The UTC time provided is inaccurate; the event will be kicking off at 19:00 UTC, which translates to 2 PM EST. I want to express my sincere gratitude to this amazing community for all the support!

I had a very uncomfortable experience on this platform, mainly due to the behavior of the admin angietechcafe. I was banned for messages that did not violate any stated rules, without clear explanation or any willingness to discuss the situation.

Additionally, several challenges were broken and, despite being reported, they were not fixed or properly acknowledged. What made the situation worse was the way I was addressed by angietechcafe: the communication felt dismissive and disrespectful, which is disappointing coming from someone in an administrative role.

As a player, this made me feel unfairly treated and discouraged from participating further. A basic level of professionalism and respect from administration is essential, and unfortunately, this was missing here.

I'm not often one to publicly comment or criticize, but this is definitely a special occasion in which I think it is needed.

My team's experiences with support and challenges echo those of Leslato (and likely many other competitors). Support was overly combative and refused to investigate or even acknowledge the possibility of glaring issues within the challenges, of which there were quite a few. The organizer, Angie Tech Cafe, was also just as combative, actively banning people who attempted to discuss their competition experience and showing blatant disrespect towards nearly everyone that entered the chat.

One of our team members was banned for simply sharing a meme regarding an experience he had with the support team. I posted a formal, constructive message about my experience which was immediately deleted and I was directed to send it into the survey form. From my brief time in the Discord, many other people seemed to have a similar experience - they would post something critical of the competition and immediately get banned. A lot of CTF servers are typically filled with banter/memes and to see such an overly strict application of rules and stifling of criticism is disheartening.

As someone who has been involved in both competing in as well as organizing CTFs over the past year, this is behavior that I genuinely do not think I have witnessed from any other CTF I've competed in. The combination of faulty challenges, organizers that refuse to accept accountability, and constant mellowing of competitor complaints, at least in my opinion, create for the "perfect storm" of a disastrous competition.

To be constructive: I believe there is a lot of work that needs to be put into both providing an environment that competitors feel welcome in (i.e. no overly strict moderation, provide competitors an outlet to discuss their experience), as well as ensuring challenges are tested thoroughly and that flags/solves are validated before the CTF starts (i.e. try to run through the challenge as if you were an ordinary CTF player - if you can do a blind playtest, that's even better - and see if everything goes well through the solve process including submitting in CTFd.)

Originally, I was looking forward to a nice, cozy winter-themed CTF. However, not long after the CTF started did problems start to appear.

First of all, a few challenges were broken/not working. That's fine, a quick ticket should fix that, right? Nope. Issues were not fixed nor properly acknowledged. Oh well, that's too bad. Surely it can't get worse... right?

The owner of the Discord server and the main administrator of the CTF, angietechcafe, was quite the person to deal with. You can read what Leslato and price8349 said. People were being silenced or banned simply for raising concerns or offering constructive criticism.

At the exact same time, the behavior coming from angietechcafe was unbelievable. They were always far more aggressive and disrespectful than anything the players were punished for. If the stated rules regarding respect and conduct were actually enforced without exception, angietechcafe themselves would be banned.

The double standard is what made the whole situation especially frustrating. Rules are meant to keep everything calm, mature, and maintain a nice community. But here? They were used as a one way shield to suppress the powerless for no absolute reason. It's simply disgusting. This whole situation reminded me exactly of 1984.

I hope this CTF gets removed from CTFTime for the misconduct that has happened. It is unacceptable and this CTF does not deserve to be on the platform.

awful orgs, awful challs, this should give negative points

i can make better challenges in my sleep. no clear format of flag. for example there was this flag - atcctf_356ONOQT1Vhv6RqvvtwiE}tUvt@hq4vuettFLrhtMD0'$h1Ddhlvptl:VptlomuA :)

Half the challenges didn’t work, support refused to listen, and the admin banned people for giving feedback. Absolute disaster of a CTF.

Oh ATC. Where do i even begin.

On the CTF side, there were broken challenges, challenges with no clear flag format, and unsolvable challenges. Not to mention guessy asl. No pwn, no interesting challenges, and overall just a really terrible ctf. It was so beginner that I feel this doesn’t even deserve the privilege to be on the amazing website CTFtime. It’s clear the authors have never played a real CTF before.

On the discord side was what made everyone go insane. Had the CTF organizer grown any braincells, they would be able to take a little criticism and fix their broken ctf. I’m sure 90% of the participants are better than the organizers. You’d think the ctf organizers realized it isn’t the players fault that all the challenges are broken when there’s 20 tickets open talking about the exact same issues.

Furthermore, the CTF organizer, angie tech cafe, instantly started banning everyone’s chat messages. Even those looking for guidance on the CTF or even mentioned anything remotely negative would be instantly banned. This is not how you manage a CTF. The “rules” were an absolute joke. Actually, the entire CTF was a joke.

overall, this ctf will probably receive more points than these organizers’ combined iq level.

This CTF is pushing me further into dead internet theory territory
"Challenges" are either too easy (like 1 google search away) or too broken

actual dogshit ctf holyyyyyyy

vibecoded challs and stupid organizers - it was the worst ctf i've ever played :3

i feel like i deserve to lose points just for taking participation in this