolute treasure trove of inside information about game development and i learned a ton about the technical details of graphics rendering, programming, cpu design etc from it's members. Not to mention offering gamer opinions that were actually worth reading and often times offered unique, detailed insight into a particular game.

this isn't some moral victory for the members of your political leanings. there are potentially several victims involved (rumors of EvilOre having a sketchy past, to say the least) in what is a very serious matter and taking advantage by screeching "lol sjws are cancer lol" is kinda pathetic and incredibly self-serving.

on a related note it is just fucking bonkers how many people have decided to speak up about sexual assault in a short period of time. good for those brave enough to finally say enough is enough and pointing out these assholes.

<3

This isn't the first time Evilore was accused of being a huge piece of shit and I look forward to reading what kind of bullshit excuse/lie he has this time. Even if the site does go back up, and even if he steps down from being neogafs owner the site will be tainted forever after this. I'd be ashamed to use their forums with such a shadow looming over them.

Funny enough, George Locus was smart enough to take Disney's Billions of Dollars for Star Wars but not the CEO NeoGAF. He was a fool for not taking the money and leave.

Also its quite interesting what kind of "ideologies" these peole often followed. I wonder how many more will get exposed.

Probably enough to buy Porsches each year. Tyler always was a business man and a smart one to turn around the Gaming Age Forums like he did. Loads of advertisement money and a pretty good listing on the Alexa rankings. Too bad however he could not keep his dick in his pants. Poetic how he went down by the way of the same witch-hunt culture he helped nurture.

The only decent thing about NeoGAF was the highly aggressive news coverage the community there provided in gaming-side, sad to see that go because no site comes close to it.

Outside that the place can burn.

I won't miss the site for some of the people that polluted it, nor the hivemind/echo chamber mentality that was ubiquitous, but it was easily the best place on the internet for gaming news and discussion. There hasn't been anything like it since, and it will be a very long time before anything similar exists again, if ever. There are plenty of decent gaming forums, but none were anywhere near as well organized, where you could literally find anything you wanted easily.

Plus, say what you will about their sometimes ridiculous moderation, but at least I didn't have to suffer most of the juvenile shit that goes on in other gaming forums. Nah, just had to deal with the incessant SJW bullshit, but at least those topics could easily be avoided.

When it came to gaming news they were the best at that as I would get news way before IGN and such, and yeah, I don't think many gaming sites come close.

Man i'm going to miss that site

It really is a shame, I used to go there everyday. Not sure where I will go for game news now. In other eye opening events, today reading through my post history here is making me wonder what was going on 7+ years ago in my early twenties.

Your brain was still developing. It's okay.

And the trend keeps on going...

Nice to see you back in the homeland, mitu.

RIP in peace.

Good riddance to NeoGAF. That place was just one big echo chamber full of extremely bias Sony fanboys and self-righteous SJWs who didn't allow any opposing viewpoints.

They are afraid that real life information about them get leaked. And hope that people won't chase after them. Because they really pushed this guys insane world views forwards for all those years.

Mods where banning people from the left and the right.. Until the point they jumped ship before people would start to turn on them in real life. ( because they basically did the dirty work on his forum for him ). They are directly responsable for defending this guy in 2013 or 2014 when he already harrassed woman to cover it up, they could contain it and where happy to keep on ruling under this nut.

They are afraid right now, because following there own extreme left wing logic, they should all get life sentenced or "hunted down in real life through social justice" with this evilore guy. And are directly responsable for this guy to keep on going and activily supported a extremist site on a higher degree.

Don't think neogaf had some higher level of moral vision it's actually far worse then other sites.

They banned and culled people for just not agreeing with them.

Loads and loads of posters that where from top tier quality and helped out a lot of people got perm banned and called litterly "shit head" by there lord al mighty. just for having different opinions.

There was no discussion allowed, it was either you agree with them or get dogpiled on and harrassed. As they would go as far as find out all your information and post them without any issue's the moment you had a view that didn't align with them up.

For example tons of posters got banned a few weeks ago, for saying, killing 100k+ people through drone strikes is better then having trump in office. Which obviously started to question some people's loyalty towards the site.

And about doxing people.

They had topics dedicated towards finding people that had nazi symbols on them to punch them ( physically assault them ) and glorify this attitude. With endless of reposts about how hitting somebody was great. Absolute disgusting behavior.

Not only that, they would activily hunt down people on social media and dogpile on them when a "rumor pushed itself upwards". there was no need for any justice system to first look into the object. If it was a white guy taht did something against a black guy, the white guy needed to be linched without any information. If it was the other way around, they would just make racial slurs like "good", "**** white cops".

They activily in the last few days before it imploded started to mob on celebrity's like matt damon without having any evidence besides a simple tweet that could say anything. They all wanted blood and everybody that didn't agree with it got culled right away. Just to find out later that even the girl that made the accusation said it was taken out of context and he had nothing to do with it which resulted in people just leaving the topic and moving towards the next one, to start all over again. Not like any of those banned people could defend there point like at all. which resulted in fear ( as accounts where hard to get ) and people activily avoiding any counter arguments. Which resulted in this extremelist left wing attitude to start with.

It was a "left wing extremist social justice warrior master race site" and that's why it became infamous in the industry even under devs to avoid it like the plague.

Hell they would even activily damage company's that didn't agree with there visions. ( hat in time game as example )

Everything else that wasn't a "gaffer" was either banned, a nazi, a right wing idiot etc etc and got mobt on without any way for you to react on it. The community was absolute toxic to extreme ends.

Why sexually abuse women?Tons of beautiful Hoes are out there to satisfy you completely.

Lol popping a bottle to celebrate Neogafs demise. Soft ass , beta male website.

Neogaf.....run by a rapist and had a moderator who liked kiddie porn.

SMFH.....

I wouldn't leave you guys...ok, I left in 2014...but I came back at least in 2015!=O

It's sad. On one hand, I feel like sometimes people who support toxic outrage culture need a taste of their own medicine. However, because of that... other people get thrown under the bus and that is the part that makes me angry. It seems like a good idea when people have done things that are super morally wrong. It is fine to call out abusers like rapists but now people have included things some people may just not agree with. People are already looking up dirt on people they do not like daily. Also, it is toxic because someone could call someone out and it may not even be true. The accusation was enough for people to just pack their bags and roll out. I do agree that he is a creep, though. There was a history of this kind of behavior with him so it was a long time coming. It was valid this time, but the people who support this kind of culture forget that this can happen to them. As I would always say.... if you are going around calling people out constantly, you better make sure your past is squeaky clean.

However, the Kotaku article about it had a conversation with the woman from that post also mentioning that she had a physical relationship with Tyler shortly after the breakup. The incident happened in April 2015 and she stopped talking to him after E3 2015 which is in June. Why? I don't know, maybe she regrets it now but now I do kind of feel that she may have been interested but since she had a boyfriend she couldn't? He could have pressured her into it but leaving out that information from the beginning is pretty odd. This could also go back to the casting couch culture that has been called out recently (a good example of things to call out!) where she feels that sleeping with him would get her better networking targets. I don't know her reasoning but I just thought that part was interesting.

It does suck because until recent years I have only heard good things about the site. If there were areas of the site that just had that toxic content and not the entire site, I probably could have been fine posting there. I'm liberal and don't like Trump just like many others but I don't want to talk about him daily... hell I hate that is all the news talks about is Trump. I have read conspiracy theories that Trump was involved in this. Why would Trump care about a video game forum??????? That is just reaching. I just do not want to walk on eggshells.

Ello =P

@indzman: Hello, I hope you are doing well!

@MistressMinako: In the end Tyler got hit with everything he has cultivated with this community and honestly it is difficult to feel sorry for him. Always had to roll my eyes when people seriously believed that gamergate was responsible for Trumps election.

The real uncertainty is what will happen now and how some sites will change with people on the search for a new place. Many seem to went to Giantbomb and we can only hope that moderation is pretty strict with them there because what they did on neogaf will hopefully not fly at other places.

Exactly. When people try that hard to be stupid you know something is up. Odd that I haven‘t really seen the typical gaf defender in here. They must be short circuiting.

Not so well actually Heh, Good to hear from you Mina. Girl , were you posting in NeoGaf all this time from your absence from OT lol?

@oliver8114: I haven't heard much about him until recent years and it has always been negative. I think only certain people in the gaming community and social justice figures cared about GG, no one else did. My family would have no idea what GamerGate is.

I don't know where they are going to go if they are used to the strict moderation of that site. They will either have to adjust or make a new website.