SOE Will Ban Players For Out-of-Game Offenses

[Elijin]

SOE banned my account months ago when I tried to play Planetside 2 on my work PC which had a VPN on it. They refused to lift the ban.

So....while this isnt terrible, them banning over whatever they feel like isnt exactly news.

Maybe you should do work at work then? Seems logical unless you're in an industry where playing games is a part of work...

Really though folks you want to cry out against people for being assholes, and say "This is why I don't play consoles" then the assholes get filtered out and you cry "OMG Orwellian tactics, fuck that company!"
First world problems...

I said work PC, not at work. As in, a laptop which I'd taken home to finish something up.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

SOE banned my account months ago when I tried to play Planetside 2 on my work PC which had a VPN on it. They refused to lift the ban.

So....while this isnt terrible, them banning over whatever they feel like isnt exactly news.

Maybe you should do work at work then? Seems logical unless you're in an industry where playing games is a part of work...

Really though folks you want to cry out against people for being assholes, and say "This is why I don't play consoles" then the assholes get filtered out and you cry "OMG Orwellian tactics, fuck that company!"
First world problems...

I said work PC, not at work. As in, a laptop which I'd taken home to finish something up.

You didn't specify, therefore confusion is imminent. Work PC usually means PC at work not "Laptop from work I took home"

 

[AuronFtw]

But Sony really has no legal or moral responsibility to track down and ban in-game customers based on threats from non-corporate sources.

It's their social obligation. In fact, it's your social obligation too. It's everybody's job to shit on assholes until they shape up. Have you ever listened to the racist tree? You don't get vitrolic asshats to shut their faces by only asking them to stop if they personally attack you. You get them to stop by as many people as is plossible shunning them and constantly reminding them what a worthless pile of shit they are for attacking people the way they do.
It's attitudes like yours-- the "only the police should be helping people!" attitude that lets communities like ours become as fucked up as they are. By telling people that they shouldn't be doing their part is shame-mongering on these belligerent assholes, you're enabling them and helping to condone a culture of protectionism for these shitbags, and we don't need that

This. You know those people? The bigots, the racists, the tards who send death threats? They represent you. Every time someone in the general public sees them or hears about them, they think "wow, gamers are some really fucked up people." Is that really the message you want to be sending? Don't you think that you have at least a little responsibility to do what you can, when you can, to reduce that negative image? Even if it's only something small, like telling a friend to cut it out or calling a single person out on their bullshit, you are making a difference. If everyone did that, the problem would be much smaller than it is. Those people with those idiotic tendencies would live in fear of the gamer crowd instead of trying to spew bullshit pretending to represent the gamer crowd.

It's up to people like us; just normal, average, everyday gamers to keep the message spreading. It's not the cops' job to tell every dipshit on the internet to stop being a dipshit. Their job is to hand out speeding tickets and eat donuts catch criminals. There's plenty of vitriolic, nasty behavior that *we can stop*. But it won't stop; it won't stop if you just sit on the sidelines and wait for someone else to do it. You have to take charge, stand up to the racists, the bigots, and the idiots and tell them to shut the fuck up, because their delusional bullshit is not representative of gamers as a whole.

That is your job. Not the job of the police.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

An extreme hyperbole, obviously, but it's still really fucking creepy that they're going to ban people over offline activity.

While I understand the point of your post, you're oversimplifying the situation into meaninglessness. They aren't banning people for standing on the corner after school talking about how everquest sucks, they're banning people who use social media to send death threats and similar vitriol to developers.

Please tell me you're capable of understanding the crucial difference there.

I do.

I also understand that this has HUGE potential for abuse.

What if Sony releases a game, and a segment of their fans complain about it? What if the game is so shitty it causes ME3 style backlashes?

What's to keep Sony from banning those people out of spite?

What if someone gets into a twitter debate with one of the developers, and that developer gets that guy banned?

You see where I'm going with this?

 

[MysticSlayer]

1. We don't know if teenagers will actually feel like they are being watched by their peers, considering the Internet carries with it such incredibly anonymity that they may feel they are safe from being figured out, rendering this useless.

Yes, because it's well known that teenagers always make sure that their friends don't follow their twitter accounts or play online games with them..

Oh wait.. the opposite of that.

Odds are pretty damned good that what they're doing is being done with at least a subconscious awareness that it will be found by their peers.

And it isn't helping things now. Placing the threat of penalty on them won't change anything.

2. Assuming they do have that feeling, then what benefit does permanently banning them have over lengthy suspensions? If anything the lengthy suspensions would be enough, as the longer they get the more it will register with the teenager that they are being watched and, therefore, are less likely to act in such a horrible manner without undergoing a punishment this strict, one that will carry with them even after they've developed out of this phase.

And if Sony wanted only to punish the action, not to prevent it in the first place, that idea would make sense.

I'm betting they'd rather it didn't happen at all. So they make the punishments draconian enough that it actually means something.. even to these teenagers.

But it is stupid to think that you can prevent it. How many people continue to say stupid stuff online even with all the stories of people being fired for saying similar things on Facebook and Twitter? How many people continue to act horribly in games even though they face potential penalties, up to being banned, for harassing other players? How many people continue to act like jerks on forums even as they are surrounded by people who have been banned for those very actions? Or, on a more real-life example, how many people continue to murder even when there is the threat of the death penalty (assuming it is there), or continue to commit crimes in general regardless of all the prison stories we have, including the absolutely horrifying ones.

The thing is, people do stupid stuff regardless of the penalties they may face, and this is only increased on the Internet where anonymity is more prevalent than in real life. Banning someone won't prevent these things from happening again, potentially even by the same person, so if their reasoning behind banning over suspensions is to prevent the actions, then their reasoning is highly flawed.

 

[Muspelheim]

Hurray for consequences! Even if acting outside the range of your game might be taking it too far.

It is a big fat commitment, though. It can't be done half-arsed, I certainly hope they know exactly how huge their undertaking really is. And how unpleasant it would be to end up having to deal with the big, flaming fallout from cocking it up.

They will have to be prepared to handle appeals and compaints, as well as clean up any unavoidable mistakes. And probably the most difficult of it all, make sure it isn't abused.

It's like some kind of doomed balloon voyage, though. Either disaster or success, it's going to be interesting.

 

[Erttheking]

I like the concept of this, but it really is something I'm going to have to sit and wait to see how it turns out. On one hand this could go wrong, on the other hand unwanted bile in online games is a massive problem that we've been ignoring for too long. Fingers crossed.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

Blizzard already has done something similar, when bad mouthing them on other sites you could get banned on the official forums.

 

[MysticSlayer]

But it is stupid to think that you can prevent it. How many people continue to say stupid stuff online even with all the stories of people being fired for saying similar things on Facebook and Twitter? How many people continue to act horribly in games even though they face potential penalties, up to being banned, for harassing other players? How many people continue to act like jerks on forums even as they are surrounded by people who have been banned for those very actions? Or, on a more real-life example, how many people continue to murder even when there is the threat of the death penalty (assuming it is there), or continue to commit crimes in general regardless of all the prison stories we have, including the absolutely horrifying ones.

The thing is, people do stupid stuff regardless of the penalties they may face, and this is only increased on the Internet where anonymity is more prevalent than in real life. Banning someone won't prevent these things from happening again, potentially even by the same person, so if their reasoning behind banning over suspensions is to prevent the actions, then their reasoning is highly flawed.

Hey yeah! Even though we have laws against murder, people still do it. Obviously we need to just ease up on it.

God, I hate that argument. If enforcement/prevention isn't perfect, it's useless. That's so much crap.

Where did I ever say that we should ease up on murder because we can't prevent it? Nowhere. If you read my past posts, which I know you did because you responded to them, then you would have seen that I'm for a penalty, just not this penalty. The point I made was that it is ridiculous to expect a highly draconian penalty to automatically prevent a negative action, and if prevention is your motivation for taking that draconian stance, then your reasoning for taking that draconian stance over a more lenient penalty is highly flawed.

 

[otakon17]

Sony, keep it to in-game would you? You have no right to enforce rules anywhere else. That is up to the people running that site. Now if you just bring this stuff up to said owners of those sites I wouldn't have any issue for it. But the point is this is the kind of shit that got that one kid 8 months in prison for a Facebook comment. Honestly its NONE of their damn business how I conduct myself outside their environment.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

On paper it could work and it sounds like a decent idea. Although how well it works depends on the implementation. I am not abusive on the internet so it should not affect unless me(it horribly implemented) and I rarely even use sites like Facebook. I give very few shits how it affects other people.

 

[Lucane]

And once again we have Sony trying to be some sort of international police force. Just like they tried to do when they prosecuted people who had modified their PS3s.

I, for one, would be much happier playing MMOs without all the douche canoes. But Sony really has no legal or moral responsibility to track down and ban in-game customers based on threats from non-corporate sources.

Prosecuting people who make online threats is a job for local, state, national and ACTUAL international law enforcement agencies.

Well I would hope that threats like that aren't too common to where this would be like a monthly thing for them and only ones that either get a lot of media attention or happen to target one of their personal departments being picked up on there radar for a cross check of accounts would likely be minimal though of course not being a class a jerk would be the best bet.

 

[runic knight]

As a company Sony has the right to dictate the terms of service to use their product. If that includes no sass talk about them or whatever else, fine. However, because of the nature of the service and the pay wall before entering that service, I expect a number of lawsuits to pop up in protest, not because the people banned in question aren't assholes, but given that the product they bought for a couple hundred dollars now may not work as intended (being banned so no multiplayer?), the purpose of the console is nil and people will want their money back for the product. How this may work in court, I do not know yet, but as the systems become increasingly online, and therefore the user accounts increasingly more important, I can't imagine how much shit will be raised the day some upset 12 year old on facebook blurts "your system sucks" and gets banned for it. We shall see.

Meanwhile, gonna stick with my good old pc for now.

 

[Aramis Night]

Congratulations Sony. You have talked me out of purchasing a PS4. And no, It isn't because you're taking away my ability to be a jerk to others online. No rather, it's because you have chosen to wave a huge red flag in front of a red bull and i don't want to be in it's path when they come in and hack your network yet again. It will be really entertaining when you compile your little user account database with as much linked data as you can manage to grab on your individual users, only to have them come in and take all your hard work AGAIN, and have even more of their personal data compromised than the previous times. Yeah, I'll sit this one out.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

I can't help but wonder how things like this can be abused whenever they show up. While I get banning people who make death threats against Sony employees, I could also see it being used to silence criticism (ala EA's Origin) or even unfavorable groups. For example, as much as I dislike groups like the KKK and Westboro Baptist Church, I wouldn't exactly be keen with someone getting banned and losing what they've legally paid for just because they're openly apart of these groups.

Yeah, I get the whole "can ban for any reason" clause that's always existed. Doesn't make it right, however, and Sony depriving someone of something they've legally paid for due to disagreeing with legal (<- keyword here) displays of free speech not being done on Sony services should be illegal if it isn't already, imho.

 

[Realitycrash]

I approve. I know that there might be some collateral damage, and that someone might be unfairly treated, and I hope there will be an appeal-system for this, but honestly? I don't care. Worth. It. This isn't about personal freedoms, about government control. It's about a game, and you being an asshole. So yes, bring on the draconian methods. In this case, I'm all for "if you got nothing to hide, there's no reason to be afraid".