Noble War

The Noble War, or r/place coup was a conflict between multiple parties in regards to ownership of r/place. The conflict started in July of 2023 and was between Blobkat and the Zekiah backed coalition.

Origins

Lapis and Embed were promoted to website administration in July of 2022, despite being negatively looked at by many. Neither of the two did much to contribute to the game; EnixBR helped fix the game far more than these two people ever did. Lapis is a moderator from Our World of Pixels, effectively making him an insider for r/place. Zekiah claims that he would have immediately demoted both if he was the administrator.

Conflicts

Invasions

Turkey, Visahizm, Apod, etc.

Russian as a banned language

Lapis got on the nerves of many when he introduced his automatic translator bot in August of 2023. The bot initially removed the original message, written in some international language, and translated it into English. Eventually, the bot began being used more maliciously, redirecting all messages to a private channel. Russians were most infuriated by this, notably bringing fuel for the P.A.

Soyjak.party invasion of OWOP

There was a thread published on /soy/ by a teen to raid Your World of Text boards, a common activity on the sharty. The thread got derailed by another teen once those raids were unsuccessful due to protection bots. Teens then fully switched to raiding Our World of Pixels and spammed tnd in the chat, which angered Lapis, causing xhamone to reveal xhamoneself in the chat. One of the teens raiding happened to be Fowlware, so he began confronting Lapis in #general to figure out why Lapis was banning teens including Fowlware himself. Lapis quickly denied any responsibility despite proof saying otherwise.

Yes the wiki is under Soyteen Ownership

Suggestive material drawn on canvas

Throughout the course of this entire conflict, more relaxed moderation on the canvas resulted in numerous pornographic drawings being constructed on the canvas. SelamSS removed most of them. Some users managed to spam the server with these drawings using a strange method: they somehow got the r/place discord bot to output that exact area of the canvas multiple times in various channels.

Zekiah's break

In August 2022, Zekiah left the server due to a conflict with BlobKat.

Scams in the server

Fake gift card/Discord Nitro advertisements were frequently spammed from September to October 2023.

Fowlware made a "@PAJEET DONT NEED REDEEM DA KARD" role and assigned it to all scammers; some of the scammers were likely normal players who got hacked.

CSAM spam in server

In November 2023, multiple users have been joining the server to advertise CP servers and just straight-up spamming CSAM in chat.

The admins, having permissions greater than deleting messages, didn't respond or even notice this for hours on end. Fowlware, SelamSS, and NoNameGuy were forced to manually remove and time out the accounts that spammed the CSAM due to the pinging of administrators being a mutable offense in the server.

The above directly proves that the current BlobKat-led administration cares more about removing Russian messages from #general than deleting literal CP.

Etta confronted Yaref on this topic, but couldn't provide any form of evidence. This led to Taafy, a close friend of Yaref, asking Yaref if she was responsible for the CP spam, which she obviously denied, proving Etta completely wrong once again.

Moderation Conflict

Over the course of the autumn of 2023, moderators have had their permissions reduced greatly, and were unable to perform common moderation actions. Alongside this, there was an AutoMod rule set up to prevent people, even moderators, from pinging the administrators, as a way to "fight ping spam" (which resulted in ping spam getting worse). Bushi set out to establish a reform and created a server with a front as a feedback loop, he also joined a group chat regarding the coup led by Fowl. Later, Blobkat would appoint an unknown person, called C.W.R-official- as a "VIP Admin", and he was privy to the staff channel, this earned the ire of many staff members involved in the coup. This "VIP admin" is believed to be Blob's puppet account, or perhaps a relative of his.

Turkey VIP Key Leak

The Turk player AKAME (also known as Shaizen/Saviom) used discord server boosts as a form of bribe to acquire a VIP key. Due to changes in the server code they were able to share this with his entire build team for mass reduced cooldown. The newly-formed group then began to construct the largest Turkey flag yet, covering a fourth of the entire canvas. This was stopped when Zekiah finally revoked the key, after realising that after the 5th incident of them being caught leaking, it would probably not be a good idea to give them it again.

Desperate turks proceeded to spam the entire server.

15.11.23 Battle

The events that led up to this eventually culminated into the original server plunging into total anarchy. Zubigri started spamming and Zekiah noticed that C.W.R-official- had been given a high role, even if it carried little power. This irritated Zekiah, and soon after the mods decided they would not moderate in protest. Soon after, the main channels were overrun and the rplace bot was altered so that it would ban masses of individuals. Blobkat soon took notice of this and worked to secure the server once again. However, by this time, everyone has been given @everyone perms and many had been given admin perms, causing havoc. Everyone, including all mods, were given all server permissions, and prompted everyone to spam the #general channel to death. Fed-up, NoNameGuy deleted most of the channels. Many moderators discontent and a part of the coup messaged Blobkat that they were in on it, and Bushi confronted Blobkat in the staff chat with his discontent. Soon after, many demotions and spamming, negociations began on Bushi's server, "Bushi's Catgirl Slayers". As a result, many mods were demoted, and a plan for the future were put in place, as well as the shuffling of roles. This conflict has turned even more people against Blobkat and discontentment seems to still grow.

Fallout:

The major battles int the noble war have had many effects on the outcome of the site. Notably the coup, which resulted in many changes in both how the discord was run and the vision for the future standing of the rplace.live site.

The Treaty of Bushi's Catgirl Slayers:

Shortly after the breakdown of the coup, Bushi started a VC on his server, Bushi's Catgirl Slayers (BCS), which Zekiah joined on his alt account. Soon after, BlobKat was invited to the talk and Bushi acted as a mediator and negotiator for the two. Many things came to light in this discussion, including the lack of communications previously. BlobKat stated Bushi would not be demoted from moderator status due to his lack of tangible destructive action during the coup, but expressed his discontent with Zekiah's actions in initiating the coup and causing mass bans. However, Zekiah insisted it was a necessary thing; and Bushi expressed his view that it should be views as the sum of the events which led up to it, not solely as Zekiah's action, as this conflict was spawned by discontentment of BlobKat. Bushi proposed some solutions for the event and worked with Blob to decide on who should remain as mod on the discord server. Finally, terms of peace were agreed to for the discord server in general. That four admins would share power equally; those being Zekiahepic, BlobKat, Relick and Lapis. A glass door system was also discussed; and Bushi expressed that he would continue as a mod on the discord. At the end of the discussion; Bushi informed the other members of the coup of the outcome. Sadly, among the members, only Bushi himself and Taffy remained as mods; and Zekiah left the server. It still remains to be seen that Zekiah will be given admin again (as of 18/11/2023, he is only a mod).

The treaty outlined the following conditions:

Short term:

• Many mods are to be removed / reshuffled
• All bans are to be revoked
• General is to be cleared of history
• Embed is to have immediate removal of admin

Long term:

• A 'glass door' system is proposed to be established intended to allow staff equal power, and stop them from mass scale damage if they go rogue (anti coup measures)
• BlobKat laid out plans for a fair share at some point between admins and himself (yet if it not guaranteed that this claim is followed through)
• Claims of implementing more communication on everything, with other staff getting a say in every update and change he makes and he is able to talk on mine
• "It doesn't matter whether they were in the coup server" - BlobKat, the potential for people who were in the coup to be let off (whistle blower protections)
• BlobKat admits he has been inactive on the game and obligated to other projects and that the game and discord were not run well and were attracting a bad crowd/dying, especially after the site transition .tk to .live during the second site blowup as a result of reddit r/place 2023
• More transparency with major site improvements in a direction agreeable to the visions of the whole staff team

Aftermath:

• The quality of the server has significantly dropped after the coup, with the increased actions of spammers.
• A problem with the automod caused many issues within the moderation team
• Conflicts and slight rising discontent again
• As of 19.11.2023, a phone verification requirement was set by the admins in an effort to stop furthermore spam.