UPDATE: Game Development Society Disaffiliated from Arc
The chaos continues from last week's Extraordinary General Meeting, with GDS being disaffiliated from Arc due to administrative issues.
As of last Friday, it was confirmed that the UNSW Game Development Society is no longer an Arc-affiliated club.
After an Extraordinary General Meeting in which all recently elected 2025 executives were removed from appointment, with no re-election occurring, the club has since been removed from the Arc Membership Portal as a club that can be joined.
A statement released on Discord by the outgoing President revealed the disaffiliation, giving some additional context and reasoning behind the decision.
The major reason is that according to Arc, the incoming executive team at the time decided to close our bank account and attempt to create a new club in its place with another individual (you know who you are) that would constitutionally blacklist my name on it. Arc clearly rejected this and believed there was no end to the escalation.
It is unclear if there were further exact reasons for the disaffiliation beyond this reason.
It was also stated that any incoming executive who already had access to the club’s executive resources would have ‘write permissions’ removed.
They are free to run activities under this club in the future if they wish though given it’s in good faith for the members of the club.
As part of the statement, a personal message went out to those ‘against [him] and the club’.
You got you wanted (sic). You won. Now leave this club alone.
What does this mean?
Clubs are rarely disaffiliated from Arc, so information on the exact implications is sparse.
The main issue GDS will face is that they will no longer have access to any of the benefits of being affiliated with Arc, including fundamental resources that clubs use to run their society such as room bookings and grants.
It is also unclear what the consequences of an executive closing the club bank account without authority, and questions have been raised regarding where those funds have gone.
From a governance perspective, the club is in breach of its own constitution in not being affiliated with Arc (1.2). The club’s current constitution is archived on Source and the Internet Archive.
What's next for GDS?
While there is no indication of any possibility of reaffiliation, Noise speculates one way for the club to reaffiliate at this stage is to actually elect a new executive team. However, the closed bank account remains a potential complication.
Alternatively, the club could amend its constitution so it does not need to affiliate with Arc and exist as an independent club. However, this would still prevent the club from booking rooms and accessing the other resources that affiliation provides.
In a worst case scenario, dissolution of the club could occur through the procedures outlined in section 9 of its constitution. There are however potential complications considering the closed bank account and locating where those funds currently are so they can be redistributed.
As part of the statement released, the President made clarifications on how the club could continue to function while disaffiliated.
The club is NOT dead as we will still be hosting game dev workshops in the future providing you content and templates so you can learn how to create video games. This will be hosted online.
For game developers and interested students, I will still achieve my goal to help you as much as I can. I did not pursue to help students throughout 5 years to see it fall apart due to someone’s personal drama.
The disaffiliation of UNSW’s sole game-development focused society will be a disappointment for many, especially 2025 first years who may have hoped to get involved as the new year is around the corner. The lack of access to grants and room bookings in particular will be a huge hit for GDS. However, while things seem up in the air at the moment, the future is not necessarily all doom and gloom. While it remains clear when the next opportunity for GDS’s re-affiliation may be, maintaining GDS’s online community until then will be paramount in preserving the recent boost of engagement all UNSW clubs have seen since the return to campus post-COVID.
