Community eras

The Amnesia modding community has a long story with many bad actors coming and going. Its history can be roughly divided into the following:

Forums era (2010-2016)

At first, the community largerly revolved around t he official forums hosted by FG. This era featured many dramas which usually were small-scale and resembled the later ModDB dramas described on this wiki.

Some of the most notorious forum users worth mentioning were:

• Aidan (AM Team, thedoctorpoo and many other aliases) – a disturbed individual who got so salty about being banned from the community that he had to be threatened with a court order to stay away from FG-related online spaces. The drama around him is pretty much the longest one of the community, spanning from its beginnings all the way to 2020.
• DnALANGE – a highly problematic modder, known for stealing tons of assets, awful English, TYPING like THIS and being technically talented but aesthetically impaired. He would often incite arguments on the forums, usually related to his mods being criticized. He started one of the most memed dramas in the community at the time, the so-called TraggeyGate¹.

For a while, some activity shifted from the forums to private Skype groups. Towards the end of this era, activity on the forums was already quite sparse. The forums remained open for a few more years, but were closed some time after the launch of the official FG Discord server.

Fan server era (2016-2019)

In 2016, a SOMA fan server (created by people from the related subreddit) was started. After a while it became a fan server for all Frictional games and became the main hub of the community, with the forums becoming mostly deserted. The server only saw small quarrels.

The fan server era ended with FG starting their official Discord server in 2019. That killed most of activity in the fan server and it got archived sometime afterwards.

Because of the publicity of the new server, the new userbase was mostly interested in regular gaming, in contrast with the old userbase which was smaller and filled with modders. Due to the nature of conversations on Discord and quite heavy moderation, the server hasn’t seen any real drama.

Golden age of ModDB (2016-2020)

While there is no discernable reason for modding becoming more popular in this time², the community undoubtedly saw increased modder activity, mostly concentrated around ModDB, with some modders congragating in the fan server.

This time period was marked with the release of some of the best quality mods up to date, overall high user engagement on ModDB, general interest in Amnesia mods still being somewhat high (mod gameplays weren’t uncommon) and seeing a few major dramas. By this time, the community mostly detached itself from Pewdiepie references and other crap which was trendy in mod development in the early 2010s.

In 2020, ModDB activity declined noticeably, (with very few active users who weren’t regulars), which could be marked as the end of this era. The main reason behind this could be the fallout caused by the Critischism, the Translation Crusade and the Bavarian drama all happening or starting in 2019³.

It could be also just an organic decrease in interest in Amnesia, of course, but ModDB being overran with spammy crap, troll mods, counter-troll reviews and complaining definitely played a role, and it is reflected in comments posted by impartial people from time to time:

Despite later attempts at reinvigorating the community made by some modders, the Amnesia modding scene was never the same. Most modders created their own tiny groups or stopped engaging with other modders altogether. ModDB has been seeing only a tiny trickle of activity since 2020.

Czech wars era (2020-2022)

The period mostly revolves around the Czech Wars.

The community was fragmented by the Critischism and many fan servers were created, some of them competing with each other. The most notable servers are:

• Multiple incarnations of Roozy’s server
• Spelos’ server dedicated to BizzePlayn (Chaos Crew)
• The Czech fan server which later split into a server owned by Sabatu and multiple servers owned by Swankest
• The official FG server – for some reason this one doesn’t interest modders much and the modding channels are only frequented by a few people, mainly newbies who give up before making anything serious.

Throughout this time, only minor ModDB drama popped up, but none of it warranted its own article and can mostly be found in the pages dedicated to individuals.

The quiet era (2022-now)

The large raid on Swankest’s server which happened in early 2022 was in a way an end of an era. The last big lolcow of the community stopped being active (thus leaving no reason for various splinter groups to remain in contact), very few mods were being developed (let alone interesting ones) and the overall interest in Amnesia mods has become borderline nonexistent.

ModDB usually sees less than 5 updates a month, mods get very few downloads and barely any reviews. If there’s any modder activity, it has moved to private spaces. Several mods are still in development hell and all long-standing dramas have entirely calmed down.

Footnotes