The author requested to have his account deleted. I confirmed that he wished this, and I silenced and deactivated the account. I hope he will reconsider, but I respect his wishes regarding this. His WIP was not deleted; either he made it unreadable for now or there is a bug in the file.
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I totally agree, this is all a bummer. I can only hope Samuel can put all of this behind and return to the forums.
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Sure puts a damper on it. I considered Sam to be one of the many fun quirky personalities on the forum but over the past few days things kind of flew off the rails a bit.
I suppose we can use it as a reminder to be respectful to others even when we strongly disagree about something.
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I think the wip being moved to adult content ticked him off the most. But yeah, I do hope he’ll be back in the future his works were the one that made me check out this forum.
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Did Samuel leave the forum?
Here is your answer (5 posts above):
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Well. Seems I missed a few things.
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I am hesitant to post here atm, but since it isn’t locked and it’s still active I’m gonna go ahead anyway.
I agree(not that it matters) that this should have been in the adult section to begin with(just found out that was a thing btw). However it’s strange to me that brutal murder and torture of women, and extreme child abuse would not be enough to “trigger a reaction” if you will. But from what I can tell from what’s been said in this thread lately, the mere mention of any form of sexual abuse, was apparently just way too much.
I read the WiP a few months ago, and although this isn’t something I enjoy at all, I still appreciate that quite a few people do like this type of stuff. I’ll just move on(mostly, heh) and not look back if it’s clear it’s not something I would like or if I find it off-putting.
What is it that makes people value the integrity of a woman’s body over quite literally anything else in existence? How is being manipulated in to voluntary, sexual abuse, hell not even, in fact, simply the description of such an act occurring, not the description of the act itself, in any way shape or form worse than the painfully clear description of brutal and constant physical and mental abuse of one child, and the killing of another child.
It boggles my mind.
I would prefer not to read about either, fiction or not, hence I try to avoid it. And that is my choice just as it is anyone elses individual choice.
If you do not want any more discussion on this here, tell me and I’ll delete this post.
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I am going to say this once:
This WiP was not yet brought to Hosted Game’s attention as to content until recently.
This is the case for other WiPs as well - MMM was not singled out because of any one thing written or not written.
Most games are not fully reviewed by HG until submitted unless specifically flagged. Such was the case here.
It doesn’t matter what triggers the review - a tester’s concern forwarded to HG via email, the author’s own initiative or the start of the review process for publication.
Don’t read too much into the individual fact pattern of one game or another.
By the way - the child abuse and murder was the tipping point that determined that this WiP was transferred to the Adult Section, not the recent updated sex scene,
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“By the way - the child abuse and murder was the tipping point that determined that this WiP was transferred to the Adult Section, not the recent updated sex scene,”
I’m glad to hear that’s the case.
However if I may I would argue that claiming that somehow the contents of an 8 month(?) old thread, with over 60k views and 1700 comments, and a demo link that had thousands of clicks(although that’s gone now), somehow escaped the notice of anyone at CoG until just recently, is ludicrous. Especially considering the content you claim was the tipping point, is all at the very start of the WiP, and has been available to read for months.
I understand what you’re saying, and maybe I’m wrong here, but it seems to me more like this decision was made based off of one person’s complaints than any actual recent “discovery” of the contents of this WiP. And that worries me.
Again, not arguing that it shouldn’t be in the adult section, I’m more just worried about why it’s actually here now, and why it took so long.
Don’t feel like you have to reply though, this was more just me thinking out loud, on a forum, on the internet, at 10 am having been awake for 36 hours with 0 caffeine in my body. However that’s relevant.
I am curious although I don’t want to be pushy about it, since it isn’t really any of my business. I’m just way too curious for my own good I guess.
EDIT: Quoting is hard. At least on a phone…
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Yes, you are wrong.
Here is the official statement:
This is a direct quote from @RETowers.
Perhaps it is time for further review.
Edit: the demo link is still in the initial post - at the very end.
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Probably people didnt say anything before because they figured the staff was fine with it as it wasn’t mark Adult, left alone closed.
Heck, I didn’t say anything cause of that logic and I am prone to tacklejump stuff that doesn’t sit right with me.
Humans are not very clever.
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If you asked me, the content of this story is pretty similar to what was already written in other stories that has been released under the Hosted Games banner.
Torture? Done.
Murder? Yup.
Rape? Well it’s more of an implication and witnessing it yourself in one story.
Child abuse? Also has been implied.
But we also gotta remember that the moderators can’t just monitor the content all of the time so it’s really up to the users to bring it up if they feel is offensive to them. They have lives of their own, ya know? So the least we could do to help ease the burden is to report and flag any offensive content so the moderators can deal with it.
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Yeah I saw that, I frankly just don’t believe it if I’m being honest. The first part, that is. They would have you/us believe that no one at CoG reads any WiPs on their own website unless that WiP specifically was reported. Maybe that’s the case, ofc it could be, again I don’t know, how could I? All I can do though is either blindly believe a statement that is frankly ludicrous(imo at least, hey maybe it’s just me, who knows), or I can try to get to the truth.
Perhaps you should talk to a CoG representative directly - either by email or private message.
Questioning their veracity in public might put them on the defensive.
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There are a vast number of WIPs and the staff are busy with their (rigorous and demanding) jobs, while the forum moderators are volunteers who give their time for free to help the forum community.
Of course you’re free to believe whatever you like, but it’s pretty rude to accuse the staff/moderators of lying.
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I’ll answer for me, at least. I don’t read any WIPs at all. I wish I could, but I just don’t have the time. The only time I delve into WIPs is to respond to flags. That’s what flags are for–to help us know what needs attention.
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While saying people would be completely unaware of the game is a stretch (if nothing else, one would see the Mass Mother Murderer thread title whilst reading the forum; it is very distinct, after all), I would have to think the staff does not bother reading WIPs for the most part. Because, to be brutally honest, the vast majority will never be submitted to CoG or HG. For every completed project there’s at least four or five that get abandoned along the way. So there’s not much reason for them to be concerned about stories until they know for certain they will actually be submitted.
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I think the issue with this story now is that the MC is now able to engage in non-consensual sex with another character, which personally I think is a major justification for removing the remainder of the work.
Let’s be really honest. Murder really isn’t a controversial topic these days. It’s more a narrative device and even non-adult CoG games use murder. Child abuse is a bit more serious but it’s never presented as positive in this game, and never once is the audience led to believe that the mother’s abuse is justified. That’s why I think the game was alright for a while: the content may have been triggering, but it was clear to anyone that read the original post that this was to be expected in the game.
What the issue for me now is that the game features non-consensual sex perpetuated by the MC. I’m gonna be honest, as long as this content remains available in the demo, I don’t think the demo should be viewable. I understand that the adult label allows for more risqué topics but even this seems too far. Sam himself even said that the MC gaslights the character in question to get them into doing this, which is a major red flag for me.
Ultimately the decision is the mods and I’ll respect their decision. This just seems like something that needs to be addressed.
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I respectfully disagree. Samuel didn’t just decide to include non-consensual sex all lf a sudden. He had priorly stated that such content will be present in the game, multiple times in this thread, and that it will be written how the entire game is written - with clear implications that it isn’t in any way, condoned or justified.
What I do not understand is, how is even the mere mention of something like sexual coercion viewed as a huge issue, when there are extremely graphic depictions of brutality, abuse and torture throughout the story? It’s not like the author is belittling these topics, nor is the reader exposed to this kind of content out of the blue, without a warning, in the very first page.
I sincerely apologize if this offends anyone, or I come across as insensitive because that is not my intent. All I’m saying is, how can someone read through the story, actively make choices that involve abusing, torturing, manipulating, and murdering people, and instantly get twitchy at the coercion part? By the time we get to that point, we know what kind of a person the MC is. Especially when the author had also said that he would take particular care while writing those scenes, and that there will be multiple trigger warnings in the beginning? Isn’t that implying that sexual coercion is worse than all the other things that came before (which is pretty harmful)?
I’m not trying to instigate anything here. If this post gets flagged or a moderator asks me to delete it, I’d gladly do so.
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