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

[Vigormortis]

Tripwire should just do what Respawn did with Titanfall.

Get caught hackings/scamming/cheating/griefing? Then you lose access to the normal, official servers and are instead only granted access to the special "hacker servers".

It's a poetic solution. Be a dick and your only option to continue playing is to play with other cheaters.

 

[Elijin]

This is in the EULA/ToS of every tripwire game, it just went mostly unnoticed. And Tripwire have gone on record saying that have revoked exactly 2 accounts with this clause. They treat it seriously, and it has to be pushed pretty damn far to trigger this penalty from the studio.

 

[ffronw]

Backing up one second, since not one person in this thread has explained it to me, why is a vote-kick option not enough? Why does it have to be the ownership of the game that is threatened instead?

Super late to answer this one, but people don't like vote-kicks because vote kicks don't work. In fact, they're bad for everyone involved.

If you have someone breaking the rules and you vote-kick them, it does nothing but postpone their bad behavior, or transfer it to another server.

"But wait," you say, "what if we make vote-kicks cumulative, and if you get too many, you get a permaban?" OK, this might work, but you're forgetting the other bad thing about the internet. People will abuse the system. "Hey, there's that guy who kept killing me in the last game. Let's vote-kick him." "Hey, Signa is a hacker! Kick him!" "Hey, my friend wants to join the server and that Signa guy isn't anyone we know., Let's vote-kick him."

Of course, the reverse could also hold true. If the douche jumps on a server with a bunch of his friends, he could simply have them vote against kicking him, and maintain his bad behavior with no consequences.

All of this is to say that if we're going to have a system for punishing people, I don't think it should be based on community votes. Let players report bad behavior, and then have someone who checks the logs to see what really happened.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I think that if they are going to ban you, then you should be refunded the money you paid for it.

Oh, God no... That's free trolling.

If CS:GO is anything to go by. Making the game accessible (in sales) for next to nothing only encourages those who like to ruin other peoples fun to do exactly that. Since VAC banning works on such a lengthy delay, people just stockpile it and get their moneys worth of griefing. If you make it free to do so...

I do like the idea of banning from official servers if the complaint count racks up too high though.

 

[And Man]

I really don't understand how this is a discussion, and I have to assume that the people against banning trolls and griefers have never played an online game with trolls and griefers. It is infinitely more likely that trolls and griefers will abuse some abstract/all-encompassing policy, workaround, etc. than the game devs. After all, why the hell would a game dev want to prevent people from playing their game, if not as a last measure against people that are ruining the game for everyone else?

 

[Loonyyy]

That's really not. Yes the person is at their home (Or a gaming lounge). But they're participating in your game. It's multiplayer, it ain't new. They're in your game, you're in their's, and you can communicate through text and voice, and some assholes insist on using that to fuck with everyone else's game. It is exactly analogous to someone deciding to start shouting whatever in a movie theatre.

I'm sorry, my post there wasn't clear. I mean that comparison in the context of being banned from offline play or private servers. In those situations, it is like a company taking away a movie you are watching in your own home because you are being disruptive there. I've updated that post to be more clear.

Sure, but their disruption is the same. To the extent that some people like spamming music or just yelling into the mic.

Yes, it does mean that they don't get to use the singleplayer, which I guess is sort of analogous, but that's a privilige that comes with not messing with their game. If you just wanted the singleplayer, you'd never run into this problem. If you decided to be an asshole, and then fell back on singleplayer after people no longer wanted to put up with you, then you're screwed. That's what they signed on for, that's the TOS, and I don't really have very much sympathy. Someone who goes out of their way to remove value from a game for other people, who goes out of their way to waste other people's entertainment time, has a lot of growing up to do, and I'd like them to do it far away from my leisure time. Buying a game should not oblige me to act as a teacher, parent or babysitter to socially maladjusted asshole children and adults, it should oblige us all to behave with a bare minimum of respect, and if we can't handle that, our toys are taken away. There are 8 year olds who can deal with this responsibility better than some portions of our community.

I'm sure the idea could be tweaked to ban for servers, or similar, but I won't shed a solitary tear if it isn't. I've played Tripwire's games for a long time. They tolerate a lot, and are, in my books, one of the good guys. They're proactively taking steps to make sure that their latest game has a good community around it(And having seen what happens as the player base for games dries up and you're left with a few populated clan servers, like Red Orchestra 2/Rising Storm going the way of DoD, that's a step up). Unless I actually see some sort of evidence of unmerited bans, I have no problem with it, and feel it is more likely to be underutilized, as the game (And I don't see all that many people here who actually play it. It's pretty good guys, get on it. It's in Early Access, they're adding in classes as they go) as it stands, has no reporting system I've actually found for marking these people.

 

[Signa]

Backing up one second, since not one person in this thread has explained it to me, why is a vote-kick option not enough? Why does it have to be the ownership of the game that is threatened instead?

Super late to answer this one, but people don't like vote-kicks because vote kicks don't work. In fact, they're bad for everyone involved.

If you have someone breaking the rules and you vote-kick them, it does nothing but postpone their bad behavior, or transfer it to another server.

"But wait," you say, "what if we make vote-kicks cumulative, and if you get too many, you get a permaban?" OK, this might work, but you're forgetting the other bad thing about the internet. People will abuse the system. "Hey, there's that guy who kept killing me in the last game. Let's vote-kick him." "Hey, Signa is a hacker! Kick him!" "Hey, my friend wants to join the server and that Signa guy isn't anyone we know., Let's vote-kick him."

Of course, the reverse could also hold true. If the douche jumps on a server with a bunch of his friends, he could simply have them vote against kicking him, and maintain his bad behavior with no consequences.

All of this is to say that if we're going to have a system for punishing people, I don't think it should be based on community votes. Let players report bad behavior, and then have someone who checks the logs to see what really happened.

I still can't help but feel we're all mad at some boogieman that doesn't really exist on the level everyone says he does. That anger is driving the support for this measure which I can't agree with. Personally, I've never seen a troll/asshole get kicked, and then have him show up again later, let alone still being an asshole later.

Once again, I'm all for banning of people that are dicks on a server. Way, way back in the day, I played a lot of Counter Strike, and I knew that if I behaved like a dick, I could lose access to the server I was playing on. I still would have to get banned on every private server ever to even begin to reach the effects this measure is taking. It still wouldn't meet the measure, as I could still run CS and add in bots to play on my own if I had to. This measure is saying I shouldn't be allowed even that much freedom after action is taken against me.

Edit:
I have to ask the question, how many of these trolls have been spotted in paid games? Before TF2 went free to play, I almost never saw assholes/trolls. Maybe twice. After free to play? Quite a bit more. I could see people being mad at trolls in general, but dismissing the context they saw them in and then supporting this.

 

[darthxaos]

Basically, you're asking if people should loose access to the single player part of the game, like story mode in CoD, or Vs AI/Season in madden, or some such?
Not immediately, no.
If they maintain being trolls by what ever means after being punished before they lose access to the game, then yes, they should. It's a likely next step in punishing someone that was bypassing the game's guards against this behaviour.

I can't believe I'm actually reading this. You are advocating taking people's game that THEY PAID FOR, over harmless trolling.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

If the game is multiplayer only and you're only playing to grief other people, absolutely. If you're talking about a single-player game that someone can be banned from because they're a little shit on the forums though, that would be kinda BS. With MP games there should be some kind of code of etiquette. People hate it when people make random noises into the mic, people hate it when their team-mates kill friendly forces for no reason. Nobody wants to play with those kinds of people anyway and banning them is a direct way of cleansing the player pool.

 

[shintakie10]

I still can't help but feel we're all mad at some boogieman that doesn't really exist on the level everyone says he does. That anger is driving the support for this measure which I can't agree with. Personally, I've never seen a troll/asshole get kicked, and then have him show up again later, let alone still being an asshole later.

That's amusing coming from the guy whose sole argument was that companies will turn into evil overlords and start banning people for the stupidest things.

I have to ask the question, how many of these trolls have been spotted in paid games? Before TF2 went free to play, I almost never saw assholes/trolls. Maybe twice. After free to play? Quite a bit more. I could see people being mad at trolls in general, but dismissing the context they saw them in and then supporting this.

As a person who played a lot of WoW, it happens a ton. This is a game that requires you to pay for a base game and an expansion and requires you to pay 15 dollars a month and people will still go out of their way to be megadouches. If they get banned for being megadouches (which has happened and its glorious) they freak the fuck out and complain about how Blizzard stole their money.

Check out your average CoD online game. Again, people are paying 60 dollars for the game. Many are spending 60 more dollars for map packs. On top of that they're paying for an online subscription to Xbox Live (do you still need to pay to get into PS online games? Cant remember). They're more than willing to be megadouches after they've spent 100+ dollars on the game.

Even in F2P games, people act like megadouches after they've spent a ton of cash on the game because they feel they're perfectly entitled to be megadouches because they paid into the system.

 

[Signa]

I still can't help but feel we're all mad at some boogieman that doesn't really exist on the level everyone says he does. That anger is driving the support for this measure which I can't agree with. Personally, I've never seen a troll/asshole get kicked, and then have him show up again later, let alone still being an asshole later.

That's amusing coming from the guy whose sole argument was that companies will turn into evil overlords and start banning people for the stupidest things.

Irrelevant. Besides, I'm less concerned about this company turning evil overlord, and more of how the decision is made to ban. If it's all user feedback, it's open for abuse. If it's a successful system, other companies that are already evil overlords could also implement and then abuse it. My original post in this thread talked about how it wasn't cool when EA did the same thing for something similar.

I have to ask the question, how many of these trolls have been spotted in paid games? Before TF2 went free to play, I almost never saw assholes/trolls. Maybe twice. After free to play? Quite a bit more. I could see people being mad at trolls in general, but dismissing the context they saw them in and then supporting this.

As a person who played a lot of WoW, it happens a ton. This is a game that requires you to pay for a base game and an expansion and requires you to pay 15 dollars a month and people will still go out of their way to be megadouches. If they get banned for being megadouches (which has happened and its glorious) they freak the fuck out and complain about how Blizzard stole their money.

Check out your average CoD online game. Again, people are paying 60 dollars for the game. Many are spending 60 more dollars for map packs. On top of that they're paying for an online subscription to Xbox Live (do you still need to pay to get into PS online games? Cant remember). They're more than willing to be megadouches after they've spent 100+ dollars on the game.

Even in F2P games, people act like megadouches after they've spent a ton of cash on the game because they feel they're perfectly entitled to be megadouches because they paid into the system.

Both WoW and COD have grand mass appeal for their userbase. They are games that non-gamers will play religiously. You're guaranteed to find assholes in them. I'm not trying to invalidate your point about them, but it comes as no surprise because of who the games attract.

I'm not sure about the f2p behavior. It's hard to check to see what a person has invested in the game. I would anticipate an asshole playing the game for free, and then enjoying it enough to start investing, and then continue to be an asshole forgetting that the game is no longer disposable. But that is entirely conjecture.

 

[renegade7]

No, you should lose access to a service based on how you act. Your behavior affects the experience of other players, if you behave like a troll or a griefer then that reduces the likelihood that other players will keep coming back to enjoy the game. When you don't follow the rules, you're ruining it for everyone.

In the real world, if you act like an ass at your job, you get fired. If you act like an ass in a restaurant, you get thrown out. If you start dicking around in a theater or a sports game or whatever else, you will be ejected. And if you act like enough of an ass, we have places called "prisons" where we put people like you, and you can spend a few years living with other assholes and maybe get a taste of why your behavior matters. I don't see why similar ideas shouldn't apply to video games.

 

[False Messiah]

As far as I can see there is no automatic system in place that perma-bans people based on reports from the community. This is a last resort from the developer, to be used when all else has failed, to remove the most toxic of the toxic players from the servers. It's been mentioned before that they have only used this for two times.

All in all, I'm ok with this. Just don't make it part of an automatic system and make sure you perma-ban players only after you've build a report with evidence condemning the player. This system can be an effective way of handling the worst players if the devs keep it totally transparent.

 

[Lightknight]

I still can't help but feel we're all mad at some boogieman that doesn't really exist on the level everyone says he does. That anger is driving the support for this measure which I can't agree with. Personally, I've never seen a troll/asshole get kicked, and then have him show up again later, let alone still being an asshole later.

If that's true and these kinds of trolls don't exist then what are you complaining about? This would inherently then mean that no one gets kicked.

 

[Lightknight]

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.

Ok then, let me give you a new analogy.

Let's say I and my friends paid for an infinite supply of pies (gaming sessions) as long as the pie making company (hosting site) is still in business. Let's say we're all sharing our pies and enjoying them together (in a multiplayer lobby). Now here comes along Mr. Troll McAsshole who did pay for pies too but has taken it upon himself to ruin our enjoyment of our pies by sticking his poop in each of them. He does this repeatedly during multiple pie enjoyment sessions and has not listened to infractions and warnings levied at him as a result. He knows full well that he agreed to a disclosure that explicitly tells him not to poop (or place poop) into the pies.

Yep, not only should he be removed, but precautions should be put in place to prevent him from doing that again in the future. Only letting him have pie by himself and not in our pie loving group is a perfectly legitimate way to do that.

Seriously, stop defending trolls. They can keep their games but they don't get to ruin our experiences non-stop just because they want to.

Be warned, tearing apart this analogy just means I will then have to come up with an erotic analogy for you. I'm thinking I'll make it involve tassel pasties...

 

[snekadid]

There isn't any need to bring insults into this. I would prefer if people acted civil in my thread and didn't flame or bring insults.

Then stop acting hypocritically and deserving it.

For starters, ignorance is not the same as hypocrisy.

Secondly, large scale renouncement of ownership based on in-game behaviour has until recently been practically impossible to enforce (Except with cheating), due to flawed feedback systems and lack of reliable evidence.

Also new is the notion that it's the responsibility of the company to "police" your games, rather than you being given the tools to do so yourself.

I don't trust companies with the authority to say who gets to keep owning a game or not. If they want to boot them off the main stream service and can actually prove that they deserve it, then fine. But I'm a bit disturbed by how that proof is collected. Are they going to record every single bit of gameplay and then systematically remove people? Sure, that would get rid of the jerks but that makes it a bit of a police state, doesn't it?

I prefer the solution of simply restricting users to playing with friends only (Private games) for a limited time.

For starters, yea, it is. Willful ignorance is exactly that. "I Purposefully never read or cared about what happened to people that violated the EULA but now I'm mad because someone flat out told me". Thats hypocrisy.

Secondly...... what? I want you to read the EULA, then I want you to read the released version for normal people to read, then I want you to read EVERY single press release from every game company ever. Why? Because what you just suggested is ridiculous and a complete fabrication on your part and you're gonna need to read those to find a citation that indicates that they will ban a "large scale" of people in a short time, which is what you just suggested.

Not really new, before they would just ban your server because you were a toxic blight on their server space. They being the game industry at large if that wasn't clear. Besides that, They did give you the tools, and if you don't use them to keep your server from making 4chan look wholesome you will get smacked. Heres the thing guys, this whole thing works off of complaints and followed up fact checking by the mods. If you want a white supremacist clubhouse server, make it private, require a password. Then if the required 1000+ people complain about your server, you know you have a problem. It's only really a issue for public servers because guess what, people get matched to those using KF2s system and servers, if you put garbage on it you will be punished. Running a server is a privilege, not a right.

Then stop playing games because what you just said means you can't play ANYTHING after the ps2,xbox generation.... Dude, you don't own the servers or the service that the company has to pay for to keep that game updated and running. You have 0 authority. Yes, they do exactly that, when a report goes in they scan the chat logs(which are tiny and due to the massive glut of storage, easy to manage) then find the source of the report, then file it away till it becomes clear that that person is a raging asshole, which as stated is 1,000's of reports in a short time.

Wow has been doing this for a decade now. You know who is the only ones that complain? The raging assholes who got banned. They go on the forums screaming up a storm and when asked what they were doing when they got banned, they either shut up or tell you how they were threatening to rape someones dog with a pipe. No one else complains that these people are gone. This is why there has never been a big outrage over this type of EULA existing forever, because it works and even regular assholes don't have to worry about it because the standards are so low that 99.9% of the people that play will not get banned, because they lack the vitriol to spew garbage wherever they go. Just calling your healer a "****" wont get you banned.

 

[Mutant1988]

For starters, yea, it is. Willful ignorance is exactly that. "I Purposefully never read or cared about what happened to people that violated the EULA but now I'm mad because someone flat out told me". Thats hypocrisy.

That a real quote or just something you made up?

Also, please do soapbox less. We don't need you explaining things we already know in the most condescending manner imaginable.

Because most of us know these things, but have other issues with the suggested model (Or public expression of intent to use the authority they have had all this time, rather).

Wow has been doing this for a decade now. You know who is the only ones that complain? The raging assholes who got banned. They go on the forums screaming up a storm and when asked what they were doing when they got banned, they either shut up or tell you how they were threatening to rape someones dog with a pipe. No one else complains that these people are gone. This is why there has never been a big outrage over this type of EULA existing forever, because it works and even regular assholes don't have to worry about it because the standards are so low that 99.9% of the people that play will not get banned, because they lack the vitriol to spew garbage wherever they go. Just calling your healer a "****" wont get you banned.

And I'm still saying that revoking the use of a paid product in too much. Revoking access to a service on the other hand, has been done, and is fair to do.

My basic policy is this:

If the game is only online and impossible to play in private, then it's a poorly made game. Because again, I don't think a company should ever claim the right to remove bought property, nor should they have the power to render significant parts of the product inoperable (Unless the service they provide is integral to it's actual function).

The company that runs the servers can deny people that violate the terms of use access to the attached services, that's perfectly fine.

But, I'd rather not have a online system that enables them to collect that degree of surveillance data, because such a network model isn't sustainable. When the main servers go, so does the game. For everyone. That's one of the reasons why I don't like this centralized moderating model.

So yeah, I'm a fan of running your own servers and enforcing your own rules. Because that means we are in control, of all aspects of the game. I come across jerks, but I can also remove them from my games as I see fit.

 

[Lightknight]

Way, way better ways to handle the situation. maybe force a mute on them but still let them play, revoke only multiplayer aspects of a game, or rewarding players who act right with freebies.

There are other ways to grief that don't require your mouth. Depends on the game.

 

[Bad Jim]

Oh, also money is a HUGE part of it. If someone pays you money to play a game, a few swears shouldn't even appear as a blip in the radar, whereas if it's a F2P it's more justified to make people "play by your rules".

Or at least it would be if F2P was truly free. But they are designed to get you to pay, and if you have paid for anything, banning you is (or should be) just as serious as if you had purchased the game.

 

[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.

Ok then, let me give you a new analogy.

Let's say I and my friends paid for an infinite supply of pies (gaming sessions) as long as the pie making company (hosting site) is still in business. Let's say we're all sharing our pies and enjoying them together (in a multiplayer lobby). Now here comes along Mr. Troll McAsshole who did pay for pies too but has taken it upon himself to ruin our enjoyment of our pies by sticking his poop in each of them. He does this repeatedly during multiple pie enjoyment sessions and has not listened to infractions and warnings levied at him as a result. He knows full well that he agreed to a disclosure that explicitly tells him not to poop (or place poop) into the pies.

Yep, not only should he be removed, but precautions should be put in place to prevent him from doing that again in the future. Only letting him have pie by himself and not in our pie loving group is a perfectly legitimate way to do that.

Seriously, stop defending trolls. They can keep their games but they don't get to ruin our experiences non-stop just because they want to.

Be warned, tearing apart this analogy just means I will then have to come up with an erotic analogy for you. I'm thinking I'll make it involve tassel pasties...

That is a far more apt analogy, but I still ask, why can't you just not eat the pies that he wants to reenact American Pie with? You have infinite pies, and he paid for access to them too. Can he not be sent off with the other pie fuckers into his own group of infinite pies?

Those questions are rhetorical since we aren't talking about pies here, but it's still the point I'm driving here. Removing the pie fuckers doesn't make pie fuckers stop existing (man, I love typing pie fucker), it just treats them like shit for being a pie fucker. We should be making mousetrap pies, or Icy-Hot pies to make pie fucking less enjoyable instead of just saying that pie fuckers can't have pies after they paid for them.