I have been debating if I should share this for a while due to fear of getting harassed. I finally felt comfortable after sharing the story to some others who have asked, and sharing in the comments of this sub, as well as Thor’s reputation being where it is thanks to his terrible takes with Stop Killing Games.
Over a year ago I joined PirateSoftwares game that he calls Blockgame. And the way that we were treated is insane. From being personally insulted to watching Thor throw a tantrum in a call while banning anyone who disagreed with him.
There’s a lot I could say, however, unfortunately, we as players were unable to gain a lot of proof at the time, due to chats being deleted before we could think about taking screenshots, as well as a lot of things happening in voice calls.
I want to talk specifically about two situations, one of which I have screenshots for.
Some context for what Blockgame is and what will be relevant to these situations. Blockgame was a social sandbox MMO based in Minecraft that Thor claims to have made out of spite. The game had some differences, but the main premise was grinding, and making friends and joining nations to gain power through the social system. And running the 2 dungeons to get better gear. With gears ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 4, with a few veteran players having Tier 5 before it was made unattainable. There was also a custom hunger system that went down with time, you had 10 minutes of hunger, and a separate hydration bar that needed different food items to fill that gave you an extra 10 minutes. The vanilla food was replaced with custom food that was really annoying to grind for, often taking more effort to grind than it would actually last you. This food part is very important. Also, occasionally Thor would join the Blockgame General voice chat to talk with the players, it wasn’t super common, but it was common enough that it wasn’t questioned when he did it, we just knew he was there to chat.After a ton of bad updates Thor had made, he eventually found out that most players were eating Kelp because it had the vanilla hunger system and was really easy to obtain. No one knew that this wasn’t allowed, as the game itself only has 3 vague rules. This causes what I can only describe as a tantrum. Me and two other players were sitting in a discord call when we saw Thor in game yelling and complaining about everything us players were doing, anytime someone objected, they were banned. If someone made a joke, they were banned, and overall, this was insane. After a few minutes Thor moved from Minecraft to the Blockgame general chat on his discord. After a few minutes of doing the same thing in discord, he completely deleted the Blockgame general chat, and himself, and every single mod in the discord, joined the call that myself and the other players were in. A ton of players joined the call and 1 player was banned, before it got silent, with nothing but Thor yelling at us before finally calming down, but taking no responsibility and not apologizing. After Thor was told that no one knew about this from people Thor trusted, Thor’s response was “It should have been obvious. If you’re doing something that’s not intended then you should realize that it’s wrong and report it”
The energy in this call was scary, I myself was scared to even speak, and many others clearly felt the same way. During this he continued complaining about everything, and was insulting a ton of us. He personally called me a douchebag who was demanding time from him after I made a very popular suggestion forum (how we were told to leave suggestions) suggesting that Thor should talk with a team of players, or just the players, to see what needs to be changed, as he did not have enough time to play the game properly.
Keep in mind, we were all fans of his at this time, and the things said in some of these cases was insane. Even blaming the players as a whole for the fact that he was receiving death threats (We still don’t know if this is true, but we know that death threats were not coming from active members of the Blockgame community, as the community was small and we would notice if someone got banned randomly for leaving a death threat) this whole situation caused many players, including myself, to quit.
Now, unfortunately we weren’t done. Thor also had a major issue with exposing his players on stream in front of 20-30 thousand people between both his YouTube and Twitch. This included doxxing a few player’s discord information on stream.
The first situation happened right before I joined, and unfortunately I don’t know all of the information for, this was a player who I’ll call K, after he pushed the rules of the game, and broke some rules, his discord user and messages were posted on Thor’s stream so that Thor could make fun of K. I don’t know too much of what happened after this, as again, this is the one piece that I’ve only heard from word of mouth, as opposed to being there myself.
The next was a player named V, V was a long time player, playing for about 2 years at that point. One day Thor believed was spawn killing a new player (he wasn’t, new player kept running up and attacking V over and over) V was then put on stream, this caused him to be heavily harassed in game for about a week or two, including a death threat, and some insane things said about his family. These fans were reported and banned, but the fact that Thor put his own player in this situation was crazy.
There were some more players in game being called out by Thor for false reasons, everytime Thor has assumed that they were being scummy or pushing the rules, when in reality, they were doing something else. Like claiming a player was cheesing a dungeon, when in reality they were waiting to kill another player. Luckily, none of these resulted in harassment as bad as V’s harassment.
The last situation of this was another discord situation with a player I’ll call X, Thor had added a world boss that dropped a mount, mounts were incredibly rare, only people who had been there for previous holiday events had one, and there was only about 4 that people had from the active player base, so this was a big deal. However, what people did not know is that using the mount while fighting the world boss again had issues, and was not allowed. Keep in mind, this was never stated anywhere, Blockgame itself only had 3 vague rules. Thor’s argument was “Well you should have known” and he temporarily banned some of the players, including X. X made a ticket appealing the ban, and his ticket was put on stream, with X’s discord information and messages again like Thor did with K. To my understanding, luckily, X wasn’t harassed, but it’s also possible that he just never said anything.After this, I was fed up and I made a ticket in order to talk to Thor and be careful. This was the first time I was smart enough to grab screenshots, and you’ll see what happened. Somehow, Thor seemed to misunderstand what I was saying, and after clarifying and giving an example, Thor’s response changed to basically saying that they deserve it because they were doing something scummy. Which was insane.
I do wish I had more screenshots, but unfortunately most of the things Thor did require more witnesses than just me to verify, and as of right now, I would like to not include other players, especially since some players don’t want to be included. Which is why I have not named anyone else but Thor.Personally, I don’t want to bash Thor, but I also don’t want this part of him to ever go unnoticed. Personally I believe that he needs a PR team, as much as I dislike Thor, he does hire his mods, most of which are really nice, and he funds stuff like his ferret rescue through nothing but his streams, and, even with bare bones advice, he was very inspiring to new indie devs, and provided a ton of resources through his discord to learn how to make games. I don’t want those situations to be fucked over just because Thor cannot control his ego. But, if Thor keeps acting like this, and treating his own players like he treated us, things will only get worse for him and the people who rely on him.
so I think 250K will be safe in my view, which is very achievable. But indeed every signature counts.
