Divergence Online Devs Diverge From The Truth

Ah yes, the sweet smell of Friday morning MMORPG controversy is like music to my ears. I woke up today and received a Facebook message (professional) from Ethan Ash Cashner regarding a news post from yesterday titled “Divergence Online Has Been Removed From Steam.” Mr. Casner is one of the developers for the aforementioned sandbox MMORPG. He asked MMOs.com to remove the news post “in its entirey, the first moment you have.” We are accused of misrepresenting the facts, but Mr. Casner and the Divergence Online team are criticizing our integrity for the purpose of spinning their own version of events.

Let’s recap what’s happened. Divergence Online released through Steam on January 06, 2016 to mixed reviews. The Star Wars Galaxies [2.0] spiritual successor was met with harsh criticism, accused of stealing assets from SWG. I’m sure Mr Casner wouldn’t subject himself to stealing assets. Oh wait.

The Divergence Online IndieGoGo Launch trailer used the iconic Star Wars theme, blatantly disregarding Lucas Film’s copyright; this use is NOT covered by fair use either—in fact it fails every single one of Youtube’s four factors of fair use. But there is NO evidence that Divergence Online stole assets from any other project. As Matt stated in the news post, “Divergence Online has had a rough time on Steam with consistent accusations of having stolen assets from its primary source of inspiration, Star Wars Galaxies being slung at it.”

The Steam Store page was not only rife with comments accusing the game of stolen assets but also included personal attacks against Mr. Casner. In a Facebook post Mr. Casner protested Valve’s lack of action against reviews which violate Steam’s Terms of Service. “For a few weeks now, we've been asking steam to please police their reviews and requesting that at the very least, they moderate comments made that directly violate their own rules and regulations...”

In response to Mr. Casner’s requests Valve removed some of the comments. But in the process of reviewing comments Valve discovered one user accusing the Divergence Online team of stealing his assets.

Then, this morning I woke up to an email essentially saying "Thanks for contacting steam, we've removed things you pointed out to us that violated our terms of service", then within about 2 hours I got another email saying "Yeah, that guy who we kicked off for harassing you guys like two hours ago? Ok well, he just sent us an angry email and we'd like you to spend another week of your time defending against it. I know we already just ruled on this, but for some reason, yeah do all this other stuff."

In their defense the Divergence Online team [allegedly] politely refused to use the asset. The disgruntled commenter accusing Divergence Online emailed Valve, who in response removed the Divergence Online Store page for further review. Mr. Casner has chosen not to dispute the claim, and Divergence Online remains removed from Steam.

Here’s where MMOs.com is accused of misrepresenting the facts. Mr. Casner told MassivelyOP that he, himself, ultimately decided to remove the game from the Steam Store.

Last night, we reached out to Divergence’s chief developer, Ethan Casner, who reassured us that the game itself is not in jeopardy but that he effectively pulled the game’s store page down from Valve’s platform himself because of sustained harassment from Steam users and Valve’s alleged failure to adequately address it.

[...]

So Casner registered his intention to take down the game’s store page, and Valve complied.

According to MassivelyOP Mr. Casner “further rebuffed accusations made on another MMO website, which he says quoted his partner’s tweets out of context in order to assert that Valve had removed Divergence from Steam by force.”

Mr. Casner’s partner is one Ana Morgan, who posted 4 tweets regarding the takedown of Divergence Online, and later deleted them. She details the points previously mentioned: that Valve removed Divergence Online due to the accusations of an individual, and that a Skype log exists detailing the refusal (copies of which have not been shared).

We at MMOs.com are baffled as to what we are accused of. The tweets were listed as Mrs. Morgan posted them to further reveal the story. We in no way misrepresented her statements, nor accused Divergence Online of any wrongdoing, but gave the game the benefit of the doubt. Our writer Matt even defended Divergence Online, stating “From what it sounds like, the team has the proof to sort this out and have Divergence reinstated on Steam.” Perhaps, we are accused of believing Divergence Online could reinstate their game on Steam. We apologize.

MassivelyOP contends we misrepresented the reasoning behind Divergence Online’s removal, claiming that Valve did not remove the game by force. But publicly available information points to exactly that. Mr. Casner himself admits to the matter in the aforementioned Facebook rant.

Mr. Casner stated that Valve is asking the Divergence Online team to defend themselves against stolen asset accusations after purging the Store Page. His statement directly contradicts what he tells MassivelyOP. Mr. Casner goes on to rebuke Mrs. Morgan’s tweets in the same post with MassivelyOP:

I told [Valve], ‘Please enforce your rules or we don’t want to have a store page anymore,’ and their response was to disable the store page – not remove it from Steam itself – as if responding to a support request to do so, hand A having no knowledge at all that hand B just ruled on the issue,” he explains. “Nobody ‘kicked anyone off of Steam.’ We asked them to make some changes regarding the enforcement of their own rules (so that we don’t have to spend development time doing it), and we’re waiting on them to say, ‘OK.'” His partner, he explains, meant in her tweets not that Valve had literally taken the game down but that Valve was responsible for the circumstances leading to Casner’s decision.

So Mrs. Morgan was detailing the logical steps required for Mr. Casner to remove the post? If that’s the case why would you remove tweets if they expressed the truth? Mrs. Morgan’s formerly deleted tweets corroborate Mr. Casner’s Facebook post, further reinforce the notion, by stating: It seems anyone can email Valve and accuse developers of using their work without permission and! Here's the best part…” and “Valve takes down the game in question WITHOUT requiring ANY kind of proof from the person making the accusation.” She then details that she has a Skype log (not shared) detailing the refusal and that they gave the accuser a free key. The same person who allegedly emailed Valve and had the game taken down.

It seems Mrs. Morgan didn’t verify her tweets with Mr. Casner before pressing “Tweet.”

There is no conspiracy here. There is bad journalism-blogging and bad politics. And while Mr. Casner requested we interview him the facts were laid bare by publicly available statements through Steam, Facebook, and Twitter. Requesting information from a developer is done to reveal ambiguities, not re-enforce an agenda. MassivelyOP gave a dishonest developer a dishonest platform to spread his views. And it seems they did not fact check, but took the developer’s word at face value.

It is also entirely unprofessional for MassivelyOP’s Editor-In-Chief to state, “That site [MMOs.com] is precisely the one that spread misinformation last night and is rebuffed in the article under which you are commenting.” Particularly when MassivelyOP built their entire article off of the word of Mr. Casner rather than conduct a simple Google search. Mr. Casner himself is not a reputable source. We request a formal apology.

Mr. Casner is entirely inconsistent in sharing the amount of money he makes per week through Steam. In his Facebook rant he states that the game generates $100/week, but in the Steam Community image he shared with us on Facebook he states that the game generates $60/week. Both posts were created within 24 hours of each other. How can someone who can’t keep his numbers straight expect us to trust him?

Notorious Steam comments have also littered Mr. Casner’s career. He spends more time engaging in playground politics and name calling negative reviewers, rather than developing his game. He taunts his customers with underhanded vitriol and then complains he can’t tolerate negative comments. I imagine that if Mr. Casner spent as much time working on his game as he does crafting comments he might be closer to a finished product.

Mr. Casner did contact us and demanded that “this one [the news post] has to go, in its entirely, the first moment you have.” He is attempting to rewrite his game’s development history by altering media perception to put the decision in his pocket.

At MMOs.com our position is to present truth without catering to developers or advertisers, but to the community. Going forward we will not be covering Divergence Online, but will continue to support other Star Wars Galaxies spiritual successors such as The Repopulation. There is almost universal disdain for Divergence Online and the way Mr. Casner, in particular, has handled himself in regards to the community and ourselves. We’ve provided disproportionate coverage when compared to how little progress has been made over the years.

We sincerely hope Ethan’s personality does not continue to hinder the development of a promising game.