Evil Mojo Games denied renown Paladins content creator, Syberbolt, a verified checkmark in the game because the executive producer claimed that he was “toxic”.
There’s a lengthy 28 minute video that covers the entire scenario from start to finish, including the e-mails, the exchanges, and the persistence that was exercised in search of becoming a verified user within Paladins.
You can check out Syberbolt’s video below.
So this all started around May 1st, 2019, where Syberbolt asks how to become verified in Paladins.
He didn’t receive much in the way of a legitimate answer, so eventually he went to the Paladins Discord to get a more concrete explanation from the Evil Mojo moderators. After getting the runaround from the moderator Romanova, Syberbolt was eventually told to submit a support ticket to find out how to become verified.
After submitting a support ticket Syberbolt still wasn’t given any kind of response about how to get a checkmark other than to contact customer support.
He tried contacting one of the staff via Twitter direct messaging, but didn’t have any luck receiving an answer.
At the end of his wits, he tried one last time after multiple attempts to get verified. After sending in one more e-mail, he received a reply from Evil Mojo Games executive producer Dayle Flowers on August 26th, 2019, who wrote…
“Hello Syberbolt,
“As a company focused on our communities with a strong policy against toxicity, we cannot endorse players that are openly toxic. As such we will not be able to give you a verified checkmark at this time. We have also recently disabled the use of the setname command so this should no longer be a common problem.”
If I were a braindead Liberal I would respond with a cringe-worthy “Yikes!”.
And yes, the executive producer wrote a player telling them that he couldn’t be verified due to “toxicity”. What does that mean? He doesn’t say.
Syberbolt even provided proof of the e-mail with a screenshot.
So what exactly made Syberbolt “toxic”? Well, he doesn’t know and Evil Mojo Games didn’t say.
Is there a “toxic” meter somewhere that allows people to find out how “toxic” they are? Not as far as the general gaming public is concerned.
But to add insult to injury, there have been various other content creators who were verified despite saying and doing uncouth things within the Paladins community, which led Syberbolt to believe that Hi-Rez is playing favorites, instead of handing out checkmarks in an honest manner.
Later in the video he shares a screenshot where it’s explained what the checkmarks are for and why they’re given out.
Unequivocally so, there doesn’t appear to be any terms or conditions that openly state that verified checkmarks can’t be handed out to “toxic” players.
A deleted commented from an Evil Mojo Games employee over on Reddit also revealed that they didn’t like Syberbolt’s language and the way he described some things, labeling him as “toxic”, and pretty much opting out of giving him a checkmark.
Basically it looks like this is something that Evil Mojo Games came up with to deny Syberbolt a verified checkmark, rather than because he actually violated some kind of community standards.
As disappointing as this revelation is for him, the reality is that this is how the industry works now. Time and time over again we’ve mentioned to our own audience that the Overton Window is chiefly Left. If you don’t align your views with their agenda, you’re ousted. You’re a pariah.
Common sense, individuality, and an unwillingness to be indoctrinated with the crazy ideology being foisted onto all of entertainment media at the moment will result in these kind of situations, where you either get in line with their crazy, insular ideological system, or you’re labeled as “toxic” and kept on the outskirts. Heck, many companies already have policies in place to remove “toxic” gamers, such as Twitch and Blizzard; you can even lose access to your Stadia account if Google thinks you’re being “toxic”.
It’s a sad, pathetic, and unfortunate reality that has canvassed nearly every single inch of the gaming industry.
