Suggestion for GMs in handling reports of player threats of self harm

[m3eansean]

This is why I dont really like MMO's anymore. Sometimes, I feel we all forget we are playing a game, which is supposed to be an interface in which you have fun -- a small escape from our daily lives.

I think it is an intense invasion of privacy to assume that a private company will track your IP address, inform your internet provider and ask them to divulge your physical location to the police so that they may visit your home, over what you allegedly said or did in an online game. Big Brother much?

Personal opinions/issues aside from the matter at hand, just my 2 cents.

[Kosmos992k]

This is why I dont really like MMO's anymore. Sometimes, I feel we all forget we are playing a game, which is supposed to be an interface in which you have fun -- a small escape from our daily lives.

I think it is an intense invasion of privacy to assume that a private company will track your IP address, inform your internet provider and ask them to divulge your physical location to the police so that they may visit your home, over what you allegedly said or did in an online game. Big Brother much?

Personal opinions/issues aside from the matter at hand, just my 2 cents.

How is it an intense invasion of privacy? Knowing your IP address means nothing. SE has your account record on file, they know your address and other information. Your IP address is worthless, you might be proxied through a VPN. It's hardly an invasion of privacy to scrape an IP address from a packet and so a lookup for the owner of the address either.

Perhaps you're forgetting that it's real people playing a game? Real people have real problems.

Let's turn this around, if there was a player threatening to end their life if people were not nice to them. How long would it be before some jerk yanks their chain just to see what they will do? Realistically, there is the potential for great harm, and SE already has the information they need at their disposal to potentially avert that harm.

[m3eansean]

SE knows a billing address willing provided to them and a credit card number.

To assume the police would visit the person at their home was the most invasive aspect IMO.

Nothing this person writes is admissible as evidence in any legal way. There is no way to confirm the person registered to the account, is making these statements at all. To suggest that a private company make decisions about whether police should be dispatched to a persons residence is alarming, in my opinion.

It opens the door too wide for any kind of speech that anyone deems threatening or unusual on a relatively anonymous platform, to incur some kind of investigation from local authorities. Not to mention various nations have various laws regarding speech and it's protection.

[hagare]

This is why I dont really like MMO's anymore. Sometimes, I feel we all forget we are playing a game, which is supposed to be an interface in which you have fun -- a small escape from our daily lives.

I think it is an intense invasion of privacy to assume that a private company will track your IP address, inform your internet provider and ask them to divulge your physical location to the police so that they may visit your home, over what you allegedly said or did in an online game. Big Brother much?

Personal opinions/issues aside from the matter at hand, just my 2 cents.

And sometimes people forget that there's a very real person behind an avatar.
And sometimes people forget that other people's situation can be radically different than your own.