Recent Developments of TOS Actions Taken

[Lily_Skye]

he deserves it I hope the ban is permanent

[FirstnameLastname]

he deserves it I hope the ban is permanent

Did he hurt your feelings too? Boo hoo.

[Melichoir]

snip

My analogy applies to giving evidence that may not show the complete picture. You think video is also indisputable as well. Editing a video to not show the entire scene or situation clearly can result in the same thing. Youre disputing my point cause "Oh this is twitch" and then assuming twitch (or streams) is infallible . It's not. Mind you when that streamed evidence is presented to a GM, its not live, its a saved recording after the fact. Furthermore, you more or less do get the right point - They wont ban someone based on a stream or a third party linking action but they can investigate that claim and see if it happens in game when they witness it. Meaning, theyre not gonna ban someone cause you caught them on stream because you are not a credible source. They will initiate a ban if they catch them in the act, not because you recorded it. All you are doing is potentially making them aware of an issue they can investigate. Of course whether they will or not is completely up for debate. For practicality, theyre not gonna advertise that if you got footage of a botter/hacker that theyll investigate simply because its gonna result in a ton of spam. This ISNT like Arthars though. This isnt Me recording Arthars doing something where I can potentially alter the recording or evidence. This is Arthars HIMSELF doing it, and showing it off.

And I always love the "See WoW bans botters so much better than FFXIV cause SE dont care". Cause IMO they dont. Depending on where you look, Ive seen more bots on wow relatively speaking than ffxiv. This doesnt mean that FFXIV doesnt have bot problems, but I think its always a disingenuous argument people make to suggest wow is somehow huge magnitudes better at handling bots than FFXIV. WoW has had and still does have issues at times with botting and RMT. This is something I havent seen any MMO effectively combat without heavy handedness or breaking their economy.

As for blurring, most bigger streamers Ive seen do blur names. Those that dont probably should, otherwise they could be opening up themselves to the same problem that the ToS is attempting to address. If youre a streamer and you dont care, well, thats on you. It gets you nothing, absolutely nothing, to have the names of your fellow players on act in a live stream if theyre not actively ok with it. So if you want to be careless, go for it. You open yourself up to potential issues resulting from that. Lastly, so we dont get to far away from the core point here, Arthars used his Parser with his live stream to purposefully shame and attack someone. This wasnt an accidently "F that guy" comment out of frustration. He made a deliberate act to single someone out and do it live to his viewers. ToS is clear about parsing, but they look elsewhere unless you make it an issue. And he made it an issue but wanted to be cute about it. I dont give him any credit because I dont think he was stupid about this. He purposefully didnt say it in game but did on his live stream as a means to try and bypass the rules.

[Kleeya]

A FC friend saw the video and confirm me the BLM was complaining about the streamer gameplay too. And that can lead you to think the whole situation was premeditated. If he was seeing the stream he knows how he would react to a BLM doing poor DPS. Not that I condone this actions but I feel he is the one who fell in the BLM trap in the end

Let's take the conspiracy to the next level : all this is a staged event so that this streamer get free advertisement. You know what they say : it doesn't matter if it is in good or bad, the most important thing is that people are talking about you XD

Joke aside let's have a thought for the people who want SE to add group parsers in the game. Their goal is now even more out of reach with one of their most used argument, "people will not use parsers to bash other players !", looking even less valid now. Especially when the one proving the contrary is a perfect legend title and top streamer, who should know way better than the average player what not to do.

[grinkdaboy]

play stupid games win stupid prizes

[Arrius]

Hey, if someone deserves to be punished then SE can have at it. They broke the ToS. However, they shouldn't cherry pick who to punish on a 3rd party platform. Everyone should be held accountable for their actions, whether it's naming and shaming, botting, hacking, etc. What they've done here is opened a door that they told us was closed and completely off limits prior to this incident. And that's fine, but they should probably leave the door open now.

Thing is, when SE starts drawing lines everywhere about this, then people will try to blur those and try to get away with things that are of very questionable nature but not necessarily something that is considered rule-breaking.

Same happened when they stepped up against in-game harassments a while ago - Suddenly people wanted to know what exactly is bad, and what is still good. And cherry picking arguments like this is just making the situation not better since the player will start twisting words and arguments in a way that still can be seen as a negative comment, but are masked enough that throwing in a support ticket might not be worth the time.

When SE remains vague with their ways of how they detect toxicity and enforce their ToS like they did now, they remain somewhat in control and that keeps the player wary of what they can or cannot do in streams. And most of the time, the players will keep their voices down (so to speak) to avoid any ramifications that could risk their account.

[Melichoir]

Arthars is not arguing that the ban was not warranted. Hell, he even admits that he deserves it. He's arguing that if evidence from outside the game is now fair game, it needs to be very clear that is now the case and, if limited to a specific subset, which TOS violations would accept this evidence from outside of the game. Note that they did not accept evidence from outside the game previously. This isn't even a matter of "learning morals and practicing common sense". This is a matter of whether we are being policed on platforms outside of the game and if this to be applied to all TOS violations. People have brought up cases where, if outside evidence had been accepted at the time of their report, a ban would have been given such as Feast win trading, admitting in private conversations to botting on their main account, etc. If they're accepting outside evidence for slander/profanity, surely these cases should be subject to the same scrutiny? It's about fairness. Being a streamer shouldn't hold him to a distinctly higher standard in the eyes of the TOS.

ToS is fairly clear about using Parsers and Harrassment. The question is does it count if he uses does it off platform. Yes, it probably does count cause the point of their ToS regarding it is to stop or mitigate harassment of other players. The debate here seems to conflate what 'outside' evidence constitutes. The argument that "Oh this was an outside stream therefore doesnt count because they dont count outside evidence when it comes to things like bots", but these arent equivalents. The distinction lies in a first person account vs a third person account. Unlike bot cases as evidence where it's one player observing and recording another player doing wrong doing, this is the player himself recording themselves engaging in wrong doing. He records himself doing the very thing the rules are designed to help prevent, and is (IMO) fully aware that doing this same action in game would warrant the ban but sought another way to bypass that ban by being clever and claiming its off game therefore doesnt count.

[ShanaMia]

ToS is fairly clear about using Parsers and Harrassment. The question is does it count if he uses does it off platform. Yes, it probably does count cause the point of their ToS regarding it is to stop or mitigate harassment of other players. The debate here seems to conflate what 'outside' evidence constitutes. The argument that "Oh this was an outside stream therefore doesnt count because they dont count outside evidence when it comes to things like bots", but these arent equivalents. The distinction lies in a first person account vs a third person account. Unlike bot cases as evidence where it's one player observing and recording another player doing wrong doing, this is the player himself recording themselves engaging in wrong doing. He records himself doing the very thing the rules are designed to help prevent, and is (IMO) fully aware that doing this same action in game would warrant the ban but sought another way to bypass that ban by being clever and claiming its off game therefore doesnt count.

You're missing the point. I'm not saying "outside stream unga bunga can't be used as evidence unga bunga" like everyone seems to be boiling this down to. It's that it's not clear what now constitutes as proper evidence for a report since this contradicts their previous stance of "if it isn't ingame, we won't take it as evidence". This is not the first case of someone talking smack outside of the game, nor will it be the last. The question here is what is valid evidence and what violations is said evidence applicable for.

Now about your point about bots. What if we're not talking about bots? Let's say someone bragging about paying money for a clear, someone bragging about botting all the time, or buying gold, sky's the limit. I'm not a first-party victim. Does that somehow make this not valid to report? What evidence is valid there? What can I even provide for a report or is the canned "they didn't self-incriminate ingame, so we won't bother to even take a look" response a perfectly valid response from GMs? It's that part that is entirely unclear.

[Vahlnir]

Thing is, when SE starts drawing lines everywhere about this, then people will try to blur those and try to get away with things that are of very questionable nature but not necessarily something that is considered rule-breaking.

Same happened when they stepped up against in-game harassments a while ago - Suddenly people wanted to know what exactly is bad, and what is still good. And cherry picking arguments like this is just making the situation not better since the player will start twisting words and arguments in a way that still can be seen as a negative comment, but are masked enough that throwing in a support ticket might not be worth the time.

When SE remains vague with their ways of how they detect toxicity and enforce their ToS like they did now, they remain somewhat in control and that keeps the player wary of what they can or cannot do in streams. And most of the time, the players will keep their voices down (so to speak) to avoid any ramifications that could risk their account.

People always try to blur the lines though regardless of how lax, strict, clear or vague a company's terms are. Sure, they make things a bit vague to cover a wide range of problems. But regarding 3rd party evidence for what would be considered an in game violation, there shouldn't be many blurred lines. They should tell us what is accepted and what is not and stick to it instead of bending their own rules to fit a situation. The person's ban which sparked this thread was obviously a justifiable thing from SE's point of view. But the same standards should be set for cheaters and botters or other questionable behaviors in that visual evidence of wrongdoing should be accepted. What they do with that is up to them. It wouldn't eliminate every single problem, but it'd be better than what we have now which is basically nothing.

[Yshtola]

SE has been doing this for more than two years, you guys are pretty late to the party.