Marco Escher

Here the latest new from Gdansk regional: An italian player (Vincenzo Cipolla) is playing on stream his top8. Many italian players there are ready to watch the game in the venue and they are sitting together in order to show him their support. Some judges approach them and threath them that every sign or reference to "iCaterpie" will automatically mean being removed from the venue. They asked me to remain anonymous because they are really scared to get retaliance from Tpci. All of this just because they are my friends. Have we really reached this point? How many limitations must players accept just to be able to play Pokémon? Is this limited to every player close to me or we have to extend this to all the italian community ? I feel really sorry for everyone. Please don't do anything that might lead to consequences for you in the Pokémon world because of me. I love you, but I'm not worth of your future.

I met Alessandro in 2007, when I moved to Milan for university, at a complicated time in my life. It's also thanks to him and his family that my passion for Pokémon became a nest where I could find shelter and grow, until I was able to take flight and build one of my own. That's also why, as much as reading this post of his left me bitter, I was glad to see how much support he has received over the past few days, both in the Italian and in the international community. In the testimonies of those who got to know him through the game I recognized the person I remember: helpful, generous, able to give this community much more than he gets back. Some remember his decks and his advice (which then paid off in results and prizes, and not only for him); some his fair play and his ability to make you "play with peace of mind" (paradoxical, given the reputation of the control decks he favored!); some his willingness to lend cards, offer rides and help out in any way he could. I stopped playing in 2015 and since then the game has changed a lot, with cash prizes, big international events streamed online and lots of new players. Alessandro was among the first to see where it was going (we had already anticipated many of these ideas starting in 2013 with the SuperNova Blast tournaments) and over the years he chose to invest a bigger and bigger part of his life in the game, both financially and personally, developing content projects and business activities. Meanwhile the debate around judging, misconduct and bans has grown more and more heated and, through social media, it reached me too, even if I didn't always follow it closely. This case, though, has something different: the reactions to his exclusion have been, in the overwhelming majority, of shock and solidarity, and it seems to me that this says a lot about what the community is losing and about how aware it is of it. Many focused on the Worlds post that Alessandro points to as the reason for the ban, which he deleted a few hours after writing it. In that post he named a judge and connected them to a series of decisions he considered unfair. Anyone who read that post will remember an outburst, a complaint, certainly not an insult or an invitation to target that person. That doesn't mean those words, or the choice to name that judge, should be excused. And I do understand why TPCi wants to protect its judges: a judge named publicly is exposed to criticism and attacks, while the confidentiality obligations they sign limit their ability to respond and defend themselves. It is therefore up to the organization they belong to to protect them, even harshly if it deems it necessary. So I can understand a penalty for naming them. But the most severe of penalties, an indefinite ban? The debate about how much power or protection judges have, though, in my opinion misses the main point. Alessandro claims he has been targeted for years by some people at TPCi, something I have no way of confirming. It should be pointed out, however, that in his account he refers to several previous clashes, as well as to a warning that, according to what he reports, explicitly raised the prospect of a permanent ban if he kept sending complaints to Pokémon Support (which I'm sure led some great thinker to say: "f...iddle around and find out"). Based on that account, it seems likely to me that what weighed in the decision to ban him was not so much the "name calling" as the insistence with which he kept complaining over the years. As we know (despite having promised otherwise in the past) TPCi doesn't communicate the official reasons for its disciplinary measures, so this remains only an interpretation. But even assuming that's the case, I don't see why having been warned of the possible consequences settles the question of whether they are proportionate, and of the conditions he was given to avoid them. What room is there today for someone who believes they have suffered an injustice and considers the answers they received insufficient? How can they keep contesting it? Where is the line between an insistent protest, even a harsh one, and behavior that justifies permanent exclusion? If insisting through support channels can become a disciplinary issue, we should be able to understand which behaviors cross that line and what options remain to be heard. Not to mention the nature of the sanction: I've read people say "it's not really a permaban, maybe in a few years they'll lift it". How can anyone take those words seriously? A measure presented as permanent has to be discussed with all the seriousness it requires: why it was imposed, and whether it fits what he actually did. If there is a possibility of review, it should be clear under what conditions and through what procedure. Otherwise it makes you wonder whether it is being used to make an example of him, or whether - worse still - there is no criterion at all for handling cases like this. Of course it's important that a decision can be reviewed, but the hope of a future revocation cannot justify imposing it: in the meantime a person has to live, work and decide what to do with their future. TPCi's lack of transparency is, after all, a large part of the problem. I understand the need for confidentiality, but the question remains how players can understand how the rules are applied when such a serious decision comes with no explanation at all. There are, of course, rules and guidelines, but with margins of interpretation and discretion so wide that the public can only go by guesses, rumours, precedents told by others. And preferably behind closed doors, heaven forbid you attract unwanted attention. This gets even worse if a player already has a disciplinary record, which in this context becomes a sort of "mark for life". Someone who has received a warning, or has already served a suspension, should at the very least be able to understand on what terms they are entering the next tournament. A system that tells you "watch your step", implying that even one wrong word can cost you the maximum penalty but without making clear where the line is, speaks volumes about the inadequacy of whoever runs it. Especially when you set this extreme severity next to the impression, now very widespread, that the rules are applied inconsistently even in the face of serious conduct like cheating or match fixing. As I said, the game has grown enormously, and for many people, Alessandro included, it now also means work, investment and an important part of their lives. I expect the responsibility of those who make these decisions, and the possibility of understanding their criteria, to grow accordingly. In the end, though, we often come back to the same answer. "It's their game, they decide, there's nothing we can do." It's true that the game is controlled by an organization and that players don't democratically decide its rules. Faced with a decision we don't accept, we may end up having to choose whether to keep playing or quit. It is precisely this imbalance that makes it important to be able to discuss what kind of trust the organization asks of those who take part. If we treat that power as a reason to stop talking about it, we also give up our own space for discussion and debate, or worse still we reduce it to a series of fleeting interactions on social media. And this is where I'd like to come back to the support of the past few days, because I was disappointed to see how little of it showed in public during the Nice weekend. Over the past few days I wrote to many people asking for a small gesture of support, like playing with green sleeves or showing something in photos. Some did, and I thank them. Someone brought a Caterpie plush to the post-tournament photos, choosing to remember Alessandro while continuing to play. The gestures, however, were few compared to the initial support. Hundreds of people had replied to his post and many were in Nice. As soon as the tournament was over, people went back to posting their results and their stories, while I saw almost no one talk about his exclusion anymore. Why is that? I don't know exactly what reasons explain each person's silence, but I think we should talk about them openly, because silence cannot become the prevailing attitude. We always say that Pokémon is more than a game, that it's a community built on friendship. That's why it hurts to see how easily a person can seem replaceable once they stop showing up at tournaments. I also think about my own story with Alessandro: over the years we had personal disagreements and drifted apart, then I stopped playing and we gradually lost touch. Quitting contributed to that distance, because the game was an important part of what kept us together. I can't ask others to reflect on these ties without also looking at what happened to me. We play Pokémon TCG for many reasons. We like competing, we like the game and its characters, it's nice to see people we share a passion with every week. These are reasons I know and understand. But this case, more than many others, should push us to ask ourselves what we want from Pokémon and what future we imagine for this community. I consider the treatment Alessandro received disproportionate, and unfair in how it was decided and communicated. That's why I hope people keep talking about it, without closing the discussion with "nothing's going to change anyway". I'm not the right person to organize anything: I haven't played in years and I don't have an active presence in the community. But if someone who does wants to propose some form of support for Alessandro, while keeping respect for everyone, I'll gladly follow it and back it. Even small gestures count: play with green sleeves at your next event, line up like a caterpillar in your group photos, you name it. And if you simply want to talk about it, my DMs are open. Above all, I ask you not to let this drop when the next controversy or the next meme takes up the space it has had so far. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! #FreeiCaterpie 💚 🐛

Tpci finally got me. I dedicated 25 years of my life to this game. Teaching the game around the Italy, raising players and building community all for nothing. But Apparently I'm everything that is bad in this game. The worst part, I was ready to travel for Nice because they didn't even have the dignity to notify my perma ban. I was a target for some people working for Tpci for the past 10 years. It happened again during the last World championship and I complain about that with a tweet that I deleted 6 hours later. For that I got a perma ban. I'm devastated. Pokemon is literally my life. I can't stop crying. Good luck to everyone in Nice, I will make a goodbye post in the future.