Quote Originally Posted by Melichoir View Post
They punished him not cause hes popular, but because his actions have a direct impact on another player and he was (IMO) trying to be cute and clever by doing this in a live stream and not in game with the impression that he would not get punished for it cause 'its not in game'. He was completely ignoring the fact that the point of anti parser ToS is to stop harassment but still did it thinking he would use the literal rules to be safe. If you want to argue he did get made an example of, thats fine, but lets not try and be cute and say "WELL SE SHOULDNT HAVE DONE THIS CAUSE NO RULES WERE VIOLATED!" Because if we want to really have a system where everything is clearly labeled and spelled out with no room for interpretation, thats gonna create inflexibility for SE and their response to that will be to create very harsh and draconian ToS.

For all the "SE has to be clear about the rules" shtick, its typically overlooks that Parsing is against the ToS but they turn a blind eye to it for our sake. Being to specific is just as bad as being overly vague.
Follow the money. Bottom line is SE cares about subscription and revenue, as any company should. Arthars suspension was inconsistent on SE's part but was probably done to protect FF14's image of being welcoming to casual players. Casual players pay the majority of the bill. The same thing with Parsers- if SE started banning everyone who used parsers, so many people would stop playing. The "use it but don't harrass people with it" rule was to keep parsing players paying the sub, and to keep casual players playing as well who might be turned off if people give them a hard time about their dps numbers. So of course SE hasn't been consistent in enforcing their ToS/rules, but from a revenue perspective, SE is always consistent in doing what they can to protect their brand. I'm not saying it's wrong or right, just how it is.