When I first heard Gibbs was leaving Vainglory, I didn’t think much of it. Many times early influencers in a community will leave and that’s ok. Furthermore, I confess I don’t watch his stream very much. Not because it’s not good, I just don’t have a ton of time to watch streams unless I’m analyzing players from a team GankStars is about to play in VGL or VIPL.

But after watching Gibbs’s farewell video, some of the things he said gave me strong deja vu. I had heard his words before, from influencers in another great community. This was several years ago, and today that community is no longer great. In fact, it’s a wasteland.

I love the Vainglory community. And as I’ve just mentioned, I used to be a part of another community that I once loved. Ever since that community deteriorated, I’ve spent many sleepless nights thinking about why and how it went downhill. Below are my thoughts on why we must pay attention to what Gibbs is saying and furthermore ask SEMC to take immediate action in protecting this great community.

[Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the inner workings of SEMC, or who these “new people” Gibbs is referring to. I have also not felt the same pain as Gibbs, luckily I have not poured my entire heart into VG since the early days nor do I stand to lose much compared to Gibbs and many others. That said, I still care for the community and especially the “idealists” like Gibbs who keep the machine running.]

If Gibbs’s is correct (I believe he is) and SEMC doesn’t take immediate corrective action, all of the most passionate and brilliant members of this community will start to leave Vainglory. It’s starting with Gibbs, but I’ve seen many others (recently) echo the sentiments in his video. Today, the Vainglory community has an incredible number of smart people who give their time selflessly, recruit and attract other smart people, all while keeping the trolls, assholes, and morons out. The value of this function can not be emphasized enough. Without these people the community will become a wasteland, because I have seen it happen before.

Right now it appears SEMC is either overwhelmed, getting lazy, or forgotten how important the grass-roots community has been in getting them to where they are now. SEMC seems to have either improperly trained their new people or hired the wrong new people (people who don’t share the same values or mission as the community). The latter is fairly common when an organization hires people for the ability to do a job over the passion for the mission the job entails. The ideal hires have both but those people are hard to come by. This is why it’s always better to hire a passionate B player over an apathetic A player. You CAN train someone to be competent with time but you CANNOT train someone to be passionate.

The evidence for me comes down to two things that Gibbs said, the statements that gave me strong deja vu.

1. Where is SEMC’s loyalty (3:21)?

“The salt didn’t really start until I was lied to over the course of a month. I put 6+ hours, almost everyday into this game and gave these people permission to my statistics to help bring the first wave of new audience to Vainglory way back when. And then I’m treated like dirt because the new people they hired don’t know any of that?”

What Gibbs is saying is that SEMC has hired a bunch of people who don’t appear to care about the amazing community they have stumbled into. Sure, they care about doing a good job, but what Gibbs is saying is they haven’t taken the time to understand the community, it’s mission, it’s origins, what it stands for, and who built it. This is incredibly disrespectful to someone like Gibbs (and it should be). There’s a basic level of respect SEMC needs to treat it’s community and especially the selfless influencers who were here since Day 1 and paid their dues. This isn’t about entitlement in my opinion. Rather, to Gibbs, his situation feels like a “bait and switch.” Gibbs feels used by SEMC. They turned their backs on him and didn’t deliver on their promises. Since he makes no money to sustain himself from streaming (a grand total of $1,500 or sth as he says), and SEMC has tens of millions in venture capital, I understand and support his point here. It shouldn’t be up to Gibbs (or other influencers) to beg SEMC for help, it is now SEMC’s job to take care of the early adopters who helped them build their platform. This is loyalty 101.

Gibbs’s feelings are so similar to the ones I felt in the other community I mentioned that hearing him say this gave me chills. I wasn’t alone back then and I am sure Gibbs is not alone now. My situation was very similar, with a for-profit organization at the center of the community. I held on for a long time to give the leader of that organization more and more chances, but it was a mistake. The leader never got the picture and three/four years later the once great community that brought so much good into so many people’s lives became a wasteland full of bottom-feeders who didn’t care about community, didn’t even know the original mission of the organization, and simply moved on to the next “cool” thing after they got bored. And guess what? That business has gone down the drain and can’t support itself anymore.

2. Do SEMC’s new hires even care about (or understand) quality (3:41)?

“Let me put it this way, I’ve been explicitly told by multiple Vainglory streamers, content creators, that you guys know to start sucking up to these new people to get what I wanted. That was icing on the cake for me, hard work should show for itself. When a year and a half of hard work [goes unappreciated… well fuck it]” summary in brackets added by me.

This is perhaps the most concerning part of the video. The fact that the people who contributed their hearts to this community, essentially built it without being paid, now have to suck up to new people who don’t even know who they are is one of the most disrespectful scenarios one might imagine. Props to Gibbs for realizing what a bad situation he was forced into and calling it quits early. Essentially, Gibbs is explaining why Vainglory is no longer a meritocracy of quality. It’s not the people who do the best work who are rewarded, but the people who suck up the most to people who are uninformed. Can you see how these incentives will lead to an inevitable wasteland?

The lack of proper onboarding by SEMC of their new people (probably due to the urgent focus on monetization), may have set Vainglory up for an inevitable demise. People like Gibbs are why communities like Vainglory have an incredibly high quality ratio relative to the size of the player base. Scaling this quality ratio is the key to Vainglory’s long-term success. “Hard work should show for itself.” Now the values and priorities of Vainglory are no longer about quality, in fact, the lower quality people appear to have an advantage because they don’t mind sucking up to people who don’t even know what quality is yet.

SEMC, you have some serious work to do. I love this game but I love the community much much more. You reap what you sow. Disloyalty will lead to disloyalty, as it has here with Gibbs and probably other influencers.

This will either be the beginning of the end of the community, or SEMC will act and fix things. First the leaders of a community (SEMC) lose their heart (in this case, not caring enough about Gibbs and the passion he invested in Vainglory) then they lose their soul. Once you’ve lost your soul you have lost everything and your utopia is destined to turn into a wasteland. When there’s no soul, no mission left, and profit is the only motive, the exodus of nearly all brilliant and passionate people is inevitable.

Let’s hope SEMC will hear the community like they have always done in the past. I still trust in them.

To Gibbs–thank you for pouring your heart into this community selflessly, you will not be forgotten.

*This is not meant to be an attack on SEMC. I do not know the inner workings and am writing this post based on second-hand information. It is meant to be an honest reflection of the risks involved in growing the Vainglory community.

**Your take-away from this post should NOT be to get mad or give-up. We must all come together with SEMC to find a solution together.