SOE Will Ban Players For Out-of-Game Offenses

[MysticSlayer]

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.

So if that's not what you're saying, then why does it matter that "banning someone won't prevent these things from happening?" Either you wrote that to support your point that we shouldn't ban people for these kind of things.. or it's irrelevant and you wrote it for no reason at all. If the former, then that same logic applies to the penalties for any and all crimes yes? In which case, it's the old saw about prevention not being perfect, the penalty obviously isn't correct.

Choose.

My approach isn't meant to be preventative, and my comments were meant to point out that banning has no preventative advantage to suspensions. Suspensions are meant to punish the behavior and, hopefully, get them to think about what they've done. While banning can do the same thing, my issue with it is that it lasts permanently, well beyond the point at which the person fully matures out of it. The point is to find the most suitable set of punishments (i.e. ones that get the message across) and taking the one that has the most lenient repercussions, and suspensions fit this much better than banning does. Like I said, the major advantage of suspensions is that you can keep giving them out for each new infraction, increasing the time for each new infraction. This will eventually allow you to find the point at which their punishment has carried enough weight to make them reconsider what they're doing. For some, that might require an effective ban, even if it comes in the form of an incredibly lengthy suspension. For others, a single one week suspension might be all it takes, and banning that person would be going ridiculously overboard.

 

[wetnap]

Beyond it being stasi like behavior, its ripe for abuse, and not the type of corporate behavior anyone should encourage.


A precedent should not be set.

It should not be normalized.


Thought police that literally follow you around should only exist in repressive regimes like china. That sony even thought it was a good idea to bring this into our world is mind boggling.

An atheist is a troll to any religion, just remember that.

And as I've said before, people who were quick to jump on the sony ps4 bandwagon just forgot sonys long track record, its the company that installed rootkits on pc's after all. Don't be so quick to claim a corporation as your savior.

 

[Sectan]

Since BuzzCutpsycho left planetside 2 of boredom and the Enclave is gone, the system is worthless now. Not that it ever worked. Way too late to fix any real issue. The damage has been done. Him and his crew broke a whole server from his bullcrap and was the most toxic AND the most POWERFUL (politically) player planetside has to offer.

Even when he broke the in game rules on his own stream, they didn't do anything. Even when he practically broke the game for his own benefit. On video.

He even was on tape when he gave orders to his gigantic outfit (clan) to teamkill another friendly outfit (was also a huge outfit) in the area and blow their mobile spawner (sunderer) because Buzz wanted to do easy xp farming with his own sunderer.

A toxic, racist, and misogynist player. The most famous player in the entire game right next to "Scourge of the server." With a legion of lackies that helps him exploit the game month after month on a live stream and destroy anyone else's fun.

I played with this guy when he transferred to The Venture Co. on WoW. If you looked at his WoW profile he had his character doing a (idk what it's actually called) Sieg Heil salute. He would constantly post harrasing things on his guild website, track down IRL pictures of other players and post them on the guild website and just shit talk them for months. Just a horrible person all around. I'm surprised he was never banned from either game.

 

[MysticSlayer]

My approach isn't meant to be preventative.

And that's both the problem and why you can't understand it.

Incidentally, suggesting that harsher punishments have no preventative value is complete bollocks, and there are *reams* of statistical and psychological studies that back this up.

While my point isn't to be a preventative measure, in that I'm under no delusion that this will actually prevent incidents like this from happening, I understand that any form of punishment carries with it preventative potential for the individual affected and those who know that person. The point is, as you said, striking a balance, and going for the ban right away seems ridiculously harsh. As I've already said, it might work up to an effective ban, but it also understands that different people respond differently to punishment, and for some a simple one-week suspension would be all it takes. Others might work up to the effective ban, but automatically reaching for the harshest of punishments without giving them an opportunity to at least change their ways after more lenient punishment isn't being smart. It's being reactionary.

By allowing an offender to return.. especially if that person re-offends, the impression Sony gives out to the vast majority of their customers who aren't asshats is that Sony really doesn't care if you are or not. (After all, someone not showing up for a few weeks/month isn't evidence of disciplinary action, it's simply evidence of absence, which could have been completely voluntary). On the other hand, if asshats disappear forever, then even if the person behind returns under a new name, people understand that Sony is at least trying.

We all know of ways in which you can send the message that the person is suspended, not just on vacation. Labeling their account as suspended is a starting point, though it certainly isn't the only thing you can do.

Also, it doesn't send the message that they don't care. It sends the message that they are watching and there are consequences for such behavior. What the person does with that knowledge is completely out of Sony's hands. If Sony stops there or never gets any harsher as time goes on, then yes, they are sending a "we don't care" message. However, if they keep up the penalties, making them harsher as time goes on, then it does begin to send the message that such behavior is not tolerated. Again, I'm not against avoiding a harsh penalty all together, but there has to be penalties leading up to it.

 

[Abomination]

Hold on, this is only if the person abuses someone associated with the production/upkeep/publishing of their games, right? For that reason I can understand issuing bans and such.

However, to do this to someone who is nasty to someone else on Twitter is just open to all forms of abuse.

"Someone said something I construed as being offensive on a social medium. I know they play Planetside 2 and have actually spent a bit of money on it. I'm going to report them to SOE so they lose all that they invested. Hah! I am a well-rounded individual, capable of handling my own emotions."

Or am I reading this wrong?

 

[wetnap]

Pointless. Well meaning but pointless. All people have to do is well, not allow Sony to track them outside the games. Believe it or not, you don't have to have your game linked to your twitter or facebook page and newsflash... you can create multiple facebook and twitter accounts for the purpose of harassment.


Really. The best thing to do is to allow players to maintain a black list of sorts. Somebody being a dick to them, add to blacklist thusly ensuring they never wind up in the same game. This fixes the problem from 3 angles. People who are generally dicks will over time find themselves effectively locked out of games since basically every game lobby has about 3 people that's blacklisted them.

Secondly, people who basically just like to spam complaints about anything will find themselves in the same boat because if you have that many people on your blacklist you won't get matched into any games.


Thirdly, in MMO type games, , it can be used to more or less function as a pre-emptive gag. Or if the devs are really smart. Essentially render blacklisted players invisible to the people who black list them and vice versa. So a douche Everquest Player could find over time that it starts looking like he's the only one on the server...good luck finding a raiding party.

methods of tracking people would scare you s**tless if you looked into it.
http://qz.com/125470/google-can-track-you-without-cookies/
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
there are flash cookies and the rest, and the more you block, the more unique you become anyways, and there are further methods i'm sure. You just can't practically avoid this stuff, and its not reasonable to expect people to have to try jumping through hoops to avoid a corporation tracking them this way for the purposes of banning in games.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

As one of the FB Commenters said: "Freedom of Speech: Yes. Freedom of Responsibility: No."

As long as they are clear about what can get you banned, I don't mind and I think getting some of those people who threaten to kill and rape people over their video game offline would be good.
It's just the Gaming Version of not letting the mental soccer fans knock the shite out of each other over a Football game

 

[ThunderCavalier]

This is a good idea as long as Sony clearly outlines what they define as "irresponsible" or "abusive" behavior and they, at least, allow people to appeal what they've been banned for.

Otherwise this is just a free pass for Sony to start dropping customers they don't like or speak out against them.

 

[stabnex]

On one hand I think I can almost understand where they're coming from. But on all 7 others......

People with their Twitters tied to PSN are now going to be living in fear of a power tripping admin taking every. single. thing they say out of context. This seems more like a Microsoft power play, Sony. Take that to heart. I'll be in further contact.

EDIT: I thought it important to note that after reading this article I felt the powerful need to start listening to The Dayton Family [https://www.facebook.com/thedaytonfamily].

 

[ReleGamer]

Perhaps this is an overzealous approach to dealing with the recently highlighted problems in gaming social media. However, it is good to see action being taken, even if it may not have any noticable results. I think this is a positive move to try and get people to behave like human beings on the internet...perhaps that is asking too much

 

[Tsaba]

I somehow doubt that Sony is going to start spying on people and that this is just a way for them to deal with "extreme" cases of over the top individuals or as I like to think of this as covering their butts.