It will blow over when people stop fanning the flames.
let me preface this next message by pointing out I'm in a really bad mood so I'm going to go no filter for a moment.
There are a set of rules that you are all asked to follow. instead of bitching about how waaah waaah waaah life isnt fair tha tthe rules are being enforced waaah waaah. Do one of three things.
1. Follow the rules you actually agreed to, and accept the fact that people for once are doing their jobs.
2. Create your own forum where you can discuss what ever you want.
or my favorite.
3. Just shut the f*ck up. God. I'm so tired of all the pointless whining and bitchery. There are so many ungreatful entitled blind people out there that it sickens me. You want a place to discuss games. you want a place to help try to bridge the gap between blind and mainstream games.
you're given this and you complain because you're not allowed to post links to audio described episodes of All in the Family and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. You then throw a sh*t fit because you're not allowed to pass around copies of mainstream games. By companies who actually read this f*cking forum in the first place! Step back and take a look at how ridiculous and sad that makes us look as a community. The sighted community has dozens if not hundreds of outlets in which to go discuss games. We have. Hold on. let me count here. I need to carry the seven. Refactor the reciprocal value of x, oh and divide that by pi. Oh. That's right. We have one forum! One! Single! Place! Where! We! Can! Interface! With! each! Other! and! Developers!
I don't care if this message ruins my chances of ever moderating again. The whole thing sickens me, and there are a lot of people who should be ashamed of themselves. There is wrong on both sides here by staff and users a like. As far as I'm concerned, noone including myself is immune from taking on part of the blame. This is an issue that should have never been an issue but it was never properly addressed in the first place. Finally someone is doing something about trying to make this a legitimate place for discussion. You wanna pass around roms with your friends? You wanna share described episodes of Alf on your own private forum? go for it on your own time, but you're being asked not to do it here. How hard is that to understand?
Eddie Murphy said it best.
"and if you don't like it. You can get the f*ck out."

I hate to tell you, Liam, but you are the only one bitching as of now. Have you ever played A mainstreme game on an emulator with OCR? Let me tell you something, sir, those, companys, that you are speaking of, Give me one form, Just one form, of evidence, where A company actualy came here and said these things are rong? And let me tell you a nother thing sir, these, eleegal, games, are what brings us closer to mainstreme comunity. And one last thing, the only ones who are doing this are the ones who have and don't want to share with others. Mister I have Scramble and i'm constantly showing that off to everyone that I have it and noone elce has it I meen what?

Interestingly enough, there's this topic from last year that talks about the Blind Mice Movie Vault. That topic also raises some interesting points.

Liam nailed the problem on the head perfectly.

Wow Juan, really?  This is just pathetic.
So you say he keeps things to him self and can't share, yet he's produced several free games for the community, and then made a couple of his previously paid games free as well.
And is he supposed to give you the pre release copy of Scramble and go against the dev's wishes then?  I mean how absurd is this statement that he's keeping it from you, how would he even do that when he isn't the one making it!
If you truly want someone to take your opinions seriously, try not sprinkling them with insults and nonsensical speculation.

@Audiogame
The fact that you agree with him is depressing, yet not particularly surprising...

The things Liam does on his streams or youtube channel and whatnot are totally irrelevant. I am tempted to leverage a caution against you for that, Juan, but I'm not going to. Tempers are high today, apparently, and so I'm just going to ask you to reread Liam's rebuttal a couple of times more. He did a pretty good job.

The main point I have been trying to get at, first by closing the one thread and then by actively supporting the other one (at least on a limited basis) is to give you guys time to become accustomed to a rule that's been there for years and is now going to be enforced a bit better. It's new, it's annoying, it's maybe even upsetting, but it's not unreasonable. Go discuss whatever you want wherever else you want, but when you came here, you agreed to rules, so if you don't like them, no one is forcing you at gunpoint to stay.
But iff you're thinking about leaving, just stack up all the good things this forum has, against the few things that you maybe don't like. Ask yourself if leaving is really what you want. And hey, if it is, then happy trails, and I hope you find what you're after elsewhere. But if you come to think about it, and realize that you'd rather stay, please understand that, while we value and appreciate your input, at the end of the day we have a responsibility to make sure this place runs smoothly. If you must protest, consider doing it a little more politely. The amount of bitchery I've seen today has been nothing short of jaw-dropping.

That said, I am sorry to have been a part of it...the drama itself, not the bitchery. I definitely wasn't at my worst today, but I was right there ready to respond to whatever showed up. I tried to keep my temper, mostly succeeded I think, but some people (self included at times) have trouble with that whole getting-the-last-word thing. If any of you feel that my conduct today has contributed in part to the current state of affairs, you have my apology, as well as a promise to be as diplomatic as I'm able during troubled times.

Liam, as far as I'm concerned, you are still a good candidate for being a mod if that's what you're still after. Your tone just tells me you're done to death with this whole business; frankly, so am I. So are most people, I expect. I appreciate that we don't see eye to eye on everything but still generally get along, and I also appreciate the vote of support. From you, it means a lot.

Well it might be a slang word, but you definitely didn't make it up. lol First time I heard that word was maybe 2002 or so, and that was before I knew you existed.

Liam, there's just as much bitchiness in your comments as anyone else's. You're trying to make out that anyone opposed to this decision is a whiny bitch, when your own posts contain way more snarkiness and sniping than lots of people who argued against this. And tons of sighted people indulge in piracy and are out for all they can grab, so let's stop with the negative stereotyping of blind people like we're all one entity. We have enough prejudice to deal with from outside, without people on the inside pissing inwards too.

Flackers.
Any bitchyness I harbor is due to the fact that this issue is an issue which really should be a non-issue.
You would be correct in saying that among the sighted community there are people who are out to priate and grab what they can. the problem is that in multiple instances I have seen people ry to justify in this community their piracy by cliaming that because we don't have equal access to things it makes it okay for us to steal them. That is the issue I have. I made a generalization because the fact is that we all bare some responsibility for changing this.
This should have been stopped from the beginning, but it never was. I'm reminded of that adage of the bear in the forest. If you don't deal with the bear when you first spot him, he just grows bigger and bigger.

Agreed. I am totally not claiming innocence here. I sat by for a long, long time and just let this go, didn't go chasing it. I let my own personal morals about capitalism and the like cloud my judgment, and that's no Bueno. We all have responsibility to some extent, so this is the step we have to take to make good on what we did wrong. Also also? Yes, I've seen that old argument, the "we have it rough so it's okay to steal" thing, used so many times it sickens me. Because here's the thing. If you're starving, and you steal a loaf of bread or something, then arguably it's keeping you alive, so okay, that is definitely not the same deal. But as far as movies, TV shows, games, audio books (most audio books, some textbooks might be exceptions here, depending on what's going on, and even that's flaky)...you don't -need any of those things to live. You don't get to claim you have it rough, then do whatever the heck you want. It sucks that we have less access, and I'm 100% in favour of changing that however we can. But the answer isn't just to straight-up steal stuff. And even if you, personally speaking, think it's okay, we as a forum can't condone it. We can't have this beast of a topic floating around where people are offering free things that shouldn't be free. Even if it won't get us in insane legal trouble right away (and fine, maybe it won't), it sets a terrible moral precedent. And that, at the end of the day, is really what this comes down to. Moral precedent.

Excuse me?

I've been progressively calming down today, from calling the mods a bunch of fucking cowards to offering reasons why maybe, just maybe, engaging with the community is a good idea...but that last post did it for me.

Jayde, people who cannot access audio described content due to their country or the idiotic licensing restrictions that companies have placed on such content in certain markets are not 'part of the problem.' When content is available for one market, and when blind people are excluded in another market from obtaining that product (when sighted people are not), the companies blocking that are the entirety of the problem.

I don't support cracking or cloaning games from small developers, or downloading free audio books from authors, because I know how little audio game developers tend to make and, knowing a few authors I know how difficult that business is right now. What I cannot accept however, and never will, is that companies that deliberately lock out particular markets, or have such a lax attitude to disability rights that they commission/produce audio description only for one or two, deserve a single shred of sympathy.

If you produce something, and refuse to make it available legally, don't go crying when people go get it illegally.

I wish people would stop thinking that only blind people find excuses for piracy. Ever heard of people who say that it's okay to crack because they live in a poor country? Ever heard of sites offering cracks and saying that it is just for demonstrational purposes and that you should by the program afterwards? What about people who, just like some of us here think that it's a big company so a few cracks would not hurt them? So many unnecessary generalizations about blind people it's crazy. This stuff happens everywhere, and users of pretty much any forum don't like rule changes. There are a number of exceptions to this stuff, but so are there in the blind community. For an example, blind mice became a US only thing about a year ago, there was only one topic complaining about it. So no, it's not blind winy people complaining about it, not to mention that this is a really good personal attack for which some people got warnings in the past.