This is a joint statement from Nicky and Roticher. Our bans are obviously different in the details but we feel we can speak collectively.
As people have seen we have been publicly banned from POLAN, a ban which has been mirrored to the ETF2L.
This ban was extremely shocking to the both of us. We had no idea that we were being investigated by the POLAN staff. We found out at the same time as the rest of the community, via a public TFTV post. No ETF2L or POLAN admin has reached out to us for our perspective during or after POLAN 2026. We don't know the specifics of why we are banned, even.
From what we do know we are accused of making one of our friends in the TF2 community uncomfortable with our behaviour at POLAN. We do feel sorry over said person being made uncomfortable. It was never our intent in any way, we do not want our own friends to feel bad in any way nor anyone for that matter.
When we returned home from LAN we were accused by our friends of harassing and deliberately going against this person's wishes (everyone involved are mutual friends, including the person who was hurt) with our behaviour. We were not reasonably informed that our behaviour was hurtful until after LAN. As an aside we are both diagnosed with autism so we perhaps missed some more subtle signs or insinuations, we both prefer a more clear and direct communication style.
We both pride ourselves on being considerate people who are welcoming, and have no history of misconduct throughout our long years of participating in the community. If it was clearly communicated that our actions were making anyone uncomfortable we would have immediately changed our behaviour, especially if it involves a friend.
That being said we don't feel our behaviour rises to the level of harassment or stalking as some people have claimed. Perhaps we were a bit awkward/cringey or unaware, which we are open to taking responsibility for and apologising over. We feel this situation could have been solved with just a bit of direct communication between both parties, and that a misunderstanding/misinterpretation of our actions and intentions during POLAN 2026 has escalated out of control. We respect the needs of victims to privacy and dignity but it needs to be balanced with justice and fairness.
We also apologise if we have been angry/hostile to those accusing us. We felt immediately attacked by our friends and under immense pressure. The lack of understanding was very frustrating for the both of us.
We kindly request that the admins of both ETF2L and POLAN reach out to us to hear our side, or even that those who feel discomforted or offended by our behaviour talk to us openly so we can explain our perspective and gain greater understanding of the situation. So far the Uberfest admins are the only group of admins that have talked to both sides.
We also ask the community to reserve judgement and be patient while we make our voices heard behind the scenes. We want to maintain the respect and dignity of everyone involved in the situation so we don't want to speak publicly further than this for now. We know this post will raise a lot of questions, so after the admins have reached a conclusion we will present a full version of events from both of our perspectives to make things clear. However if misinformation is being spread publicly, we will respond publicly.
We currently hope to attend Uberfest and we intend to just keep to ourselves.
From this point forward please assume we are talking for ourselves.
Thank you for your understanding,
- Nicky & Roticher