Oh I forgot to mention that when it's not a timeout, when it's a proper disconnect, everything works fine and gets EOF and exits properly, the thread dies properly, etc. Basically it's just

while(1)
{
while (my $connection = $main->accept) {
threads->create(\&initplayer,$connection);
 
}
[download]

then

sub initplayer {
  my $hand = shift;
  $hand->blocking(0);
  print "INITPLAYER CALLED!\n";
  threads->detach;
  doplayer($hand,$hand,$hand);
  remove_player($hand);
  print "THREAD DESTROYED!\n";
  $hand->close();
  }
[download]

and doplayer contains the code I posted before. I added a print line inside the while loop and it continues to print after the timeout, so it's not a blocking issue.