Okay - just gonna take a wild stab here and suggest that neither you or Kaocraft were party to what was said in the interview and that neither of you have seen the original notes?
(you don't need to answer - I'll take as read - because if you had been you've have mentioned it already).
So maybe the interviewer said something like;
"Well that's kind of bullying isn't it - don't you think?"
Or maybe it was;
"So what was all that about then - blowing up all those defenceless ships?"
"Well from our point of view it wasn't bullying or anything - we're allowed to do that - PVP is allowed"
The simple fact is neither you nor Kaocraft know how that sentence about bullies came into being but you've both decided - based on your own bias or your interpretation of "meaning and context" that the interviewer called them bullies.
I have absolutely no idea what was said - but I'm not the one making assumptions about it.
I . . . don't get what this is supposed to prove. Yes, true, correct - we don't know what question the author asked to elicit the "from their perspective" statement that the author then PARAPHRASED AND REWROTE IN HIS OWN WORDS rather than quoting directly. If we're going strictly by direct quotes, here, not only did the author "not call them bullies," but the members of DG2 never actually made any statements of their own as to whether they are bullies or not. Which when all is said and done means that the only reason the topic of "bullies" is part of the conversation is because THE AUTHOR INTRODUCED IT.
You're 100% right: we don't know ANYTHING about what anyone said to anyone, all we're left with is the author putting words in the mouths of the DG2 community as a whole, followed by a quote from Harry Potter WHICH DOES NOT ADDRESS BULLYING, followed by a judgey statement by the author ("sad!") throwing shade on the whole affair. And we're just supposed to take it on good faith that the author didn't ask an idiotic question, get a correspondingly idiotic answer, and then not even quote the response but rather summarize his own interpretation of what he wants us to think it means. That's why people don't like Polygon. Are they being stupid? Or are they being stupid on purpose and therefore smart? I don't know, I just know that it's par for the course with these people.
And this is why earlier I mentioned the "when did you stop beating your wife?" rhetorical trick. I could interview you, ask you "when did you stop beating your wife?" And then write an article about you where I say "Mr. So-and-So stresses that, from his perspective, he is not a wife beater." OK great. But whyyyyyyyyyyyy are we having a conversation about wife beating with Mr. So-and-So in the first place? Why bring it up at all? It's the author's choice to do this, and there's only one reason to broach the topic: because he wants the readers to think of Mr. So-and-So as a wife beater, or at least in the context of wife beating.
Fox News does the same thing: "Sooooooommmme people are saying DG2 are bullies, but they insist that from their perspective they are not bullies. What do Yoooooouuuuuuuuu think?"
Let me summarize where we disagree: You seem to think that I am somehow psychically inferring the exact sentence that the author asked the DG2 community, and that I am asserting that he called them bullies in that private, behind-the-scenes conversation. That is not the basis of my claim. I am saying that it doesn't matter what he asked them, and it doesn't matter what they said. All that matters is what he wrote, and what he wrote is a series of sentences where the only person introducing the question of bullying at all, is the author.
For comparison, he never at any point wrote something along the lines of "Members of Distant Worlds 2 stress that, from their perspective, they aren't pathetic mewling babies with no grip on reality." If the author HAD written something like that, it would be rightly inferred that he was suggesting something less than flattering about the Distant Worlds 2 community. Are you seriously disagreeing with this?
Now, I don't CARE whether you think the author is right or not. I don't care whether you think DG2 are bullies or not. I don't care if you're offended or not. I don't really even care if you like the article or not. The only thing I take issue with is this incredibly dishonest rhetorical gamesmanship whereby you and others keep trying to claim that the author at Polygon has not made any kind of statement at all, when he clearly has.
... head's a little fuzzy today.. Saw a post in another thread and though it said ''So much time, so little potato'' but it said ''So much time, so little patience.'' 
