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

[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.

 

[Mau95]

If they are breaking the Terms and Conditions they agreed to, I can see why they might.

 

[MCerberus]

Context: I've been following TWI since it was the RO 3.0 mod team. They're generally big into 'fine do whatever', loose touch with mods (they don't want you to charge for them since Ostfront). But there have been incidence where people would either hack or exploit to cause mass server crashes.

This is what people got banned for.
Someone being an asshat is generally up for the community to decide on, and there are generous hardworking people who make blacklist mods for servers.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

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.

DOTA 2's system is lamentably worthless. While the idea of a low priority queue is commendable, the amount of time spent in it is relatively low, and the amount of reports you get per week (I believe it's 3) isn't enough enough to detail all the assholes from a single match, let alone a week's worth of play. Thus a relatively high level of toxicity is allowed to flourish.

 

[MCerberus]

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.

DOTA 2's system is lamentably worthless. While the idea of a low priority queue is commendable, the amount of time spent in it is relatively low, and the amount of reports you get per week (I believe it's 3) isn't enough enough to detail all the assholes from a single match, let alone a week's worth of play. Thus a relatively high level of toxicity is allowed to flourish.

Also according to Riot bad player queues and low priority just lead to cyclical bad behavior. A hellish troll nightmare from which there is no escape.

 

[Signa]

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.

That's entirely hyperbolic. No one buys a game just to screw off for every game they ever play. For the few that do, there isn't enough warrant this new system to take care of the problem.

If you're concerned about running a business, there are far better ways to handle this. Are you absolutely certain that no one will abuse this system to ban innocent people? Are you certain that Tripwire won't abuse this system to encourage more sales? I do trust Tripwire to not be that stupid, but I'm still not certain. This is the type of thing that opens floodgates for bad policies and customer abuse. If trolls are that much of a problem, just kick and move on. There's no need to accept it and allow Tripwire this kind of power.

 

[wickedmonkey]

Yes.

If you're cheating/griefing/being abusive to other players etc. I don't see why developers can't revoke your access to their game. If it's in the EULA/Terms and Conditions and you hit "I accept", then you agreed to play by their rules.
If people are upset because they're now £40 out of pocket and not able to play their shiny new game any more then maybe next time they'll think twice before being a poisonous douche-bucket again.

I've just taken £40 away from you because I don't like your tone.

Of course, you have no right to complain. I mean, did you really expect your punishment for abusing social interaction to be handled socially, rather than by some unrelated authority stepping in? How naive.

What you've typed disgusts me, but I would never demand that it be removed, or more relevantly, that you be banned. Your punishment is that you have my ire, and anyone else's whom you have annoyed. That's how public forums and social interactions work.

Except what I've typed hasn't violated any rules outside of your delicate sensibilities. You not liking my tone doesn't break any rules of the forums. If I was outright insulting you and and posting swastikas or something then I would probably cop the banhammer and lose my account, which would be fair enough as my actions deserved it. There's nothing naive here, I've been gaming online since dial-up - if people are able to ruin other peoples games and get away with it then some people out there *will* do it until they are removed.

Developers won't be banning people for a little coarse language. And besides, what "social interaction abuse" took place in my post?

When someone is following you round your multiplayer games changing gravity or insta-killing your character constantly while hurling racial slurs at you, you're telling me you're going to deal with that socially? OK champ.

What do I care if I have your ire? Your ire sustains me. The same rules apply to cheaters and greifers - they love seeing people shriek and moan at them for not being nice, it's why a majority of them do it.

 

[WeepingAngels]

I don't game online so I am curious, how would anyone prove you did what they said you did? In other words, if I lie and report you for being a misogynistic pig and I get a few friends to do it too, would you have any defense or would you just be the victim of theft?

 

[AT God]

Yes, this has always been a thing, hacking/cheating in a game gets you blacklisted from that game's protected servers. VAC and Punkbuster have been doing this for years, people's actions made them lose access to aspects of the game. Killing Floor 2 is somewhat uniquely applying this rule to conversations as well, but they aren't deleting the player's access to the game, I honestly do not know of any games that have been inaccessible after being banned aside from account-focused games like MMORPGs, if your account is banned you cannot play at all since those games work entirely online.

Killing Floor 1 has anti-cheat protection as well, and if you are caught hacking on a protected server you will be unable to play on any other protected servers, which basically means all online servers are off limits. You can still load the game, play offline, and play on unprotected servers, you do not lose access to the game. As far as I know, Killing Floor 2 is following this same idea, except you can be banned for non-hacking behaviors as well. I agree that there could be abuse with these language rules but there can (and is) abuse with banning people from anti-hacking measures as well.

If games start completely locking off access based on your actions, either language or hacking, then I feel there might be some cause for alarm. However that isn't the issue at the moment.

To that scenario, if it arises, I honestly wouldn't mind either way, I don't hack and I don't act like a perpetual asshole so I have nothing to be concerned about.

To be honest, Killing Floor 1 had a fair bit of people who would act like idiots and sabotage games so having intense regulation would probably help a lot with KF2, assuming it has similar problems.

Edit: I should probably mention, if the game's Terms and Agreements says you can be banned from online servers for certain behavior then there is no issue at all, no one is forced to buy the game and you agree to their terms when you bought the game. The only problem would be if a game modified their terms after people bought it, that could be problematic but if you bought the game, you accepted the current terms and you should have to abide by them.

 

[Mikeybb]

Personally I like and dislike the idea.

I'm in the same position.

A fairer way would be to place a 'troll/griefer' tag on an account and restrict said players to well marked and recognized 'bad behaviour' servers while forbidding their access to standard servers.

Any matchmaking would ensure said player is placed with others who share their playstyle and behavioural foibles, which I view as the most deserved punishment imaginable.
Ensuring any server or host has to flag their server as a rule free zone would mean players could filter such servers from lists or be entirely aware (by pop up warning) of the monsters they're about to share game time with should they choose to join such a server.

Now, the only flaw I can see with this version is that you can't sell another copy of the game to a person who has been tagged this way, whereas you can sell another to a griefer or a troll.
I don't think that the killing floor devs are that cynical as to be considering the revenue stream from repurchasing players.
They quite probably genuinely think this will work.
However, I can't discount it as exposure to some companies attempts to monetize every molecule attached to a game, I've become a little cynical myself.
Probably too cynical.

Both ideas, my wishful thinking and the devs plan, have one floor in that it opens a floodgate of customer service requests as people protest their banning either legitimately or in some attempt to weasel out of their actions.
It also opens the doors to potential litigation if it transpires such an eula doesn't match up with some of the local legislation regarding online purchases.
For example, germany and their interaction with the good old Origin eula from a few years ago.
Certain countries have a very aggressive, pro consumer attitude towards such agreements.

It's nice to see devs considering ways to combat such things, but I still think they're going too far in rescinding ownership of a title.
A penalty box solution is softer, yes, but would achieve a number of the goals they have in mind, without risking the cries for refund that would ensue from removing ownership.

 

[shintakie10]

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.

That's entirely hyperbolic. No one buys a game just to screw off for every game they ever play. For the few that do, there isn't enough warrant this new system to take care of the problem.

If you're concerned about running a business, there are far better ways to handle this. Are you absolutely certain that no one will abuse this system to ban innocent people? Are you certain that Tripwire won't abuse this system to encourage more sales? I do trust Tripwire to not be that stupid, but I'm still not certain. This is the type of thing that opens floodgates for bad policies and customer abuse. If trolls are that much of a problem, just kick and move on. There's no need to accept it and allow Tripwire this kind of power.

No one may buy a game just to be a giant asshat to people (though I don't doubt people create new accounts in F2P games to do so). However there are a lot of people who, by the very nature of existing, cause grief for other players by being giant douches. You don't have to go in with the intent to be a megadouche to end up being a megadouche.

The people like you who immediately jump to slippery slopes of a terrible wasteland of corporate overlords banning pure innocent little Ted is frankly ridiculous. This is basically the same system they've always had. Its the same system Blizzard has had for the last decade with WoW (and all of their current games as well). Blizzard does wonderfully with their system and if, by some freak accident, you really do get banned when you didn't deserve it the problem gets fixed.

Aside from that. Seriously? We can't give Tripwire the right to police their game on their servers that uses their content? What kind of ridiculous argument is that? If they abuse the fuck out of this then they'll rightfully eat shit for it. Until then I'm all for any system that is perfectly willin to start kickin megadouches right in the ass and out the door. Too many people are willin to bend over backwards so asshats that joke about rape and call people niggers and jews constantly don't get their poor feelings offended by actually suffering consequences for their douchiness.

Its about time that people started stepping up and showing these people the door.

 

[darthxaos]

Ban players from their own official servers? Sure.

Tell server admins what they can and can't allow on their own servers? Hell no.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

Well, it's not just about killing floor 2 now, but for all of steam (as in, you can be banned from any game on steam, not that a KF2 ban will apply to other games or your entire steam account) http://steamcommunity.com/actions/WhatIsGameBan

What rubs me the wrong way about this, much like with the paid mod debacle, is that there is no fine print explaining the specifics and how it all works legally. Will it be a multiplayer only ban for official servers? Will there be an appeal system? Will be be refunded if they refuse to agree to these new terms?

IMO, this is fine if it's just banning people from playing online on official servers and/or putting a mark of shame on them. Anything more then that is unreasonable.

 

[Signa]

No one may buy a game just to be a giant asshat to people (though I don't doubt people create new accounts in F2P games to do so). However there are a lot of people who, by the very nature of existing, cause grief for other players by being giant douches. You don't have to go in with the intent to be a megadouche to end up being a megadouche.

I don't disagree about F2P games, but that's a different matter all together.

Let's say you aren't going into a game intending to be a megadouche. How do you get to be a megadouche then? By either accident or aggravation. Neither case should be punishable by making you lose your game. Taking a time out to cool off is a far better way to handle that. The punishment needs to be proportional. There's nothing that a single person can do in an online game that makes losing their game a proportional reaction.

The people like you who immediately jump to slippery slopes of a terrible wasteland of corporate overlords banning pure innocent little Ted is frankly ridiculous. This is basically the same system they've always had. Its the same system Blizzard has had for the last decade with WoW (and all of their current games as well). Blizzard does wonderfully with their system and if, by some freak accident, you really do get banned when you didn't deserve it the problem gets fixed.

And people like you that willingly roll over when there is something that is offering to take away freedoms because they are inconvenient (I do agree with the sentiments though. Trolls do suck) piss me the fuck off. There is nearly zero benefit to letting this slide, while you stand to lose a lot of money if it goes sour. Why take the risk? I mean seriously, I've said it like 3 times in this thread, what is wrong with a vote-kick system that works in other games? How come isn't that good enough anymore?

Blizzard is making hundreds of millions from WoW each month (or was), and it's not a fair comparison. Few, if any other companies could hope to maintain that level of just service. Also, it's their servers whenever you play. Not the case every time in Killing Floor. Also, an MMO can host hundreds of people at once. KF1 only let, what, 6(?) people play at once. You're not going to be ruining that many days if you're trolling 5 other people at once.

Aside from that. Seriously? We can't give Tripwire the right to police their game on their servers that uses their content? What kind of ridiculous argument is that? If they abuse the fuck out of this then they'll rightfully eat shit for it. Until then I'm all for any system that is perfectly willin to start kickin megadouches right in the ass and out the door. Too many people are willin to bend over backwards so asshats that joke about rape and call people niggers and jews constantly don't get their poor feelings offended by actually suffering consequences for their douchiness.

Its about time that people started stepping up and showing these people the door.

The post below you explains why this is a problem. I don't care what they enforce on their own servers, but it's applying to more than that apparently. I'm not very interested in KF2 because KF1 didn't do much for me. I'm worried about it becoming a standard practice in other games. I'm worried about vague definitions of "harassment" like at the Calgary Expo. I'm worried about big-picture stuff, because it's these little battles that build that scene.

Also, assuming that a vote-kick really, REALLY isn't possible, people dropping racial slurs can be muted, either in game or through the computer's audio. They can also be ignored. Does anyone remember how to do that anymore? Ignore offensive things?

 

[Signa]

Well, it's not just about killing floor 2 now, but for all of steam: http://steamcommunity.com/actions/WhatIsGameBan

What rubs me the wrong way about this, much like with the paid mod debacle, is that there is no fine print explaining the specifics and how it all works legally? Will it be multiplayer only on official servers? Will there be an appeal system? Will be be refunded if they refuse to agree to these new terms?

IMO, this is fine if it's just banning people from playing online on official servers and/or putting a mark of shame on them. Anything more then that is unreasonable.

Oh dude. What. The. Fuck. Am I reading that right? A dev can ban your whole Steam account?!

And this thread is calling me crazy and ill-founded.

Edit: Ok, I read it about 15 times now, and I'm probably just paranoid. I think it's saying that a specific game can be banned from a Steam account, which is ultimately what we are discussing here.

Game developers inform Valve when a disruptive player has been detected in their game, and Valve applies the game ban to the account.

I was getting hung up on the bolded part.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

Well, it's not just about killing floor 2 now, but for all of steam: http://steamcommunity.com/actions/WhatIsGameBan

What rubs me the wrong way about this, much like with the paid mod debacle, is that there is no fine print explaining the specifics and how it all works legally? Will it be multiplayer only on official servers? Will there be an appeal system? Will be be refunded if they refuse to agree to these new terms?

IMO, this is fine if it's just banning people from playing online on official servers and/or putting a mark of shame on them. Anything more then that is unreasonable.

Oh dude. What. The. Fuck. Am I reading that right? A dev can ban your whole Steam account?!

And this thread is calling me crazy and ill-founded.

Edit: Ok, I read it about 15 times now, and I'm probably just paranoid. I think it's saying that a specific game can be banned from a Steam account, which is ultimately what we are discussing here.

Game developers inform Valve when a disruptive player has been detected in their game, and Valve applies the game ban to the account.

I was getting hung up on the bolded part.

Sorry, I may have worded my post poorly, I didn't mean to imply it applied to your entire steam account (at least I don't think it does, the wording the page gives isn't exactly specific)

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

I don't think anybody here is not in favor of banning people who are being disruptive to other people playing thr game as well inside the game. People who oppose this oppose it because it applies to offline play and private servers as well, , in which case a better comparison is if you feel if a person who is sitting in their own home should have the movie taken away from them just because they said something disruptive while they were out taking their dog for a walk.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

The developers have control over their game. They set the rules. Break the rules at your own peril. If people want to forget (or don't care) that they're making the lives of others miserable, then they should own up to the repercussions.

Of course it'd help to have their games set aside so only the people misbehaving only play with their ilk, but not every game developer has the resources to set it up.

The problem is, like any ratings system, or just about any system that allows a community to police itself are, essentially the assholes that are going to abuse it.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

The developers have control over their game. They set the rules. Break the rules at your own peril. If people want to forget (or don't care) that they're making the lives of others miserable, then they should own up to the repercussions.

Of course it'd help to have their games set aside so only the people misbehaving only play with their ilk, but not every game developer has the resources to set it up.

The problem is, like any ratings system, or just about any system that allows a community to police itself are, essentially the assholes that are going to abuse it.

Do you think disruptive players should be banned from playing the game alone, though?