The Gen Con Twitter account has been pelted nonstop for the last several days for a comment about one of its exhibitors and attendees, Matt Loter, allegedly enacting violence against another attendee, Jeremy Hambly from the YouTube outlet The Quartering. Gen Con has forfeited to respond to any of the requests for comments and has even gone as far as to censor and ban users from the Twitch livestream channels if they bring up the alleged assault. The convention, however, had no qualms with promoting Matt Loter’s board game, Expancity, while completely ignoring the alleged assault.
The tweet from Gen Con promoting Expancity was published on August 4th, 2018.
Ooh, 25% off Expancity! That’s a GREAT deal. Check out Rise of Tribes when you stop by the Breaking Games booth (#2329) as well! https://t.co/x03e3pMSU0
— Gen Con (@Gen_Con) August 4, 2018
The Expancity board game was designed in part by Matt Loter, who goes by the nickname “Matt Fantastic”, as depicted over on the product page for Expancity on BoardGameGeek.
The Twitter thread is filled with people calling out Gen Con for not addressing the alleged assault, which originally made waves when it was being reported on August 2nd, 2018.
Even after reaching out to them for comment, Gen Con has still opted not to respond.
However, the organization has been censoring user comments and banning users for bringing up the assault that Hambly encountered. Various users have been posting photos of Gen Con’s Twitch stream, which keeps deleting comments and banning users for bringing up the assault and asking for a response.
LOL wtf pic.twitter.com/NY1SFaIUip
— Dank Net (@CracklingCrow) August 2, 2018
I WAS BANNED FOR POINTING OUT THE LAW
“Isn’t punching someone illegal? Ban Matt”
Talk about damage control pic.twitter.com/QMtzpshQxW— Comatose (@Com4tose_) August 2, 2018
Holy shit, they banned us for asking who to contact. Some were being jerks, but I just asked for names to contact.
— ELF (@turquoisebolo) August 2, 2018
Wow. That is wild. Everyone who brings anything up even remotely about this is instant banned.
— (@sincitygeek) August 2, 2018
Holy fuck they’re full damage control. NO ONE can chat. pic.twitter.com/LLjJ7UztOV
— Blake S (@HUSK3RGAM3R) August 2, 2018
There’s also a thread that is literally chronicling all of the bans happening in the Gen Con Twitch streams, courtesy of Nathan.
@Gen_Con are currently banning anyone who brings up the fact that @TheQuartering was attacked by someone who has a booth there. Pathetic. pic.twitter.com/RCahdb9Jvf
— Nathan (@itsmenathanj1) August 2, 2018
As pointed out in the previous article, harassing, physically attacking, or breaking the law constitutes expulsion from Gen Con. The code of conduct is available to read over on the official website.
Jeremy Hambly has opted to crowdsource funding for a civil suit against Matt Loter. There’s a GoFundMe page where it states…
“The perpetrator has been identified, and will be arrested shortly. But Jeremy lacks the means to sue him in a civil court, and we feel money shouldn’t be the reason Jeremy shouldn’t be the reason his attacker isn’t punished to the fullest extent of the law.“
After Matt Loter was identified by other witnesses as the one who allegedly assaulted Jeremy Hambly, Loter has closed down his social media pages and locked all his accounts, preventing anyone from seeing his past tweets or comments.
