Hi there, I'm here to clear up there air. My name is CrashmanX. I am one of the moderators over on the /r/ArmoredCore subreddit. I would like to get this out of the way: The reddit team has no interaction with the Discord. Their discord is only affiliated with our subreddit through legacy reasons. I and the other members of the reddit moderation have no control over the Discord team and vice versa. This is done so to avoid collusion and to allow freedom of speech. Anyways, onto the bulk of the post.

First, I'd like to state that I personally reached out to EJRaven back on April 26th of this year with the intent of collaborating with EJRaven on having our Subreddit promot his tournaments. When I proposed this to our team I was met with some pushback by a few members. One was only familiar with EJRaven though hearsay, another was a member of former communities, and another was only part of the former communities towards their end. I pushed for EJRaven to be given a chance and told the team I would take on the responsibility of dealing with EJRaven personally should there be any issues.

As EJRaven has made you all aware, there was some drama started by random Reddit users. EJRaven deleted their original post with said drama and re-created the post. This drama boiled over into Moderator Mail and into more posts, we removed the offending posts and continued on keeping an eye on things. EJRaven then posted about an Armored Core App he was developing, this struck a few of us as odd but we figured it was a non-issue. Shortly before EJRaven made a post about hosting a tournament we had discussed Tournaments and their future on the Armored Core subreddit and created a feedback post regarding them. Our team has a strong stance against tournaments with any form of prizing, but particulary with cash prizing as we individually have dealt with issues in the past with this. We made a stickied comment on EJRaven's post stating that the Subreddit was not affiliated with this tournament but we were going to allow it to be posted, we would do nothing to prevent it from being discussed, shared, or participated in. Simply notating that the Subreddit Team is not responisible for anything that happens with the tournamnet. (Link here https://www.reddit.com/r/armoredcore/comments/13rxrxv/confirmed_armored_core_tournament/jlr8mbw/) This did not sit well with EJRaven and they responded stating that the Subreddit belongs to the fans, not to the creators of the subreddit as well that they previously ran the official tournaments for Bandai and Agetec. We asked for proof of EJRaven's affiliation and they could not provide any, simply reiterating that they used to be and that they were under an NDA. We informed EJRaven that once they can provide current proof that they are working with Bandai, be it as a partner or otherwise, the post would be changed and it would have our blessing and support. EJRaven agreed and stated they would reach out when we can update the post.

EJRaven then created a post about "Armored Core 6 for the Troops" which asked for contributions so that they could donate copies of Armored Core 6 to the MWR as an official partner of the MWR, a cause I can gree with. However the post originally stated that Armored Core Online was a non-profit, we could not find any proof of this non-profit so we asked EJRaven to provide proof, instead EJRaven told us it was supposed to be No-Profit organization. We then asked for proof of the MWR affiliation, and was told we could find it. We received user reports saying they were unable to find this organizaiton's association with the MWR as well. We were unable to locate any official affiliation and once again asked EJRaven to provide proof. EJRaven told us we can search for it, we were unable to find proof.

With this information and other outside information, such as social media posts stating he would pay a modeler for their work on assisting him with a project (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=6214295845273055&set=a.100543746648326)(https://i.imgur.com/myP8rXZ.png) our users and our moderation team became weary of this user. Our team is comprised of primarily "Background" Armored Core fans. We have played Armored Core our entire lives, but we did not participate in the online communities. So some of us were entirely unfamiliar with EJRaven.

To rectify these worries we asked that EJRaven provide proof to back up these claims. EJRaven originally posted our modmail message to him, but has since taken it down. I'll re-add said modmail here. https://i.imgur.com/OtvezaW.png

EJRaven assued us that they had a very positive history among the community and that there is only the Armored Core community, believing the subreddit belongs to him as well. For his proof of partnership with Bandai he provided is 2011 NDA, which expired after only 2 years. He also provided details about the community manager he interacted with, but said details only included things such as terminology, interacting with fans, and making videos. No details on tournaments or payments. There was also no details for Agetec, Sega, nor Ubisoft or anything for Bandai related to tournaments. We have asked for details of his contact at Bandai so that we may only corroborate that he is in-contact with them or affiliated them in some way, but he refused to provide this information rather stating we can ask them ourselves. This morning EJRaven updated the mod mail to say they've added Sega and Agetec NDAs, however upon checking the Google Drive once again, the documents remain the same as last night.

As such after much deliberation among our team we feel it is in our best interest to remove EJRaven from the subreddit over concerns of our users potential safety. With many new Ravens joining Armored Core (our subreddit has seen growth by over 75% since the AC6 annoucement) we are taking into consideration many fans who are wholly unfamiliar with the franchise and can be easily preyed upon. While we do not believe EJRaven is inheriently a bad actor who may prey upon new users, we don't have any proof to the contrary at this time. We ask these details of any users who wish to host tournaments or organize other events in the interest and safety of our community.

If EJRaven can provide proof of current Bandai partnership, in any form, we would have considered rescinding the ban, we even told him such. (https://i.imgur.com/bmIININ.png) However, given these social media posts and the callouts against specific moderators, even saying about myself "on a powertrip like I have never seen before, not since the Nazis." we are choosing not to reinstate EJRaven.

We don't like that we are having to make this post, and we don't like how this turned out. I personally have always looked up to EJRaven and loved the ACO forums and enjoyed browsing them as a lurker when I was only 14. However, we are looking out in the interest of our members and this behaviour is not the kind of behaviour we want to represent our community.

Please feel free to ask any questions, though I won't be able to get back to them until later this evening. Thanks for reading if you read this whole thing.