devtrackers.gg
I have unbanned you. You should not receive a ban that does not have a ban warning from our staff. Note that steam does regularly ban people from our forums (of the forty bans we have ever issued, most of them are done by steam staff) and they don’t always fill out the ban reasons.
However, please do read the steam community guidelines as posting on the forums is not a “right” and steam makes this very clear. You are expected to be polite and it’s not just open season for whatever opinion you want. It’s a place for measured and considered discussion with the devs.
Think of it like going into someone’s store. The forums are our store, and while you can indeed say whatever you want, you can also be asked to leave.
While I appreciate the ban lift it clearly says "a developer banned you". It seems i am also banned from Discord and Twitter so that would imply it was not steam. I submitted to steam support to confirm this. I have worked with customers and clients all my working life. While yes, you can tell a customer to go elsewhere, it's not in the better interest of the business to alienate concerned or frustrated customers.
My opinions are valid. I come to the community with them to discuss in a civil manner. I even held off on a review as while I can't recommend the the game I didn't want it adding to the score. I was holding out for improvements. I'm not sure I will ever be able to recommend it at this point but who knows.
However the previous replys have worded it better than I could so I will leave it at that.
I cannot lift steam issued bans, I can only lift ones we applied. I mentioned above simply because there are some blank bans that I cannot revert. Only forty bans have been issued, so not that many.
The post was polite, voicing his own personal issues with the game to you, the devs, while being polite and courteous. There was nothing with malice or intent to insult. The fact that you and the rest of your team are attempting to censor this kind of feedback is absolutely appalling. I am not saying that you deserve to be mistreated or insulted, but people including myself have bought the game and would at least like a standing as to what is in the works.
Everyone knows that the forums are "not a right" but you guys definitely need to adjust how you accept feedback and healthy criticism. It is not a good look for you to come in and be delivering backhanded comments on a post on reddit like this.
Then you remove Munnky from the discord and block him on twitter. This is someone with a personal vendetta against Munnky for voicing his opinion. Shame on you and the rest of the moderators. I have already left the discord, uninstalled the game, and unfollowed you all on twitter. I refuse to support this game and you guys while you continue to behave in this manner.
I reverted the ban as I can’t see why it was applied. I cant revert steam issued bans, only ones issued by our staff/moderators.
Are you saying that Steam doesn’t show you — a developer of a game who has to manage a community — who it was that performed the ban? If that’s the case how can you even claim that it’s Steam doing it and not some developer on your team that is simply getting upset and lying to you? “No, sir! I didn’t ban anyone today!”
If Steam is truly such a poorly built system that gives you no username reference at all as to who performed the ban, I think you should hire a community manager that moderates the existing ban list and makes sure Steam staff isn’t for some reason going rogue on your community. Because outside of racism, discrimination, and / or misinformation Steam shouldn’t be touching posts from your community. Doing so makes you as a lead developer look really bad. They’re pretty much attacking your reputation.
This post wasn’t constructive but it was in no way harmful. Your analogy is also so horribly delivered. You’re pretty much saying that eating at a restaurant and then posting on Yelp that the food is “bland” is a punishable offense.
I’m not accusing anyone because I can’t see what I feel you should be able to see (if you can’t see who banned someone you need to request the Steam devs to implement that ASAP). But whoever is banning people from your community for posts like this needs to be talked to. I feel reactions to almost harmless posts like this come from a place of low morale. They need to be told Icarus may not be perfect but it was a fun game that my sister and I co-op’s over 400 hours each in.
Icarus has flaws and the user who said the game is boring is not wrong. Because the game did get boring once my sister and I mastered our build orders and learned the AI mechanics. It became more of a grind than an enjoyment, but what game doesn’t? Taking offense to generalized criticism isn’t going to make the game less “boring” to this user and any other users who agree with them, and believe me, a lot of people agree with them.
So maybe talk to Steam or whoever was responsible for the ban about their morale. You can even use your store analogy except instead of saying the customer can be asked to leave, maybe encourage positive engagement.
“Chef, this food is really bland. It has no taste.” “What do you feel it’s missing?” “It might just need a little salt.” “Thanks for the feedback. We’ll check with the other customers and see if they feel the same way”
Doesn’t that seem more civil than
“Chef, the food is really bland. It has no taste.” “Get out and never come back.”
The ban was issued by our team, hence I was able to revert it. This is against our own policy, which is no ban should be issued without a genuine reason (as a last resort) and that reason is required to be shown in the ban reason text.
To date only forty bans have been issued, which considering the post quantity is a very small number.
I am awaiting more information but that is all the I have about this ban so far.
That’s really sad to hear given Dean’s post stating it may have been Steam who did it.
Edit: I’ll just add that I really liked this game. I can see the frustration having to deal with balancing people like me with people who wanted more out of it. But staying positive and relying on your community will bring much better continued success if not with this project but the next. Turning on community members though, that’ll leave a bad taste in anyones mouth regardless of their opinion on the game design direction.
That’s really sad to hear given Dean’s post stating it may have been Steam who did it.
Just to note, that's not what I intend to suggest.
There are multiple aspects to my post, to confirm:
Overall the focus is about providing an inviting space for developers and community to interact. I'm not suggesting this is the case here, but some people do get bans/posts removed because despite posting their opinions, they're disruptive or create moderation hazards.