Thank fucking NeoGAF moderation for permabanning my friend NPD George / NDP Mulcair.

George / Mulcair is from The NPD Group. He's my contact at the agency in Port Washington. I helped him set up an account and actually was able to convince NPD that it was a good idea to help out GAF / other sites with some official information starting with October 2015 NPD.

But apparently that piece of shit admin Stumpokapow decided to ruin a perfectly good thing and permaban my friend because they got into their stupid little heads that he was "my alt account" which doesn't make any sense. I set up his profile on my computer and then told him the login and password because he's not very good with forums, and apparently that's "proof of an alt account" despite him clearly being a very different poster than I was.

I tried to get back on NeoGAF in the past...I reached out to the mods to be unbanned at multiple points...but they have completely ignored me. So I thought bringing George to GAF could act as a good replacement for data so everyone didn't always have to rely on leaks.

But apparently the arrogance and elitism of the NeoGAF moderators knows no bounds, and they'd rather stick to their draconian ways instead of getting more of a good thing. So you know what? Fuck them. We're done.

We all think it's utterly ridiculous that they're acting like children. This incident has really soured our opinion of the forum. But hey, what can you do? NeoGAF is really going downhill. I'm finally starting to understand why there is so much hatred against them on the Internet.

I have nothing against Chartz forums or any of you guys. NPD used to be really draconian last year so I was pressured pretty hardcore into trying to stop leaks but they've got new management lately that has been more open towards sharing tidbits of data (like hardware), hence the existence of NPD George / NDP Mulcair. This incident will probably close everything down again, which sucks.

If I can leak something here in the future with the permission of NPD I will, but it's probably unlikely.

ZhugeEX ban had nothing to do with his logic, contribution, or estimates.

I actually messaged some of the mods regarding this issue with no feedback. I even took a break from Neogaf over this issue, which is why I was on vgchartz in the first place. Here is some info, but it doesn't paint the whole picture.  

Mods on NeoGAF deleted this from the forum. Very convenient. http://t.co/Ek4N6PRhBa

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) August 6, 2015

Rumor has it that his "potential to self promote" his site was the cause for the permaban. The whole things was ridiculous.

Except I didn't have a website before my ban. 

I still to this day do not know why I was banned. The mods refuse to respond to me about it. 

You realise that 'VGChartz' is in direct competition with a service that The NPD Group provide right? 

Unless they enter some sort of partnership (which I don't see happening) there is no way they would post anything here. 

If I remember correctly.... You added your site after your temporary ban, and that was the rumor to why the permanant ban was issued.

I'm just going off of hearsay, and find the whole thing to be immature at best. Regardless, I'm glad you didn't give up your hobby, and still post from time to time.

I know, right? And NPD used to even give GAF numbers from like 2006-2008. That was the hook I was able to use. "Hey NPD George / NDP_Mulcair, you guys gave GAF numbers before, just do what you used to do back in the day." And eventually it worked, but only thanks to the new guys. A year ago when they were harassing me it would have been impossible.

I've made posts on GAF about the issues of VGC accuracy before and that still rings true today. Sometimes VGC is pretty accurate...other times it's far off the mark. I personally can't trust it because I can see the discrepancies are significant at times but hey, gotta give them credit for at least trying.

But that's really easy to solve. If VG Chartz could establish a relationship with Walmart, Target, GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon, they would effectively become as relevant as NPD.  They would have 90% of the sales in the market. Now of course, 90% accuracy isn't as accurate as NPD, mind you, but it's still pretty damn close (NPD is 95% accurate). Close enough that lots of institutions would start paying for them. Hell, we'd buy a subscription to them.