Toni and I have come to the sad realisation that we can no longer be a part of the /r/Vive community.
What the Hell Happened?
Yesterday we posted about our grand opening update to /r/Vive. This update isn't a regular update. It is essentially a remake. Rebuilt from the ground up by a 3D artist, feet tracking, a nightmare mode and a bunch of surprises. For perspective, it cost us 8X more than the original Richie's Plank.
Minutes after posting, upvotes started coming in. It was upvoted to #4 spot and for a short while, it was the only post in 2 pages that wasn't about Fallout 4 VR. (which does deserve 2 pages. It's pretty damn epic) We were thrilled. Unfortunately, it was removed by the moderators before most people saw it.
We Broke the Rules
Around this time last year, we released the Santa Simulator update. I was so excited, I asked our Steam fans to upvote the post on Reddit. This broke the rules and it was removed by the moderators. Desperate, I broke the rules again to post Santa on /r/Vive. Then I doubled down and tried to mislead the moderators about this. I tried to reconcile with the moderators througout the year. I didn't receive a response.
Yesterday, we Broke the Rules Again
For the first time in a year, we broke the rules again by posting about the grand opening update. We were excited for /r/Vive to see our surprises. We used a 3rd account. The post is deleted and we're now banned again for ban evasion, probably beyond reconciliation. Please don't blame the mods. They were just following the rules.
Unfortunately, we have now come to the realisation that we can't be a part of the /r/Vive community anymore. If you don't see us being involved, it's not because we don't care.
Memories
We immediately felt connected to /r/Vive. There was this constant buzz with the giant leap in technology with proper room-scale VR. We still feel it. Here's some of our fondest memories...
First post about Richie's Plank
(Cringe. Geez it looked bad)
Hearing about different plank setups
People sharing their first experiences
WGEM Tower being named after Redditor, /u/wgem67/
What Now?
In future, we'll spend more time on the Steam Community and over at /r/SteamVR and /r/Oculus where we'll be happy to respond to any questions or comments that arise.
Goodbye /r/Vive. We will miss you.
Sincerely,
Richard Eastes
EDIT:
I want to clarify something about our vote manipulation ban. Yes, our initial ban was because of vote manipulation. It was the wording we used when we shared the Santa Simulator reddit post in 2016 on steam. The wording was "If you like the Santa Simulator update, please share the love on /r/vive" Although an honest mistake, we agree that this was technically vote manipulation. We suspect it was filtered by a sensitive bot/tool. Interestingly, at the same time, it was organically voted to the top of /r/gaming so I doubt the /r/vive vote manipulation made much difference.
Our 2 intentional offences after that were from creating new accounts out of desperation to stay involved in the /r/vive reddit. After 12 months of attempted reconciliation with no response, we had to say formally say goodbye. I hope that clears some things up.