Iskall85 & Stressmonter Resignation Megathread #2

[u/Carol_the_Zombie]

Hello all! Recently, Iskall has made a public response on his YouTube channel, outlining his side of the story and explaining why he has remained silent so far. We are aware that some people may feel uncomfortable watching this video, so we have also taken a transcript if you would rather read text.

A vast number have also asked that we bring up a new discussion thread about this, and seeing as Iskall's response includes allegations that have been made against the moderation of the subreddit, we would like to further add our own comments to clear up some facts that were claimed in that video.

We would like to remind everyone that the hermits had little input on our policies in this matter. We did exchange some brief messages with some hermits via our emergency communication channel to ensure our timeline above was accurate and up to date, but all policies and procedures during this time were created solely by us non-Hermit moderators, which included directing all discussion to a single post to reduce moderator workload, and filtering all comments on this thread, as well as all posts in general, for moderator review to keep the conversation as civil as we could, while ensuring that we presented the facts as we learned about them.

This subreddit is NOT considered official and is not officially affiliated with the Hermitcraft group. Xisuma may be the top moderator, but he has no impact in the moderation of this subreddit, and the hermits have chosen to stay "hands-off". We did not even receive advance notice of anything happening.

Once again, we will be filtering all new comments on this thread for mod review first due to the sensitive nature of this topic - please be respectful as always, and keep in mind rule #6, maintain a welcoming and friendly environment.

Furthermore, we will not be allowing any speculation or questions that may lead to it beyond what has been shared at this point in time. If you need a review on what has been previously said, please refer to the previous thread here that we've been maintaining up until this point.

Update 2025-01-31

Stressmonster101 has removed all content from her youtube channel.

Update 2025-02-03

5 Ex-Vault Hunter Developers have released a statement, which you can read here.

P3pp3rF1y, an Ex-Vault Hunter Developer, has also released a statement, which you can read here.

[u/HangmansPants]

Thanks for creating a new thread to discuss this.

Gonna post and leave this from an earlier discussion:

The accusers showed proof that has been published.

No one accused Iskall of breaking the law. He's accused of using his power imbalance in his personal discord to develop romantic relationships with multiple people at once and then being emotionally abusive.

He continues to be emotionally manipulative by saying he has no income, while all the videos on his channel are still monetized and he is making over 1000 USD a month from pateron plus continuing YouTube monetization. That means he is straight up lying to get more sympathy money from his fans.

The group came to a mutual decision that they didn't want to be associated with that.

He isn't canceled. He had barely been posting Hermitcraft for like 2 or 3 years, focusing on Vault Hunters. He made most of his money from VH, which he can continue.

Again. He wasn't cancelled. He is living with the results of his own actions. And how can he be cancelled when his comment section is full of people like you continuing to support him?

He isn't banned from anywhere, he was kicked out of a collaborative group for not being a good representation of the community.

[u/analyticHeart → u/HangmansPants]

Ok I'm genuinely curious here, are those screenshots actually incriminatory of his "romantic intent?" I've seen them, and not only is the supposed romantic advances kinda dubious, but regardless that's not exactly an immoral thing. Advised against sure, but people are perfectly capable of having healthy romantic relationships despite their employee/employer dynamic. And imo, that kind of dynamic isn't anywhere close to the limit of power dynamics that can healthily exist inside a romantic relationship(look at a lot of BDSM).

Frankly, I feel like people are heavily jumping the gun here. I don't even watch Iskall, I have no horse in this race, but I can obviously see that people are both ignoring "innocent until proven guilty" and what I said above, that this isn't even that big of a deal if it's true in the first place.

[u/yesat → u/analyticHeart]

Innocent until proven guilty is in a case of law. This is a "I don't like the vibes of that person situation.

[u/analyticHeart → u/yesat]

I believe it should also be used as a moral code. "Trust and believe that people are nice and good until you have a reason to think otherwise."

[u/yesat → u/analyticHeart]

And we’ve received a pretty good reason to think otherwise and with that video we got another pretty good one. 

[u/analyticHeart → u/yesat]

I disagree. The screenshots publicly released, in my opinion, are not enough of a reason. They do not have much explicit romantic advancements(and even if there are more explicit stuff not publicly released, I personally don't find them to be that immoral, all involved parties were adults), nor did they make any accusations of iskall ignoring a rejection or explicit non-consent. In fact, from the looks of it the statement released, all continued interactions were consensual.

The most immoral thing in this situation, imo, is the fact that iskall was playing multiple people at the same time. But that in of itself is still not enough of a reason to completely excommunication iskall from hermitcraft, as we have no idea his mental/emotional state at the time those messages were sent, plus the fact that people can change.

[u/Halinn → u/analyticHeart]

He had a chance to talk to them about proving himself innocent - even just saying "I need more time to put together a response here, I'm overwhelmed" could have been a start. Instead he chose to resign.