Should people lose access to a game because of how they act?

[Signa]

All I have to say is it wasn't cool when EA did it, and I don't think Tripwire should get a pass on this choice.

Ea is a bit different. They can band you from multiple games because of your behaviour outside of a game.

Oh, I know it's not the same, but it still isn't cool either way. Is it really hard to implement a vote-kick system like what Left 4 Dead has to get rid of assholes? At least if you're getting kicked, you aren't losing access to your game. You are also suffering instant and direct responses to your bad behavior. Also, no one can abuse the system to call out someone falsely to the point where they lose their game. At worst, you won't be able to play with other assholes, which isn't a loss.

The whole convenience of digital distribution is starting to feel quite burdensome when losing access to your possessions is becoming an option. It's bad enough I don't get a Michael Jackson zombie in Plants Vs Zombies, but if a whole game is rendered unplayable? Fuck that shit.

 

[sageoftruth]

This is an interesting one. I'd say, either do what Sniper Team 4 mentioned and give them a temporary time out, or if the community is large enough, restrict them to matchups with others who have the same records of bad behavior.

However, they should eventually have a shot at redemtion. As L. Declis said, not everyone who gets shafted actually did something to deserve it, so if their behavior in future games is spotless, they should be able to rejoin the entire community.

 

[Shaels]

To lose total access to a game? That seems harsh, considering the person you are banning paid money to play your game, as toxic as they may be. I like the idea (which I believe Valve implemented with Dota 2) of putting toxic players in their own bracket. If you get reported enough for poor sportsmanship/greifing, you're only put in games with other toxic players. Then they can enjoy the company of their own kind, continue to have access to all of the game's features, and are kept away from the more civilized playerbase.

 

[Leg End]

We also will not tolerate anyone using the game, or any servers or forums provided for the game, to be continually or repeatedly abusive to other players. This includes, but is not limited to, griefing, racist bigotry, sexism or any other forms of cyber bullying.

Alright, sounds like the terms of most online servers for games and such with a particular hard-on against such. Fine by me. I'll just host my ow-

We will also not tolerate anyone hosting servers for the game where such behaviours are continually or repeatedly allowed to take place.

No.

If we find you are a Cheater or Abusive, we will revoke your CD key and ban you from the KF2 servers and tell your mom! Your license will automatically terminate, without notice, and you will have no right to play KF2 or any KF2 Mods against other players or make any other use of KF2. End of story.

Eat shit, Tripwire. If you want to restrict what happens on your servers, you can totally do that with no argument from me. If I want to host a server for a private group of friends or anyone not wanting to be subject to your server rules, that is not any of your damn business. It is one thing as well to ban someone from your online servers, but a whole new territory of revoking any and all access to any privately hosted multiplayer or single player portion of the game and you get to keep their money on top of it all.

Was once interested in the game, not anymore. Also RTUSA can fuck off as well.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Well, the movie theater example would only apply to an online game. You could lose access to the service for bad behavior but revoking the cd key of a game that has a single player mode seems like theft to me.

Oh and EULA's..LOL They could put anything in there including that you have to give them your first born child, doesn't make it legally enforceable.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

I'm assuming anyone here who opposes this has never played a match or ten of either Killing Floor or Red Orchestra 2. The communities for those games, while friendly overall, have a boatload of noodleheads (many of them long-term TripWire customers) who do nothing but verbally abuse other players when they are online. That includes some of the mods that run the servers.

Anybody who shouts Nazi slogans and rambles on about Jewish conspiracies while everyone else is trying to enjoy their game deserves a permanent ban. There's no excuse for that kind of childish behavior.

 

[Supernova1138]

I can't say I'm in favour of completely denying access to a game as a method to deter trolling, it is simply ripe for abuse from several angles. We can have trolls getting together and filing false reports against somebody they don't like to get them permabanned. We could have unscrupulous devs banning people who simply criticize aspects of the game, or banning people simply because the devs don't like the user's politics.

If a game developer wants to take this route, then they are going to have to write a Code of Conduct for the game that explicitly spells out what constitutes bad behaviour, and it can't be a set of vaguely worded open ended rules where the developer can ban you for any reason they like. Harassment needs to be firmly defined, and it cannot be defined simply as whatever the complainant feels is harassment. The dev would have to actually investigate reports, rather than simply ban somebody who received X number of complaints, and there would have to be a system in place to appeal permabans.

I do not trust any developer or publisher to be able to implement such a system properly, largely because they would probably be too tight-fisted to spend extra money on staffing to investigate complaints and handle appeals, not when it's easier to just ban somebody who gets X number of complaints (whether they are valid or not) and point to the EULA when they customer demands his money back. That's assuming the dev isn't corrupt in the first place and isn't using such a system as a means to silence criticism.

I'd have to agree that other systems like putting the trolls and cheaters into their own self contained matchmaking bracket and/or servers is a better solution to dealing with the troll and cheater problems. If you find yourself wrongfully thrown into that bracket, you can at least still try to play, though you might not have the most pleasant time.

 

[Signa]

Yes, for the same reason I think an asshole standing up and shouting in a movie theater during the movie should be removed.

It's not about taking something away from that person so much as it is preventing that person from taking away from everyone else. The rest of the people there also paid for the experience and they're ruining it for everyone.

As long as this is part of the user agreement then absolutely. But even if not, social contract isn't unreasonable to follow.

I think it's very important to point out that in the movie theater analogy, customers in the theater all paid for that session of movie viewing, and nothing else. They don't have the option to come back later and enjoy the movie without the douche in the room, nor can they go see a different movie later. In order for the situations to be similar, the theater would have to offer a permanent service where customers can come and go as they please to each movie in the theater. Suddenly, ruining one movie for a lot of people isn't so bad since they can just go see a different one or view it again when the douche isn't around.

The analogy still falls apart when you consider things like people's time in getting to and attending the theater. I have no problem saying that a douche in the real world should be removed from a theater, but in an online world, the affected customers have options to get away from the douche without compromising their experience significantly. Options that doesn't involve the douche losing money or rights.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

From a purely business perspective, the ideal solution is to slide them into "punishment queue" with all the other reprobates so they can enjoy one another's company and leave the general population the fuck alone.

From a personal perspective, I could give less of a shit if someone's loathsome behavior loses them $50 or whatever their investment in the product was. Frankly, it's a valuable life lesson, and probably the least of consequences they can anticipate from life if they can't control their need to be a shitpiece in mixed company.

Some people have expressed alarm about what such "loathsome behavior" might constitute, but generally that alarm takes the form of slippery slope gong banging about draconian measures being applied to upstanding customers, a scenario I find highly unlikely. If anything, companies will likely trend towards being too lenient on assholes for fear of losing the business. I play a lot of multiplayer games, and in all honesty there are a LOT of people out there who fully deserve to have their toys taken away.

 

[2HF]

Yes, for the same reason I think an asshole standing up and shouting in a movie theater during the movie should be removed.

It's not about taking something away from that person so much as it is preventing that person from taking away from everyone else. The rest of the people there also paid for the experience and they're ruining it for everyone.

As long as this is part of the user agreement then absolutely. But even if not, social contract isn't unreasonable to follow.

I think it's very important to point out that in the movie theater analogy, customers in the theater all paid for that session of movie viewing, and nothing else. They don't have the option to come back later and enjoy the movie without the douche in the room, nor can they go see a different movie later. In order for the situations to be similar, the theater would have to offer a permanent service where customers can come and go as they please to each movie in the theater. Suddenly, ruining one movie for a lot of people isn't so bad since they can just go see a different one or view it again when the douche isn't around.

The analogy still falls apart when you consider things like people's time in getting to and attending the theater. I have no problem saying that a douche in the real world should be removed from a theater, but in an online world, the affected customers have options to get away from the douche without compromising their experience significantly. Options that doesn't involve the douche losing money or rights.

An anology doesn't have to be perfect. If it were exactly the same then there wouldn't be any need for it, you'd just cite the problem as the problem without needing a comparison. You're finding little details that don't fit to distract from the overall point. If you wreck shit for others then you should be removed. Don't be an asshole and you've got nothing to worry about.

 

[Zakarath]

Dota 2 has a decent system where you get stuck in a separate 'low-priority' matchmaking for a while, so if you rack up too many reports or abandons, you have to spend some time stuck in a hellish land of trolls and leavers. Not to say there aren't some flaws (getting reported by a band of trolls, getting punished if you suffer an internet/power outage) but it seems better than most alternatives.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Idiots need to learn. All other smart systems honestly aren't smart enough to outwit a straight up ban, after years of MMO gaming I know that much.

Obviously the rules should be reasonable (not like Warhammer Online where you got a mod slapping your ass like a frakking schoolteacher if you uttered a single curse in a public channel), so that the non-idiots know where the limits are.

 

[Signa]

Yes, for the same reason I think an asshole standing up and shouting in a movie theater during the movie should be removed.

It's not about taking something away from that person so much as it is preventing that person from taking away from everyone else. The rest of the people there also paid for the experience and they're ruining it for everyone.

As long as this is part of the user agreement then absolutely. But even if not, social contract isn't unreasonable to follow.

I think it's very important to point out that in the movie theater analogy, customers in the theater all paid for that session of movie viewing, and nothing else. They don't have the option to come back later and enjoy the movie without the douche in the room, nor can they go see a different movie later. In order for the situations to be similar, the theater would have to offer a permanent service where customers can come and go as they please to each movie in the theater. Suddenly, ruining one movie for a lot of people isn't so bad since they can just go see a different one or view it again when the douche isn't around.

The analogy still falls apart when you consider things like people's time in getting to and attending the theater. I have no problem saying that a douche in the real world should be removed from a theater, but in an online world, the affected customers have options to get away from the douche without compromising their experience significantly. Options that doesn't involve the douche losing money or rights.

An anology doesn't have to be perfect. If it were exactly the same then there wouldn't be any need for it, you'd just cite the problem as the problem without needing a comparison. You're finding little details that don't fit to distract from the overall point. If you wreck shit for others then you should be removed. Don't be an asshole and you've got nothing to worry about.

No, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it should still frame the problem in a correct perspective. I agree with the removal of disruptive people in a theater, I don't agree with the removal of their licensed property. There is enough different to change the context and my position on the matter.

 

[Vivi22]

I don't think it's right they lose access to their game.

The first problem is thinking of it as "their" game. The law would disagree with you and everyone else on that. I don't think it's right, but fact is you don't buy a copy of a game, you pay for a license to play it. A license the dev/publisher can pretty much revoke whenever they want for any reason at all.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

No, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it should still frame the problem in a correct perspective. I agree with the removal of disruptive people in a theater, I don't agree with the removal of their licensed property. There is enough different to change the context and my position on the matter.

A multiplayer game is not like buying a book or a CD or something, though. It's a space you share with other people. Your interaction with those people is not something you can "own". If you keep acting like an ass and disrupting their experience, at what point does their right to enjoy their "licensed property" eclipse yours?

 

[Bad Jim]

Essentially, Tripwire is judge, jury and executioner. Fine, but "abuse" isn't totally clear until we see what brings out the ban hammer. That could be a racist griefer or it could be use of the word "rape" as a verb for all we know.

It's not something that can be clearly defined, because as soon as you define it, there are will be assholes ruining peoples' games with something you didn't think of or didn't think was serious enough. The only sensible answer to "what can get me banned?" is "basically anything".

Hopefully they will exercise reasonable restraint and have actual employees looking at replays before banning.

BTW is that "and tell your mom" line actually in the agreement or did someone photoshop that in?

 

[Mutant1988]

I don't think it's right they lose access to their game.

The first problem is thinking of it as "their" game. The law would disagree with you and everyone else on that. I don't think it's right, but fact is you don't buy a copy of a game, you pay for a license to play it. A license the dev/publisher can pretty much revoke whenever they want for any reason at all.

Except you do buy a copy, not a license to use. If a company tried to revoke your ownership of that one copy for a dubious reason, they would be demolished in court.

The loophole is them tying the product to a service, which they are entitled to discontinue, because they own the service. If the result of that is you losing access to your copy then tough, shouldn't have agreed to the terms of the service.

They can restrict your access to the service for violating the terms for using it. And this is where it gets interesting in terms of how much power we as consumers are willing to give companies in deciding what rights we have to the products we paid for, based on us violating the terms of service of a service that might not in fact be integral to the use of the product itself.

I think it's fair to ban someone from using a service they abuse (And that includes abusing other users), but not to revoke access to products paid for and a game is a product, regardless of what companies would like you to believe.

We should be very vary of giving companies the power to take products that have been paid for away from their customers and be vary of signing up to services that permit companies to discontinue our ability to use those products.

This is why I personally refuse to buy any EA products. Their insistence on exclusively running their own multiplayer servers is effectively killing games, rendering large parts of them permanently inoperable once the servers are discontinued.

It is very bad for the preservation of the medium as well as for the right of customers to use the products they have paid for as they want.

Those that claim that the first sale doctrine doesn't or shouldn't apply to digital sales are nothing but corporate shills.

 

[Signa]

No, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it should still frame the problem in a correct perspective. I agree with the removal of disruptive people in a theater, I don't agree with the removal of their licensed property. There is enough different to change the context and my position on the matter.

A multiplayer game is not like buying a book or a CD or something, though. It's a space you share with other people. Your interaction with those people is not something you can "own". If you keep acting like an ass and disrupting their experience, at what point does their right to enjoy their "licensed property" eclipse yours?

They are always equal as long as they were both purchased legally. If it is within their power to keep others from having fun, then we should be equipped with proper weapons to make sure they don't get to have fun either. That doesn't mean removing their property, that means kicking them from the game they are ruining.

Online games do not exist as a singular experience that can be permanently damaged by a bad participant. Why is permanently damaging their experience a fair response?

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Cheating? Yes. But only if you can actually prove and not based on suspicion. And only from the companies server. Not banning the whole game on steam and from private server. Also the games must have a privet server option. If not, banning should absolutely never happen because fuck you devs, s/he paid for the game.
Everything else? No, just now. Add a freaking mute button, add a kick feature where people can vote to kick someone out and that's it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

They are always equal as long as they were both purchased legally. If it is within their power to keep others from having fun, then we should be equipped with proper weapons to make sure they don't get to have fun either. That doesn't mean removing their property, that means kicking them from the game they are ruining.

Online games do not exist as a singular experience that can be permanently damaged by a bad participant. Why is permanently damaging their experience a fair response?

Persistent instances of bad behavior are cumulative. Over hundreds of games, how many hundreds of customers are put off/disrupted by one idiot? If you're running a business, why do you allow for that? Because the idiot might get salty and take his business elsewhere? Because you corked his "good time"?

Whatever measures a company feels they want to take against constantly disruptive players are fair game, IMO. Whether it's banishing them to a low priority gulag or just booting them off the product entirely.