Nintendo vacates Jackpot’s 2024 World Championship title

[neonscreenlight]

Do we really need to background check every player on everything they've ever said or done?

...yes? a bit of a background check is a good idea. like yeah not in most cases, but this is the world championships we're talking about, where every team represents an entire region of players. i think it's reasonable to expect them to be good people.

frankly, i wouldn't want a known racist to win my tournament either

 

[TOD13]

The rules are being retroactively applied to behavior outside of the actual tournament based on select clips. This isn't based on an illegitimate win, or poor sportsmanlike conduct at the event.

i've spent the past 10 minutes rewording this comment so lemme just say my point:
you're not supposed to let people who said racist stuff partake in international tournaments, regardless of when or where they said it.

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

I think this is a massive step forward for Nintendo/Splatoon Community relationships. If Nintendo is going to continue to make online games they need to be able to enforce their community guidelines. I think Nintendo doing their part separate from but still in tandem with the Splat Safety ban shows that they can be trusted to do things like that. I need more action before I would say something as radical as “Splat Safety isn’t needed anymore because we have Nintendo,” but this is a good thing.

Splat Safety is kinda **** and doesn't do its job as is(cough looks at how they're handling gems case) so I wouldn't give them too much credit

Their methedolgy would be fine if there was a tangible need to be as professional and articulated as possible, while taking the maximum time needed - in both the jackpot and gem situations, they've taken too much time to do virtually nothing at all.

 

[sevenleaf]

Splat Safety is kinda **** and doesn't do its job as is(cough looks at how they're handling gems case) so I wouldn't give them too much credit

Their methedolgy would be fine if there was a tangible need to be as professional and articulated as possible, while taking the maximum time needed - in both the jackpot and gem situations, they've taken too much time to do virtually nothing at all.

tbh i've really wanted to believe in splat safety. i know they're a volunteer team doing emotionally challenging work, and i was sympathetic to that for a long time. but hearing they unanimously voted to do nothing about gem...

i don't know what the best solution to keep the splat community safe is, but i wish we had more than we do

 

[ThestralZ]

Splat Safety is kinda **** and doesn't do its job as is(cough looks at how they're handling gems case) so I wouldn't give them too much credit

Their methedolgy would be fine if there was a tangible need to be as professional and articulated as possible, while taking the maximum time needed - in both the jackpot and gem situations, they've taken too much time to do virtually nothing at all.

Splat Safety's vote about Gem was to do nothing at that point in time, if more evidence is brought forward then I'm sure they will take action. It's also important to recognize that Gem has not made any statements about the issue yet nor has he been making YouTube content. While that could mean a couple of things, the relevant thing to this discussion is that Gem's reputation has been ruined and the chance of him being able to do anything in the Splatoon community at the moment is unlikely. The Jackpot ban happened relatively quickly in my opinion, especially considering how high profile that incident was.

But more importantly, there is absolutely a tangible need for a code of conduct board. The founding statement of Splat Safety still holds true today; "Twitter justice doesn't work." If we rely on the algorithmic whims of a social media site that's owned by a crazy billionaire to govern what incidents we see and how we react to them, we are being dangerously irresponsible for the safety of hundreds if not thousands of minors. Without enough people who are willing to do research and validate these incidents innocent people will be at best discouraged from interacting with the community and at worse physically or emotionally harmed. There also needs to be an element of restraint to. Human beings, and especially kids and teenagers will do and say a lot of ****ed up things. Can this indicate that a person is either dangerous or irresponsible and should not be welcome in the community, yes. But it can also sometimes be just a mistake or misunderstanding, or just kids being stupid. This is why repeated misconduct is much more heavily punished. If a person is given a 2nd chance and they don't change their behavior, it shows that they cannot be trusted in the community. Lastly, it's important that Splat Safety not condone or enable cancel culture. If people lie about, overstate, or cherry-pick incidents relating to people they have "grudges" against, the case needs to be caught and thrown out before the wrong people get punished. This is why Splat Safety takes so long to make its judgements. It needs to take all of this into account. It needs to validate evidence, look at the past record of the offender, and acknowledge the maturity in which the offender was acting, all while remaining neutral and not beholden to the rest of the community.

In my opinion I think Splat Safety accomplishes this, even when their decisions (like the Gem case) are not popular. I think the work that these people do needs to be supported because if it isn't, the reputation the Splatoon community has built of being inclusive will be lost.

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

tbh i've really wanted to believe in splat safety. i know they're a volunteer team doing emotionally challenging work, and i was sympathetic to that for a long time. but hearing they unanimously voted to do nothing about gem...

i don't know what the best solution to keep the splat community safe is, but i wish we had more than we do

For what its worth, I've been looking into the situation a bit more and I think its a lot more nuanced then "gem sa they're an awful person"

At the same time, its crazy to me that theres a full of restraining order and its still "nope, we're not doing anything yet" because it says clear as day "people are above consequence if they're popular in the community" (going back to the jackpot situation, it does not take multiple months to decide how long the ban is, especially not if to ban them, thats just stupid)

https://x.com/Slosh_It/status/1809138908401217589 this thread is basically how I feel word for word

Also, I'm generally not a fan of forcing huge essay length announcements by using a lot of big words that make you sound like a prick and could be simplified for legibility issues and splat safety does that in spades in more

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

Splat Safety's vote about Gem was to do nothing at that point in time, if more evidence is brought forward then I'm sure they will take action. It's also important to recognize that Gem has not made any statements about the issue yet nor has he been making YouTube content. While that could mean a couple of things, the relevant thing to this discussion is that Gem's reputation has been ruined and the chance of him being able to do anything in the Splatoon community at the moment is unlikely. The Jackpot ban happened relatively quickly in my opinion, especially considering how high profile that incident was.

But more importantly, there is absolutely a tangible need for a code of conduct board. The founding statement of Splat Safety still holds true today; "Twitter justice doesn't work." If we rely on the algorithmic whims of a social media site that's owned by a crazy billionaire to govern what incidents we see and how we react to them, we are being dangerously irresponsible for the safety of hundreds if not thousands of minors. Without enough people who are willing to do research and validate these incidents innocent people will be at best discouraged from interacting with the community and at worse physically or emotionally harmed. There also needs to be an element of restraint to. Human beings, and especially kids and teenagers will do and say a lot of ****ed up things. Can this indicate that a person is either dangerous or irresponsible and should not be welcome in the community, yes. But it can also sometimes be just a mistake or misunderstanding, or just kids being stupid. This is why repeated misconduct is much more heavily punished. If a person is given a 2nd chance and they don't change their behavior, it shows that they cannot be trusted in the community. Lastly, it's important that Splat Safety not condone or enable cancel culture. If people lie about, overstate, or cherry-pick incidents relating to people they have "grudges" against, the case needs to be caught and thrown out before the wrong people get punished. This is why Splat Safety takes so long to make its judgements. It needs to take all of this into account. It needs to validate evidence, look at the past record of the offender, and acknowledge the maturity in which the offender was acting, all while remaining neutral and not beholden to the rest of the community.

In my opinion I think Splat Safety accomplishes this, even when their decisions (like the Gem case) are not popular. I think the work that these people do needs to be supported because if it isn't, the reputation the Splatoon community has built of being inclusive will be lost.

I think we're agreeing on the broader points) my point is moreso on the logistical end and how splat safety presents themselves(which I think when you contextualize the enviroment they exist in, aka funny nintendo third person shooter, is miles above way too disjointed and over professional to the detriment of itself, like cmon, they literally communication through alt annoymous accounts half the time), and less on their decisions/decision making (my main gripe is the lack of public facing acklowedgement of situations and long gaps in time inbetween full decisions being made public)

I would rather have no splat safety, or a more down to earth and less disjointed organization with more realistic presentation in line with the rest of the community, over what we have right now - it reeks of someone ages ago having a good idea that got co-opted by people with huge egos that want to feel better by having some level of control over a community but don't actually want to make the tough calls neccisary to accomplish that.

 

[ThestralZ]

I think we're agreeing on the broader points) my point is moreso on the logistical end and how splat safety presents themselves(which I think when you contextualize the enviroment they exist in, aka funny nintendo third person shooter, is miles above way too disjointed and over professional to the detriment of itself, like cmon, they literally communication through alt annoymous accounts half the time), and less on their decisions/decision making (my main gripe is the lack of public facing acklowedgement of situations and long gaps in time inbetween full decisions being made public)

I would rather have no splat safety, or a more down to earth and less disjointed organization with more realistic presentation in line with the rest of the community, over what we have right now - it reeks of someone ages ago having a good idea that got co-opted by people with huge egos that want to feel better by having some level of control over a community but don't actually want to make the tough calls neccisary to accomplish that.

So you want serious topics like sexual misconduct and racism to not be treated seriously and professionally?

 

[sevenleaf]

So you want serious topics like sexual misconduct and racism to not be treated seriously and professionally?

that's a bit of an extreme way to interpret what alphine is saying. she can correct me if i'm wrong but i think the idea is less "splat safety should be silly because we're playing silly squid game and none of this matters" and more "splat safety elevates itself to a level of professionalism and importance that its actions - or rather, lack of - haven't been holding up to"

i disagree with the idea that no splat safety is better than what we have, but i'm, like many folks in the community right now, frustrated by what seems like too little too late (or just outright inaction) for recent serious cases. i appreciate the work they do, but it's the work they haven't done that troubles me.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

A lot of what I'm hearing is "no gem ban = splat safety isn't doing their job" but like... their job isn't just to ban people who've done bad things, their job is also to figure out whether people actually did said bad thing.

It's not that they didn't try to find evidence. They tried to find a way that things could have lined up and not a single one out of the ten of them could (some of which have experienced sa themselves). do you really think you have more information than they do?

If gem didn't actually do sa, and splat safety bans him just because all of twitter thinks he did, then they wouldn't be doing their job.

 

[sevenleaf]

A lot of what I'm hearing is "no gem ban = splat safety isn't doing their job" but like... their job isn't just to ban people who've done bad things, their job is also to figure out whether people actually did said bad thing.

View attachment 12478

It's not that they didn't try to find evidence. They tried to find a way that things could have lined up and not a single one out of the ten of them could (some of which have experienced sa themselves). do you really think you have more information than they do?

If gem didn't actually do sa, and splat safety bans him just because all of twitter thinks he did, then they wouldn't be doing their job.

now admittedly it's been a minute since i've heard any updates about the gem case. since it stopped showing up on my twitter fyp i haven't heard anything from gem, six, or any other involved party (or splat safety for that matter). and six's twitter is protected right now - reasonably - which prevents me from fact-checking everything personally, so we'll have to go by my memory. (if anyone knows anything else, feel free to chime in)

the issue with splat safety's statement is that it conflicted with six's accounts. the big example being that they claimed they hadn't been informed that six had gotten a restraining order against gem, and she later showed screenshots that... she did inform them, and they should've known. now, it was a temporary order, one that gem still had the chance to refute in court (and he claimed... uh, while accusing everyone supporting six of defaming him... that he planned to do so), but the point still stands that splat safety reasonably should have known about it. the apparent reliance on the legal system to do something before splat safety does anything is also reasonably raising alarms - y'know, the legal system notorious for fumbling cases of sexual misconduct?

it's also worth noting who gem is (...was?) to the splatoon community. he's a wildly popular creator known for beginner-friendly competitive guides and - perhaps most problematically - has taken on this 'voice of reason' status. the 'dating advice' thing was meant as a bit, sure, but i think a lot of his fanbase really did look up to him almost like a life coach. considering the status he has and the weight of six's accusations against him, a temporary ban is more than reasonable as they investigate further.

if splat safety really did make the right call here and the allegations are all lies or something, then i'm sure that'll come out in time. but i am and always will be in the camp of believing victims unless it's overwhelmingly obvious a given accusation of sexual misconduct is false. six has nothing to gain from accusing a man who's been widely celebrated by the community of SA unless he actually did it.

at the very least, i hope splat safety is recognizing the backlash they've been facing recently not as a bunch of twitter nobodies yapping but as the cries of folks in our community who feel unheard and unsafe, and i hope they're seriously considering how to bridge the gap between them and the community. as i said, i wanna believe in them, i really do.

 

[vitellary]

my two cents on the whole splat safety thing is that, while action on both the jackpot and gem cases could be faster, yes, i would guess that a major reason they're taking so long to do so is that it has not been immediately Necessary. in both of these situations, the accused parties had already indicated that they were not intending to participate in splatoon (every member of jackpot had already quit splatoon by the time their bans were sent out, and as already mentioned, gem hasn't uploaded any content and has been a ghost in the scene while he's working on the situation)
if these members were actively trying to continue participating in the competitive scene in the middle of being accused of such things, i feel that splat safety would have obviously put out a ban, at least temporarily, much faster. but because no one involved has made any indication that they would be continuing to be involved in splatoon while the accusations are standing, there hasn't been an urgent need to act on arguably inconclusive evidence. it's better to act fast when there are people at risk if you don't, but there is a very real point to be made that there is no harm in waiting when taking action would have no positive effect either way

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

I'm not gonna backread too much since I got back from an amusement park today and my legs hurt(and that did cause some confusion because I worded some stuff yesterday poorly, my bad in advance.) but I thought about it a bit deeper. I want to emphazise that on paper, Splat Safety is a good idea. I don't think they're a good org the way they are right now, but let me get to why I think that.

My big issue is moreso on the fact that, well, Splat Safety barely communicates with the community as is, so they come off as very seculed and insular when that creates the exact opposite problem -people don't trust them.

Same with half their members being annoymous - it creates a "in group" and an "out group" - one with all the cards, and one without.

Now, obviously, I'm not expecting a huge public presence for every single case, especially more minor ones. But for stuff like gem and jackpot - major community outrages that have spilled over from months of problems builiding up over time? There is no reason they couldn't have made a public twitter/discord post saying "Hey, we know X person has been claimed to have done some stuff, we'll investigate it right now, get back to you later." The fact that didn't happen for an org that hinges on people trusting that they are protecting us, in the loop, and on top of doing that job, is frankly unacceptable.


For what its worth, I think the way they handled Jackpot(banning each member for an individual amount of time based on multiple factors instead of blanket banning everyone for the same time) is GOOD. I can't agree with how they've handled Gems case, going for a "lets let the courts decide this" approach, when the courts will always be biased towards the white cis male in the situation, but I can't fault them for taking an overall hands off approach on a deeply uncomfortable topic revolving around (frankly) the most helpful content creator in the scene. Its entirely around how Little they interact with the community(to the point half of them don't even want to be associated directly with splat safety) + a long history of taking months or even years to simply ban players off research that should not be taking more then a week at best, that makes me think the org is ineffictive and lazy, if that.

Like, I can look at IPL and Luti and go "oh hey Thomas, Ely, Popgun! I know all these people, they're cool folk! I can trust that they'll be fair and cool people."
Even with something like sendou.ink its "I don't really know who sendou is but the way they interact with the community they've made and how they handle their site makes me trust them."
With Splat Safety, its "Who the **** are these people, and why should I trust them when they take a month doing nothing to indicidate they know about the jackpot drama only to shadowdrop a ban announcement randomly out of nowhere."

Tldr - theres no reason for me to trust an organization that claims to care about the community but actively hides from it and takes ages (presumably deliberating in private channels almost no one sees compounding the issue) to do things that any well organized group should be able to do in a fraction of the time. This isn't the american legal system, this is a volunteer group of members with the stated goal of keeping the community of a nintendo third person shooter themed around squids and ink safe by signing agreements with tournaments and lans for them to follow their rules and enforce bans - and I don't feel particularly safe the way they are right now.

 

[electronvolt]

I don't think they do a bad job per se, but it would be nice if they could work a little quicker (maybe they can't, idk), and they could stand to be a lot more transparent about their decisions.

 

[Squidilicious]

Splat Safety is kinda **** and doesn't do its job as is(cough looks at how they're handling gems case) so I wouldn't give them too much credit

Their methedolgy would be fine if there was a tangible need to be as professional and articulated as possible, while taking the maximum time needed - in both the jackpot and gem situations, they've taken too much time to do virtually nothing at all.

What happened with gem

 

[sevenleaf]

What happened with gem

his ex has accused him of sexual assault. splat safety put out a statement defending their decision to consider him 'not a threat to the community' and a lot of us are (rightfully) upset about that. i'm going to refrain from talking too much about the actual allegation - both because i don't feel good about plastering somebody else's trauma across a website they don't even use, and because a lot of the evidence is currently inaccessible because gem's accuser has privated her twitter - but i just listened to popgun's recent popcast (moderate language warning, par the course for popcast) discussing the splat safety side of things and i'd recommend giving it a listen.



i think the gem discussion has hijacked this thread a bit, though. while the conversation led naturally to that, i'm concerned about folks not expecting or preparing to see a conversation regarding SA coming in here. (debating going back and putting parts of my previous messages on the topic behind spoiler tags for that reason, tbh.) if we want to continue discussing that case/splat safety as a whole i think we should make another thread about it.

to turn things back towards jackpot: how do folks feel about nintendo seemingly deleting everything related to them? it's clear that nintendo takes what they did seriously, which i appreciate, but i've seen concerns about whether completely erasing a part of comp splatoon's history is something to be celebrated or not (esp. regarding the teams they played against also having their content erased). not sure where i fall here. it's kind of just a sucky situation regardless.

 

[isaac4]

to turn things back towards jackpot: how do folks feel about nintendo seemingly deleting everything related to them? it's clear that nintendo takes what they did seriously, which i appreciate, but i've seen concerns about whether completely erasing a part of comp splatoon's history is something to be celebrated or not (esp. regarding the teams they played against also having their content erased). not sure where i fall here. it's kind of just a sucky situation regardless.

I'm not surprised honestly, the history of competitive Splatoon 3 isn't something Nintendo cares about.
I do still think it's important to keep record of what Jackpot was able to accomplish though, they're an important part of Splatoon comp history now and that's not something we can erase.
Besides that, I don't really care too much since for better or worse, we'll still remember Jackpot and Nintendo deleting everything they've posted relating to them doesn't change that.

 

[vitellary]

given that they've said they're reworking the banner, and not completely removing it, i get the feeling the takedowns of the world champ related news posts are temporary while they get the new thing in, and they'll make a new, jackpotless post about it once that's in. i really doubt they're going to leave this in a state where there's a certain banner that only some people in the game will have because they happened to look at a news post before it was taken down

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

What happened with gem

its a long and nuanced story and still ongoing, so I don't think talking about it in depth is appropriate here - I certainly am holding my full judgement until I see something more definitie then a "he said she said" expose doc

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

I'm not surprised honestly, the history of competitive Splatoon 3 isn't something Nintendo cares about.
I do still think it's important to keep record of what Jackpot was able to accomplish though, they're an important part of Splatoon comp history now and that's not something we can erase.
Besides that, I don't really care too much since for better or worse, we'll still remember Jackpot and Nintendo deleting everything they've posted relating to them doesn't change that.

yeah, the way I look at it, its "Jackpot was an amazing team at playing the game, but that is no excuse for their behavior - you can take the bad and the good equally and even them out at the end of the day and still end up with a net negative"

I would not be surprised if they(nintendo) try to rein in their control over the scene more after both gem and jackpot and all this other **** going on - it wouldn't be the first time a high level grassroots scene under a game they owned turned out to be attracting awful people(cough smash)