some of my personal opinions on the tournament committee.
i really hope more people get to see things from my POV, especially tcomm.
(incoherent rant warning)
sorry in advance for the wall of text, i've been having a lot of mixed feelings lately regarding this and i thought it would be best to just let it all out. i know that there was already a document made by Rojo 2 months ago (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VyKWVnehEVzKGAYDgltSzDS7oZ_VeUNbyFW5nRs2hyw/edit?usp=sharing), but i feel like not enough has changed and i will be a lot more personal and biased. this is going to be about how i view tcomm, how i think tcomm views me, the current dmca issue and more.
(this is going to be very long, so if you don't have 10 minutes, just read the last 4 paragraphs, they are the most important currently.)
when the tournament committee was made in 2021, i was in disbelief and over the moon. many people have probably forgotten by now, but before tcomm was made, all communication between a host/player and request for official support was entirely anonymous and mysterious. here's an example: https://ue.s-ul.eu/iWXHUClA. i never understood why that was the case when you are trying to communicate, so having a group of people that we can name AND recognise was a huge upgrade. nothing in the actual process for us changed, but it was nice to be able to know that a real person with real experience was on the job, instead of a mysterious entity.
unfortunately, the reality seems to be that tcomm still had little to no control over decisions that were made, and were meant to be more of an advisory board for when the mysterious anonymous support needs a second opinion. however, through lack of communication and rose-tinted glasses, 99% of hosts and tournament players (including myself) believed that tcomm had taken over and was calling the shots. we now know in 2024 that that is absolutely not the case, but that stigma is hard to forget now and that's what most people thought was the case at the time. i would also like to point out that the debut of tcomm was exclusively announced on the osu!dev discord server in the brand new #tournaments channel with it. there was no news about this anywhere else on osu!. this is a trend that you may start to see.
i was at the peak of my passion for tournaments at the time in 2021 and it showed, coming off my first few LAN tournaments organised with GST:LIVE and hosting my most successful tourney yet with banger bonanza. on top of being completely obsessed with researching and learning about past tournaments, i was originally very keen to join the tournament committee the moment i saw that they were now open for applications, at the start of 2022. however, i soon learned about nik's application being rejected, which was due to 1) not needing any std members, and 2) generally disliked by most tcomm members. seeing as how i would also be rejected by the same reasons, i quickly gave up any hope of being able to join and make any changes. it had been three years since i knew this1neguy, a tcomm member, and i already knew it would be pointless to try with him around. this officially burns my bridge with t1g but i don't think there was one to begin with.
this1neguy has had a negative view on me since before i even hosted my first tournament and it has only grown worse over time, no matter what i do. in 2019, he had shut me down on wanting to learn about how to host a tournament. in 2020, he would frequently argue with me as i became increasingly mentally unstable after being overworked for TT3. since then, he has continued to assume the worst of my intentions and would spread said assumptions to others over the last 4 years. i can't deny that i haven't done the same to others intentionally or not, but it seems that every time i've tried to be vocal about something, he has so much to say about me to others, when he is not even involved most of the time. two major examples of this is my 4WC feedback this year, as well as my unbadge tracking sheet.
i was frustrated by 4WC's mappools this year (sorry poolers) because of it's poor quality and lack of playtesting. i had high expectations since it was run by high-profile staff, but i would frequently come across maps with no hitsounds and random out-of-place patterns. that alone wouldn't be that bad if not for the literal thousands of messages sent a day in the mappool feedback channel, yet it felt like actual feedback was falling on deaf ears as the same mistakes were continuously made. amazingly, this1neguy has managed to turn this around to tattle about how my behaviour is outrageous and im a condescending asshole, an agenda he has been pushing for years.
i have also been running a spreadsheet for the past year tracking every tournament i can find that aimed for a badge but failed in some way or another. part of this was because i loved researching on tournaments, and the other part was because there was an unbadge wave that caused mass-confusion. i tried my best to reach out to every host to ask them about their own tournaments and why they get unbadged, and i collate all my findings on the REVOKED! sheet. i think that it has become an interesting page to look at and can even serve as a reminder to hosts on what to look out for, to ensure their tournaments run smoothly. once again, this1neguy has twisted my intentions claiming that i made this spreadsheet with lies to paint the tournament committee in a bad light; that i am coming up with bullshit reasons (https://ue.s-ul.eu/C9GLdYAa). now that really hurts me. all i do is get the reason the host provides and write it down. i can't help it if the reason sounds ridiculous when that's all i get. tcomm doesn't want to provide any reasons publicly, so i can't really make do with anything else. i am doing this for myself and the community, not as some F-U to tcomm.
with those two examples, i'd just like to say this. i agree that my behaviour can be problematic sometimes. the way i handle situations often make things worse and i'm sorry for that. i'm rash and i have horrible PR. but, i'd like to think that my actions are in good faith. i'm not intentionally trying to cause people problems but that tends to happen whenever i try to resolve another problem, and i hate myself for it.
moving on, often times i would try to make suggestions to tcomm but they never get anywhere. screening is a waste of time in every tournament requesting official support and i recommended it to be an automatic thing done once a month or more. there is a whole section on everyone's profile called Account Standing that is already supposed to be able to show if someone has a tournament ban. i do not understand why support or tcomm would still think that manually screening multiple tournaments a day for years would be less work than taking some time implementing an automated system. there was also the addition of the Tournament Report Form, which became mandatory on forum posts for badge eligibility, yet there wasn't actually a single announcement for any host to know about it. this will become a common trend, as many new rules get set in place that are vague or unknown. it became standard for me to point them out which greatly frustrated members like t1g further.
one awful example was a new rule that eliminated players could provide replays, but not playtest. this was very confusing as if a replayer were to point out an issue with the map they were playing, that could count as playtesting. this was a big problem if not clarified yet there were tcomm members trying to either argue that i was wrong about it or that they were fine with that scenario (which contradict each other btw). there would be many new rules being quietly added that people would have to find out on their own. they did finally create a changelog a year later and you can argue all these updates were announced in the new "Official Tournament Support Updates" forum thread, but the changelog would literally just be "bump, new changes" instead of any information. thankfully that has changed in recent months and i hope it can continue to be improved further, as it will become relevent again later.
the next major issue i personally have was again, a new rule that was quietly added whereby tournaments were now required to submit their conclusion email within 2 weeks of tournament completion. i have no idea why this was added, but it is what it is. almost immediately after, 4WC 2023 concluded. the graphic designer was ChillierPear, also a tcomm member, tasked with providing the badge design and banners for the top 3 teams. everyone waited, but after waiting for over a month, there was still nothing. many people started to get rowdy in the server asking for the designs until ChillierPear finally got them done 2 months after the the tournament ended. unsurprisingly, there were now discussions whether 4WC would even be badged anymore because of the new rule. there was no news about it, until one day the badges were applied on the winners, and this change on the wiki was made (https://ue.s-ul.eu/4J1yALPK). tcomm argues now that it was a coincidence and the change was already decided beforehand, but this started to set a very bad tone for how many people view tcomm til this day, with the assumption of them laying down the law on others but bending it for themselves.
fast forwarding to earlier this year, i was stunned to find out about shdewz and Stage joining tcomm, because they had previously said they had enough people already and these two weren't replacing anyone. so of course, i felt like i finally had a chance to chase my original dream once more to join tcomm. i thought that i would be able to contribute as someone who would intensely play out new rules that were implemented, as well as provide a unique view coming from Singapore as there isn't a single person in tcomm from Asia. in fact, it is primarily white, and many members were now inactive and out-of-touch with the current scene. obviously i didn't make it in, but i found it very upsetting that i never even got any form of response, which made me feel that tcomm just genuinely hates me and thinks very poorly of me. that made me pretty sad for awhile, internalising that the people i want to help don't think i'm good for anything.
that aside, i want to fast forward again to present day, where we now have another issue. earlier this year, there was once again a new rule added that had no announcement, which was the prohibition of using any songs that were DMCA or explicity denied use by artists. i was doing my usual routine of contacting hosts about unbadged tournaments when i learned that one called IDOLS was unbadged due to pooling MENDES, which was DMCA'd. that really sucked as it was really well-run LAN with everyone putting in hard work. i pointed this out in a server which included ChillierPear and it wasn't long before he caught wind and did some investigating of his own. much to his dismay, he finds out that The Perennial 2024 has also used a song that an artist explicitly prohibited use, Semifinals DT3 Zekk - Freefall. Following IDOLS, this would mean that The Perennial, a tri-badged tournament, arguably top 3 biggest tournament this year, was now risking unbadge. this news spreads and the next day i am informed of 4 other huge ongoing tournaments that have made this same mistake.
i pointed this out in the osu!dev #tournaments channel as i usually would and once again the first to argue back was this1neguy, who claims that IDOLS was actually unbadged for multiple reasons, not just the DMCA. this was the first time i had heard of this. i then learned that the other two reasons was due to: 1) lack of public qualifier results and 2) their mania side of the event not having enough participants. clayton, who was a staff for IDOLS, quickly dismantled these points by proving the results WERE already publicly available and the mania tournament had nothing to do with the standard tournament and its badge. tcomm backs off and only then says that they actually didn't have anything to do with IDOLS' unbadge and they will try to get it re-evaluated. bruh.
now there is a dilemma. for IDOLS and the other ongoing tournaments that broke the rule, is leeway for making this mistake allowed? this is now becoming a legal issue and in my opinion from what i've seen, other tournaments have already previously gotten unbadged for making small mistakes as well. i think that there are two ways to approach this. 1) suck it up. any attempt at leeway with this is walking on thin ice risking legal trouble over copyright. 2) provide the leeway, saving IDOLS and The Perennial and many other tournaments, and pray to keep it on the down low. i feel like tcomm would very much love to choose the 2nd option considering two of their members are responsible for The Perennial and have no excuse of not knowing about this rule.
if you've somehow read this far, let me know. what do you think is the right choice to make? well, it probably doesn't matter anyway (https://ue.s-ul.eu/VXOpdpTN). we just have to accept that it's tcomm's world and we're just living in it. they can argue that's not true, but most of us that have experienced interacting with tcomm firsthand can hardly disagree more. here's some more fuel for shower thoughts, thanks for reading all this.
how did IDOLS get unbadged without tcomm getting a say? isn't that the whole point of their existence?
not only were the poolers of The Perennial already aware of the rule, but they also had a bot (that works) which would've spotted the un-allowed song. what more can be done to prevent this?
if tcomm cant follow their own rules, how can we expect them to diligently review others?