My thought is it would be nice if there were "official" threads, started by the manufacturers, where they had more control over the thread. Kicking people out maybe even. It's really nice to have on-topic threads where you can get official answers and updates, and people can ask questions and share opinions where they can get feedback directly from the team. And when that gets swamped with noise no one really wins.

I know Pinside isn't an advertising/social media platform for businesses, but we all would benefit from such a thing I think. And if a company abuses it they'll get pushback.

And if people want to start "unofficial" threads to speculate on Alien, or Hobbit, or whatever else they're free to do so, with no restrictions. So no one is being silenced, they just can't derail a thread that's officially dedicated to a topic.

I know some troll account tried to suck me into an off topic Alien thread that was obviously set up to trap me. I just drained it. No clue if it's still going, don't care. But I can't do that with the official Alien thread, because there are updates I want to be able to put in there for people, and I suspect no one would hope that I would not post them.

I can't see how Pinside is a better place without Keith posting. I have thick skin and I'm patient, but honestly there are times when I feel like bailing too. It all just gets so personal, it's hard to suck down that negativity constantly without it affecting you. (I have no problem with criticism of games, art, etc, it's when it turns into personal insults and trying to make people feel like shit that I lose my tolerance.)

Who cares though? They'd be joke threads, people would eventually stop bothering with them, and the unofficial ones would be where people talked. If there's a Jpop thread with 100 people banned who's even going to read it? Or they'll just quote from it into unofficial threads. And that's fine. You bring your own baggage with you.

I don't like locked threads, it's good to let people ask questions. But if they're gonna shit it up with off topic stuff then I want a tool to show them the door.

It's a huge amount of work to keep a thread on track against that. And if you spend all day doing that shit you're not working on the actual game.

Also to the thick skin comment people: I certainly have it. I think I've posted here enough to show that.

But when you're here as a company, and not just an individual, you get to a point where the toxic environment just isn't worth it anymore. I dunno why Keith bailed, but I can guess.

If you enjoy having direct access to companies then it needs to be fixed. Building pins is enough of a headache without all the extra BS.

Even Stern doesn't have a full time social media guy, Jared is just a part time contractor. Every single other pinball company in the world of any kind and flavor is smaller than Stern, you think they have a full time social media person? There is no one who's going to just hang out in a forum all day dealing with keeping things on topic. Assuming they can even answer your questions in the first place, since the whole point is to have access to the people building games.

So sure, I get your point. But you know what? There are people with agendas who aren't there to be genuine. They want to stir up shit. And frankly it's just not worth the headache.

So you can stand on principle. Or you can watch as less and and less pinball companies have any interest in maintaining a presence here. Stern already cut Jared's balls off, he couldn't work for them and be a normal poster, so he bailed. Looks like Keith and Alex had enough, they're out, at least for now. Rick retreated to his own forum for updates because he got tired of dealing with trolls.

Are those guys all saints? Hell no. But the fact remains that they represent companies that people here are interested in, and the climate is such that they're finding it not worth the time and effort.

So yay, they adapted by leaving.

I feel less inclined to post updates on Alien myself. It's just incredibly time consuming to make sure things aren't derailed. Easier to just not bother. And I'm not even a Heighway employee. And it's not people saying that they don't like something I did. Big deal. It's the nasty personal shit people pile on top of it. Who the hell needs that?