I'm surprised ShackTac is still around. It's been a while since they began.
They're still very much a thing. I'm pretty sure Dslyecxi still does consulting work for Bohemia interactive.
more like CultTac
sounds like someone's salty their application got denied
Pictured: StrawberryClock at annual CultTac meetup
https://i.imgur.com/KvQFqfn.png
In all seriousness though, I never understood the beef some people have for ShackTac.
It comes up every year when I post their overview video and the best explanation I've seen is "they have an application process and that makes me mad".
I enjoy Dslyecxi's content and don't have time to play Arma so I literally have no stake in this, I'm just genuinely curious because it all seems petty as fuck.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that I don't like Shacktac because an application that never happened got "denied".
I don't like Shacktac because their cult like behaviour is awful as hell. Dslyecxi is practically a cult leader. You either
be a yes-man or you live long enough to become a 'bitter ex member'.
Oh and don't even get me started on the fucking video restrictions they put on their memebers.
I was half-joking about the application thing in regards to you specifically, if that makes you feel any better. FP Arma are a lot of fun to watch and I know you'reva good bunch of players. I'm aware you have no reason or desire to join ShackTac.
I've just seen more than a few Facepunchers being really salty about having their application denied.
Now, I wouldn't mind if you wanted to elaborate on the "cult-like" behavior you accuse them of.
What's the cult? What are they worshipping? What are the "yes-men" saying yes to?
Isn't their whole deal that you're not meant to be a member forever because they've got some strict schedules and standards to adhere to? So you come in, have a good time every week for a year or two and then if you can't keep attending for whatever reason you part amicably?
As far as I know, isn't the only restriction on recording simply "no livestreaming?"
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. Do you have proof for anything you're saying or should I just take your word for it?
I remember Beaglerush talking about the reasons why he left shacktac, and it was specifically because Dslyecxi was an awful person. He was a massive control freak, and earlier on when beagle met jamball and they started going out together. He'd spend less time on shacktac and Dslyecxi did not like it, constantly berating him and telling him to dump her, eventually it got to the point where he was harassing jamball as well.
He initially left shacktac with no comment, just wanting to go seperate ways, then Dslyecxi a year or so down the line did some bullshit, started harassing people and claiming beagle was poisoning other shacktac members or some shit. That's when beagle opened up about a lot of the shit Dslyecxi had done and was doing, it was a lot of you either do as Dslyecxi says or you're out/harassed until you conform.
In the end beagle ended his rant with, most of shacktac members are amazing people and a lot are still his best friends, but the guy in charge is the worst. I can't find a link to the original rant of his, but that's the jist of it. Here's someone commenting on how the whole rant thing kicked off
https://www.reddit.com/r/arma/comments/7ib550/twelve_years_of_serious_fun_my_2017_shacktac_year/dr04lun/
That seems like some troubling information. I'll sift through it.
https://imgur.com/a/i8Zjq
This gallery has screenshots lot of the details, a few in Beagle's community.
https://youtu.be/sTfqugAzUCg
For those who don't play ArmA, ShackTac is the Church of Scientology of the ArmA community
Thanks to the latest FPA op, i realized that i shouldn't have paid money to join in on the SERIOUS FUN!
I managed to join ShackTac once, for like an hour. My application was approved, got access to their forum, went to download their huge mod pack through some not so great direct download links, went to their IRC asking if they have any better ways to downloading it and maybe suggesting a torrent link or something, Dslyecxi came in, said "wtf are you telling me what to do?" and kicked me out. Probably wasn't a huge loss, I was already put off by them requiring your forum avatar to be a photo of you and your username to be your real name and having a requirement to show up to basically every event they have or you're out.
No joke, is there honestly a fee you have to pay to join Ann internet computer game club??
I mean a periodic membership fee doesn't sound too outrageous, if they're paying for a private server.
Looking through the evidence, it seems like a lot of the claims of Dslyecxi being really eccentric and making unreasonable demands to some members may have some basis in reality but I think that by making those hyperbolic comparisons with cults you're actually sabotaging any attempt at bringing people over to your side of the argument. After all, if the group was so completely awful (and not merely allegedly problematic due to the leadership) why would Bohemia Interactive still be working with them? To me it seems like ShackTac has some problems but also some people (not all) criticising them have an agenda (especially the ones accusing them of being a cult) because they have a bone to pick with Dslyecxi.
If you are watching ShackTac videos and looking for a similar sort of experience without the unreasonably high barrier of entry or some of the (apparent) weird control-freak stuff, you can try shopping around for groups like these yourself. I joined one through a mutual friend where the only requirements were the requisite teamspeak/mod package downloads, a single 30 minute training session running you through the basics of the mods you will be using, and attending at least one event per month. It was good times and I got a similar sort of experience as I get watching shacktac vids but I had to stop playing after I got a new job where I work Friday-Monday.
I can't speak for Beagle's situation, as I was a occasional squad-mate and an acquaintance with him, at best.
But, since this thread is so juicy I thought I might at well share my negative experience with Shack-Tac as well.
Basically one of the senior members of the group was extremely displeased with my play-style, and, recordings of said play-style. Which was basically going for kills and enjoying the game in the way I enjoyed it. He reacted with open hostility to me, and made it very clear he didn't want me in the group because of this.
I'm not going to defend this. It's not being a good team-player when I would play overly aggressively and be a lone-wolf when the opportunity presented it self in the game. I understand that.
But, this was a small number of instances compared to the huge number of missions I did with them, I did leadership roles, and did a decent job as far as I can remember (this was 3-4 years ago at least). But those few bad times were enough, apparently.
AND Dslyexci himself did this exact same thing, if you don't want to encourage this behavior, maybe don't do the same things yourself in-game. It's a implicit approval to that play-style.
Yet this senior member thought I was actively attacking the spirit of the group and ranted at me over direct message about how I needed to change my behavior as if I was the most toxic person to ever grace his presence.
After telling Dsylecxi about his ridiculous attitude, I was basically told that that was just the way he was, and that he tended to over-react.
Then I basically got the same condemnation, but in a slightly more polite way, with less direct aggression. Almost like a good cop, bad cop routine? Who knows...
So I was given a "compromise" were I had to cease all videos on my channel until I could "prove" I was going to record "quality" content. After a few months of sticking with it, I was given the go-ahead to post videos that had to be approved by one of the senior members. I did this for a little while until I was so completely burnt out of the game, group, and YouTube it self, so much that I quit both the group and making any videos at all. It was poison to my enjoyment of the website and the game.
So, from my experience, the accusations of "Control Freak" are accurate. He tries to control the group as if it is a brand, and must be viewed with only the exact right eye to avoid tainting said brand, to the detriment of the people under him.
Just an FYI there are a lot of amazing people in Shack-Tac, and I have a ton of fond memories with them. I just felt alienated by Dslyecxi and broke all ties with everyone from the group, so I'm sorry if you are one of them.
Hey I migrated my account just to reply to this so sorry in advance for anything that I get wrong.
The reason why most people use hyperbole is because Andrew "Dslyecxi the Cuck" Gluck is objectively a fucking asshole. Get ready for a big post because there's a lot to explain why.
The main origin behind the "cult" joke is that ShackTac is an overly controlling group that's objective isn't so much arma, that's the distraction. The real reason behind ST is so DSL (gonna shorten Dslyecxi to DSL for the majority of this post) can get a group of friends. ShackTac requires your full name, picture of yourself, and almost 100% attendance. Doesn't seem that bad right? Well the problems come from DSL's obsessive ass behavior with controlling members. ST's video policy makes it so you can only make videos about them and nothing else, you're also not allowed to share footage of things that don't put the group in good light. This comes in tandem with DSL having the final say on everything, if you try and dispute this sort of behavior you're probably not going to last for much longer in the group. As mentioned in the previous pictures in this thread with Xenon and Beagle's stories DSL tries to groom this perfect image for ShackTac. This is all a sham. ShackTac tries to present this "best of the best elite club" image to the internet to try and get people to join. In reality ShackTac's impressive playercounts and long ass missions aren't that unique to it. Sure you get better behaved people but that's because Damocles' Sword is hanging above them all so people are straightened into line. You can get a similar experience to ShackTac just by joining a large ARMA group like UO or something.
Furthermore this "best of the best" thing is also bullshit when it comes to the things they oh so graciously share with the larger ARMA community. ST HUD is a poorly coded mess that drops your frames by 10 even when you turn off the radar's occlusion (basically icons for friendlies disappearing behind terrain). Every frame counts in ARMA. It also causes crashes on some maps for reasons unknown to me. Then you have the things donated to ACE by DSL such as his Grenade Throwing and NVGs. His spaghetti code was pretty shit and the ACE team pretty much had to rewrite those entire things to get them functioning well outside of ST's closed environment. The way he made his NVGs was pants on head retarded and caused so many issues when people were trying it in ACE's dev builds.
Back on to the Littlebird man himself he's just a plain prick. I haven't had the pleasure to speak to him personally but the way he types to people online is fucking smug as hell, he seems like a real piece of shit. This is enforced by the repeated times he's talked shit behind member's backs. I know for a fact ShackTac has these private forums only DSL and his cronies can view and post in where they "evaluate" new members and whatnot. In here they shit-talk people they don't like. Along with this they're also nasty to people like Beagle or Xenon's friends that are still in ST for behind associated with him. The very fact that "Morgan" (someone close to DSL) was trying to get some private investigator to dig up dirt on Beagle should tell you everything. Another thing I've noticed is that his group has some weird mistreatment of women going on. There are very few female ST players that are recurring. You can see this is every ST video, there's barely any women at all across all thousands of them. The women who I know about in ST are all gone because of this. Jamball was shit-talked behind her back about how she was a bad influence on the long-term ST member Beagle and how she was "poisoning him" (you can read about that in Jeff's post). This kinda shit was all going on when she was interviewed by Polygon on their ST article, pretty disgusting to think about. https://www.polygon.com/2014/10/8/6881629/inside-shack-tactical-shacktac-military-simulation-arma Then there was a guy on reddit who eludes that there is a misoginystic attitude in leadership. https://www.reddit.com/r/arma/comments/2z6nse/shacktac_downsides_part_2/ Finally there's the fact that the only woman I've seen in ST who's been around more than Jamball is DSL's girlfriend. Kinda fucked that there's all these accusations and the only woman who doesn't eventually get kicked from the group is the leader's girlfriend.
Now the reason why this isn't common knowledge is because many people don't talk up about it. There's a rule in ST where you're not allowed to make drama, what is considered drama is decided by DSL and the rest of ST's leadership. That means they can end any and all criticism about their treatment of members with a ban threat. Then there's also the fact that DSL and his cronies will harass you and your friends behind closed doors going so far as trying to dig shit up on you as a deterent for speaking up. I know for a fact this kind of toxic behavior would discourage me from telling people about this. I figure most ex-members are just too scared to speak up. They don't want to get involved with this shit and they don't want to ruin their friends' relationships in the group by being guilty by association. Those who do speak up like Beagle get damaged controlled by DSL and other ST members. As for why they have a connection to Bohemia is because Dslyecxi was (is?) an employee of BIS, Bohemia's sister company that makes VBS. With this shit being suppressed none of it gets to Bohemia and if it does I bet DSL just plays it off as "a salty ex-member who got kicked for being a jerk".
I could probably go on forever with this but I just want to say at the end of the day I don't think everyone in ST is a bad person. I feel like most of them are either being manipulated or they are uninformed because of the strength of DSL's gag and/or his damage control. People are hyperbolic about ST because ST does not deserve any respect. Any respect about them is this carefully constructed image by DSL to make ShackTac seem like the elite of ARMA groups. In closing fuck all of DSL' lapdogs in ST and especially fuck you Dslyecxi.
To also add to Destroyox's megapost up there, there's a very high probability that Dyslexci actively stages and doctors his videos, especially the ones where he's seen piloting the Littlebird he likes to show off about a lot.
Basically the Littlebird is the most maneuverable but also the most brittle and dangerous vehicle to fly as it is basically a seat with a panel of glass and an engine attached to it, and a single fuckup means you're going to turn into a fireball soaring across the sky until you inevitably slam into the floor like a fucking idiot. Yet he somehow manages to often make perfect maneuvers in hot airzones, avoiding all threats and never getting killed by a bullet through the canopy, often times just losing his rear rotor and autorotating to safety.
This sounds fine until you realize that in a conventional combat scenario you're lucky if your supersonic jet fighter doesn't get blasted out of the sky by a radar guided system. There's no way in hell that the most specialized light observation-insertion helicopter in the roster would endure anything past literally disabled AI, and yet somehow Littlebird Man here always manages to get out in one piece.
If people are interested in some good Arma 3 times and don't have a group, there's always FPARMA.
We've actually got a large as heck op coming up so there's a lot of slots still open for that.
ARMA Series (I, II, III)
The FP Arma Series thread OP has info on FPARMA if people are interested.
Did the same thing happen to CHKilroy? I remember loving his videos along with Beagle, they were so hilarious as a team and it sucks that neither of them are really around anymore. I see that CHKilroy has uploaded some stuff in the last month so I'll definitely check it out, but they were the reason I even found ShackTac and since they left/got outed I haven't been entertained by any of the ST videos, just because its a serious roleplaying server doesn't mean it can't be funny at times. A 100% realistic military simulation just isn't my thing I guess.
Damn, I didn't think I'd spark such a big conversation on the subject. I'm incredibly surprised this hasn't come up at all before. At most Beagle's exit from the group was mentioned from time-to-time but that's it. @jonoPorter I feel like it would have been more productive (if you knew the information revealed in this thread) if you'd asked me politely not to promote their content and give an explanation as to why. My intent wasn't to belittle you but with what I knew at the time I simply thought you had unwarranted beef with shacktac.
I'll actually bookmark this thread for future reference and I'd encourage other people to do so as well. I think it's a good summary of why it's unethical to promote shacktac's content.
I still don't believe all the accusations veiled against ShackTac and Dslyecxi to be true as when emotions get involved single individuals don't have much incentive to accurately recall events. I'm a firm believer that using terms such as "cult" to describe the group does a disservice to actual criticism of their behavior; control-freak seems a more fair and accurate term I think.
BUT at this time I believe that there's more than enough circumstantial evidence - and people that have come forward as witnesses to bad behavior on the leadership's part - to discourage promotion of their content and recruitment.
If you know anyone else that could add more information and shed further light on the situation I'd really appreciate it.
I mean all I have is one time I commented on a ShackTac video that Arma would be pretty awesome in VR or something along those lines, and Dyslexci replied saying VR was unviable and pretty bad in his opinion, to be fair to him this was pretty early in VR development and I can understand that sentiment. I'm definitely not trying to be part of this witch hunt against the guy, but I can kind of see it being true as much as I can believe it being he said she said, it must be pretty hard to keep a group as big as ShackTac as professional as they try to be and I wouldn't be surprised if it can be sort of a competitive and enclosed group.
kilroy was on some of Beagle's more recent streams. They played Escape From Tarkov together, but Beagle wasn't too into it on stream.
To think I wanted to join this group....
I've watched DLS's videos for years and this is all pretty shocking to hear.
What a disappointment...
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