Gamefaqs - An old gaming website that still exists somehow

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I actually got stuck at around the halfway point through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (CJayC's favorite game, according to the radio interview), and GameFAQs' FAQs were worthless at helping me figure out where to go next. If the game's not linear, the writer always assumes you're holding their hand throughout the entire game, so it's very easy to guess where you left off, follow directions on where to go next, and then get stuck again because you haven't cleared other areas or found other mcguffins. McGuffins that the FAQ writer mentioned way earlier in the guide, but they just assume you already have the Holy Crystal of Bullshit with the game giving no indication that that's what you need to open the gateway to Mt. Niggerhead or whatever.

JRPG guides are the fucking worst with this, especially if you're stuck at a boss. The writer will assume that you've followed everything and offers insane strategies that require you to find obscure items and do sidequests you had no idea existed. Oh you didn't do that one missable sidequest that was only available 6 hours ago? Too fucking bad, you don't get a normal strategy.

 

[Here For the News]

I posted some of CE's reactions to RBG's death in the RBG thread right here

But the best one was probably this guy:
View attachment 1606893 View attachment 1606894

Ah, Endgame. He's quite infamous, especially on the Fire Emblem boards, though he haunts a fair amount of Nintendo boards. He spergs about politics a lot. If there was a way to search Gamefaqs by username, I bet you could dredge up a lot.

 

[Pissmaster]

Ah, Endgame. He's quite infamous, especially on the Fire Emblem boards, though he haunts a fair amount of Nintendo boards. He spergs about politics a lot. If there was a way to search Gamefaqs by username, I bet you could dredge up a lot.

Looks like all his shit is set to private. He hasn't contributed anything to the site, as in, his contributions page is empty, despite having a 19 year old account. Most people who've been on board that long have submitted something.

But you can always search Google for: site:https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards "Endgame posted"

That'll find everyone whose replied to him. 6,020 results. Oh boy. The very first result that comes up is someone pointing out his bullshit:

 

[TaiIs82]

Gamefaqs' days may be numbered - Red Ventures has bought CNET from CBSi, at a fraction of what CBS first paid for it. Gamefaqs was not mentioned anywhere in the press releases. A few longtime "special" persons were really panicking. Allen has no idea what's going to happen yet, their part time admin ZoopSoul called it a "scary" day on twitter when the news came out (he would be the first one fired). Red Ventures has no prior history managing a place like Gamefaqs, and may keep the place to monetize the guides and so on, but who knows about the boards. It's all up in the air, they could keep it untouched, they could try to modernize them and succeed or fail at it, or they could close the place entirely.

bover87 deserves a mention. This total moron defines "internet police" in one of the saddest ways I've ever seen. Back in 2014, 2015ish he got exposed for hijacking other accounts, because he was desperate to become a mod and wanted older accounts so it'd look like he had been on the site longer than he actually was. Problem is, one of the people who he stole the account from came back, and he got found out. I screened the whole shebang and he never got over it. SIX YEARS LATER, he still hates me even though I had nothing to do with his idiotic actions or the punishment he got, I just laughed at his misfortune. Allen even let him keep the stolen accounts and simply demodded him. A normal person wouldn't consider that a huge loss. But bover held a massive grudge over it and never forgave me.

A few months ago I got invited to an offsite discord server and took up the offer after my account was banned, so I could stay in touch with a few people. Unfortunately for me, bover was there as a mod as well (he has a strong urge to be a Paul Blart figure anywhere he goes), and he made it his mission to get me banned from there. Here is where we get thick into the board drama.

Lead mod Error1355 hated that server ever since the day it opened up, and banned any mention of it from Gamefaqs. Any discord server that wasn't his own got moderated. Error would only allow people to link to his server, and even spammed it a dozen times hoping to get people to sign up, but failed miserably because he over-moderated it as badly as he moderates on Gamefaqs. bover is still clutching Error's nuts in the hope that he could become a Gamefaqs mod again someday, so to kiss up to Error he set up a Gamefaqs community board exclusively to screen users for Error's discord and determine whether they were worthy or not. Error would then use mod tools to spy on the usermaps of applicants before he cleared them. For whatever reason, bover was also accepted as a mod on the competing discord even though to this day, Error suspends anyone who links the invite on Gamefaqs.

A few weeks ago, bover started telling people that Error would allow them to invite people from Gamefaqs if they banned me, as if I was the reason why Error moderated any mention of the place. The server had already been banned way before I got there, almost from the day it started due to Error's small-dicked pettiness, not because of anything I did. Whenever he crossed paths with me, bover would inevitably repeat that I should be thrown in an insane asylum due to...my posts on a message board. And the other part of it that is just bizarre? Error lurks the competing server at all times and even changes his name to reflect that he's listening in on everything people do there, but he never says anything. bover was like the lowest bitch on the ladder, Mean Girls-esque loser that they sent out to attack me, hoping that by going after me he will finally get Error's approval.

A few days ago bover got the posting requirements to become more restricted, and wouldn't greenlight me. I got another mod to do it. The instant I got back in, he flips out at me due to some stupid-ass board drama that was going on. Someone from CE had asked me to dox a police officer who posted there, I said that I don't dox users, but bover lost his shit at the mention of doxxing anyway and immediately threatened to ban me. He then deleted my comment where I said I don't dox users, but left up my message quoting the request, and took screenshots of the altered log so he could send it to the police as "evidence" of a criminal conspiracy. (Maybe he will get a tin badge and deputy hat for his troubles?)

Here's some of his meltdown that people sent to me after he banned me.



YOU JUST COMMITTED A CRIME BRO!! XD

Gamefaqs ex-mod is straight up trying to board police the entire internet and apply the worst parts of the Gamefaqs terms to places offsite. If you were wondering whether these people were any better off the boards, the answer is no. They choose to live like this and enforce tightass rules in an attempt to get Gamefaqs mod approval and brownie points. Not only do I get banned for "quoting a violation" in 5 minutes, the actual request to dox was up for about 48 hours and that person didn't get banned. Fine and dandy if bover wants to ban me because he doesn't like me, but he totally freaked with "I AM REPORTING YOU TO THE ADMINS! I AM TELLING THE COPS!!"

lmao bover, dude's pathological

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Anyone remember that dude who hyped up CE on how he was going to kill himself, and then ended up welching and saying it was because the Lost finale gave him hope for the future?

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Today on GameFAQs' LUE, Zangulus mows his front lawn for the very first time in his life with a hand-me-down lawn mower, also posting a picture of his sweet digs at the trailer park:

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By the way, his account is 19 years old:
View attachment 1323370

How did I miss this? I saw him post on the Poll of the Day board. He is also married to another old user who is some fatfuck catlady called Moonjay who happens to be one of the oldest users on the site. Guess where they met? I think he is lying about living with his parents because I remember him quitting the board after being mocked for bitching about having to move from his parents' house with his landwhale of a wife back in 2007. Also he had a vasectomy, good lord if he had a child with that.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

The constant accusations of being so and sos alt and the over abundance of "*so and so user is banned/warned/suspended" topics was super annoying on CE and is what actively pushed me to just troll and stir the pot.

It's weird how all the 40 somethings on that websight dont realize how fucking boring they made it by ONLY talking about SJW Politics and board drama. If you try to post anything else its ignored, so of course those of us that used CE as a time waster instead of a social life simulator would stir the pot. Even better when you actually like Trump and they lose their collective minds over it.

I'm also in month 2 of being gone and god damn i dont know why i didnt leave sooner. Even just trolling those losers hadn't been fun for 3 years.

I'm so glad I left Gamefaqs and CE at the start of the summer. I mean I'm sure I would have been banned anyways but god damn they're such a bunch of whiny overdramatic pussies

Same here.
I remember hearing about GameFAQs back in high school when Internet forums were still a thing even before Facebook and Twitter completely destroyed most of the anonymity of the Internet. Plus, since for me this was back in 2010-2011, gaming included just the likes of GTA IV, the Skate series and Dark Souls. It just felt like a simple time, compared to now when the board will just ban you for simply pointing out that games with political agendas aren’t as cool or innovative as they used to be.

 

[Pomniman]

CE was always a shithole. The other social boards all considered CE and its users to be a joke for well over a decade. It's all gotten fairly pozzed now but CE was always seen as the short bus of the site for good reason.

 

[Totally Awesome]

I like going to GameFAQs everyday and answering the Poll of the Day.

 

[Shroom King]

Looks like all his shit is set to private.

A lot of the super serious posters set their shit to private. I don't understand this. If you don't want people to see your posts, then don't post.

 

[Pissmaster]

I like going to GameFAQs everyday and answering the Poll of the Day.

I try to vote for whichever option is probably in last place and I'm usually right because GameFAQs' userbase is eternally predictable and unchanging

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

CE was always a shithole. The other social boards all considered CE and its users to be a joke for well over a decade. It's all gotten fairly pozzed now but CE was always seen as the short bus of the site for good reason.

This is true but it was still more fun before all the users turned 22 and got super faggy and political. I dont remember nearly as much political talk before Obama but then again maybe it's because I wasn't on nearly as much before I started working...

A lot of the super serious posters set their shit to private. I don't understand this. If you don't want people to see your posts, then don't post.

Which is hilarious because they used to actively mock people who set their shit to private for being cowards. Which was of course because they could stalk and harass them across topics and boards if their shit wasn't private.

They thought those of us that stir the pot and troll wouldnt think of doing the same to them. When we did they hypocritically set their shit to private too.

 

[Pomniman]

This is true but it was still more fun before all the users turned 22 and got super faggy and political. I dont remember nearly as much political talk before Obama but then again maybe it's because I wasn't on nearly as much before I started working...

There was always a strain of it, though it didn't get quite as shrill as it is now among the fags who make a point of bringing it up everywhere until Obama's second term, especially in the leadup to/during the 2016 election season. It really can't be overstated how much the media drove basic dem-by-default college age speds insane over the course of 2012-2016. The seeds for this current wave/cycle of cultural autism were sown during the Bush administration, sprouted during Obama's, and are blossoming now.

 

[TaiIs82]

A lot of the super serious posters set their shit to private. I don't understand this. If you don't want people to see your posts, then don't post.

I did that after some obsessed autists mass-marked whatever I posted (no one ever goes through someone's message history with good intentions). If they were gonna stalk me to report me to the board police, I was going to make them work for it. The bigger problem is when a mod does that. Error always denied that he did it, but it has always been super-obvious from the "warned/suspended" topics on CE that somebody targets the users they don't like and moderates them at the same time in batches. Then I dug up an old interview where Error said that crawling through someone's private message history was actually his favorite mod feature on the site and he would scan users' history for violations all the time. Whenever I brought up things like that, the rest of the mod staff would hugbox each other and act like they had just been assaulted rather than called out on their BS (same thing whenever they're challenged on any moderation).

Speaking of, if a mod or one of his pets goes after you, this is what they refer to as "calling you out on your BS." But if you're not their friends, the same thing is called harassment. They have become so anal that their new definition of harassment is "bringing up anything a user did in the past in a negative way." But every rule predictably has an exception for the in-group, including one of the greatest crimes ever in this day and age - "misgendering" - which you can still get away with if you're in the protected group.

Most of the site's moderations are either conducted or obsessively defended by their 2 worst leads: Error1355, aka the morbidly obese walrus who moderates people all day during his call center job, and RaptorLC, the disgruntled, chairbound vet on benefits who initially quit moderating when he was 30 since he considered what he was doing to be too childish, but eventually returned because he had nowhere else to go and is now pushing into his 50s. Both of them simp for Allen full-time in the hopes that he will finally pay them one day, or that they could somehow become his successor - although in Error's case I think he ends up dying of heart disease way before Allen. In reality if the site doesn't go under, Devin would be next in line since he's actually competent enough to code and get by, while Error's main contribution to the site is making random beeping noises when he feels offended. But I guess when you're stuck in a dead-end job you can keep dreamin' eh?

It really can't be overstated how much the media drove basic dem-by-default college age speds insane over the course of 2012-2016. The seeds for this current wave/cycle of cultural autism were sown during the Bush administration, sprouted during Obama's, and are blossoming now.

I always hesitated to say it's the worst it's ever been, since it's always been pretty terrible, but now it really is the worst it's ever been. It was a fairly equal partisan divide in 2016 but then the staff got it in their minds that they were going to punish the Trump voters as revenge for whatever the president was doing that day. A little while ago this guy tried to suicide on the Politics board with his dreams of lining up every Republican in the country and executing them for treason, and then lining up every Democrat who wasn't a socialist trans-furry like him and telling them that they would be killed next if they didn't give him his demands. He eventually gave up and closed his account manually because no mod would touch that. At the same time, anything slightly critical of the left is coming down.

It amazes me that the MAGA board has survived, but there's still time for them to get it banned - and if that doesn't work, they do the usual and go after its members one-by-one. Allen already tried taking the board out from under its owner after he left for a few weeks. There's usually at least 1 topic going on CE that wants the MAGA board closed, and whenever I look into one of these crybabies they usually fall somewhere on the rainbow spectrum. Then there's that other perpetually-paranoid admin who uncritically retweets about stuff like chemtrails and still thinks that anyone who's outside right now is out to murder him. He's telling everyone to arm up for civil war with Trump. Somehow he made it out on his own, although probably not by choice since both his parents died from drug-related issues and he was too terrified to even drive on his own until his 30s. As for the typical user, it's mostly the "free stuff" crowd, these legacy basement-dwelling NEETs who couldn't get a girl and therefore decided they were some letter of the alphabet and society is to blame for their personal failures. Then you'll have the odd user like me who is still around to challenge them and watch 'em freak, but we get banned pretty quickly because they cry to the mods every time and those guys are even bigger losers.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Lol I remember really upsetting Error by constantly telling him to get a real job every time hed bitch about how dumb the people that called his call center were.

It was always funny how there was a consistent group that would gang up on conservative users because when you'd point it out or make fun of them for needing to get the brigade together every time someone got their feelings hurt they'd immediately cry conspiracy theorist and the topic would suddenly get locked. They're so pathetically transparent.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Nobody can console war right anymore, they just devolve into dating advice threads and people complaining how lonely they are.

/v/ has the same fucking problem.

 

[Totally Awesome]

Nobody can console war right anymore, they just devolve into dating advice threads and people complaining how lonely they are.

/v/ has the same fucking problem.

Console wars, including PC vs console, are both retarded and need to go away. It doesn't really matter when each platform has their own exclusives, so everybody's choices are limited by what they want to play.

 

[TaiIs82]

First round of layoffs as CBS tidies up in preparation for the handoff. You get a letter to stay on or you're gone. Socials are saying it's either an "unknown" number or "up to 100." The biggest losers so far are Gamespot's Australia team and TV Guide, though some are still waiting until tomorrow night to find out.

Gamefaqs may be saved from the first round solely because they were never bloated (barebones, neglected staff), and are too small for anyone to care much about them...but possibly canned at a later date for the same reason. Red Ventures is notoriously vague about its plans, and what it even does in general. IMO the clearest they have been is their post about wanting to "unlock the potential of legacy brands." It's all about what "legacy" names they want to hold on to, seeing if they can pump them up with new ways to monetize them, and ditch the rest. I dunno if Gamefaqs still has a name big enough to care if they're gonna start off by gutting TV Guide, but those were paid people being let go. Gamefaqs has the free user-generated content and it MIGHT be saved, it might roll into Gamespot, but I wouldn't be hopeful for their boards.

It's sinking in for some people.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/400-current-events/79034665

https://logfaqs.com/topic.php?id=79034665

I get some of their points. I mean, I'M still on the boards in 2020, so I do like them to some degree - it's just the mismanagement and crap mod staff that I dislike the most and got kicked by, so I went off to this century and other places. It is still fun to follow the trainwreck and lurk, though. Some of these people I've seen over the years, it's absolutely hilarious to see them breaking down now. "This is it for me. I sit around here all day and this has been my life. I would have nowhere else to go!" And holy shit at people who legitimately get the bulk of their news from the Current Events message board, I guess they exist. It'll be a big loss for them when the day comes.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

I don't even get why anyone would break down over this besides complete faggots like Error and Cyric who dedicated themselves to building up """"""""""power"""""""""" and """"""""""reputation"""""""""" there. Hell I'm pretty sure half of them already post on ResetEra anyways.

For old times sake, took a gander at CE. First thing I see is Doom_Art posting another shitty "lol supporting Trump is cringe" topic.

God damn, these guys only have three things they can talk about huh? It hasn't changed at all in almost 6 months.

 

[TaiIs82]

^Was this you? Nice one.

Error is very easy to check on because his name is the same everywhere. Yeah he's on resetera, he even overcame his urge not to assist "the competition" and has an IGN account - just 3 posts, and he only created the account to whine at users who had left Gamefaqs and said that he was the reason the site was dying. But Gamefaqs is Error's life. Up first thing in the morning to scan the message histories of users on his hit list. Then he reluctantly waddles off to work where he spends most of his time moderating Gamefaqs some more and complaining to Gamefaqs about his shitty call center job. Then it's back home to more Gamefaqs, and possibly offsite if he feels the need to defend Gamefaqs's Honor (he is usually too scared to do this, though, since he doesn't have mod tools on other sites and can't silence the complainers if he gets shredded). On twitter he is proudly known as "Lead Moderator @GameFAQs"...and so on and so on. The day he loses this title, he has nothing.

Both Error and RaptorLC have nowhere else to go - Raptor is mostly chairbound these days and at one point (his 30s) he stepped down because, in his words, he thought that what he was doing was too childish. It didn't last long before he came back though, now he's pushing 50.

Gamefaqs is a great example of how more moderation does not always mean good moderation. The site operates under this unparalleled phenomenon where everything is subject to a full cavity search for any violation down to a typo, but the content that remains up is still garbage. This is not because the terms of use aren't strict enough, but because the mods are so bad at enforcement, and many of them are just there to protect the trash that they or their friends post. Since it's not adding any new users, at this point the place is best viewed not as a public forum but as an increasingly-shrinking private club for old-timers and mod suckups.

Since I am now practically ban-on-sight for anything, I cleared out some of my old PMs before I lose access to them. Here's one from Krystal109, the former community manager.

Anyone who has looked in on that trash heap for a second, including their own admins, knows what the problem has always been. But these guys are free labor, Allen is MIA with little to no oversight, and nobody higher up cared about the boards. Red Ventures probably cares even less and may consider closing the boards down entirely. CE shat on Krystal in many hilarious ways, but now that this topic came up again someone asked me how Error and Raptor had treated her. Because of something I hadn't thought about at the time: when this position was announced, both Error and Raptor HAD to have applied for it - only to be rejected in favor of some girl. Imagine thinking after all those years of free mod simping, Allen was finally going to hire you for something, just to pass you up each time. They must've been seething.