The beta-173-chat Riot

The picture spammed by a_big_rat during the riot

The beta-173-chat Riot was a riot mainly involving a_big_rat, Mixarium, Existing_Player and Capatika that protested the prolonged and unreasonable absence of the #beta-173-chat channel of Puucraft's Discord server.

Background

#beta-173-chat was initially closed off due to spambots sending links to pornographic images in-game. However, as days passed by without any attacks, players grew increasingly frustrated of the situation. The idea of a protest was first brought up by a_big_rat on September 22, 2022, who promised a riot if the issue wasn't resolved on the next day and said it would involve spamming the Discord server with a specific picture. Capatika suggested joining the server and surrounding the spawn area with burning netherrack, similarly to New Schweiz, as a form of protest.

The next day, seeing that the channel still hadn't been reopened, rat scheduled the riot for 2:07 p.m. UTC. Several players also set their nickname to bring back #beta-173-chat, following TheXLMinecrafter's idea.

The protest

The burning netherrack surrounding spawn

Since the players' request had not been fulfilled until the 2:07 p.m. deadline, the protest commenced. As promised, rat started spamming the picture, and 3 players, Capatika, Mixarium and Existing_Player, joined the server to create the netherrack box. There was some initial hesitation, as no more players joined the server, and the other players didn't seem to know of the netherrack plan. After a few minutes of futile waiting, though, the players decided to proceed. Once the netherrack box was complete, signs with the text "BRING BACK BETA-173-CHAT!" were posted as per Capatika's suggestion.

Afterwards, as the protesters ran out of ideas, they started spamclicking noteblocks, thereby producing music. Pork was also thrown on the noteblocks. The protesters also tried to eat the cake at spawn, without success.

Pork and music concert by Mixarium and Existing_Player

By this time, Peperos had joined the discussion regarding #beta-173-chat and the riot, and at around 3:07 p.m. UTC, #beta-173-chat was back, though with embeds disabled.

Impact

About half an hour after the return of the channel, the bots returned. Though the attack did cause a minor inconvenience, the solution this time was to restrict access to the channel to players with the Respected rank and above (later lowered to Member rank and above), instead of a complete closure - a much better compromise than before.