FFG Accidentally Texted Me Its Suspension Plans
SWU Game Designers included me in a group chat about the upcoming suspension of certain cards. I didn't think it could be real. Then the live stream happened.
The world found out shortly after 11 a.m. pacific time on April 9 that Jango Fett, Triple Dark Raid, and DJ were going to be suspended from premier play.
I, however, knew two hours before the fateful live stream that the suspension might happen. The reason I knew this is that is that Tyler Parrott, one of the senior SWU designers, had texted me the suspension plan at 8:44 am. The plan included precise information about cards to be suspended, camera equipment for the live stream, and timing.
This is going to require some explaining.
This story technically begins shortly after the release of Twilight of the Republic, in November 2024. Jango/Tarkintown - a yellow/red/villain deck which relied heavily on aggressive space units and Triple Dark Raid - soon developed a descive advantage over most control and aggro decks, creating havoc for the global metagame. Throught the Twilight of the Republic format, the meta was somewhat effective at balancing this new threat; but with the release of new cards for the deck in Jump to Lightspeed FFG needed a stronger response.
This is where Tyler Parrott and I come in.
On Tuesday, April 1st, I received a connection request on Discord from a user identified as Jeremy Zwirn. Discord is a messaging service popular with gamers and others who seek more social connections than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed the Jeremy Zwirn in question was the designer on the SWU team. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given FFG’s contentious relationship with content creators that use unoffical clients to play the game. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Zwirn in order to somehow entrap me. It is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce content creators to share information that could be used against them.
I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual designer, and that he wanted to chat about sector qualifier streaming, or Legends of the Force spoilers, or some other important matter.
Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Discord chat group. It was called the “Jango PC small group.”
A message to the group, from “Jeremy Zwirn,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Jango (and DJ), particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/designer level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”
The message continued, “Pls provide the best staff POC from your team for us to coordinate with over the next couple days and over the weekend. Thx.”
The term principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most employees, including art, marketing, and legal, as well as the lead designers of the game. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to an FFG principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of playing competetive card games, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.
In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various designers; Jim Cartwright, the Vice President of Strategy for FFG; Xander Tabler, FFG’s dedicated SWU live stream host; Alex Werner, the SWU rules specialist; and someone identified only as “R S,” which I took to stand for Ryan Serrano. I appeared on my own screen only as “RT.”
That was the end of the Thursday text chain.
After receiving the Zwirn text related to the “Jango PC small group,” I consulted a number of colleagues. We discussed the possibility that these texts were part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a Magic: The Gathering play group or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts to place content creators in embarrassing positions, and sometimes succeeds. I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the game design leadership of Fantasy Flight Games would communicate on Discord about imminent suspnesion plans. I also could not believe that such a senior game designer would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of Take The Initiative in such discussions with senior officials, up to and including the vice president of the company.
The next day, things got even stranger.
At 8:05 a.m. on Friday, April 4, “Jeremy Zwirn” texted the group: “Team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings per the Lead Designer’s guidance this morning in your high side inboxes.” (High side, in corporate parlance, refers to work computer and communications systems.) “Marketing and Legal, we developed suggested notification lists for business allies and partners. Corporate is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days and we will work w marketing to ensure COO, CFO and CEO are briefed.”
At this point, a fascinating policy discussion commenced. The account labeled “Jim Cartwright” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing a Marvel Champions event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Cartwright was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Cartwright account goes on to state, “5/8 of US sector top cut was Jango. 7/8 of Milan was. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as Lead Designer said, to send a message.”
The Cartwright account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Lead Designer Danny Schaefer’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the lead is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in Sabine playrate. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the secondary maket is, etc.”
A person identified in Signal as “Alicia Gensch” (FFG’s marketing manager is named Alicia Gensch) wrote at 8:22, “There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line. We’ll have the exact same options in a month.”
Then, at 8:26 a.m., a message landed in my Discord app from the user “Joe O’Neil.” I will not quote from this, as the message contained information that might be interpreted as related to spoilers for Legends of the Force.
At 8:27, a message arrived from the “Tyler Parrott” account. “VP: I understand your concerns – and fully support you raising w/ lead. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (Cad, Bossk, Sabine, etc). I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – everybody knows who Jango is – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) meta warping & 2) negative play expirience.”
The Parrott message goes on to state, “Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. 2 immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Some community tournament takes an action first and we don’t get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both. We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This [is] not about Jango. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring diversity in the metagame, a core component of a healthy meta; and 2) Reestablish balance, which Jango and DJ cratered. But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC”—operations security. “I welcome other thoughts.”
The account identified as “Jim Cartwright” addressed a message at 8:45 to Tyler Parrott: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”
The user identified as Parrott responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Jeremy is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given lead directive to rebalance metagame. I think we should go; but lead still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
At this point, the previously silent “R S” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the lead was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If FFG successfully restores a diverse metagame at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”
That message from “R S”—presumably game designer Ryan Serrano, or someone playing him—effectively shut down the conversation. The last text of the day came from “Tyler Parrott,” who wrote at 9:46 a.m., “Agree.”
After reading this chain, I recognized that this conversation possessed a high degree of verisimilitude. The texts, in their word choice and arguments, sounded as if they were written by the people who purportedly sent them, or by a particularly adept AI text generator. I was still concerned that this could be a disinformation operation, or a simulation of some sort. And I remained mystified that no one in the group seemed to have noticed my presence. But if it was a hoax, the quality of mimicry and the level of game design insight were impressive.
It was Wednesday morning, Wednesday, April 9th, when this story became truly bizarre.
At 8:44 a.m., the account labeled “Tyler Parrott” posted in Discord a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Discord conversation, is that the Parrott post contained operational details of a forthcoming live stream to announce a suspension of Jango, TDR, and DJ, including information about equipment, words the presenters would be speaking, and timing.
The only person to reply to the update from Parrott was the person identified as the vice president. “I will say a prayer for victory,” Cartwright wrote. (Two other users subsequently added prayer emoji.)
According to the lengthy Parrott text, the suspension would be announced about two hours hence, at 11:08 a.m. pacific time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Discord chat was real, I reasoned, the suspensions would soon be announced. At about 11:18, I checked X and searched Star Wars: Unlimited. The suspensions of all three cards were announced.
I went back to the Discord channel. At 11:48, “Jeremy Zwirn” had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an “amazing job.” A few minutes later, “Joe O’Neil” wrote, “A good start.” Not long after, Zwirn responded with three emoji: a fist, an purple lightsaber, and an exploding head. Others soon joined in, including “RM,” who wrote, “Good Job Tyler and your team!!,” and “Xander Tabler,” who texted, “Kudos to all – most particularly those on stream! Really great. God bless.” “Alex Werner” responded with five emoji: two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two purple lightsabers. “R S” responded, “Great work and effects!” The after-action discussion included assessments of community reaction, including the likely death of a specific individual.
The Discord chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Discord group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Jeremy Zwirn,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was.
Earlier today, I emailed Zwirn and sent him a message on his Discord account. I also wrote to Tyler Parrott, Joe O’Neil, Ryan Miles, and other officials. In an email, I outlined some of my questions: Is the “Jango PC small group” a genuine Discord thread? Did they know that I was included in this group? Was I (on the off chance) included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was added, or when I removed myself from the group? Do senior FFG officials use Discord regularly for sensitive discussions?
A spokesman for FFG responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Discord group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” They wrote. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior designers. The ongoing success of the Jango operation demonstrates that there were no threats to the competetive integrity of the metagame.”
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for game deisgners to communicate on Discord. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending suspension. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a content creator has been invited to such a discussion.
Several former FFG employeers told me that they had used Discord to share public information and to discuss routine matters, particularly when traveling overseas without access to company systems. But they knew never to share secret or sensitive information on the app, because their phones could have been hacked.
Zwirn and the other high-level officials were already potentially violating company policy simply by texting one another about the suspension. But when Zwirn added a content creator—presumably by mistake—to his principals committee, he created new security issues. Now the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it. That is the classic definition of a leak, even if it was unintentional, and even if the recipient of the leak did not actually believe it was a leak until Jango and the other cards were suspended.
All along, members of the Discord group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security. In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming suspension, Parrott wrote to the group—which, at the time, included me—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
In case anyone didn’t catch it, this article is satirical and the events described did not actually occur.