About the Poppy Playtime vs Venge Controversy:
Ah... I usually try not to get involved with controversy. Okay, well that’s a lie. I’d say I’ve yet to dedicate time to discussing it on a platform of my own. But this one kind of got me heated, specifically in regards to Ethan/Ekrcoaster. Some people are considering this a genuine and positive clarification letter, but from what I’ve learned and what I’ve read within said letter, I can’t share that opinion. So I’m going to break down why the following letter is abhorrent and unacceptable in my opinion:
As for the controversy, no, this isn’t a fault of every person that may be involved in the creation of Poppy Playtime, but select individuals. Don’t lump in everyone involved with the production of Poppy Playtime, and don’t harass anybody, whether they’re connected to the controversy or not. Now, if you don’t know about the controversy being discussed, and you want more context, I’ll give you a link before we begin. I don’t plan to get into more than this letter, but because of that, at least giving you a good starting point to form your own opinion before I get into my discussion is fair. However much further you want to dig is up to you, and if your opinion differs from mine, cool. I’ve seen arguments on both sides that make sense, and either way, the most important details and facts that give definite, irrefutable answers aren’t available regarding a lot of things talked about. I’ll give you the direct link to Ekrcoaster’s twitter thread, where he clears up a lot of this stuff himself. I would encourage you to look at more than just this post or his side, but this is a good starting point to understand what everyone involved is talking about moving forward. Trigger Warning for Anyone Who Reads Ekrcoaster’s Story. It gets into some heavy territory: https://twitter.com/theekrcoaster/status/1449583867615068164?lang=en ________________________________________________________________ Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about this mess of a statement.
Before I properly start, I just want to note that they said as early as possible that the majority of Poppy Playtime's team was not involved in the drama they're about to acknowledge from their past. While true and worth acknowledging, this is planting a seed that isn't really about protecting said people. We'll come back to it.
In their "apology" the first thing they did was bring "context" that only suggested they had a relationship largely based on making videos that periodically featured Ekrcoaster's content, as though that was the more important context out of how he was treated. You barely get context for why the use of his videos for sinning fodder was so nefarious if you don't know that it was attached to drama they personally had behind the scenes with Ekrcoaster, but woe to them if they have to admit they had problems with Ekrcoaster on a more personal level. So we're already minimizing Ekrcoaster's complaints and his validity by obscuring the real facts.
The very next thing they do is - without acknowledging their derision was so blatant that numerous people picked up on them being biased and harsh concerning Ekrcoaster's content in specific - try to suggest that after so, so long of stopping with no rude or condescending words exchanged, they even went lighter on his content than normal when they reviewed it. How kind and benevolent. They were going "soft" on the guy, but it turns out it wasn't enough for him to not "get in his feelings”. If you don't know that they actively mocked him when he asked them to stop, you might even think they had good intentions when they decided without asking or gaining his permission in any way to make this "nicer, more positive" video to shed a "good" light on Ekrcoaster. Here’s a question they don’t answer: WHY did they make another video on him knowing he said not to? You surely don’t ignore someone’s wishes because you respect them and intend to spread positivity, especially if you were aware enough that you waited until the fires settled down to do it.
Despite trying to lowkey plant the above ideas in your head, they follow up by "validating" him, noting that he was rightfully upset, because if they're willing to admit that and they can sucker somebody into missing all the the malicious subtext laced between the lines above, they'll surely look like reasonable, mature people that made an honest mistake, not people who willfully acted like baleful A-holes and want to smooth over the situation so the money keeps rolling in now that it can hurt them, not just Ekrcoaster.
Following this, they point out that Ekrcoaster cut off communications and refused to respond to apologies, which sounds relevant, but it's not. You can even tell just in the fact that taking that part out doesn't change anything. Ekrcoaster's fully within his right to cut off communication. Here's why they brought it up: It's just meant to subtly get people to read into it as Ekrcoaster possibly being immature and unwilling to discuss with people who were genuinely trying to make things right. Then they say they discontinued their whole channel, but only after giving you multiple cases that make it seem like their poor mistake with Ekrcoaster got out of proportion and they felt super sorry, so the deletion of an entire well intentioned channel can largely look like Ekrcoaster’s fault. It all apparently happened due to Ekrcoaster's refusal to have open discussion with people who - with the "context" they gave - haven't done nearly as much as Ekrcoaster acts like they have. Except here's the thing: They admit that he's rightfully upset they disregarded him and made a video critiquing his work knowing they have a history of things that include making a "joke" about Ekrcoaster holding a gun to his head - yes, I'm serious - but they think it's relevant to say he hasn't responded to their apology? It's not the victim's job to tell their abuser everything's hunky-dory. They don't HAVE to respond. If the intent was to highlight that they haven’t spoken in years, fine, but what does the apology have to do with their attempt to suggest they’re far removed from Ekrcoaster and his work? Just leave it at “we haven’t spoken in years.” If you look at what follows, it’s clear why they did this. Like I keep mentioning, they’re setting it up to make him look bad so their later claims don’t sound so malicious.
They (finally) refocus on the primary claim, now that the damage is done to the public's perception of Ekrcoaster's supposed maturity, validity and rationality, only to immediately use - and I quote - the word "absurd." Again, the only context they gave was that they ran a - supposedly good faith - channel that occasionally featured Ekrcoaster's content, they were told to stop, they did for a long while and then they made one final video to largely give praise but Ekrcoaster got mad so they discontinued their entire channel. They suspiciously leave out that “years later” when Poppy Playtime came out, a post announcing it was still made on said channel. The channel currently has a huge follower base who hopefully wouldn’t know about the controversy, so they’re still using their terrible channel’s clout to boost sales, despite the terrible history that built them up. Only now do they say in regards to the claim of stealing ideas: "The accusation was based on the assumption that the creators of Animation Sins were attempting to create a game to spite him. This is absolutely absurd." There’s a reason absurd was the word they used, and the entire letter was setting you up to find it palatable.
They would have you believe that for no reason at all, with no prior history of spite - and quite the opposite, since their last video apparently was largely to praise the positives of Ekrcoaster's animation - that Ekrcoaster targeted them irrationally with a claim that they were spiting him (which is them basically leaving the suggestion for readers to pick up that Ekrcoaster is unreasonably spiting them). Funny how, like the last time they copied him regarding the use of his outro, they went through a ton of steps to call Ekrcoaster's cognitive rationale into question and finished off with the suggestion that he was doing as accused - before, he was copying their outro, though they never used it before to date and Ekrcoaster had been using it since 2016, and now he's spiting them, though there's plenty to suggest the opposite. The only thing that changed, from how I'm seeing, is that their ability to gaslight has become more elegant and eloquent. It honestly makes the idea that there's no ill-intent leagues away from believable to me, whether it can't technically be proven or not.
The next thing they do is try to appeal to the passion of the team, because who doesn't love and respect the picturesque indie development team who's got a passion project they've been working for months to develop? It doesn’t have to be a lie - it might not be a lie - but it’s easy brownie points; let’s face it. Given everything else in this letter, I’m going to take that into account. They then state that they were in the wrong for making the videos on Ekrcoaster's content years ago - gotta get in that it's been years one last time - but Ekrcoaster's not justified for coming after the entire development team. Remember this?
"they said as early as possible that the majority of Poppy Playtime's team was not involved in the drama they're about to acknowledge from their past. While true and worth acknowledging, this is planting a seed that isn't really about protecting said people. We'll come back to it."
Please keep in mind that the CEO himself who has a massive hand in the development of Poppy Playtime is one of the primary people who treated Ekrcoaster poorly, that he has not given full and needed context but is more than happy to mislead others into thinking he gave context, and please acknowledge that after readers have settled into the above paragraph and the offhand suggestion that Ekrcoaster's the one spiting them, THAT’S when they say it more blatantly. By now, the idea's thoroughly sunken into a lot of people's subconscious, so it's easier to accept this not-totally-direct claim without question.
They then come full circle and state that they've again tried to reach out to apologize for past drama (which, since they never gave you the real context, seems rather small) but Ekrcoaster still hasn't responded. Gee, if you look into the full history and what's happened every time Ekrcoaster's tried to move on concerning them and have a clean slate, you don't have to wonder why. For starters, this "apology" says enough. Then their history hammers it home. Again, if you want a starting point for said history, check out Ekrcoaster’s more depthful account yourselves: https://twitter.com/theekrcoaster/status/1449583867615068164?lang=en ________________________________________________________________ I'm not gonna get into the history at the moment, because this post is long enough and there are already people going over it, the most informed of all being Ekrcoaster himself. But honestly this "letter of gaslighting, manipulation and obscured truths" had me so ticked off I had to break down the bull that I was reading. I've never used this tumblr page for literally anything, so I don't expect this to reach people, but I was too annoyed to not refute this messy letter where it theoretically could reach somebody. If this has any chance of lessening the likelihood of other creators or people in general going through the nonsense that Ekrcoaster faced, I’m for it. If you want the full story, seriously, go look into it, but be mindful because it's gonna piss you off. Someone who was literally 17 years old at the time tried to pull the "I was young" card when it came to obvious mistreatment, but years later, the context that's most relevant (to making them look good) is Ekrcoaster supposedly being one in a sea of content creators they might critique from time to time? Yeah, if age was the matter, they wouldn't have misled people into thinking that's why Ekrcoaster took up issue with them, or that those videos were the extent of their personal connection to him. Again, Ekrcoaster, with the REAL context especially, is fully within his right to not acknowledge their half-baked and deflated, sugar-laced-with-salt apology, but they really wanted to drive that silence home. Their last statement is about him not communicating with them. They really wanted to trick people into finding that relevant or finding Ekrcoaster's behavior to be negative. Yeah. Okay. How many other small creators have they treated like trash that they sweep under the rug? How many? I'm not sorry. I just doubt Ekrcoaster is the only person they’ve mistreated, and outright don’t believe this was an accident, they're actually sorry or that the idea that they copied Ekrcoasters game (Venge) is as "absurd" as they'd like people to believe. Reading this doc was a beat-for-beat repeat of the way they invalidated, mocked, twisted and then threw back Ekrcoaster's words and claims in the past, only this letter sound like it was written by a full adult under fire with his money on the line, not a 17 year old with an ego who thought no one would ever find out if he ruined some 15 year old kid's mental health and reputation. Who would honestly ask the victim to respond to an apology that only came out when their abusers were under fire from people they knew could do something about it? Who would think the victim was obligated? Most of all, who would think that in the discussion of whether or not they plagiarized a work, the most relevant and important sentence to leave off on was said victim not responding to a sloppy, forced apology for what they themselves seem to consider a largely separate issue? Squeeze however much relevancy you want out of it, but is it "end statement" types of relevant? No. No, it's not. Again, I don’t want anyone going out and harassing anyone - that’s not really why I’m writing this. I don’t have any ill will towards the people involved, regardless of how upsetting all this is, and this post being used to hurt anyone would be the last thing I intended. I just don’t think this letter is acceptable. It didn’t read professionally, like a cut and dry redress of the controversy, or genuinely in the slightest. The plagiarism is debatable, but with their history, the claim is far more worth considering than if all we had was the basic (relatively common) premise and mild similarities in style. It’s specifically the history that actually makes the claim worth considering, however, that they left out when “giving context,” and that doesn’t sit right with me.