Picroma’s Cube World has a had a long and troubled relationship with the community, mostly due to the developer’s lack of communication or poor forms of communication. Well, those issues were exacerbated to all new heights when censorship reigned supreme in the forums after people began criticizing the game and highlighting some of its many problems. After the censorship exploded in the forums the moderator eventually came in to apologize for being a newb.

On September 27th, 2019 a post on the Cube World sub-reddit titled “The CubeWorld forum is now deleting critical Threads and banning people pointing it out” outlined how multiple forum threads were being locked and deleted in the Cube World Steam community, along with various users being banned for criticizing the game.

This wasn’t just a post from someone whining about the game. Felixader brought receipts with him.

Despite having evidence of locked threads, deleted threads, and users being banned under false pretenses, the Reddit moderator threatened to remove the post for having a “sensational title”. As is typical in most converged and brainwashed communities, blunt presentation of the facts is considered “sensational”.

Syberz, the Reddit moderator, wrote…

“I approved this thread even though it was reported a few times, but I seriously debated removing it altogether due to the sensational title and contents.

 

“They’re not removing ALL critical threads in the Steam forum, they removed yours. As far as we know, they only banned you as well and no-one else. What you call “constructive criticism” is formulated in a pretty harsh and sensationalist way. I understand that you’re just trying to highlight things that you thing are important to know (and they are) but you don’t have to do it while screaming through a bullhorn, running and waving your arms in the air.”

This is wholly incorrect.

There are multiple threads locked and banned from the forums.

ExplosiveBolts’ thread was locked.

Sad nee’s thread was locked.

Bosdrums’ thread was outright deleted.

Syberz was also taken to task in the Reddit comments because the moderator of the Cube World Steam forums, pixxie, admitted to deleting and locking threads that shouldn’t have been locked or deleted.

Pixxie wrote in a post…

“Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

“Hello,

 

“I’m sorry that I deleted some of your threads. I’m not used to be a moderator but I just wanted to replace treads with namecalling and harassment.

 

“I hope you take my apologize and I will try to do it better next time.”

The forums now has a number of people making threads asking for calmer heads and for the mods to stop banning people for criticizing the game. SomoHex attempted to assuage the tensions in the community by asking for cooler heads in a thread titled “Respectful Disagreement”.

Some pre-release reviews are already taking Picroma to task over the censorship and poor handling of feedback.

If the game gets review bombed due to the censorship when it releases on September 30th I’m curious if Valve will step in to silence the reviews or let them stand? And I’m also curious if Valve will consider review bombs themed around a developer silencing criticism about the game as “off-topic”? I guess we’ll find out when September 30th gets here and Cube World officially enters into Early Access for the general public on Steam.

(Thanks for the news tip Brian)