02/04/2025
Good Evening,
In the past 24 hours, a letter was delivered to leadership with 8 of our roughly 50 staff members initially signing (two more signed on afterwards, it is unclear what actions led to this or what they were told) - This letter was received as an ultimatum and stated that if one of our staff was not removed immediately, unclear consequences would be wrought. Once the letter was delivered, the targeted staff member, who was already on a performance improvement plan, resigned immediately. Upon investigation, it was discovered that a majority of our staff had never seen the letter, and disagreed with it either in part or as a whole.
This incident has shown us that we have failed to identify and address an environment where toxic behavior had been running rampant, and that social bullying was being allowed to be perpetrated. What is even worse is that this was at least the third known occurrence of this pattern of behavior on the staff side of Starfall and each time we had acted too slowly to stop it.
The letter is relatively unimportant; it is just the latest n a series of actions from the start of Starfall (some public, some not) that has fully opened our eyes - Starfall’s staff culture is systemically broken. We fully believe as senior leadership we are to blame for that.
For some of you this may come as a surprise and we apologize to you for that. We have tried to find a clear path forward, and figure out a way to make this year work. The reality is in the time we have left before July there is no way fix our problems and build an event we can be proud of. We are truly concerned about being able to provide a safe space for players and staff in an organizational environment that has continued to foster rumors, lies, hate-mongering, and bad faith actions.
These continued actions have damaged our love for the game such that we do not feel confident in our ability to deliver the experience we love to provide - we have been advised by many that we should name the individuals that are behaving this way. For safety reasons we will share this information with other events organizers on request but otherwise maintain privacy. The reality is the failure starts with us for having poor staff structures, and for not removing all of the bad faith actors sooner.
It is very clear that we have failed, and we will learn from this failure and come back stronger. The three ways we can promise you we will grow from this experience is we will build clear and robust structures to protect both staff and players, we will be prompt about removing bad actors from the environment, and we will be more aware of our responsibility to staff as we are to players.
So what is the next step? Starfall will take at least a year hiatus, Jet and JL will reflect upon what we need to do make this work and how we can build better guardrails. While we cannot promise our return, It is our sincere hope that we can rebuild with a healthy foundation. We will be in touch.
All ticket sales will be refunded by February 9th at the latest, and any physical cheques will be voided and shredded. Those of you who were kind enough to donate to the scholarship fund, this will also be refunded.
We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and disappointment.
-
Jet Pak
JL Moore
