Torden — As essentially a personal dispute between 2 individuals, it seems a case for internal matters. But it seems this keeps getting dragged into the public domain – fine, we’ll let the scores be settled right here:
Pledge — Over the past couple of months, I have been thinking a lot and speaking a lot to people about finding a way for me to cast again. After Comedian kicked me from TF2TV and VanillaTV was created by Byte a week after, there was no space for me anymore in the casting scene. I played TF2 around division 1-2 over the past months for dotpiXels and went to i43 as a player with them. In the end though, I want to get back into casting. This is my first effort to make all of that happen.
Step 1: write a wall of text with a lot of stuff that, in my opinion, needs to be said. Below you can find the story of everything that ever happened between me and Byte, and everything related to me and casting in general.
I joined ETF2L Radio as the new caster on August 22nd 2010 ( link ) where I would complete a casting team formed earlier by Byte and Dave. At the time, casting was relatively new to TF2 and I was determined to give casting a place within general TF2 coverage. I told Byte I wanted to have more casts and YouTube videos of the casts (by combining the mumble and STV recording) to maximise the coverage. Both Byte and Dave seemed to do nothing (to me) and therefore, at October 19th, I sat with Comedian and d2m on mumble and expressed my annoyance with the whole situation. 24 hours later, TF2TV was born and apart from one time during i42, I haven’t spoken to Byte since.
Now, I understand that Byte feels betrayed. I would feel the exact same way if someone would leave me for a rival organisation without any sort of notice. But at that moment, the idea of TF2TV with a lot of dedicated coverage and streaming just sounded really good to me. I just didn’t know how to tell Byte. Days after the launch of TF2TV I wondered if I shouldn’t go and apologise to Byte for not telling him, but I just didn’t have the courage to and before I knew it, it was too late to apologise.
Byte, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you about my complaints with ETF2L Radio. I should’ve talked to you before going off and creating a casting organisation without the main TF2 caster at the time.
But I didn’t. I was too much of a coward to do it, because I was afraid of the confrontation. That sounds a bit exaggerated, but it’s the only suitable word I can find for it. As I said earlier on, Byte and me spoke again at i42.
Krimson, Hildreth and I did the i42 coverage for TF2TV. Hildreth told me during the weekend that he probably didn’t want to cast the finals at the stage, so I was going to look for someone to cast the grand final next to me. People online expected Byte and I couldn’t really get around it anymore. I decided to ask Byte up front and to see how he would respond.
“ Hey Byte… uhm… I wanted to ask you to cast the finals with me. I know we’re not the best friends, but the community wants us to cast the final together, so… here I am, asking you. Let’s bury the hatchet and cast the final together .”
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“ I understand. ”
I ended up casting a fantastic final with Oggy, but I left the event and came back home with the feeling that I just couldn’t be arsed anymore with Byte. I felt like I did my part by walking up to him and breaking the long silence we had until then. While the conversation was short and i could have misunderstood, Byte just didn’t seem to understand the fact that I was willing to put our problems aside for the greater good of TF2. I didn’t care anymore about Byte, and I wanted to leave it all behind and focus on me and the future of TF2TV.
I got removed from TF2TV by my good friend Comedian, who didn’t see any other choice then to punish me for my terrible behavior within the organisation. Because VanillaTV was created a week after my departure, there was never a clear newspost on the reasoning behind my removal from the TF2TV Staff. Just for the record – VanillaTV had nothing to do with me being a jackass to Comedian and ShoX.
I decided to take a break from TF2, but I was back soon enough and started playing medic for a strong division 2 team. I loved playing again, but casting just never really let me go. Apart from one time with Exfane (with DrLeon streaming) and once with nVc, I haven’t casted since April this year. And since the start of ETF2L Season 10, I missed it a lot.
Three weeks before i43 I spoke to ShoX and Comedian, to whom I declared my interest to cast for VanillaTV if Byte would let me. Leftism and Trell were also involved in the talks that I had with VanillaTV, but the response I got was “Byte will think about it after i43”, which was an appropriate response.
The real problem came after i43 though. As a former caster and community person, I found that my opinion should value for something, and I responded, just as many others, in the Good Show TF2 Community-post after i43. What I heard from both Comedian and Trell, was “this was the last straw for Byte, and he won’t let you cast for VTV anymore”.
Byte, I’m sorry if I offended you in any way in those posts. I tried writing the posts clear with my honest opinion and didn’t mean to offend you or anyone else personally. I wanted to let everyone know my opinion on the situation as I spoke a lot to Arx and Beta during the event and felt I could share a different side to the whole situation. I’ve always criticised casters during and after my own casting time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for what the community people do. As a person, I’ve always respected the work you do for competitive TF2 (as a player and as a caster) and that won’t change.
To round up, I’d like to say that I don’t really mind if Byte or anyone else wants me to cast again, possibly for VanillaTV. I’m working on creating my own streaming channel (which is supposed to ready January 2012) and that’s not going to change whatever the response to this article is. I just want to tell the story, get it all out of the way and stop explaining to people why I don’t cast anymore. I want to stop blaming people for my own issues within TF2 and just tell the truth. That’s all. And I hope this article, or whatever you want to call it, is the first step towards resolving the whole situation so we can be one happy community again. The community is too small to have enemies who have the same goal in mind: the growth of competitive TF2 as an eSport.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-11-26 by ThePledge.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.