I feel miserable while I write this, but I feel this step is completely necessary and I feel that those who bother to take the time reading my blog/profile deserve to know what's happening.

I'm gone from GameSpot. I know some of you will (hopefully) miss me, but it is not the end you'll hear from dear-old Ben. Oh no. I'm all over the interwebz! At the end of the post, I'll post links to ways to see what I'm doing if you're really interested.

There were some memories, oh yes. I made plenty of friends (even a few enemies) along the way. Some of my best memories include:

• The struggle to get un-banned after I was mistakenly done so
• Getting my 360 FAQ & Game Reccomendation Thread stickied on the 360 board (still is stickied I believe)

But then something happened that I have deemed to be the last straw:

• 7 day suspension for calling someone "ignorant"

Yes, 7 days for that. A bit absurd, and truthfully, fully reinforced my stance that mod MAILERDAMON was out to get me. Do I have proof? No. But as far as I could tell, all of the moderations I've recieved that I felt were questionable seemed to have come from him/her after asking on the Ask the Mods board.

GameSpot is a wonderful site. I still trust their reviews the most over IGN, I get a good amount of my news from here and the community is wonderful. However, limiting free speech on the site is wrong; you can't swear or hurt someone's feelings without being punished for it. Is it the mods fault? Yes and no. Many of the rules in the Terms of Service are vage (sp?) and that leaves many moderations up to the judgement of the mods, which puts them in a difficult situation and one that I feel is wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I am constantly pursuing a career in journalism, and GameSpot is a destination I would love to end up, but there are also other communities on other sites that have welomed me with open arms, much as this one did way back in 2005. If you take anything way from this post take this:

GameSpot is a wonderful site and I will always remember it.

Follow me on:

• Choffcast.com (my gaming website)
• Checkpoint Reached (podcast I appear on)
• Giant Bomb.com (my new community)
• Twitter
• Xbox Live -- choffy21
• MySpace / Facebook
• Skype -- choffy21

Please look out for my name in the future; I may end up working here on GameSpot someday! Please read my site (Choffcast.com) and listen to the podcast I'm on (Checkpoint Reached). Visit me on Giant Bomb. Thank you for the memories, and I sincerely hope all of our paths cross again. And who knows, maybe I'll pop on in every once in a while for a visit.

Sincerely,
-- Ben "Choffy" Tolmachoff

I'm not going to let it get to me. I'm back and ready to forget it all happened.

No ambition to be here on GameSpot for a few days. Just realized how ****ed up most of the community is. I'm just burned out of the site.

See you guys soon