cool to voice act people's trauma and then ignore them when they tell you to not do that. surely this is actually about advocating for positive change and not a weird temper tantrum

video sucks dick, is a low a effort slopumentary, and couldn't even bother giving a timeline because the hit-piece would have had a lot less impact if he bothered mentioning some of this shit happened damn near a decade ago

you used to be able to stand on top of the buildings on granary mid. now people make youtube videos

To preface, I am both the administrator of a competitive TF2 league and I was an RGL admin for a single season.

I will split this lengthy response into two main sections. The first will address the specific issues with this video, and the second will dispel the myth that TF2 is uniquely awful with respect to the players in the community. I acknowledge this is a HUGE word salad, but after a few days and seeing what has been said, I feel as though I cannot sit by. While bliztank's video provides some decent cover, it is rather incoherent, and he is on the verge of tears throughout. I will attempt to detail my thoughts in a more coherent fashion.

TLDR - Dogshit video. Every. Single. One. of these players who brought up are either permabanned or fully cut out of the community. Even the players who received no/shorter bans are still known for those actions, and there is a stigma surrounding them. As of 10/21/26, the title of the video is "Why TF2's E-Sports Scene Harbors P3dophiles...". Merriam-Webster defines the verb of harbor as "to give shelter or refuge to" with the literary example of "harboring a fugitive". This would then suggest that the competitive TF2 scene gives refuge and shelter to such players - despite his own video showing that most players are permabanned and ostracized from the community. I am unsure how you can use that term in the title when not a single one of those players is given shelter or refuge by the community after being exposed, and the entire community usually immediately supports a player's exodus after such allegations are brought forward.

The Video Itself

What an absolute NOTHING burger. This video brings up no new information, doesn't do anything to protect new players, and trivializes the harm the victims faced by A) having voice actors narrate over their messages, and B) dredging up the past and forcing many of the victims to relive some of the trauma they already endured. This is nothing more than monetizing and capitalizing on the suffering of others for some clicks (see Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler for a good depiction of how people can profit off exploitation). The video ends with a call to action, suggesting viewers message ETF2L and RGL and that he hopes there will be positive change - but what was actually identified in the video that was wrong?

1. Vague Ban Reasons

Detailed ban reasons for Retrodavid, Broking, and Nursey were indeed changed to a more generic reason, and the bans going forward were very generic. The video suggests this is maliciously done on the part of RGL to downplay what happened and make it seem like there are fewer predators. There is literally no evidence to support his view other than his gut feeling/vibe. Contrary to his baseless assertion, and as many have rightfully pointed out here, this is because RGL is rightfully concerned with getting into legal trouble for defamation.

I no longer have access to the conversation, but I can say with 100% certainty that a few years back I was discussing with someone senior at RGL (either exa or sigafoo) specifically about the legal issues with the ban descriptions because RGL had been threatened with a lawsuit over it by a banned player. While I cannot recall the exact specifics (who the banned player was, the specific threat), this was 100% something that happened - despite the legal threats being empty. RGL still has an article up from when the original bans came out that spells out in explicit language what Nursey, Viper, Broking, and Retrodavid were being banned for. He also nitpicks the same issue with the wording for Gwendolyn's ban (see above for why), and Plaidinum. Regarding Plaidinum, he is just being pedantic - sure, RGL could have put the exact charges since there are no defamation concerns, but that's really where we are going to hang our hat? Should the ban read Banned for Violating GA Code § 16-12-100 - Sexual Exploitation of Children? Instead of asking RGL why they write their bans like that, he simply made an unfounded assertion of malfeasance off of the vibes.

2. Sempar + Maggie

First, he brings up the example of Sempar only receiving an 8-month ban. While I am unfamiliar with the specifics of this case, he provides a screenshot from exa discussing how the admins could not verify that Sempar knew the age of the individual. Regardless, Sempar did not get off scot-free, and sure while this case could have been handled better maybe, this is the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of players get permabanned for such behavior, and there are bound to be issues with inconsistent/unclear evidence. To use this one example, when there are dozens to the contrary is foolish. Next, he talks about Peanut Poker Man. I am unsure about the specifics of this case, but there is no evidence in the video that anything was reported to RGL, and there are no TFTV threads about it. Perhaps something was reported to RGL, in which case we go back to Sempar to see that perhaps there was tricky evidence, or it was hard to prove what actually happened.

He brings up Maggie, and how when players were confronting Maggie in the Discord, Mothership was shutting the conversation down, and that Mothership was never punished for this. I am unsure what his point here is. Everyone who was around during the time that Mothership oversaw the forums and Discord knows just how cringe they were and how strict they took that silly computer position, but this does not suggest that RGL was trying to cover stuff up; it was just a Discord mod doing Discord mod things (being cringe and taking their job WAY too seriously). Maggie ended up getting a permaban, and the video suggests that maggie’s ban was only given more explicit reasons due to community pressure. This is odd considering there are WAY more players (Nursey) who have had far more public pressure against them, yet RGL still keeps the generic ban reason. We all know that leagues always respond to public pressure, but Maggie was always going to get banned, and mothership being cringe does not show that there was an attempt to “cover it up”.

3. Exa and the mod team

What is there to say on this point. He makes an unfounded assertion that there is a culture of cover-ups at the top of the league and that top level staff are the problem. Once again, this is a silly statement. The VAST SUPERMAJORITY of problematic players are permabanned, and the few examples given above where there was no ban/a short ban, there are usually mitigating circumstances (exceptions not rule). There is almost a seven-year gap in between the earliest cases in the video and the most recent. There has been tremendous turnover at RGL in that time, with basically every “top-level staff member, " with the exception of Exa, having turned over. To suggest they are all involved in some cover-up for players they don’t know, and have no reason to support (with no actual proof, other than casual connections) is frankly absurd. But we all knew that.

4. ETF2L Stuff

Also a nothing burger. VOLUNTEER Admins bungled a ban first time around, got called out, apologized and permabanned the player. The ETF2L statement does a great job of explaining what went wrong, and how they will fix it. This is not to say that ETF2L conducted themselves amazingly here, but to imply that there was a cover-up or an attempt to sweep Aiko’s actions under the rug is also refuted by the evidence. They made a mistake and fixed it after public pressure (like the most common thing ever - see the pushback and ultimate bankruptcy of Flock Cameras to see just how common it is).

It is clear to any informed viewer that this video provides nothing of value. It revictimizes many of the victims of these issues (who would never have guessed their trauma would be viewed by 10s of thousands, if not 100s of thousands of people). He never spoke to any of the admins for comment, and did not speak to most of the victims (if he spoke to any at all) before posting this. The video brings up a few examples of issues and mistakes made by the VOLUNTEER administrators, but by and large, those mistakes were ultimately fixed. The whole premise of the video is defeated by knowing that basically all of the problem players are permabanned and are completely cut out from the community. The insinuation that competitive TF2 harbors pedophiles is incorrect, not supported by any fact proffered in his video, and is easily debunked by looking at the countless threads in TFTV publicly shaming and shitting on those players.

The Stats

Taking a step back, there is some narrative being pushed that competitive TF2 is a uniquely tarnished place, where pedophiles thrive and exist alarmingly. While the number of players who engage in such behavior is terrible, it begs the question of whether the number is actually that bad given the size of the community. Please keep in mind there are not exact numbers

Looking at RGL’s most recent season, there were 624 players in HL, and another 643 in 6s. In ETF2L, there seem to be about 180 HL players and about 622 6s players (there were 30 people on both 6s and HL rosters - about 4%). So let’s assume about 1,267 players in RGL (with a 4% overlap like ETF2L that gets us 1,220 unique players) and about 765 unique players from ETF2L - for a total of 1,980 competitive players. Let’s assume there are a few hundred players who are missing from this list, who are not playing this season or are in other leagues, for a total of 2,200 competitive TF2 players at the moment.

I went through the UGC ban page and found 29 people who have been permabanned (By UGC and mirrored bans from ETF2L and RGL ) for gross misconduct. Let’s assume I’ve missed a few and go with 33 predators.

A rate of 33/2,200 is about 1.5%. Mind you, this uses bans from every era of competitive TF2 and uses the lower number of players now. Assuming larger player numbers in previous years, the rate can be as low as 1.1% or 0.66% (assuming 3,000 and 5,000 players, respectively).

There is a general consensus that it is hard to say for sure what portion of a population is pedophiles, but Michael Seto, writing in 2008, suggests the prevalence of pedophilia in the general population is about 5% (holy shit). Joyal & Carpentier (2017) suggest the rate of actual pedophilia (people who have actually acted on their attraction) is about 0.6%. Whitten et al. (2026), based on their research, show that about 4.6% of men surveyed have had sex or sexual contact with a minor since turning 18 (also holy shit).

Once again, there is a mismatch of time windows since the 33 bans span about 7 years, but 2,200 is one season’s total size. Further, the 0.6% are diagnosible/arrested individuals, and we know between 5-16% of children abused disclose it, and of that, only about 12% get reported to the authorities, suggesting the number of actual pedophiles is probably much higher than the 0.6% of diagnosed pedophiles.

So the TF2 rate of about 0.6-1.5% is…perfectly expected. It also does not help that online gaming spaces put minors and adults in extremely close proximity and foster an environment conducive to pedophilic behaviour (the nature of online communications makes grooming far easier, surrounding mental health factors common in gamers, etc.) In fact, it’s almost surprising how low the rate is, given the nature of competitive TF2.

Beyond this, TF2 is not unique in this problem. Super Smash Bros, Overwatch, Fortnite, Roblox, and the list goes on and on.

No community is perfect, and I have not seen anyone actually look into the numbers before. Fuck that YouTube video, man.

Thank you for writing up something as concrete and well researched as this, i need my time to recover from the comment sections at this point tbh as it's drawn all of my spare attention so I'm taking a mental health break on this topic myself; i hope the post gets the attention it deserves and helps clear the air to others and that we find other ways to bring awareness to it. Really good job Nick, and sorry for how scrambled my own video was.

this is simply another retard that thinks they can profit from making bad youtube videos. fella didnt even put that much tf2 footage in the video... lmao??? why would you not supplement this entire video with tf2 clips? are you retarded? yes. this is such a pathetic attempt at a serious subject that you should be ashamed of yourself. you for some reason have the same cadence as that retard clavicular btw. that alone should make you reconsider your entire life.

lock the thread?

i love how we're basically throwing tomatoes at tooru and it's beautiful