Some valuable reactions on Discord:
In my opinion this is dividing the community as is a quite polemic decision, the team is rewarding the bad behavior of a dev breaking the TOS (or this is the accusations that have rounded the Discord lately), while they could hire other honest and skilled devs as Iproto who has been loyal to the game.
On the other hand I understand the decision as a way to effectively stop some of the BH users as probably Sylar will have enough data to expose those breaking the TOS either with his service or with others.
My main concern is the terms of the contract with him, I really hope that the team included clauses to prevent the clear conflict of interests and to punish this employee if his loyalty is broke in any point.
I'm not eager to judge a person's work beforehand so will be looking what the outcome of all this process is, this being said and has been warned by some other users as well, if the team fails with this decision, it's very likely that many users will loose all their trust in it. If they haven't lost it yet, as we can see in some comments on the Mav chat.
Sylar came to us and expressed genuine interest in helping to solve these issues and to generally help make Splinterlands a better product, and we felt (after a number of discussions) that this would be a good opportunity to finally tackle a difficult and longstanding problem.
I wasn't aware the Iproto was interested in possibly joining the Splinterlands team, but if that is the case I would be happy to have a discussion with him and/or any other talented community members to see if there is a fit either now or in the future.
I think this is true of pretty much everything that we do. We always try to make the best decisions that we can toward the long term success of the product, but we will inevitably make mistakes along the way. We are attempting to move quickly with decisions but also to identify mistakes quickly and change course when needed. We'll see how it all works out.
I'd be interested in joining the team as a mobile user representative. I'm a Certified Scrum Master if that means anything. Y'all could pay me in packs or DEC. 😆 Seriously though...I would.
I know I have no legs to stand on since I'm just at the bottom of the barrel but hear me out. I do think this hiring is a good opportunity and I think it's also good to test his capabilities for a few weeks or months before spouting negative criticisms on the guy.
The reason I said this is because:
https://peakd.com/hive-124452/@konaqua/apparently-there-s-still-bots
https://peakd.com/hive-124452/@konaqua/apparently-there-s-still-bots-83126278c6518
... after Splinterlands did the "No bot rule in Modern Format, I would say that they are successful but not quite. So, having an expert WHO KNOWS how to make bots, is essential to regulate bots, right?
Yep, as we were talking in the Discord most of players agreed on this point, Sylar could be the most indicate person to look after the ones breaking the rules. I haven't any problem with the decision regarding the capacities of Sylar, I think he is a good dev, it's the moral aspect what it's a bit disappointing but this is a business and Yabapmatt does well looking for the practical aspects of it, letting aside the sentiments.