Hey everyone,
We hope you're all having a blast with this years osu!taiko World Cup. We certainly have been and appreciate the incredible amount of positive feedback we've received from both players and spectators. However, with the good also comes the occasional bad. We strongly feel that transparency is key during these situations, so that brings us to...
The Bad News.
We've run into a, to put it lightly, less than ideal situation. In recent weeks we started getting reports about a specific player ("Dargin") on the US team being suspicious. It was right around the Quarter Finals and outside of gut feelings we didn't have much to go on, so we decided to keep an eye out. By the Semi Finals however, it became increasingly clear there was something going on.
This posed a tough situation. The last thing we wanted to do was assume someone's guilt without sufficient evidence. Especially because a player engaging in foul play during the World Cups is far larger than just that individual player or their team. It impacts other teams, people working behind the scenes, friendships and spectators. Most importantly though, it affects the integrity and trust from the community that we strive to build around the World Cups.
In the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, we decided to not take action based on solely our gut feelings and instead asked him to, in clear view, record his play session during the Finals. This might seem very rudimentary, but pending back-end investigation and the little time we had to work with, it seemed a fair compromise to ensure there at least wasn't any obvious foul play happening.
Quite frankly to our surprise, after reviewing of the footage by several people and back-end detective work, we've concluded that Dargin, beyond the shadow of a doubt, was using tools during his participation. The situation has been handled in line with our policies, but that leaves us with another question:
Now what? We find ourselves in a situation where the US team made it to the Top 3, and are supposed to face Taiwan this weekend.
Here's how we think we can make the most of this situation:
1) We'll be postponing the Grand Finals by a week. This is to ensure players have time to acclimate to the situation and aren't pressured in any way.
2) We have no reason to believe the US team was aware of their teammate's foul play, and we firmly believe punishing them based on it would be the wrong course of action.
3) Both Canada and Indonesia were very directly impacted in their journey to the Top 3. Obviously many other teams have faced the US along the way, but with both these teams making it into the Top 5, we feel they in particular deserve a redo and fair shot at making it to the Grand Finals.
4) Based on points 2 and 3, we gave Indonesia and the remaining US team the option to replay their match. The US has declined the offer and will instead forfeit out of the TWC.
5) Following the above, we've reached out to Canada and Indonesia to hopefully plan a match for this weekend that will determine who's facing Taiwan in the Losers Grand Finals.
We believe that this is the fairest answer to the current situation and ensures the Taiko World Cup can reach the conclusion it deserves.
What can we do better in the future?
Every situation like this comes with responsibility on our end. We should've taken more decisive and proactive measures the moment the first report came to us and we apologize for our lag in response. In hindsight we certainly silently hoped and assumed this wouldn't pose a problem rather than ensuring it couldn't become a problem in the first place. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the situation.
Now that this is dealt with and the clouds have cleared, let's sit back and enjoy the rest of the Taiko World Cup!
- HappyStick
We hope you're all having a blast with this years osu!taiko World Cup. We certainly have been and appreciate the incredible amount of positive feedback we've received from both players and spectators. However, with the good also comes the occasional bad. We strongly feel that transparency is key during these situations, so that brings us to...
The Bad News.
We've run into a, to put it lightly, less than ideal situation. In recent weeks we started getting reports about a specific player ("Dargin") on the US team being suspicious. It was right around the Quarter Finals and outside of gut feelings we didn't have much to go on, so we decided to keep an eye out. By the Semi Finals however, it became increasingly clear there was something going on.
This posed a tough situation. The last thing we wanted to do was assume someone's guilt without sufficient evidence. Especially because a player engaging in foul play during the World Cups is far larger than just that individual player or their team. It impacts other teams, people working behind the scenes, friendships and spectators. Most importantly though, it affects the integrity and trust from the community that we strive to build around the World Cups.
In the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, we decided to not take action based on solely our gut feelings and instead asked him to, in clear view, record his play session during the Finals. This might seem very rudimentary, but pending back-end investigation and the little time we had to work with, it seemed a fair compromise to ensure there at least wasn't any obvious foul play happening.
Quite frankly to our surprise, after reviewing of the footage by several people and back-end detective work, we've concluded that Dargin, beyond the shadow of a doubt, was using tools during his participation. The situation has been handled in line with our policies, but that leaves us with another question:
Now what? We find ourselves in a situation where the US team made it to the Top 3, and are supposed to face Taiwan this weekend.
Here's how we think we can make the most of this situation:
1) We'll be postponing the Grand Finals by a week. This is to ensure players have time to acclimate to the situation and aren't pressured in any way.
2) We have no reason to believe the US team was aware of their teammate's foul play, and we firmly believe punishing them based on it would be the wrong course of action.
3) Both Canada and Indonesia were very directly impacted in their journey to the Top 3. Obviously many other teams have faced the US along the way, but with both these teams making it into the Top 5, we feel they in particular deserve a redo and fair shot at making it to the Grand Finals.
4) Based on points 2 and 3, we gave Indonesia and the remaining US team the option to replay their match. The US has declined the offer and will instead forfeit out of the TWC.
5) Following the above, we've reached out to Canada and Indonesia to hopefully plan a match for this weekend that will determine who's facing Taiwan in the Losers Grand Finals.
We believe that this is the fairest answer to the current situation and ensures the Taiko World Cup can reach the conclusion it deserves.
What can we do better in the future?
Every situation like this comes with responsibility on our end. We should've taken more decisive and proactive measures the moment the first report came to us and we apologize for our lag in response. In hindsight we certainly silently hoped and assumed this wouldn't pose a problem rather than ensuring it couldn't become a problem in the first place. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the situation.
Now that this is dealt with and the clouds have cleared, let's sit back and enjoy the rest of the Taiko World Cup!
- HappyStick
