A crisis of conscience forced the original creator of the BattleTech subreddit to clean the house on weekends. That creator, Reddit user ddevil63came back in vengeance, removing every moderator from the 15-year-old message board with nearly 50,000 members after those mods repeatedly denied any mention of a fan-made BattleTech-themed zine written by queer authors. Representatives of BattleTech publisher Catalyst Game Labs tells Polygon that they are now in contact with ddevil63 and are working on a new way forward for the sometimes toxic online community of big stompy robot fans.
BattleTech Pride Anthology 2023: Queer Tales from the Inner Sphere is a fan-made zine featuring five short stories produced by queer authors. The zine includes a foreword with contributions from author Michael A. Stackpole and a short story by Russell Zimmerman, both authors of officially licensed BattleTech contents. But when the BattleTech Pride Anthology was initially listed on the BattleTech subreddit, it was repeatedly removed by moderators for violating what they believed were several longstanding rules against injecting politics into the message board. But users pushed back, noting, among other things, that the existence of queer people isn’t a political issue at all — their removal, however, is.
That’s when ddevil63 rolled inCalled bullshit about the whole moderation process, hit a few buttons and start all over again.
“I originally created r/battletech 15 years ago because I wanted a place to talk about Battletech on Reddit,” ddevil63 wrote on Sunday. “I have not been active as a moderator or contributor, but I regularly read posts and comments. Yesterday I became aware of the removal of the Pride Anthology post and the rightly deserved backlash. I have no experience in moderation or community management, but I’ll do my best to correct any mistakes.”
Polygon has contacted ddevil63 for additional comment.
While the most important BattleTech The subreddit was in turmoil, the newly minted community and marketing director of Catalyst Game Labs, Rem Alternis, was caught flat-footed and in the middle of a move. (Alternis uses a pseudonym to protect its identity from online trolls, a common practice for those who work with fan communities that can be toxic.) While the developer had a number of accounts on file, including on Reddit, it had no practice of fully exercising his authority as steward of the decades-old brand in these types of social media spaces. So, Alternis and her team quickly washed up some sort of lifeboat — an officially approved one BattleTech subreddit with a trusted team of moderators. Nearly 8,000 users have already signed up.
That’s when ddevil63, who was already cleaning the house, contacted Alternis. Later that evening, Alternis said, she and ddevil63 will meet to make plans for how to proceed — together, as a united front.
“I think […] how we choose to respond, and what we choose to respond to, says a lot about the company,” Alternis told Polygon in a video call today. “There is an opportunity here to show who Catalyst is inside. […] To be able to say, ‘Hey, this is who we are. BattleTech is for everyone and respect is a right.‘ And that’s how we’re going to run our communities.
“Hateful people who were building their own brand […] under the name of a company’s banner – be it Warhammer, or Games Workshop, or Catalyst or whoever – they will realize that [we] it doesn’t matter what your views are, your opinions are,” she continued. “If you can’t respect other people, you’re not welcome in this community.”
Battletech Pride Anthology 2023: Queer Tales from the Inner Sphere remains available as a free download.