with no actual forum for the accused to speak for themselves
You will need to clarify this. Last I recalled, there was nothing stopping the accused from simply respond on the same thread they are being accused of scamming. If they so-claimed to not have scammed their victims. I believe one of the scammers have responded to her allegations before (I think in 2019 of Spring), though it let to some back-and-forth feud that wound up with both the accused and accuser banned temporarily.
Far as personal information is concerned. Alright, maybe the addresses may be drawing the line too far, but the real name, email, and social media names they used in the ordeal are essential to identifying the scammer and know who they are so they can be avoided, in addition to the sufficient evidence of the ordeal. Screenshots of the actions are also important to prove the actions of the scammer, and finally the solution on what the victim did and what others should do when dealing with said scammer so they don’t scammed by them.
That was Michael Philips’ original motive.
not to mention the severity of leaking personal information-even addresses were being shared.
If doxxing is so much a concern, than perhaps you could just host an official registry board that no one can simply post at a whim. Instead they can just submit their complaints there and if proven to be valid with sufficient evidence, it gets featured with strictly only necessary identity information of avoidance - name, email, offending social media usernames. If it does not provide sufficient evidence or just looks to be a libel piece than it gets rejected.
You also say we should contact you all (the moderators) if a scam occurs, but to be honest, I am unsure it will go anywhere or that the moderators will even care besides to regurgitate warnings of scams and “be careful who you work with” at best. We’ll probably be wasting our time trying. In fact, others have already tried, not just here, but other game dev community spaces as well. These communities don’t truly care about scamming nor the severity and prominence it has, and how badly it affects game developers and companies, and their projects, and their livelihoods. I am unsure if they even understand either. In fact, it seems scamming has only further increased since the pandemic and with practically no repercussions, they reign with impunity, such as the two scammers (whom were both cousins) who scammed me in 2019. Now under different names, they continue to scam and exploit others again, and I have Unreal Slackers and their negligence and tolerance of scammers to thank for it, along with others like the Game Dev League, which is riddled with scammers and crooked game devs.
Even now, I am still criticized for why I choose to work alone in this industry rather than waste my time working with a team on MY OWN projects; this is one of such major (if not main) reasons why I will always be a solo dev (and I am sure the same likely applies to others in my situation or worse). It is also one of the reasons I don’t want to work freelance anymore and rather stick to an employment job. Ever since my two jobs I acquired last year, I was more than happy for once in over a decade. I don’t have to gamble with ugly freelance work anymore. The money I make to survive from those jobs are more than enough for me now.
If we are unable to protect ourselves from scammers, than there’s no point in trusting others with our projects, businesses, or our money anymore, and under certain severe circumstances, even the engine associated with the community.
Regardless at this point, I already lost faith in the Unreal Engine series, after working with the engines for 15 years (including my UT3 modding days from 2007), and am considering to move to Godot Engine and take my chances there, or try my hand at modifying id Tech 2 RTX Engine for my needs (and perhaps even replace GZDoom in the process if lucky). I have already began work on the latter this year.
The only thing remaining that keeps me around UE4/UE5 are the remaining projects that need to be finished of which relies on UE4 and UE5 respectively and are too far in development and too much progress made to simply switch to a different engine.
