An absolute joke of an administration. I tried to contribute to the community by writing a completely fresh and accurate Dragon Ball Z guide because the existing one on the site is packed with wrong information.
Instead of welcoming actual, correct content, the admins rejected my submission with some ridiculous claim about a "different author." They would rather keep outdated, trash guides online than let active users fix their database. The moderation and submission process is stuck in 1999, run by clowns who don't care about quality. Don't waste your time contributing to this dead site.
ST
StrongKid
it lied on how to beat riddle school 5
it lied on how to beat riddle school 5
GT
Glen T.
The moderators do not follow the ToS and all rules are subject to their discretion
I use to be a very active user on GameFAQs since around 2000. I submitted several guides. One of them won a FAQ of the month contest. The forums use to be friendly and the first one I visited after becoming a member helped me to learn about modding games.
I would get the rare spoiler without warning moderation but that was it. Around 2016 things started to change. I was posting the way I normally had but I was getting moderated a lot more often.
For 4 years you could say that the election was stolen and that the president was illegitimate. But for the next 4 years you were not permitted to express any doubts of over the 2020 election or criticize the Biden administration.
The Terms of Service regarding offensive material didn’t change. But the moderators began to consider any view that went against their personal beliefs to be offensive. The moderators do not follow the ToS and all rules are subject to their discretion.
I was recently going through a folder of screenshots of my moderation.
07-10-2022 - 7 days for making a distinction between actual bigotry and having a disagreement on what constitutes equal treatment under the law.
10-08-2022 - Someone’s post reminded me of a Dave Chapel stand up routine. Their post got deleted and I got 30 days because I quoted them. I saw nothing that violated the ToS in either the original post or my response to it.
12-13-2022 - I said that Democrats casting doubt on the election process for 4 years and showing support for similar protests had lead people to think this was an accepted means to seek a redress of grievances. Thus contributing to the one on Jan 6. This was apparently lying about a terrorist attack.
02-05-2023 - I posted a news article on the FBI’s findings that the events of January 6 were not a coordinated attack. Thus contradicting the reason for the previous moderation.
04-16-2023 - I said that I don’t believe anyone is out to deny trans people the rights that everyone else has. This was apparently ‘sexually explicit’, ‘hate speech’, and/or ‘violence’.
10-18-2023 - I said FOX News was no better than any other news network and that they don’t provide any real opposition to the progressive narrative. This was deemed to be a lie worthy of an 180 day suspension. I can only guess that that day I got the one lone mod that was a fan of FOX News. I thought the progressive consensus was to hate it unquestioningly and support any criticism of it as I was doing.
At some point GameFAQs instituted a rule that political discussion was not allowed except for a specific board. This also marked the deletion of the Politics social board and made Current Events restricted access. I supported this decision. I had long argued that if you can’t express an opposing side of an issue then you can’t have a discussion. I encouraged widening this policy to include other subjects that regularly receive one sided moderation. At least then the rules for those subjects would be stated somewhere since they aren’t covered by what is presented in the actual ToS.
Despite this new policy I still saw posts that brought up the theft of the 2016 election. If commenting on election integrity doesn’t qualify as discussion of politics then I don’t know what does. Expecting moderation to be more fairly applied now, I marked these. I never saw action taken to remove the posts.
My final moderation was for saying that I believe the actions of an individual are not a reflection of the behavior of an identity group. I would judge if I want to associate with a person based on individual action, not what identity group they belong to. This was somehow seen as spreading harmful stereotypes about an identity group. The very thing that I was arguing against. At that point I’d had it and never returned to the site.
I requested that all guides I contributed be removed from the site. They still have one of them up.
MS
mitchell S.
Banned for having an opinion
I've been a user on Gamefaqs since I was 10 years old. I'm now 34. I was suspended for 3 months for discussions relating to Dragon Age and the horribly forced trans ideology that's forced down your throat within the game. I was suspended for having opinions that differ from the opinions of the moderators. People are getting suspended and banned left and right for having any sort of opinion that doesn't positively reinforce gay and trans ideals. The suspensions also cannot be contested, meaning the moderators have full control of who they want on the website.
DW
Dylan W.
Over-moderated website that has no respect for people's privacy.
I've been visiting the website everyday for quite some time now, and these new rules that they keep stacking up on top of each other really has to be the worst decision that they have ever done to it. To those who aren't updated, Gamefaqs is now owned by a San Franciscan company called "Fandom". They would rather focus more on their D.E.I. initiatives than userbase engagement. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the new moderators they've chosen are D.E.I. hires. Because of this poor selection, the accuracy of their moderation has dropped considerably to the point where users are getting severely punished (Suspended) for the tiniest things. I'm talking about things that aren't supposed to matter. By that, I mean statements like "People should be hired based on merit." or "I do not like what Sweet Baby Inc. is doing because of this and that". On top of this, there's also the issue of privacy where you've got people in the moderation team, who can see not only your I.P. address, but also the websites that you've visited, the search engine keywords you've inputed, and the online videos you've watched. It is both creepy and wrong. Overall, it's a recipe for disaster.
MI
Michael
Gamefaqs, where the mods wear greasepaint
Gamefaqs used to be a decent site but over the past few years it's really gone downhill. This is mainly due to woke moderators having double standards in regards to what is or isn't allowed
I was moderated for saying I wanted a straight version of a character in MK1 yet another poster by the name of iKombatLouvre is allowed to make multiple topics wanting characters to be gay.
I have been a member of gamefaqs for over 20 years but today I decided to close & delete my account as I don't see a reason to post in a one sided politically motivated environment.
KS
Klassic S.
Sissies and trollers
UPDATE- I'm still suspended but after doing some research, I read how many other reviews that confirms that they troll people & if you say anything disparaging about a company that they like they'll report/suspend you. So now the final piece comes into light. I was saying bad things about NRS & my opinions of them & since Gamefaq is obviously NRS beeeeoch, they reported anything that would make NRS look bad. I'm never using their criminal site again but I think it's hysterical that they think having me suspended is bothering me.
Original Review
Got reported/suspended by them last night cause I said the truth about a video game company known as Netherrealm Studios to another member when we were complaining about a game feature. We were stating true facts about the company like how they are inept, money hungry & very disrespectful to the players with their ideas as well as they content they created. We were voicing our opinions on their ideas but they said I was trolling & offensive which made me pat myself on the back. Its hysterical that they got offended by the TRUTH but its funny when anyone gets offended. Remember when people get offended by the truth or dumb crap, you know they are woke domestic terrorists. What's funny is that so many people in the reviews I read online said that the company was trolling them looking for stuff that made their fefes hurt so I can proudly say I'm glad to have offended your sissifed fefes. Can't wait to see what they write to try to defend themselves for being wrong, whatever it is will make me laugh hysterically
MK
M. K.
Controlled by advocates of rape and discrimination; avoid like the plague due to VARIOUS issues
I forget why GameFAQs becomes so appealing, and only know how it likes to appear so often on search engines due to a lack of a good competing alternative, one that would be needed amidst the glorified elitism of the moderators. The moderators have recently deleted evidence against a group of rape apologists in a discriminatory attempt to silence the person who provided said evidence. Evidence can be found on the petition "GameFAQs needs to stop supporting rape and discrimination" for anybody interested, but long story short, they are willing to keep enabling not only the YouTube user named "Mangs", an unrepentant rapist who has over 100K subscribers on YouTube despite the fact, but already shady characters in their own right who also claim to be against the rapist but at best refuse to directly submit more active proof of their actions which sabotages the credibility of anybody else attempting to go up against Mangs for additionally OTHER nasty behaviors, ones that don't even have anything to do with women.
The fact that the deleted posts were preemptively Archived also make it clear that the moderators' conduct is not new. In fact, there is an entire blog that posts VARIOUS actions by the GameFAQs moderators, the latest one of which (as of writing) implicates a proven doxxer known as "Flintlock Staff" who was made moderator. Worth noting is that "Flintlock Staff" would come from Kid Icarus Uprising, where the board involves the submitter of evidence having had his topic providing a Christmas gift basically celebrating a sort of character family choice met with unblockable bullying by "Flintlock Staff."
It is quite possible that "Flintlock Staff" was behind the false moderations, but there is no way to prove as much OR call as much to attention on the forums themselves even if you don't get arbitrarily suspended. Why? Because the punishment system is completely biased in favor of the moderators' whims; it is impossible to tell which moderator is responsible for an individual post's deletion without them giving a signature point in the first place, and even if you can dispute the moderation, they can Uphold without giving ANY reason and prevent any further attempt to dispute it. There is no calling this out in public either, because the "Ask the Mods" forum disallows talk of individual moderations, and the "Site Suggestions" forum bans calling out site policy. The admins don't even care either, only siding with the mods whenever something, ANYTHING, comes up.
This isn't even going into the brand of material that is allowed to run around. The comment "I'd palu her tena" was admittedly dug up via searching a line I remembered, no matter how stupid I am for remembering it, but believe me, that sort of content is TAME as far as what you can expect to find on GameFAQs without the mods caring to put a lid on as much. Reporting these messages is useless as well because the moderators are too busy picking on whoever they want to, assuming they aren't in direct support of the inappropriate material in the first place. Again, there is a blog that indicates how the moderators will themselves post less than welcome material, not all of which even involving objectifying women in the first place.
The clincher is when, like with TVTropes.org, GameFAQs will claim to be about democracy. They're a different form of the corruption of democracy: where TVTropes.org shut out necessary voices for healthier organization in a hypocritical zeal, GameFAQs runs on mob rule, which definitely makes it even worse particularly when it's still a bigger site. Red Ventures and C-Net, both allegedly in support of diversity, also warrant some of the blame for letting all of these problems run around unchecked.
It's also worth noting that the intended key appeal for the site, the guides themselves, have become increasingly more mediocre. This does NOTHING to offset the abuse of power in the social aspect that has become predominant in the usage of GameFAQs, and thus they deserve this BARE mention.
At the end of the day, if you can avoid GameFAQs, do it. Dealing with it unnecessarily at all is not worth the hassle of this mess. It's a testament to how much the internet needs to morally improve that dealing with it becomes too constant a necessary evil.