[Resolved] mute appeal

[Tim Torpedo]

In-Game name: Tim Torpedo
Time of Ban: Around 23:45 GMT+1
Date of Ban: 2026-05-13
Steam ID: STEAM_0:0:34583833
Reason for Ban: Insulting another player
Additional Comments:

In the comments, someone said to the player "Mario Gaming", who was doing VERY WELL in the match, something along the lines of

"por que tienes tu perfil privado? tenes miedo que vean que eres in perdedor?"

To which I replied:

"no, veran que es un predador"

========

I got muted like 5 minutes after this. Note that you can pull up ANY Spanish dictionary, the word "predador" means a predator as in an animal that hunts, it does NOT mean the same as it does in English (sexual abuser).

Check out the translation for "predador" on SpanishDictionary.com!

Translate millions of words and phrases for free on SpanishDictionary.com, the world's largest Spanish-English dictionary and translation website.

www.spanishdict.com

predador - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

And it was in this sense that I meant it. Mario was in my team and doing very well, like an apex predator. Please, if you do not speak a language, do not try to judge it based on another language just because you think a word sounds similar to one you know. This is not how linguistics work. Do not perform word-for-word translations and expect them to be accurate. Running an EU server means being prepared for people who speak other languages, or at least, if in doubt, giving them a chance to explain themselves, or letting a multilingual moderator handle it.

From the list of people online, I believe this was the admin: https://steamcommunity.com/id/JellEBytes/

 

[vilewitch]

Your mute has already expired as you were only silenced for one hour. The person who reported you speaks Spanish themselves, which is why they reported you as they do know the context of what you're saying, and they provided it to us. You left out the entire context where you were both talking about this user having a private profile, and not talking about their gameplay. We have chat logs and can read this. It makes no sense why you would be calling someone an "apex predator" in this context.

Please do not accuse random players you don't like of being pedophiles; that's a really shitty thing to do for a litany of reasons. Consider the silence a warning.

 

[JellEBytes]

Hey, just so you know, you can see which admin processed the ban/silence when viewing it on sourcebans. As you can see, I did not process this one.

 

[Tim Torpedo]

The person who reported you speaks Spanish themselves, which is why they reported you as they do know the context of what you're saying, and they provided it to us. You left out the entire context where you were both talking about this user having a private profile, and not talking about their gameplay. It makes no sense why you would be calling someone an "apex predator" in this context.

I did not leave it out. It's in the transcription that I provided in my original post. That's what "perfil privado" means. And the person calling him a perdedor was doing so BECAUSE of his extremely good gameplay that match, so I don't see why his gameplay is irrelevant. I retorted to calling one of my team's top fraggers a "loser" to saying he's a predador/depredador, which is a hunter in nature. If you look up "predator" in an English dictionary, you'll see "sexual offender" as either the #1 or #2 definition of the word, so I understand that this word can have a sick meaning in English. This is not the case in Spanish, however. As I said, pull up a dictionary, do not rely on high-school level of Spanish from a foreign country. I live in a native Hispanic household and I know what the word means. It wasn't an insult, it was a compliment to my teammate, responding to an angry adversary who was calling him a loser.

If you have the logs, check how well he was doing, who he was dominating, how many points he had accumulated for that match. It'll be clear why this makes sense in context. What wouldn't make sense is me randomly accusing a very good teammate of sex crimes, as if that's something a criminal would put in their profile or something.

I understand that this block has been expired, but I do not find it fair that this remains on my permanent record.

 

[vilewitch]

Given the context of the conversation, it is still a very bizarre thing to say and doesn't really make much sense under scrutiny. I didn't say that the gameplay wasn't relevant, I was saying that, in the context of the greater chat logs (as attached below,) it does not appear that anyone was saying anything about gameplay at all.

What wouldn't make sense is me randomly accusing a very good teammate of sex crimes

You'd think so, but people do randomly do this, which is why we took the precautionary measure as this is something that a lot of shitheads do frequently in online games, including the larger TF2 community. I am still somewhat inclined to believe the reporter as, again, this is still a very strange interaction and phrasing that appears to come out of nowhere.

Regardless, the mute on your account is very brief and as such, we are not considering it a first infraction and it will not factor into any future situations. You don't need to worry about your record or anything, as this isn't a substantial enough situation for us to bring it up again in the future. Just please watch your phrasing in the future.