Statement About Fake Simming Prize (.com)

From the Simming Prize Trustees-

The Simming Prize trustees, of simmingprize.org, condemn the recent actions taken by Charles Star against The Simming Prize organization and the greater written role-play community.

No one can deny that Charles Star has been an active member of the simming community for years. His work on his sim, UCIP, Independence Fleet, as well as various community efforts and events such as SciWorld, the Tournament of Simulations, FallFest, etc are well known.

Throughout all of this, the one honor that has eluded him - the proverbial “feather in his cap“ - has been serving as a Simming Prize Trustee.

The Simming Prize Trustees is a body established by Chas Hammer from the Simming League, an organization that had served to foster peaceful relations among individual sims and simming groups of various genres. The Trustees are charged with oversight of selecting an administrator, judges, and the nomination process each year while also ensuring that the long and respected history of the prize, along with the foundation of peace upon which it was established, continues to be upheld and treated with the highest regard.

It is important to present a timeline of events so you have a better understanding of why we find ourselves in this situation today:

• 2015 - Charles Star made multiple requests of the Simming Prize’s then Administrator, Chas Hammer. He requested to not only be awarded the Simming Prize for his efforts in the simming community, but to also be allowed to “run” the event. These requests were ignored.
• 2016 - Charles Star was awarded the Simming Prize in recognition of his efforts within the simming community.
• 2018 - Charles Star was given control of the SciWorld Online Convention and the Tournament of Simulations with the promise to Chas Hammer that both would remain open to anyone who wanted to participate or assist. Unfortunately, this promise was not kept and those who served as a past presenter, panelist, judge, or even a participant were purposely excluded from future invites.
• 2018 - Charles Star insisted to the Simming Prize Trustees that he be named a Trustee. Chas Hammer declined this request before retiring from simming.
• 2019 - Charles Star was again awarded the Simming Prize in recognition of his efforts within the simming community.
• January 2021 - Without informing the Trustees of his actions, Charles Star bought the domain simmingprize.com.
• March 2021 - Charles Star again insisted that he be made a Trustee by forwarding an email from an inactive Trustee that allegedly named him as her replacement, instead of her directly contacting the other Trustees with her replacement as is procedure. We were concerned that Charles Star was involved with too many things at the same time in the simming community and would not be able to handle the responsibility of being a Trustee, plus the procedure not being followed by the inactive Trustee raised suspicions about the validity of the email. The Trustees voted to not accept Charles Star as a Trustee.
• January 2022 - The Simming Prize Trustees reached out to Charles Star to discuss his expectation of the Simming Prize, to which he questioned why the 2020 Laureates had not been announced and our planned handling of the 2021 Laureates. We shared information about ideas and other changes coming to the Siming Prize and urged patience, to which he told us that we would “fall on our own sword.”
• January 2022 - Unknown to the Simming Prize Trustees, Charles Star attempted to buy out the simmingprize.org domain out from under us through our domain host. He did not mention this attempt to us, and thankfully our domain host declined his offer.
• February 2022 - The Simming Prize Trustees established an Advisory Panel, which would be charged with developing ideas and changes to improve the Simming Prize. We agreed to name Charles Star as the administrator of the Advisory Panel on good faith.
• February 2022 - Before Charles Star could be named as administrator of the Advisory Panel, the Simming Prize Trustees were alerted by multiple sims and groups that Charles Star had copied our concept, format, and even long established images to set up his own unauthorized version of the Simming Prize, and sent out emails informing people and groups they had been awarded.
• February 2022 - We discovered that the email address and password for the official Simming Prize Twitter account had been changed, effectively locking out the actual Trustees from access to the account. This account is currently being used to actively cast doubt on the validity of the official Simming Prize website history and spread unfounded lies and falsehoods.
• February 2022 - We attempted to arbitrate and reach an amicable solution through a neutral 3rd party; however, Charles Star ended negotiations by attacking the arbiter.
• February 2022 - Charles Star or someone allied to him continues to edit the Simming Prize Role Play entry in an attempt to change the narrative of the attempted coup.
• February 2022, due to continued contention over the legitimate win of Starbase 400's 2020 simming prize, the Starbase 400 organization has voluntarily declined the honor.

It’s a well established fact that the last few years have been difficult for many individuals around the globe due to the pandemic and other real life challenges, but the simming community has also faced its own challenges as well with several sims, groups, and services closing their doors forever. Many have had to deal with overwhelming and unexpected things during this time, both in real life as well as online.

We understood that Charles Star was upset and disappointed in not being named as Trustee multiple times, most recently in 2021; however, his recent actions are an attempt to invalidate 21 years of history and achievements of Simming Prize Laureates, plus actively suppress the legacy and contributions of multiple honorable judges, advisors, and Trustees. This is a gross act of betrayal towards those he purports to represent in good faith, not to mention conduct unbecoming of someone who was given such an esteemed honor of respect and dignity due to his long standing contributions to the simming community. His continued libel and defamation of the Simming Prize and its official Trustees has severely damaged the reputation and legitimacy of our organization.

His use of an outdated and no longer used “handbook” from years past further shows how out of touch he is with the simming community and the Simming Prize. His shady backgroom tactics have sullied his good name and also attempted to sully the good name and reputation of the Simming Prize. His continued and ongoing public actions against the Simming Prize and the official Trustees have made an unfortunate and avoidable situation worse.

Several groups have already publicly stated their disdain of his actions, and many who received prizes issued by him have rejected them due to the nature and circumstances surrounding their distribution. Some community services have gone as far as to ban Charles Star due these events. Sadly, Charles Star blames the Simming Prize Trustees for his bans instead of taking responsibility for his own actions.

We urge Charles Star to do the right thing by:

• Ceasing all efforts to slander, spread libel, disparage, or otherwise sully the Simming Prize and its Trustees.
• Turn over access of the Simming Prize Twitter account to the Trustees.
• Discontinue the use of the Simming Prize name, the use of our images, along with the name and likeness of Seth Cotis (Michael Back) as we are the only ones authorized by the family to use this to honor their son.

We, the Simming Prize Trustees, understand that this situation has caused some anger, confusion, frustration, and discord within the simming community. Personally, each one of us does not foster any ill will toward Charles Star in spite of everything that has happened.

We hereby announce that:

• We will not invalidate the Laureate status of Charles Star.
• After this statement, we will not speak of this situation with prejudice of Charles Star.
• We commit ourselves to continuing forward, as we were charged by Chas many years ago, to further the simming community, recognize outstanding leadership, integrity, and activity.

Furthermore, effective immediately:

We will recognize the Laureates awarded by Charles Star and his Trustees if said recipients wish to receive it. We feel that they are all deserving and it is not their fault that they were swept up in this debacle.

We will continue to accept 2021 Simming Prize nominations submitted directly to our official nomination form at http://tinyurl.com/simmingprizenomination until 3/31/2022. At that time we will gather the nominations, select an Administrator for the 2021 Simming Prize, gather the judges (past Laureates that wish to help judge the new year’s nominations), and announce the official 2021 Simming Prize Laureates soon thereafter.

Nominations submitted after 3/31/2022 will still be accepted and considered for the 2022 Simming Prize.

Once the 2021 Simming Prize Laureates have been announced, we will look to move forward with the Advisory Panel in an effort to move forward with improvements to our process and the Prize itself., complete a website overhaul to simmingprize.org we’ve been planning and working on now for quite some time, and other behind the scenes things to keep The Simming Prize at the forefront of the simming community.

We thank you for your continued support as we move forward into 2022 and beyond!

-The Simming Prize Trustees

Web- https://simmingprize.org/

Twitter- @SimmingPrize1

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/348467547186518

Discord - https://discord.gg/NuYtsEdqF4