We love the JSE community. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be putting so much love and effort into Glitch In The System, and we wouldn’t have put so much time and heart and soul and work into The BOSS in the first place. We love each and every person that has reached out to us in support, and we appreciate how much you all want to help, and want to be a part of the team. We never dreamed that we could possibly build this mini-community within the larger JSE community, and so of course we want you to feel involved, and we want you to be what you’ve always been: a driving force behind our work.
But what we absolutely cannot tolerate is threatening the safety of our cast and crew because you were not selected for a position of some kind, or because you are desperate for the appearance/specific actions of a character or game. We cannot show any kind of support to a monster who is willing to threaten the very lives of community members because they didn’t fit what we needed for a position and another person did, or because they did not have the same opinion of characters or situations. That is first and foremost cruel, and is also terrifying. If you are threatening, harassing, intimidating, or in any other way harming someone who is a member of our community or the JSE community as a whole, you are not a member of the community. Your actions make you a bully, and a danger.
These fan projects we’re making are for all of you. You were all the reason why we were able to release The BOSS, and the reason why so many of the Sarcastic Pasta developers have found new (or revived) passions for creating.
However, we cannot please every single one of you with these fangames.
Keep in mind that we’ve tried to accommodate as many people with diverse backgrounds, talents, and experience making games or projects for the JSE community to create these fangames. But if we included one thing in Glitch In The System for every person who follows SPG, the final product would be incomplete at best, and unplayable at worst.
We encourage anyone who wishes to pursue their own fan projects to create their own, or find developers who need assistance. While initial reactions and support to our (released and upcoming) games have been incredible, this is slowly turning into a nightmarish experience for everyone involved. Hearing about people causing drama or spreading horrible rumors about our team members who have been nothing but supportive and cooperative is genuinely upsetting. We’re still viewers at the end of the day, and so are you. No matter what you think about our games, or the people behind SPG, we aren’t the only people out there who are looking to make fangames. Please do not associate the worth of your work just because you weren’t accepted to work with us. (The same can go for any failed applications or auditions.)
At no point did we make The BOSS simply to get noticed by Jack. We were excited about it, yes, and we did hope he would see it. That was never a secret but we also told you time and time again not to spam him about it because we respect him. He chose to play the game on his own. We never expected the kind of response we received. It was just a passion project we poured our hearts into. And we do love you guys. We love your fan art and your reviews and comments and support. We don’t want jealousy or different opinions to turn into problems. And we don’t want to stop making these games because a small minority of people are too immature to handle being turned down for a role, be it artist or voice actor.
Before Jack played The BOSS, we rarely saw any negativity. We saw so much loving support. We know that no one is perfect, so there were mistakes and mishandled situations, even within our crew. But at no point did we see dysfunction at this level until Jack gave our game attention.
Not only has there been issues and drama surrounding our decisions on our cast and crew, we watched as another fan game group was similarly bullied. We’ve watched people on our team and even outside of it get threatened. We’ve heard some nasty rumors about ourselves that are not only untrue, but completely harmful. And regardless of how excited we were to be recognized by Jack himself, at the end of the day, this sort of behavior does hurt us too.
We wanted to ask you all to please remember that we are people. We have feelings and lives of our own, and when you are threatening a member of our team, you are threatening our close friends. But by the same token, when you are supporting and encouraging our team and the other fan game developers and development teams, you are supporting and encouraging our friends, and we, of course, want to see them succeed and want to celebrate with them when they do. We want to see our communities happy and supportive and, above all else, fun to be in, because we love what we do, and we want to keep doing it, and keep sharing it with all of you.
This is not the kind of behavior Jack encourages. This is not how he wants the community to behave. He constantly talks about what a wonderful community we are and he is, for the most part, completely right about that. We’ve created some incredible things and have been there for him and for each other. Do you think threatening each other, hacking accounts, bullying, or any of the recent behavior embodies PMA? We genuinely hope these issues sort themselves out because the last thing we ever would want is for him to end up dragged into this drama in any way.
Honestly, it would break our hearts to have to cancel our games because of the community’s behavior. Or for a loud minority to make Jack wary about playing it. I know a vast majority of you are wonderful people and it would hurt all of you, not to mention him, to see a fan project used as a weapon. This was never our intention. We told you that you are incredible and capable of amazing things. That is very true, and true of those who have been perpetuating this behavior as well. You can do better. We believe in you.
This is not a specific callout post, but it is directed at everyone who has said or done these things in recent weeks. To those of you who do this, we ask you to stop, and to seek help if you believe yourself so injured that you wish to injure yourself or others. We want to believe that you can be better than this, and that this is perhaps a reaction, and not a character trait. We want you to know that not being cast/added to the crew is never a personal insult, it is simply a matter of best fit, and no one is the best fit for every position. We know that you can be excellent people in your own right, and do amazing things for yourself, we just don’t think it would be to your benefit or ours to work in a very specific role. These threats are not a solution, and they never will be, but you can work to better yourself and your situation. You can do so much; why stoop so low when you could be climbing? We believe in you, and we hope you learn from this.
Thank you for reading.
Enough is Enough
Published
A Glitch Named Anti 