What’s next for Hunter_?

Whether Hunter_ is punished for the CP allegations or Solace is ripped apart in a vengeful lawsuit will be determined by judges and lawyers in the next few months as this situation continues to play out.  Legal matters aside, what happens now for Hunter, one of the biggest promoters in Hon, as far as e-Sports is concerned?  His reputation has been absolutely demolished by this scandal.  But my guess is that he will try to return to the gaming community anyway, given how much of his life he’s already invested in it.
If he does make a return it will not be a pretty one, and there will be trolls heckling him for the rest of his stay.  Here’s what he needs to do:

First Disappear for a While

It shouldn’t be hard for someone as shady as Hunter_ to activate his Assassin’s Shroud and disappear into the shadows for a month or two until this whole situation blows over.  He took the right first step by resigning from eSports Media and not trying to defend himself too much on forums, which would just sink him deeper in the troll quicksand trap, but parts of his response are troubling: lying about Trojans being put on his computer, changing his account to “hakced” on GosuGamers to try and sell the idea that his computer was hacked (which it was not, it was key-logged by someone he willingly gave admin access to), well and of course denying everything and fabricating a complete bullshit story to try and cover his ass as usual instead of taking the blame for something he’s clearly at least partially responsible for.  Which brings us to our next point…

Be Honest and Don’t Manipulate

Deleting and editing posts to always look right, seducing people with far-fetched lies, and other shady dealings are hallmarks of Hunter_’s online persona and are the reason the communities he involved himself in were already so untrusting of his supposedly altruistic engagements in them.  Regardless of how twisted and perverted his private life may or may not be, behaving ethically and not by the “I can make up anything and cover up anything I want because there’s no way to prove anything on the internet” policy would make him so many less enemies to begin with and would be a lot more positive for the eSports community in general.

Apologize; Admit Fault

What Solace to expose Hunter_ is extremely unethical itself (Key-logging his computer, going through his personal email accounts, and sending out mass emails to his friends and family about his secret habits) and will likely put Hunter’s personal life through a hellstorm of shit that surely no human being deserves.  Some will argue that its okay to do bad things to bad people, and so a gross invasion of Hunter’s privacy is warranted by the complete lack of integrity in Hunter_’s conduct.

Nonetheless, many of the things in the Hunter Exposed article have nothing to do with Hunter’s personal life and are proven situations in eSports where he’s just been intentionally deceptive or clearly just had the mindset to lie his way to getting whatever he wants, whether its making up or exaggerating sponsors and prizes, telling Dota people how much he likes Dota after he just wrote an article about how hes happy it’s dying and good riddance, or just lying to the community about his motives for everything.  If he ever wants to return to eSports, he must finally take responsibility for some of his actions instead of just continuously trying to spin EVERYTHING he does into a good light.  His explanations in the past have NEVER added up, which is why there was so much distrust and hatred for him in the past Dota communities of TDT, GDG, DXD, etc.  If you stop trying to trick and confuse people into buying your bullshit, maybe they’ll buy it on their own accord because it’s some tasty bullshit, but you have to at least give your bullshit that chance to begin with.  That analogy was terrible, but Hunter’s response so far has just confirmed his shadiness and made him look worse.  If he finally takes some responsibility for his past wrongdoings in the eSports community, people can empathize with him and it will make Solace look like the bad guy for trying to ruin his life.

In conclusion, while the way Hunter_ goes about stuff IS extremely shady and always has been, the results of his interactions in the community, at least recently, have been as a whole positive;  Honcast is undeniably a great, free service for Hon players that wouldn’t exist without his hand in it’s making (even if that hand is doing bizarre, creepy things the rest of the time).  Truth is, his private life is none of our business and will be taken care by the proper authorities in due time if he HAS done anything illegal.  But as far as eSports are concerned, we can only welcome Hunter_ back if he changes his ways and stops being so deceptive and dishonest.

“Hunter_ exposed” shady scandal?

Hunter with S2 CEO Maliken and Honcast CBO Adolph Santorine

A new scandal (“Hunter Exposed”) has surfaced regarding Jeff Hunter (Hunter_), a promoter of Hon and Dota and owner of such websites such as dxd-league.com and honleague.com.  Apart from painting him as an embezzling spin doctor, the source also suggests he ran a fake modeling company and regularly impersonated a woman to get girls to send him naked photos, and impersonated a young boy to get explicit photos from a minor.

What do you think?  Is the evidence incontrovertible?  Or is it possible that Hunter_ is innocent and was framed?

The sites with the original material keep moving around but you can follow all the drama in this thread on the North American Dota Syndicate forums here: http://www.nadota.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1474

(Don’t try to discuss it on Hon Forums or your post will be deleted and your account might get banned due to the sensitive subject matter)

Here are some of the sites where you might be able to find the original “Hunter Exposed” material and decide for yourself:

• huntertruth.info
• http://mops.freetzi.com/dxd/
• http://ohshititstas.com/dxd/index.htm
• http://78.129.149.20/index.htm (taken down)
• http://www.dxd-league.com/index.htm (taken down)
• http://staplehoax.com/FINAL/main.htm (taken down)

In case you were wondering what happened to DXD Forums, they are down because of this too.

Update: Hunter_ has resigned from eSport Media: http://hon.esportmedia.com/2010/05/14/resignation

Update 2: Neva cancels partnership with eSport Media/Honcast: http://tropicalninja.eu/?p=3

Update 3: It’s safe to talk about it on Hon forums now; check huge offtopic thread here: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=122115

Update 4: Dolph Santorine takes over Honcast: http://hon.esportmedia.com/2010/05/15/a-note-from-our-ceo

Update 5: 5/21, more threads have been taken down.  Can follow some remaining drama here: http://dxdforums.org/index.php?topic=154.0

Update 6: 2/14/11, new site up huntertruth.info

Stentorian gets diagnosed with bad

Clan GDG has hosting bots

Clan GDG on uswest now has bots to host their games. As soon as the game is confirmed, a bot magically hosts the game with listchecker-style latency reduction. This is pretty convenient if you can’t host games yourself but want the bot to make a game for a bunch of your friends to join. The delay is decent if you’re from Socal and there aren’t a lot of GDG games going on at the same time, or Hunter’s girlfriend isn’t off making rogue downloads. If you’re like me and want to swindle the host yourself, join the game and type .unhost to have the bot abort the game, so you can host it yourself.

game hosted by GDG bot

DxD: We Know DRAMA

Hello Fellow DotA Gamers!

HunteR_ here, many of you know Tritran10 and I Have been running DXD leagues for a long time. You’ve probably heard the rumous about DXD merging with GDG and I wanted to elaborate on the details.

I wanted to let you all know the truth that has come forward in light of this situation.

First of all, I was never informed of a merge, and I was told by the staff here at GDG that tritran10 wanted to keep this very quiet. I know understand why, Tritran10 tried to steal DXD for himself by merging with GDG.

See Tritran10 and I have had a 50/50 partnership for a very long time. I’ve paid countless amounts of money on the server, ventrilos, and various operations of the league. I’ve connected Tritran with DotA pioneers like IHCS Lego to help build our bots. I’ve done countless years of work to maintain DXD and grow it to the size it has become today, I’ve always incited that DXD was a great place for DotA players to come and enjoy a good game with good accountability.

In the past Year, Tritran and I have grown some fundamental differences upon how a league should maintain itself.

A couple days ago, all the bots that have been hosted on my server were removed, and so were my Garena bots for DXDin (which were worthless for him to steal since they’re compiled and not source code).

I was contacted by DXD’s admins and staff who couldn’t believe tritran was backing out on our partnership.

Respected DXD Staff like Deestylistic came to me alerting me of signs that there might be something going on that is shady. At first I did not believe it, I gave tritran the benefit of the doubt and even supported a merge that I had no idea about.

Tritran tried to sell out DXD and merge into GDG.

I know the leader of GDG personaly, Lethal and I were once working together on Gamebend before he moved to Italy. I had not learned of his return, and as most of you know my activity on Battle.net is very low because of teh Garena Leagues DXDin/DXDi.

Low and behold the owner of GDG, LEthal, was told by tritran that if the DXD staff didn’t want to go with the decision that it didn’t matter because he owns DXD and they will do what he says.

Now many of you who were staff in DXD can remember the random and unwarranted Staff Demotions and Promotions.

Lethal had asked Tritran where I was for this merger meeting so we could work out details, and Tritran told him that I was not needed because I have no stake in DXD. Which is false obviously.

The DXD community is an amazing group of people, both staff and players, and I was shocked to see Tritran wanted to sell out DXD.

When I came to the meeting, Tritran told Lethal and I that he doesn’t need either of us, that DXD will be around forever with or without us, and that if DXD merged with GDG and tritran didn’t like how it was going he would leave and leave Lethal “Crying”.

The atmosphere in the merger meeting between DXD, and GDG grew very nasty and borderline hostile.

I had DXD staff tell me if we merged on these terms after tri’s speech they would leave, and Lethal told me the same was with his staff.

The discussion turned poisonous quickly.

Upon the end of these events, I wanted to talk to lethal, and tritran privately, which when we did tritran told lethal that if he tried to back out on the merge he would just “Take Over GDG’s Staff”.

Well, that got Lethal and I thinking, and many of the DXD staff, as well as Lethal and I decided maybe Tritran’s plan wasn’t the right one.

I have decided to help Lethal out, and He the same.

I am no longer going to support DXD, and I am now going to be putting my efforts into growing GDG.

I urge you all to stand up with me, and fight the tyranny that is now DXD.

If you have any principals for transparency I hope you come with us to GDG.

Global DotA Gaming as of last night is now a subsidiary of GameBend.com and we are partnering to clean up the DotA League system of corruption that has plagued DXD for many years.

I believe in the principals held by the GDG league. There is complete transparency, GDG is owned by a corporation, a registered LLC, has it’s own Paypal account, monthly statements, and will run a League that offers real prizes and holds players and staff accountable.

This is a win/win situation for both the DotA community, and GameBend.

GameBend.com will now be hosting your website and integrating the GDG Forums into the database.

This weekend you will more than likely have to re-register due to a new overhaul, and use of vBulletin over PHPBB3 for more security features and flexibility.

If you had any pride in DXD, and want to go back to what it used to be before the corruption and jokes join Lethal and myself to work towards a real league.

Solace50 and Tritran10 tried to undermine myself and use Lethal to plot the extinction of DXD.

Last night, before I discovered the secret meeting from my staff, DXD was going to become GDG.

Now the extinction of DXD is inevitable with the sour relationship between tri tran and myself.

Here we have a situation where I have given someone my ultimate trust, given my heart, soul, and monetary support to running a league and tritran attempted to steal it from me. All he did was steal the only respect I had for him.

I pledge to uphold a new standard in GDG, I will help GDG out as much as I can, and I am launching gamebend this weekend which will revolutionize the way you think about a community.

I have built many strong relationships in DXD and met many of you in real life, and I call some of you my friends.

I hope to see you stand with me and the others that hold true to the idea that we deserve more.

This weekend you will be able to goto http://GameBend.com and goto the leagues by clicking “Forums”. Right now we will continue to use the website http://globaldotagaming.com until we launch this weekend.

I hope to see you all in GDG, I know the core people that built DXD into what it is today will be there.

Thank you for your time,

HunteR_
Previous DXD owner
Global DotA Gaming Manager
http://GlobalDotAGaming.com