If you didn’t catch the official announcement, Sega this week launched an official Sonic the Hedgehog Discord server.

Since then, there have been multiple stories shared online about the server being “on fire” and Sega has now issued a response. It comes via Sega Japan’s Aaron Webber, who recently announced his return.

In a series of messages on social media, he acknowledged it was “pretty wild” to begin with, but naturally, due to “over 30,000 people” joining the server at once, there were some bad actors and they were swiftly removed and banned.

Here’s the message in full, which notes towards the end how the server is filled with many “positive and supportive fans”.

Hello! After years away, I return today to talk about the new Sonic Discord. You might read a headline that says it’s on fire and everything is chaos, but as anyone in the server the last ten hours can tell you, that’s very much not the case.

The very start *was* pretty wild, and this is normal when over 30,000 people arrive and all excitedly want to talk. The mods have been doing a heroic job keeping the server clean during that window, and since. Big props to all of them.

You may see cherry-picked screens of bad actors trying to cause havoc, but these were all swiftly removed and banned. One of the key ways the server is kept clean so quickly is through the automatic filters, which are very strict right now. (Probably too strict!)

As a result, we’ve noticed a number of users getting incorrectly banned. We’ve already started unbanning some of those affected and will be fine-tuning this in the days to come. Thank you for being patient as we get that sorted.

Finally, though the headline: “Sonic Discord has very busy start and then fairly wholesome rest of the day” is nowhere near as exciting, I do want to take a moment to say thank you to the positive and supportive fans who we’ve been interacting with. You all are great!

As ever, still lots to improve, which the team is working on. For new users who can’t type yet due to the spam restrictions, thank you for being patient – as things calm down, we’ll gradually be opening the server so you can send messages too!

Despite this, not everyone is convinced the server can work. Some users have also shared their stories about being banned, but as noted by Webber, there are automatic filters in place and some might still be “too strict”. Fortunately, there are plans to review bans when things calm down.