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  • September 17, 2016

    Hello Vault Dwellers,

    I just wanted to address some of the things that have been going on here on TamrielVault. Recently we were made aware that a few former members of TamrielVault (Tae-Rai, Curse Never Dying) had formed a small site using the content that they had once posted here. Normally this wouldn’t be seen as an issue - posting your content on multiple sites is never something we’d discourage - however we soon were alerted to a much more serious issue. These former members broke site rules by trying to “poach” members from our community, and were trying to convince them to join their site instead of ours.

    We weren’t entirely sure how to deal with these issues, as these members were once our friends and we had worked with them for a long time. That being said, we still have site rules and a site code of conduct that needs to be followed. We cannot ignore infractions upon these rules, even for people who we once considered to be friends. We began closely monitoring the people in question in order to figure out exactly what they had been doing. We learned that they were using our site’s PM system, Skype, and other methods to lure people to their site. I was also sent a copy of a Google Document that they had been working on, in which they go over some of the details of their recruitment plan:

     

    After receiving this, I reached out to one of our members who both worked on this document and continued visiting the Vault to try to receive some clarification. In our exchange he confirmed that some of the members of their newer site were attempting to poach members, though he himself was against that. Here is the exact quote:

    “For the record, I was against the idea of poaching members, not just for ideological reasons, but also because of the issues like these that it would cause. I did, in fact, discourage doing this. My suggestion was to build a member base from ex Vault members (i.e. those that don't really have anything to do with the site anymore) and Heroic's fan base, not active Vault contributors.”

    In addition to that, another member also sent us a transcript of a Skype conversation that she had with Tae-Rai, in which Tae attempted to poach her as well. For the sake of said member’s privacy, I won’t be posting that transcript in this discussion.

    With the growing amount of evidence that we had, we saw no other course of action other than cutting Tae-Rai/Curse Never Dying out of our member base. We simply could not allow for this type of behavior to persist, and they clearly had no intentions of stopping. We did not remove any of their content from this site - anything that was removed was done so on their end, not ours. We’ve added their site to our spam watchlist to prevent further advertising for it here. We have also had to suspend a number of alternate accounts belonging to those members, as they have been using them to try to bring drama to our site. With all of that being said, we aren’t trying to prevent people from joining their site. If you’d like to head on over there then you are more than welcome to!

    We have had to make some very difficult decisions over the last few days, but we made them as a unified team of Administrators and Hosts and we will continue to stand by them. We only want what is best for our community as a whole, and we apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause our loyal members and friends. We wish them well in their future endeavors. Thank you for reading, and I hope that you can understand where we are coming from with this.

     

    -Todd, the Admin Team, and the Host Team

     

  • Member
    September 17, 2016

    Ugh, this is just like politics in my country... Why can't we all just be friends?

  • September 17, 2016

    I'm with you here, Axius! 

  • September 17, 2016

    Agreed. You have to understand, this has depressed  us for the past few days, especially when there is open dishonesty about what transpired and misinformation being spread.  We delayed because, shit, wouldn't you want to get your facts straight and talk stuff through before you act rashly? And then to sit there and have people imply fascism and other things because we are trying to sit and discuss a course of action that will be of benefit to the site as a whole, I'll tell you, I was hurt because if anybody knows anything about me, they know that I love this site and would do NOTHING EVER to hurt its members. When people start painting others in a certain light and all you do is write stories, build, and help to make this site the best it can be, so that members come here with a smile. I don't like drama, but I have heavily felt the drama of the past few days. 

    I stand by my fellow hosts and admin. I stand by the members here. And I wish those that have left well in their endeavors. 

  • Member
    September 17, 2016

    Well, as someone who's browsing both sites (yay, even more content! :D) and has no preference for any, I can objectively tell you this was to be expected. Remember when you guys chose to give CouchWarrior their own tab on the old vault site while leaving HeroicX and pcoutcast in the shadow? Now, to be clear, I think CouchWarrior are a very cool channel, I like some of their videos and the way they organize their stuff; it's just that they were, and still are, nowhere near the volume of content showcased from our site as HeroicX and pcoutcast. I said it then and to this day I stand by my words. It's a dick move from your part, admins. So, I can understand Heroic's decision to make his own site after it's been made pretty clear that the old vault didn't want/choose to support his content showcases. As far as Tae and Curse go, I have no idea... that's your hosts/admins internal drama, if there even is any.

    So, don't be quick to judge.

  • September 17, 2016

    Well PCOutcast stopped producing videos for Bethesda games, so partnering with him was a bit of a stretch. As far as Heroic goes, I actually had messaged him and apologized for overlooking him. In fact, he and I were discussing a partnership before I learned about everything listed above. After learning about it we called off all of those talks, which I'm sure is understandable. 

  • Member
    September 17, 2016

    At that time PCOutcast didn't stop anything... He had his Witchhunter playthrough going on. He's been doing videos on Skyrim's latest biggest mod lately, Enderal.

    Pity, you guys should really make better decisions in the future.

  • September 17, 2016

    At the time he did not, but he did soon afterwards. He also publicly stated that he will finish his current series before stopping all Bethesda-based videos. I do not regret any of the choices we've made, the quality of CharacterCrusade's videos is amazing and I couldn't be happier with our partnership. 

  • Member
    September 17, 2016

    That's some great PR bullshit regarding your decisions Todd. :)) Best of luck with them!

  • Member
    September 17, 2016

    It's really a shame when people intentionally do something to cause harm to others, especially when all we want to do is talk about video games. I mean, c'mon people, it doesn't get much more petty than that.

    On the topic of featuring CharacterCrusade instead of our own members, I really have to agree with Noodles, though admittedly I've never watched any of their videos. But to me at least, it did seem a bit disrespectful to partner with some group that had hardly been mentioned on the Site before (I'd never even heard of CharacterCrusade before they got a big tab right in the middle of our navigation bar) as opposed to someone who's actually been on, and contributed to, the Site for a while.

    That being said, I personally have no interest at all in this "new Website" of theirs (Despite a few ups-and-downs related to our own platform change), so for what it's worth you can count on me staying here.


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