Personal/Custom Avatars

Okay as I have basically been asked to defend my actions

Some backstory to make you understand.

Between 3 days to 1 week after LOTS where players under sanctions had been told we would hold their funds.

The Board refused to do this.

They said we wont hold it and their money will just go back into the prize pool for tournies.

Effectively a "up yours" to any Russian tournament player.

As you can imagine this was not very well likely after players won a few hundred dollars and spend time and effort in tournament.

A work around was proposed where they could opt to give their funds to a player of their choosing from the tournament NOT under sanctions.

The Board then decided to ask for legal council but never heard back so refused to compromise at all. Because heaven forbid if they paid Turbo2 Pepsi's winnings he "could" find a way to send them to Pepsi.

As the Board unanimously decided not to reward the Russian players their winnings from LOTS and any future tournament.

Pepsi asked for some form of compensation and one of those forms is if he could get a personal avatar.

Now considering I personally strongly disagree with the Board and view their actions as attempting to kill the Tournament scene.

I saw no issue with Pepsi's request.

Historically only Mods could give out Avatars.

I was granted permissions to upload avatars, grant them to players etc as Swkoll is no longer around who use to do it and instead of my having to spam Mods for it. Brutus and Gieb both agreed it was suitable.

Note there are 3 types of Avatars (in my mind).

Tournament avatars - those created and issued to people who won certain tournaments and events.
Staff avatars - those created and issued to members of the community who help out. For example the moderator avatar or the Team leaders avatars.
Personal avatars - these granted based on what I would call certain conditions. Such as mods who have their own personal, staff who want something unique, or granted to players because "they have been fucked over" I would call it.

In this case. Pepsi's personal avatars falls under the "I have been fucked over" category.

I told Pepsi if he created an avatar himself and it was suitable then I would have no issue granting him this as compensation for the Board fucking him over.

Note the "suitable" comment, by this I mean PG12 basically.

He created it himself.
It is suitable.
It is compensation for the Boards actions.

As said by Sheikah the board has fuck all to do with avatars.
Tournament ones are dealt with by the TD (myself in this case) or the Mod team to issue them.

It was granted Giebmasse's approval as head of the Mod team that Pepsi could have this avatar.

In each case of Personal Avatars, I will still double check with Gieb based on the reasoning for it.

I am not handing them out like Free Pens.

To be honest I am half surprised that the Board did not argue this considering how much they refused to compromise on other matters.

That is the reasoning for Pepsi's avatar.
It is not because he is special or treated differently.
It is because the Board fucked him over.

If the other Russians from LOTS who cannot receive their prize wish for a personal avatar of sorts, I see no issue with it.

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Moving on to part 2:

FAF Veteran Avatar:

I was not aware of the reasons it was made, I did not issue this avatar.

It is listed as FAF Veteran as the ID nothing else.

It was believed this was for players who had played for a long ass time or at least that was my interpretation.

If it was listed as "Rowey Thanks Avatar" then obviously it would only be issued to Rowey.

This I would put down to whoever adding it giving a bad naming convention.

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I believe this has successfully defended my actions.

Rowan XDDDDD

@noc said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

I believe this has successfully defended my actions.

Yes it does. I want to thank you for the clarification and detailed explanation of why the avatar handing happened the way it did. I apologize if it sounded like a "damn, take away that man's power!", it was not meant to be directly directed towards your actions alone but rather about the whole system.

As I stated in the Discord avatar thread, I'm still in favor for writing down the exact criterias and guidelines about handling the avatars as the status now is just vaguely described through tradition / the past couple of years.

Personally I'd also like to see the removal of the last personal avatars (except Rowey's due to the reason Fichom stated and I don't think anyone disagrees that Rowey should keep it) until the guidelines are updated and handle it from there.
Please note I'm not saying "just take them away and that's it", I am for a compensation avatar for the people who cannot receive tourney prieces which is not a custom one though. Or otherwise there needs to be a rule about the price until you can basically "buy" such an avatar bc that's Pepsi's case.

@noc said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

The Board refused to do this.
They said we wont hold it and their money will just go back into the prize pool for tournies.
Effectively a "up yours" to any Russian tournament player.Now considering I personally strongly disagree with the Board and view their actions as attempting to kill the Tournament scene.

It is compensation for the Boards actions.

...as compensation for the Board fucking him over.

Now considering I personally strongly disagree with the Board and view their actions as attempting to kill the Tournament scene.

Gods but am I getting tired of you continuously painting this whole situation as the board trying to single out Russian players for no reason.

Russia is under international sanctions for the bloody invasion they launched on Ukraine. As a result, there are significant consequences to having an organisation based in Europe send funds to people in Russia.

FAF, the non-profit organization, requires a working bank account to pay for services, such as servers and the like. Any attempt to send funds to Russian citizens directly would violate those sanctions (as they are understood by the board) and could result in severe legal consequences for the organization and its members, such as losing access to financial services. Additionally, sending funds to Russian citizens indirectly through third-party channels could still be considered as circumventing the sanctions.

This was explained to you in excessive detail, numerous times, and it's got to a point where it's exhausting to continually reiterate the same facts. It's not a matter of singling out Russian players; rather, it's about adhering to legal and ethical responsibilities.

@indexlibrorum

People wanted the info as to why it was given.

As far as I am aware.

Compromises and work arounds were provided.

But the Board did not really want to hear them.

As such all I can take from that is Board decision.

@noc

People wanted the info as to why it was given.

And you think an explanation with lies and accusations is going to help there?
Mind you, in your explanation you left out that Giebmasse did not agree to anything; he only mentioned that he had "No objections ... for something else instead".

We were still discussing the options there; no one (as far as I know) gave you the green light to hand out custom avatars yet.

Compromises and work arounds were provided.

Yes, I remember those. They invariably ran along the lines of "but what if we cheat the system and send money THIS way? How about THAT way?"

You seem incapable of understanding that sanctions have genuine consequences, of understanding what it means if the FAF as an institution is found to have broken them, as well as understanding the word 'No'.

Mind you, even back in MARCH 2022 the board already announced:

The Board notes that the FAF Association is based in Denmark, and as a direct consequence it is not possible to transfer FAF prize funds towards Russian players. We are bound to Danish laws as they are enacted with respect to this conflict.

So you'll have to forgive me for having ran out of patience with your continued efforts to deny reality.

Nothing in the Board’s statements say or carry any weight related to the decision to refuse to hold the money until it was capable to send it. The refusal to do that was completely on them and made everything needlessly more complicated.

This is a bit off topic, but keeping the funds 'on hold' until the sanctions are gone is just flat out false hope towards the sanctioned players and complicates the responsibilities for future treasurers and/or board members.

Looking at the geopolitical narrative there's not a single indication that either side is about to give up, let alone that Europe will drop sanctions even if the war would end tomorrow. The world has simple changed and we need to act on that.

In my humble opinion the only thing that we (read: the board) did wrong was not make this (more) clear. Starting with the statement we should've pushed a clear message/post to every tournament that involves FAF funds that sanctioned players can not receive any form of monetary compensation for participating in that tournament and therefore effectively only play for the honor and perhaps a (special) avatar.

And because of that mistake sanctioned players and the tournament directors are rightfully frustrated. I get that, and I wish we thought of it in March 2022 when we wrote the initial statement. But we didn't, and I'd like to personally apologize towards the people that we let down by that.

I don’t really see how you could arrive at the conclusion that it’s false hope when nobody, even higher level officials, are going to be predicting the results of the current offensive let alone the situation in a year. I hear any and everything from both sides. But it’s off topic and we don’t need to get into it.

There should have been a general adjustment of how things are going to work if the Board has decided that Russia is now North Korea. If avatars are being given as some barter equivalent to prize money, then there needs to be rules ironed out about how much money equates to an avatar and whether only FAF official prize money is capable of being spent on said good. Doing this in dms without any rules set up as NOC did clarifies nothing for anybody, really. Even if gieb and whoever else is involved. Money is transferable to avatars now and that needs to get explained.

I would personally have given people the option of having funds reserved or transferring it into some sort of service ie avatars as long as it matches some criteria set up by the tournament team. I think the “complexity” argument is quite silly, the account ledgers for FAF are not that complicated where this is an insurmountable obstacle.

@ftxcommando said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

Money is transferable to avatars now and that needs to get explained.

Avatars being an alternative prize does not mean that avatars can be bought for money. Quite a jump of logic there.

@indexlibrorum said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

@ftxcommando said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

Money is transferable to avatars now and that needs to get explained.

Avatars being an alternative prize does not mean that avatars can be bought for money. Quite a jump of logic there.

Please read what I wrote and realize that I put in the question of whether only FAF provided prize funds can be used for the purpose.

@ftxcommando

You said

Money is transferable to avatars now and that needs to get explained.

It's not. Money is not transferable to avatars. Avatars are an alternative, not an equivalent or a product bought for money.

This is a sentence, yes. Now read it in the context of

“then there needs to be rules ironed out about how much money equates to an avatar and whether only FAF official prize money is capable of being spent on said good”

Avatars being a prize substitute equates to avatars being bought with money. You’re just deciding what money is allowed to be considered. The Board and tournament team already took the plunge into making it viable to buy personal avatars with this policy, this is about the details.

@ftxcommando

Avatars being a prize substitute equates to avatars being bought with money.
making it viable to buy personal avatars with this policy

This is exactly what I'm saying is a leap of logic beyond the reasonable.
No avatars were sold. No avatars were bought. No one has even hinted at the posibility of buying avatars with money. One thing replacing another does not equate being able to buy that one thing with the other.

They were bought as Pepsi was compensated for the loss of his prize money through the avatar. For this to be reasonable, rules need to exist on what an avatar is worth, because if it’s worth any amount then any russian getting 16th place in LotS could potentially get a unique avatar. If it’s too high, only 1 russian a year is going to be getting one, if that.

Avatars are given a market value for fair compensation, it’s a price. It’s a price that can be paid. It’s a question of what the market structure is.

And frankly, I think it’s pretty ridiculous and inane to only apply to Russians in a situation outside of their control. It’s not fair to either them nor everybody else. The rule should be uniform if this is seen as legitimate enough to be a solution to this issue.

@ftxcommando You're stretching the meaning of the word 'bought' to mean things that it doesn't. You can stretch your logic in whatever shape of argument you want, but fact remains that avatars cannot be bought, and that offering them as a replacement for a financial prize does not mean that they suddenly can.

The above notwithstanding: as you say, guidelines need to be established for the avatars and when someone should get one. I'm sure those kind of decisions would have been made properly, if it wasn't for the weird situation that resulted in (what I understand to be) one NOC handing out an avatar without further really discussing it.

No I’m not. You don’t understand what a substitute good is and that for it to work, it still requires a price. If money is the substitute good, it’s bought. That’s what it is. Are you describing the avatar Pepsi got as a gift unrelated to the prize money? If not, the two are obviously related, nobody is even denying it.

If avatars can’t be bought, the situation above is arbitrary and shouldn’t have happened. Because it’s really just NOC deciding based on his personal vibes that day what is worth a personal avatar. Coherent principles aka a price needs to be established for transparency and fairness. You can argue about who is allowed to buy it or what money is allowed to be used, but it’s still a good with a price.

@indexlibrorum

Then you will forgive me for the fact that 95% of other gaming communities continue to pay Russians even large gaming corporations continue to pay Russians despite sanctions (especially those in Europe) and yet here we are.

Because heaven forbid if they paid Turbo2 Pepsi's winnings he "could" find a way to send them to Pepsi.

What have FAForever to do with financial actions of person they paid? This is not FAForever money any more so the Turbo2 can do whatever he want with them

It would not be hard to establish the causal link that makes FAF complicit in that. The better question is why anybody would care about it to go through the motions of getting it proven in court.