State of the Union Address — September 2023
We've been thinking a lot about how we express ourselves to users, and it's currently not being done in the right way. With everything that has been going on, we haven't been able to sit down and have a heart to heart chat with our community about what's going on internally — a peek at the view of the Empire from atop the tower. Hence, the State of Union Address, which we'll be bringing to you every few months.
The demons we face
There is a great devil of evil in the CSGO community that we have been trying to combat for a while now, and it's only getting worse. Killian has sped up the unfair banning of CSGORoll users with large on-site balances and rewards, and the HypeDrop scam saga has taken some new twists. Volume on these scam sites have dropped noticeably, but they are still scamming millions.
Our initial warnings were not listened to as well as we had hoped, so we are now developing a structured multi-front approach to deliver punitive justice to all promoters and enablers of this gigantic scamming machine operated by Ancient Gaming involving Killian, CSGORoll, and HypeDrop, as well as all associated influencers. We are building ties with law enforcement as well as more unorthodox groups that execute justice in more unexpected ways. More on this at a later time.
The Empire team
Recently we've conducted a great deal of restructuring within the Empire team, comprising of both aggressive hiring and aggressive firing. We have removed a lot of the people that were holding us back and brought on some amazing new people that we believe will take us to new heights. We've also carefully analyzed the performance of people from the old team and are keeping some of the people we believe to be gems or gems in the making.
We believe the ultimate company is one that is relatively small and highly efficient, where everyone within it is the best in their field and has a dedicated purpose. We have removed the dead weight from within our team and things are starting to come along nicely, with increased productivity, movement of ideas, faster feature releases, and overall growth. This is still the starting phase — we've started to get things moving but we have much bigger ambitions. It will take some time to solidify our team into exactly the way we envision it, but in due time we will become as close to a perfect company as can be, with perfect efficiency in every domain. This will result in the ultimate product experience for our users.
On truth and light
In the past, we've tried to keep this part of our identity more hidden away, but it's time to embrace it. The fact that Empire is the bane of scammers is inextricably linked to our identity — this is why Empire was born in the first place. There is no separate product, no separate "PR branding" — Monarch and Empire are one and the same, just at different times of day.
We strongly believe in providing users with useful products that provide excellent value and make a difference in their lives, while also making us a great deal of money. When scammers enter the arena, everyone loses. Legitimate competitors lose because they don't use scamming to gain a disgusting edge. Players lose because they get scammed out of large amounts of money, like the new wave of players that were banned on CSGORoll this month with no recourse. It's disgusting that our scene gets a bad name and is put so heavily at risk by these bad actors, costing our community heart wrenching amounts of money. Empire was made to put a stop to this, and we won't stop our fight until this mission is complete.
So if you're here just to gamble, we hope you enjoy our casino. If you're here just to trade, we hope you like our 0% fee marketplace with high liquidity and crypto withdrawals. But if you're here for something more — if you're here to be a part of justice, if you want people to see a little more truth, to have a little more light in our lives — maybe you've come to the right place.
Until next time.