I'm terribly sorry that it had to come to this, but these forums are no longer a positive or productive place for communication. They are not an asset to us to glean usable feedback and valuable criticism from. They are not a usable platform for new players to share healthy ideas, suggestions or criticisms. People are grievously and unnecessarily attacked, including staff.

We have listened, even to the inflammatory comments, and have tried to determine what we could do to resolve issues in a reasonable time frame. Staff members including myself, Tiger, and Allatu have answered reasonable inquiries to the best of our ability which are often lost in the shuffle or uniformly ignored in favor of flame wars. Oftentimes, despite or responses and interactions, a user will say "But you ignore us!" and continue making a path of flames through the terrain disregarding anything we've said or offered.

The level of entitlement is beyond reason at this point. Users are demanding to know private details of how we're dealing with a dispute with customer - which we have to deal with discreetly with respect to the offending party. They're creating alts with the intention of creating an environment of misinformation and discomfort, exploiting the fact that we cannot discuss their case publicly. Users are demanding information which no legitimate company with an ethical backbone would ever provide it's usership. They're abusing the staff because they simply can, and believe it is within their right to do so as they are a paying customer. We've tried lightly moderating, we've tried heavily moderating, we've tried pleading with people to behave civilly and offer their feedback, positive or negative, with some responsibility as adults. This certainly does not apply to everyone in this community. Even those with vastly valuable criticisms that are highly integral to our progress and which we can learn from get lost in the hate-speech and pot-stirring threads. And people are coming here to enjoy the circus sideshow created rather than contribute to the community in beneficial ways.

At some point, as with the cyber terrorists in-world, a group of people on these forums have decided we're the enemy, our staff, our supporters, our customers with genuine complaints delivered with courtesy, are being targeted and verbally mauled. Logic has been tossed aside, and people seem to have forgotten that without their input, their exchanges, their criticisms, we're not going to get very far. We're all on the same team, there should be no divide. We've extended a tremendous amount of trust to our community on these forums, and more than enough patience in trying times, and this trust has been compromised. We have done everything in our power to maintain an environment here where information can be gleaned and used in tangible ways, including the critical feedback, and we have done so to our own detriment. Our efforts to maintain communication and engage our community have resulted in irrational, emotional tirades launched in our direction which serve no purpose but to harm. I receive many, many notecards in Second Life about the state of these forums, people feeling apologetic for the behavior of others, people picking up on misinformation being spread recklessly which despite intervention, our detractors are determined to continue spreading. We're no longer providing them a platform to do this.

If a player feels that using these forums, a service we provide, entitles them to instigate, antagonize, attack, libel, or disregard anything we've contributed, they're mistaken. If a player feels that they no longer wish to participate in the game because of the harsh, inclimate, unfriendly environment fostered here by other users, that's a sad, unjust loss. However, if a player chooses to leave because we're no longer going to allow them to abuse this platform, I respect that, and will readily admit it's probably best for all involved. Many here kicking up the most dust in our faces, attacking our supporters, were not even our customers. They owned no Meeroos. They were not active players.

We have endured many hardships in the past month that have contributed to our weakening tolerance. We've been threatened, we've had a ring of criminals attempt to extort money from us. We've had our business disrupted daily by people exploiting a bug allowing them to build on no-build land, and they would rezz boxes with 1000's of running scripts to chain crash the sim. Here on the forums, we get hammered for having inadequate permissions, despite sharing links and trying to explain, exhaustively, that our permissions were to disallow build. But here, any opportunity is enthusiastically taken to discredit and diminish our intelligence, our function and our ethics. Linden Lab requested we temporarily put payment information on file as a requirement for entry so they can help us moderate activities, which we have done. But here, we're raked across the coals by our attackers. Despite explanation, which goes ignored and buried under bile filled threads, we continue to see them leverage that against us. We deal with thieves every day in world who are determined to bully us out of business, people who have poached the Meeroos name and used it for their regions. While we are dealing with that internally, here on the forums we're undergoing a streamline of pitchforks and torches telling us how incompetent we are. People have forgotten that our business is not managing these forums. Our business is trying to preserve an experience, to salvage it from these string of attacks, for over 30,000 customers. Not only the loud, vocal bullies who've taken up residence on the forums who have decided to amplify the difficulty of our circumstances.

I'm speaking to you as an adult, not a business owner now. As a player of games myself, as a community member of online games for more than nine years. I have never ever witnessed such aggressive, insensitive and deliberately toxic behavior. I've also made sure we were far more accessible, personally, as I felt that was an asset that few companies I've seen provide - you know how it seems like interactions from staff can appear sterile or inconsequential in online communities. But I did not expect that our accessibility would become our greatest liability when it came to bullying and abuse. It actually has become a sport to see who can take the most painful swipe at our staff, knowing they cannot react to it. For my staff, it has become painful, impacted their morale and has caused them to shy away from these forums because no matter what they say or do, they're targeted, their words are disregarded, and their character is slain for personal enjoyment. Afterwords, the bullies continue on about how they are ignored, and we don't communicate, and we're going downhill at the speed of light because we don't care!

I have never seen such mob mentality, influenced by hateful minds with agendas with their sights set on destruction. The people here breeding malcontent do not speak for the volumes of people in-world who are completely satisfied, perhaps even frustrated due to one reason or another, but who have not made it their mission to come here to these forums and grossly malign us or others. No matter what we have said here, how impassioned we've been in saying it, how lightly we've moderated, or how heavily, no matter how many of our users on these forums we've addressed directly, how many posts we've made, we are fighting a losing battle because nobody wants to hear what we have to say, they want to go on a witch hunt. They don't want resolution. They want drama. They couch it in seemingly intelligent posts with a string of thinly veiled insults making statements that are uniformly untrue, antagonistic, misinformed, or threatening. Because it's a good read, immediately others jump on board to lend their support to the flamefest, not because any statement made was accurate. At some point, I'll say it again, some users of our forum forgot that we are on their side, and have taken advantage of the fact we are listening and used it against us to hurl insults rather than provide us feedback. When we locked these threads which degraded into personal attacks we were told we were on a power trip, abusing our authority, or trying to silence criticism. Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply have no place at the table anymore, because nothing we have to say is accepted, and our mere participation here is now seen as threatening.. not because we've done anything to deserve that, but because the direction this forum community has gone is beyond reason.

Of course our detractors will say we've closed the forums because we don't like criticism. That's pretty expected anymore. They'll say this isn't a democracy. It's not a democracy. This isn't Lord of The flies! (I love that movie!) This is our business. Those who enjoy impacting the experiences of others will say that it's because we can't answer questions, or are refusing to, or are making things up as we go along! We've answered countless threads. Before this forum is gone, take a look around and see for yourself how many times we've entered a thread to participate - and that thread ended up being locked because of the insults thrown, or it being derailed into attacks. They'll pull the comparison card - *Insert business here* never closed their forums, they just came in and answered us! Well, I have tremendous respect for any business that has managed to remain unaffected personally and professionally by the loud minority interested in impaling their people and brand.. although, considering the past, I don't think any have remained unaffected, over time those attackers just gravitate elsewhere. We all know other businesses that have ill reputations, not because of their own actions, but because of the vocal minority determined to influence others into believing awful things out of spite. I'm sure Meeroos are not exempt from that. I had someone very early on tell me how awful a company was, how ignorant and dismissive and how they ignored the masses... and I believed it and I remember thinking, "Oh, how terrible, how greedy they must be, how ignorant to do these things." Now, I understand the other side, and how the company themselves were the victim of a spiteful few with a large audience.

I'm not going to play that game.

We're going to continue developing, fixing, improving, and learning from our experiences at Meeroos. We're going to do so with the heart toward making things right for our customers who really genuinely WANT things to be made right and WANT to play the game. We can't continue to turn cartwheels to please the forum crowd who don't want us there. Who have no interest in Meeroos. Who simply want to degrade the whole thing for their own enjoyment. I doubt they'll be with us long after their platform for abuse is removed. We're okay with that. We wish them well. We'll pass along Kevlar vests to the next company whose community they join!

For the rest of you who did share responsibly. I know it feels like you're being punished for the actions of a few, and I wish I could tell you this wasn't the case. I can only extended my most sincere regret and apologies that we have had to take such drastic measure to preserve the integrity of our community. A great many have been writing me in world for months saying it needed to be shut down completely or people needed to be banned. I was heavily resistant, but at this point, I'm seeing no future for this forum, and I won't consume staff resources by putting them in a place where they are abused, ignored and attacked for irrational reasons purely for the attention some get because of it. Purely for the dust they can generate by stomping as hard as they can.

You can call me snarky, say how unprofessional I am, whatever your mind can pose as an explanation as to "Why we have gotten here" - That's fine. The reality is, we are here, and I have absolute confidence in saying that it is by no fault of our own, as we have unified strongly from the very beginning, determined to engage, listen to and react to our community. Our own progress stands as a testament to that and will continue to do so. This is why, from beta, we have so many great implementations suggested by our users. We have listened. We have reacted. We have participated enthusiastically. We care about our community, they are a vital part of our team and their input guides us.

We have had multiple staff members take a look at these forums and my favorite description given to the behavior here and things said is "Soul Crushing." We've discussed it at length, tried to find an appropriate resolve, and eventually had to concede that the state of things had nothing to do with us. No matter what we would do, or change, or say, we would be "The Enemy." The inhabitants of these forums have made it evident to us over the last month that they are not interested in a mutual relationship, so we are withdrawing that platform.

To the rest of you affected by this, please know you can reach any of us in-world and we will be leaving the genetics forum and bug forum. We will be reopening the Trading Post forum due to player request! We will be adding a FAQ forum, and a Concerns and suggestions thread that will be read only.