Question About Sharing a Character

[worldofneil]

Sorry, but I really don't understand why everyone is shouting at the OP.

The player admitted to sharing their account with another person. Regardless of whether everyone thinks this is a big deal or not, it is against the terms of service.

OP reported this to SE, they'll take a look into it and take whatever action they deem necessary.

Attacking the OP for actually following the rules... that's harassment and also against the terms of service...

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Sorry, but I really don't understand why everyone is shouting at the OP.

The player admitted to sharing their account with another person. Regardless of whether everyone thinks this is a big deal or not, it is against the terms of service.

OP reported this to SE, they'll take a look into it and take whatever action they deem necessary.

Attacking the OP for actually following the rules... that's harassment and also against the terms of service...

3.1 Sharing Account Information. You may not share your account or login information (such as your Square Enix ID and password) with anyone except your legal guardian, your minor child, or Square Enix. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and login information, even from your friends and family. If you violate this provision, you may unexpectedly lose access to your account to a third party without recourse against Square Enix. Square Enix will not be obliged to credit your Square Enix Account with Crysta or other points or awards, which may have been used by a third party as a result of the violation of this clause.

It says account and login information, not that they cannot play on your account. This is all to protect you from having your account stolen via a 3rd party. Thats all this is. Its not "You will be banned by sharing your account" Its "if you lose anything in your account, we are not responsible because you gave the info out"

[worldofneil]

It says account and login information, not that they cannot play on your account.

What....? It says exactly that.... You literally quoted it...

You may not share your account

I don't know how you can read that any other way. How is someone playing on your account anything other than sharing an account?

Account and login information are two completely different things, hence they list both. Account being your characters etc, login information being the method of accessing those characters.

And it's not just to cover you from 3rd party attacks, you're ignoring the part where SE says they might remove access to your account too:

In addition, Square Enix shall be entitled to terminate any FFXIV Service Account (immediately and without notice) of any User who (1) was previously suspended or terminated by Square Enix and who Square Enix believes (in its sole discretion) re-registered using different registration information in order to circumvent or bypass such suspension or termination, or (2) Square Enix believes (in its sole discretion, based upon any information available, including registration and account information) that such User is enabling or assisting another User to conduct any Prohibited Activities of any kind.

Square Enix may update the list of Prohibited Activities at http://sqex.to/ffxiv.na.support at any time. The current Prohibited Activities are as follows:

3.1 Sharing Account Information. You may not share your account or login information (such as your Square Enix ID and password) with anyone except your legal guardian, your minor child, or Square Enix.

But again, it's nothing to do with whether *we* think it's a problem or not. OP saw some someone breaking the ToS, they reported them. It's up to SE to look into it and take whatever action they deem necessary. Our opinions are completely irrelevant.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

What....? It says exactly that.... You literally quoted it...



I don't know how you can read that any other way. How is someone playing on your account anything other than sharing an account?

And it's not just to cover yourself from 3rd party attacks, you're also conveniently ignoring the part where SE says they might remove access to your account too:



But again, it's nothing to do with whether *we* think it's a problem or not. OP saw some someone breaking the ToS, the reported them. It's up to SE to look into it and take whatever action they deem necessary. Our opinions are completely irrelevant.

You are reading too much into that. Account or login information means account information or login information, that's why they are together. But hey, maybe we can get a GM to speak to this tomorrow, since today is a holiday.

[ChaseNetwork]

You are reading too much into that. Account or login information means account information or login information, that's why they are together. But hey, maybe we can get a GM to speak to this tomorrow, since today is a holiday.

iirc, they aren't properly back in office until the 7th.
This line:
If you violate this provision, you may unexpectedly lose access to your account to a third party without recourse against Square Enix. Square Enix will not be obliged to credit your Square Enix Account with Crysta or other points or awards, which may have been used by a third party as a result of the violation of this clause.
Is basically the minimum punishment. Which is: "It's not our fault you shared your account. We will not reimburse you." So, really. They aren't going to consider worth keeping you from giving them money if you lost some stuff from sharing your account.

[worldofneil]

Account or login information means account information or login information

Sorry, but I think you're just reading that the way you want to read it. What is "account information"? I would say the only thing it could be is credentials to access the account, but they already specifically said "login information" as a separate item so when they say account, they can only mean the actual account, not login information.

But look I don't really care either way. That's my interpretation, clearly you have yours, but it's nothing to do with us. It's how SE interprets it. My point is that OP thought they saw someone breaking the rules so they reported them and they've received nothing but a hard time about it.

Whether or not the person mentioned broke the rules is clearly something that can be debated, but that's up to SE to decide, not us.

OP is probably too scared now to report anyone ever again for fear of getting lynched once more.

[Iscah]

.And it's not just to cover you from 3rd party attacks, you're ignoring the part where SE says they might remove access to your account too:

Just because account sharing is under the blanket of "prohibited activities" doesn't mean that the account will be automatically banned for doing it. The opening statement is that Square Enix is entitled to terminate the account if they consider it appropriate, not that they definitely will.

Partly it covers them from demands for compensation if someone uses another player's shared information to steal or sabotage their account - as covered in the extended quote of section 3.1 that Valkyrie posted.

But it's also going to allow for a "Catch-22" ban if someone does something ban-worthy, then tries to say it wasn't them, it was their friend who used their account. Instead of having to judge the truth - potentially about something serious - SE can now say "well maybe you didn't do X, but you've admitted to sharing your account so we're banning you for that instead".

It's probably an extreme example, but it means they're legally covered if they have to use that option.

Simply letting someone play on your account might fall under the broad definition of the terms they've set up, but that doesn't mean they actually want or intend to apply the rules to that harmless situation of letting another person play your game. It would be massively heavy-handed and achieve nothing except the loss of customers.

But they probably can't actually admit to this without weakening their legal standing in situations where they do want to apply that rule.




Also I agree with Valkyrie that it is equally possible to read the phrase "your account and login information" as " your account information and your login information". I'm not sure what the difference would be, if that is the intended reading, but that is likely to be covered eleswhere in the document.

[Niwashi]

Partly it covers them from demands for compensation if someone uses another player's shared information to steal or sabotage their account - as covered in the extended quote of section 3.1 that Valkyrie posted.

But it's also going to allow for a "Catch-22" ban if someone does something ban-worthy, then tries to say it wasn't them, it was their friend who used their account. Instead of having to judge the truth - potentially about something serious - SE can now say "well maybe you didn't do X, but you've admitted to sharing your account so we're banning you for that instead".

There's a third reason for it as well. If multiple people are playing the game, SE wants to be paid for each of them. You can't get one account for the whole family, have everyone make a character and take turns playing the game while only paying for one subscription. That's the least likely of the three problems to come to SE's attention so they can stop it, but they'd want to stop it when they can. If multiple people in the family play the game, you're supposed to purchase the game and pay a sub for each of them.

(It would still be a bit of stretch to think that applies to this case. I just thought if people are discussing the reason for the "no account sharing" rule, we should bring up all the reasons for it.)

[HyoMinPark]

Sorry, but I really don't understand why everyone is shouting at the OP.

The player admitted to sharing their account with another person. Regardless of whether everyone thinks this is a big deal or not, it is against the terms of service.

OP reported this to SE, they'll take a look into it and take whatever action they deem necessary.

Attacking the OP for actually following the rules... that's harassment and also against the terms of service...

I think you're reading too far into it. A one-off situation like this is not what Square Enix is talking about in their TOS when they mention account sharing. The guy never said he and his girlfriend actively share the account or login information - just that he had to AFK real fast, and she temporarily took over his character while in the dungeon. It would be like -- if I had an important phone call or something personal required my attention, and I asked my fiancé to just watch my character for moment, passing him my controller. Obviously, he wouldn't know what to do outside of basic controls (since he only played FFXIV briefly a few years ago), but that's not the same as him and I sharing my account.

That's not a reportable or bannable offense in my opinion. And the OP is overreacting.

I won't reply to the rest of it, this has gone on too long, you can have the last word. But I feel I need to address:

I'm very sorry you felt offended, but I've never heard of "that" as the definition. All I know it as, and how I intended it:

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/lynching

Yes obviously an exaggeration of what's actually happened, but it seemed appropriate given the point I was trying to make. Not what you described...

No one is “punishing” the OP though — they’re telling them that they overreacted. Which they did.

[Niwashi]

No one is “punishing” the OP though

And neither did the OP punish the guy who had his girlfriend take over his character for a while. Reporting someone isn't a punishment. It's just letting SE know about it so that they can be the ones to decide whether it's an issue or not.

This was technically account sharing, but probably not the type that SE was talking about when they put it in the ToS. But it's their rule, so they're the best people to decide whether it still counts as an infraction or not. There's nothing wrong with reporting it to them so that they can do so. If they don't think it warrants any action, then there won't be any action taken.