GDQ Name Change

TL;DR: GDQ can’t display the username ‘tomatoanus’ so I came up with ‘tomatoangus’ which they approved. My Twitch info will not be displayed on stream as I will continue to go by ‘tomatoanus’ on those sites, which is something I completely understand. GDQ was super transparent about the whole thing and communicated very clearly and quickly.

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about GDQ’s need for increased transparency, which I do agree is warranted criticism with certain things that have happened lately, but I wanted to share my experience with GDQ and show their communication isn’t strictly bad.

I’ve submitted to 6 separate GDQ events now, and after the first three, my submissions stopped appearing publicly in the games submissions list. GDQ reached out to me unsolicited about this to notify me that it was because of my username.

They told me that my submissions were not automatically denied, and that they would be considered just as any other submission, but they would not be publicly viewable on their website as long as I submitted with my username being ‘tomatoanus’. This is obviously because they’re a professional organization representing a charity, which I understand and accept.

I continued to submit under the same username for the next few events, and eventually decided I would prefer to have my submissions be publicly viewable so people could see that I was submitting on their website rather than only know based on me tweeting what my submissions were.

I reached out to GDQ via DMs and asked if ‘tomatoangus’ would be ok and they were quick to respond that while yes, it would be acceptable, they still wouldn’t be able to display my submissions if I was linking my Twitch to my account since I’m still ‘tomatoanus’ on there. This is because they typically display the runner’s Twitch channel name on stream as well.

I accepted this and understand their position, so for the next event I unlinked my Twitch from my GDQ account and submitted under ‘tomatoangus.’ I reached out to them again to ensure this would be ok to display publicly on their website, and they affirmed me it was.

Sure enough, when I submitted my runs, they did end up getting approved for being listed publicly, and by chance one of my runs ended up getting accepted. Some people think that me changing the username I submitted with was the limiting factor in a run of mine getting accepted, which I don’t believe to be true.

There have been a couple other runners in the past who have been accepted with suspect usernames and they’ve been asked to run with a different name at the event. An example of this is Breastickle running as ‘BT’ at AGDQ 2018, even though they submitted their run as Breastickle. It’s because of this that I do take their word for what it is that a runner’s username doesn’t play a role in how a submission is judged.

As I said earlier, GDQ displays the runner’s Twitch channel name on stream, but as long as I continue to go by ‘tomatoanus’ on Twitch, that info won’t be displayed. I’m fine with this. I won’t be changing my name on Twitch to ‘tomatoangus’ to match the name I’m using at the event. I would rather keep the username I have on Twitch than change it for a chance at growing my stream from the event.

Through the whole thing, GDQ was very transparent and quick to respond with any questions I had, and I applaud them for that. Every day there seems to be a new story about how GDQ doing something that angers many people, and those situations could have been avoided by being a bit more transparent with their decisions. I do agree that there are a lot of things that have happened that they should have been more transparent about, but that there are things that GDQ does handle well when it comes to transparency and it’s not all bad.

That’s all. Have an above average day.