With Simp-bot now being released to the public, I would like to say a few things about siliconealien (IneffableAlien on AO3), who originally began the project and is the administrator for the Discord support server. (I say "support server", but it is largely just a general server for fans of The Magnus Archives.)
I have read the entirety of the Simp-bot twitter account. I have combed through every word of the game's source code. And nowhere did I find any credit given to the primary project that this game was originally inspired by. The closest I could find to thanking another creator for their inspiration was this tweet, but nothing in the credits of the game itself.
Let me tell you about MagnusQuest.
MagnusQuest began as a collaborative game on another Discord server, commonly called the Jonah server. It is formatted like an old-school text-based adventure game, with me playing the part of the "game" and other server members writing out commands. It has inspired a number of other projects, including spin-off games, artwork, music, and a video game.
In MagnusQuest, yes, you can seduce the NPCs. Yes, you can die horribly. And yes, it absolutely shares a setting and characters with Simp-bot.
A number of months ago, siliconealien read MagnusQuest on AO3 and joined the Jonah server shortly afterwards. Screenshots are included here for the sake of establishing a timeline.
Now, why am I not surprised that MagnusQuest has gone uncredited?
On February 20th, I and 12 other users (several of whom have contributed to MagnusQuest) were, without warning or explanation, banned from the Simp-bot server. Some of us were, as far as we can tell, banned for politely questioning certain decisions made by siliconealien. Some of the people banned had not been active on the server for days or weeks. People were incredibly concerned about the possibility of the remaining server members using their personal information and photos against them, with no way for them to remove it.
For more information about this specific incident, see this post.
Do not support this game. Do not support this server. It is not a fair, welcoming, or supportive environment. Your posts could be deleted at any time, and you could be permanently banned, without warning, for any arbitrary reason.
This type of behaviour is a discredit to the good community so many of us have worked to build within the TMA fandom, and we do not have to tolerate it.
