Star Citizen backer Lauresh has issued a blog post detailing the events which saw her temporarily banned from Cloud Imperium Games' forums and her thread, in which she advocated for the creation of a "community for female Star Citizen gamers".
Designer Ben Lesnick wrote a forum post yesterday in which he commented, "I do not believe anyone on the moderation team banned Lauresh because they are a woman. I am 100% confident that it was because of the 30+ flags complaining about other users in the thread."
And said that while he believes Lauresh was perhaps overzealous in her flagging on comments, CIG's moderator made several mistakes in their management of and response to the thread. Lesnick has ordered that Lauresh be reduced to a one day suspension instead of the original seven day period and placed the morderator in question under review. The thread about a female Star Citizen community has also been reinstated.
He remarked:
"Cloud Imperium Games is not in the business of preventing women from playing our game. Part of the Star Citizen dream is to build a game that crosses traditional gamer boundaries and includes an experience that everyone can enjoy. Certainly, we are not sitting around in smoky boardrooms dreaming of ways to exclude 50% of the planet in our space adventure."
On Twitter, Lauresh and Lesnick had this discussion:
@LaureshWeb I would also like to apologize to you personally for the thread closure. We can do better.
— Ben Lesnick (@banditloaf) May 5, 2014
Lauresh's blog post comments:
- It wasn't a troll, the thread was a genuine attempt at establishing a group for female fans of star citizen.
- Some women need a non-confrontational place to talk with other females in this community.
- The proposed group was always intended as trans-friendly, this was stated several times in that thread.
- It isn't reverse-sexism to want a female social group.
- My affiliation should have no baring on how the moderators do their job, it did.
- Ben Lesnick agrees that the thread was genuine.
- Prior to this point I have never received a warning, a past ban was overturned on review by CIG.
- Mass-flagging violating posts isn't against the rules, I shouldn't be able to be banned for it.
- The thread still contains rule-breaking posts including bigotry and trolling.
- I am unaware of anyone who has attacked me on this issue receiving a ban.
- Parody threads including white-supremacy versions of my own have been posted but nobody has been banned over any of them
She says that the ban was still unjustified despite the reduction in length and has called on Lesnick to "stop hiding and talk to me like you said you would."
Whatever the resolution of these events, everyone should be able to play games free from abuse and threats. Hopefully this incident will provoke developers to encourage their communities to be more inclusive.
