Fronzel Neekburm

If Josh is really gone for good (he has been absent from the forums ever since the game came out), then I'm amazed at the brazenness of Replay still having him listed as part of the company on their website (https://www.replayga.../index/about-us). All the more so considering the kind of litigious bullshit being stirred up by Trowe last year when some Kickstarter campaign featured Al Lowe in their pitch. I'm sure you all remember.
 
I've said it before, Josh was the embodiment of everything Reloaded did right. A company should consider itself lucky to have a man of his talent and integrity. I hope that, despite all this ugliness, we'll be seeing more from him in the future.
 
 
Thanks to MusicallyInspired for archiving this heartwarming display of solidarity in the face of true vileness. Again, I'm truly sorry for anyone affected by these recent bans, but at this point I can't really imagine anybody having any bad feelings about being kicked out of Replay's forums. Getting banned from that place is more a badge of honor than anything else.
 
As for the few people who still remain (or reregistered), I hope they'll soon realize that even flaming on that carcass of a forum is a waste of time. The place is doomed now anyway. Personally, I'll put my energy into posting on more constructive subjects than Mr Trowe's vicious antics from now on. Having us vent our collective rage will only fuel this guy's delusion, that he's actually worthy of our attention. He clearly isn't.
 
Don't feed the Trowe!

I've gotta give them some major props for still doing a shout-out for Larry after what happened. Now that's class. :wub: :y:

@PurpleTentacle
 
I'd agree with you, were it not for the fact that this bunch of people you mentioned pumped - literally! - thousands of dollars into the game, worked as moderators for Replay and did all sorts of free labor (artworks, beta testing and such). All that rewarded with a great big "Fuck you!", just because they dared to point out that someone is making a complete ass of himself. (Bear in mind that I consider myself mostly a neural party in this. Yes, I was also thrown out of the forum - presumably because I posted an animated gif of a guy munching on a bag of popcorn (!) - but I was nowhere near as involved in either the forums or the actual game as most of the other banned parties were.) Imagine if you had been the one who basically had given a year of his life to the project. Wouldn't you agree that this goes quite a bit beyond bruised egos and delves into the realm of, shall we say, exploitation?
 

That and, you know,...
 
- threatening Wisecrack with a lawsuit even though they had Al's permission
- causing a shitstorm obout this in the gaming press, claiming that it was Al who wants to sue
- impersonating Josh in one of the updates
- attempting to sabotage other people's kickstarters
- revealing rather intimate details about Scott Murphy's private life in this very forum in some desperate attempt to make himself look good
- leaking other companies' delicate information to the press
- the numerous instances of cyber-bullying
 
and so on and so forth. I agree about the inappropriate and rude part, though.
 
As for news about these recent developments hitting the Steam forums: Since it was the community who is basically responsible for getting this game on Steam in the first place (via the greenlighting process), I'd call it a classic case of poetic justice. Still, I had hoped that this would happen in a somewhat more refined and articulate way. People deserve to know what's going on, but I'm afraid just pasting a link to these forums might do more harm than good. But it looks like it's been removed anyway.
 
Sorry for not letting this topic rest (as I had promised earlier), but like I said a few pages ago: people ought to know why this is a big deal.

@PurpleTentacle
 
I'd agree with you, were it not for the fact that this bunch of people you mentioned pumped - literally! - thousands of dollars into the game, worked as moderators for Replay and did all sorts of free labor (artworks, beta testing and such). All that rewarded with a great big "Fuck you!", just because they dared to point out that someone is making a complete ass of himself. (Bear in mind that I consider myself mostly a neural party in this. Yes, I was also thrown out of the forum - presumably because I posted an animated gif of a guy munching on a bag of popcorn (!) - but I was nowhere near as involved in either the forums or the actual game as most of the other banned parties were.) Imagine if you had been the one who basically had given a year of his life to the project. Wouldn't you agree that this goes quite a bit beyond bruised egos and delves into the realm of, shall we say, exploitation?
 

That and, you know,...
 
- threatening Wisecrack with a lawsuit even though they had Al's permission
- causing a shitstorm obout this in the gaming press, claiming that it was Al who wants to sue
- impersonating Josh in one of the updates
- attempting to sabotage other people's kickstarters
- revealing rather intimate details about Scott Murphy's private life in this very forum in some desperate attempt to make himself look good
- leaking other companies' delicate information to the press
- the numerous instances of cyber-bullying
 
and so on and so forth. I agree about the inappropriate and rude part, though.
 
As for news about these recent developments hitting the Steam forums: Since it was the community who is basically responsible for getting this game on Steam in the first place (via the greenlighting process), I'd call it a classic case of poetic justice. Still, I had hoped that this would happen in a somewhat more refined and articulate way. People deserve to know what's going on, but I'm afraid just pasting a link to these forums might do more harm than good. But it looks like it's been removed anyway.
 
Sorry for not letting this topic rest (as I had promised earlier), but like I said a few pages ago: people ought to know why this is a big deal.

@PurpleTentacle
 
I'd agree with you, were it not for the fact that this bunch of people you mentioned pumped - literally! - thousands of dollars into the game, worked as moderators for Replay and did all sorts of free labor (artworks, beta testing and such). All that rewarded with a great big "Fuck you!", just because they dared to point out that someone is making a complete ass of himself. (Bear in mind that I consider myself mostly a neural party in this. Yes, I was also thrown out of the forum - presumably because I posted an animated gif of a guy munching on a bag of popcorn (!) - but I was nowhere near as involved in either the forums or the actual game as most of the other banned parties were.) Imagine if you had been the one who basically had given a year of his life to the project. Wouldn't you agree that this goes quite a bit beyond bruised egos and delves into the realm of, shall we say, exploitation?
 

That and, you know,...
 
- threatening Wisecrack with a lawsuit even though they had Al's permission
- causing a shitstorm obout this in the gaming press, claiming that it was Al who wants to sue
- impersonating Josh in one of the updates
- attempting to sabotage other people's kickstarters
- revealing rather intimate details about Scott Murphy's private life in this very forum in some desperate attempt to make himself look good
- leaking other companies' delicate information to the press
- the numerous instances of cyber-bullying
 
and so on and so forth. I agree about the inappropriate and rude part, though.
 
As for news about these recent developments hitting the Steam forums: Since it was the community who is basically responsible for getting this game on Steam in the first place (via the greenlighting process), I'd call it a classic case of poetic justice. Still, I had hoped that this would happen in a somewhat more refined and articulate way. People deserve to know what's going on, but I'm afraid just pasting a link to these forums might do more harm than good. But it looks like it's been removed anyway.
 
Sorry for not letting this topic rest (as I had promised earlier), but like I said a few pages ago: people ought to know why this is a big deal.

Fronzel is right. The people that Paul banned were people who donated their blood, sweat and tears to the game. They donated tens of thousands of dollars worth of cash, free labor, free promotions, moderating and trying to make himself better by making everyone else look worse. I know for a fact that Tom King himself did several months of programming and debugging. That's the kind of thing they pay programmers $5,000+ a month for.
 
It boils down to ethics. How you present yourself as a person reflects on the company. I myself didn't even get an official reason for being banned. I just was. I mean c'mon -- you're saying "well, he didn't kill anyone". No, but he tried to destroy one project then proceeded to try to rip SpaceVenture because Scott and Mark didn't join up with ReplayGames. Everything he did was to screw over other people and help himself.
 
Paul should not be given a pass on this. There's no reason for us to give it to him. Josh saw fit enough to leave. Al should design the next game without Paul. The one thing we don't need is a small Larry wannabe trying to hurt other adventure games in the series. When you talk about hurting the Larry franchise, what you don't take into account is that Paul is trying to hurt other adventure games franchises that we love. So sometimes it's a trade off, and we all know Spock's saying in Star Trek II, where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

@PurpleTentacle
 
I'd agree with you, were it not for the fact that this bunch of people you mentioned pumped - literally! - thousands of dollars into the game, worked as moderators for Replay and did all sorts of free labor (artworks, beta testing and such). All that rewarded with a great big "Fuck you!", just because they dared to point out that someone is making a complete ass of himself. (Bear in mind that I consider myself mostly a neural party in this. Yes, I was also thrown out of the forum - presumably because I posted an animated gif of a guy munching on a bag of popcorn (!) - but I was nowhere near as involved in either the forums or the actual game as most of the other banned parties were.) Imagine if you had been the one who basically had given a year of his life to the project. Wouldn't you agree that this goes quite a bit beyond bruised egos and delves into the realm of, shall we say, exploitation?
 

That and, you know,...
 
- threatening Wisecrack with a lawsuit even though they had Al's permission
- causing a shitstorm obout this in the gaming press, claiming that it was Al who wants to sue
- impersonating Josh in one of the updates
- attempting to sabotage other people's kickstarters
- revealing rather intimate details about Scott Murphy's private life in this very forum in some desperate attempt to make himself look good
- leaking other companies' delicate information to the press
- the numerous instances of cyber-bullying
 
and so on and so forth. I agree about the inappropriate and rude part, though.
 
As for news about these recent developments hitting the Steam forums: Since it was the community who is basically responsible for getting this game on Steam in the first place (via the greenlighting process), I'd call it a classic case of poetic justice. Still, I had hoped that this would happen in a somewhat more refined and articulate way. People deserve to know what's going on, but I'm afraid just pasting a link to these forums might do more harm than good. But it looks like it's been removed anyway.
 
Sorry for not letting this topic rest (as I had promised earlier), but like I said a few pages ago: people ought to know why this is a big deal.

Surely, this aPAULing behaviour can't be AlLowed!
 
(Sorry, had to go there as well)

This thing is a work of genius! They're faithfully retaining every single massacre-in-outer-space-FPS-cliché in the book (the levels look like they were lifted straight out of Doom 3) while replacing the fast-paced action with the most menial chores imaginable. And oddly enough, it works! Not just on the subversion level, this thing is actually fun to play.

Surely, this aPAULing behaviour can't be AlLowed!
 
(Sorry, had to go there as well)

I guess he's finally learned a lesson about Josh-tice.
 
Yeah, okay, I'll show myself out.

Surely, this aPAULing behaviour can't be AlLowed!
 
(Sorry, had to go there as well)

Surely, this aPAULing behaviour can't be AlLowed!
 
(Sorry, had to go there as well)

I wrote this little thing up in support on my Facebook page. Thought I'd leave it here:

I heard from the horse's ass himself that the 250K units was how many keys he gave out to retailers. I have absolutely no idea on the number actually sold.
 
On a related note, I'm glad to have cut ties with him when I did. As Spikey said, Polyester Paul is death by association. I wouldn't care less if he was vindictive enough to pull my testing credits. I still want my star kept intact, though. I paid good money for it. I know Jeroen sent Al an e-mail and I plan on doing one myself. He needs to "break the chain" and pull free himself. I've got way too much respect for the ol' guy to see anything happen to his good name.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speculate it's WAY more than 50%. ;)

Count me in for a signature too. I'd love to see a new Larry game (I'm okay without remaking any more even if LSL2 was a "bit" (that means a WHOLE lot) buggy.

Spoke to Jeroen about this. I'm in favour of a petition or one single well-written letter signed by a number of fans. I'll probably relegate myself to the background of affairs as I think I'm spending way much time on TroweGate right now. It's becoming a bit too much and I want to gear down and take a deep breath. But I definitely support the initiative.

I do agree, carpet bombing a company with lots of mail is not a best approach with this. Perhaps a well written and articulated petition etc. would be the best way to handle this matter.

It really isn't about feeling screwed over, it's sad the way Paul reacted to all of this, but I'm still happy I was involved with everyone else during this project. It's more about the adventure game community being 1 big front (as everyone showed over the last week). We all gathered behind the SV project as we couldnt sit back and let someone tarnish the hard work they are putting into this. As everyone has stated before, we will block any attempt coming from Mr Trowe for another adventure game. So if we are all trying to bring this genre back and are this big front, it cant hurt to contact CodeMasters to let them know how we all feel, regardless if you're a SQ/PQ/KQ/GK/QfG or Larry fan. I think we all want this genre to succeed in this gaming market. That's the main reason I stopped my involvement with Replay Games. I didnt want to sit by and let someone hurt the community.
 
I guess what I'm saying is that together we can make a stand. Just like we all did when Paul posted on KS. Lets at least contact CodeMasters to let them know how we as an adventure game community feel about Paul's involvement. It's not about Larry, it's about adventure games in general.

Perfect! Nov 1st sounds like a great idea!
 
I have a few ideas kicking around my head for short snippets which could be inserted throughout the tribute video to spice up the sappiness. If anyone's interested to put my silly ideas into practice (or is suffering from writer's block), feel free to contact me!

I'm going to say Nov 1st as a tentative deadline. I've also added it to the OP. 3 weeks or so seems like plenty of time.

I'm camera shy to an incapacitating degree (good luck finding a picture of me on the interwebs!). I'll probably need a psychiatry session or two before I can handle stepping in front of a camera, so I'll second Datadog's query for a potential cut-off date.
 
When the SQ6 commentary happened, I mailed Chris Pope my SQ-story, which sure enough contained enough sappiness and pathos to fill at least two Spielberg films. That one would've made for the best script for a sappy fan tribute. Unfortunately, since I mailed this from a lavabit-account, that mail is no longer there.
 
True to the most recent episode of the Space Quest historian, I'd also be more than happy to translate someone's sappy story into German. In case you'd like to deliver your sappy story with a teutonic twist (you know, to boost not only the two guys' morale, but their work ethics as well... :P ), feel free to drop me a PM!

I agree with the idea for a petition. Our mails to Codemasters would probably have been dismissed anyway as a handful of fans venting their anger over getting thrown out of a forum. They probably get mails like that all the time. A petition would give us the opportunity to truly stand together in this, make people realise who was involved, why this is such a great deal and get noticed.

Oh yes, please, let's get some Sabine Duvall attitude up in this motherfucker.