After nearly 20 years, one of the largest gaming forums on the internet has metaphorically burned to the ground in a single afternoon.
NeoGaf – the simultaneously beloved/reviled Mos Eisley of the gaming community was rocked Saturday afternoon after fresh allegations of sexual assault were leveled at the site’s owner, Tyler Malka.
The immediate response by Malka in response to this allegation, was to start banning any NeoGaf user who was trying to engage in a discussion regarding the charges, as well as deleting any new threads about the topic. This led to a domino effect of the entire NeoGaf moderation team stepping down; effectively leaving the site in a wild west state.
Once the leadership collapsed, the forums degenerated into a cacophony of troll posts, such as “New Dino Crisis HD Announced”, and it didn’t take long after that for the site to go completely dark.
Despite advertising the site as a place of civil discourse, Tyler Malka’s NeoGaf would often ban users who did not adhere to the forum’s accepted brand of political philosophy
As of this writing, any attempt to access NeoGaf results in a 503 Service Error screen.
NeoGaf’s detractors are celebrating the site’s demise en-mass this evening, with the vast majority of them calling out Malka and the rest of the moderation team’s ultra-“progressive” SJW stance.
In November of last year, we reported on a massive wave of banning NeoGaf users who were anything less than outraged or critical of the then President-Elect, Donald Trump.
NeoGaf mods have even banned users for being critical of something as horrific as pedophilia, instead preferring to try and cast it in a sympathetic light:
Absolutely sick. These people are sick. pic.twitter.com/sUpy3A2SjJ
— Insanexer (@insanexer22) October 22, 2017
The latest allegations against Malka came amidst a wave of people speaking out about their sexual harassment experiences as part of the #metoo social media movement, which was sparked after a bombshell sexual harassment scandal rocked Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein.
While NeoGaf did have a vast toxicity within its leadership and community, it did act as a good platform for rumors and breaking news stories.
No determination has been made on the future of NeoGaf as of yet, or whether the site even has a future once the sun rises on Sunday morning.
We’ll have more on this story as it develops.
Written by The Watchman
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