Recent Developments of TOS Actions Taken

[AmurT]

Pls fix healers

[Risvertasashi]

So, let's look at what he did.

- Talked a lot of crap about a player in his party
- Enlarged the parse screen
- Used special sound effects and animations to draw even more attention to the "bad player"
- Showed their name in the clear; no attempt to obfuscate their identity.

If we're now in an era where SE takes action on this kind of evidence (And really, SE is behind, because most other operators of online games already do), I'm perfectly OK with SE suspending someone like this.

I also reported that streamer to twitch, since I'm pretty sure his actions violate their ToS too.

Now let's say the streamer could now indeed be banned for what they do outside of the game (but is one-time criticism really harassment, especially when there is zero direct interaction between players?). What happens now?

Streamers/youtubers/etc have a lot of power to start witch hunts. Not only did he show that player's name, he made it even bigger and more prominent on his stream.

[DumdogsWorld]

This is one of those kinds of things where I hate both sides. The guy was clearly toxic, but Square Enix crossed a risky line to punish him.

Not sure that I would defend either stance in this situation, to be honest.

[Selova]

I don't think it's a wise decision on SE's part to be patrolling 3rd party sites and dishing out punishments for stuff unless it's directly taking place inside their game. I recall Blizzard doing the same thing with Overwatch and well....It wasn't exactly a great moment for them. I'm not gonna debate whether or not Arthars should have said what he said, just that this isn't the wisest course of action SE should be taking.

[Alaray]

My stance is: While yes, action against the behavior is understandable given previous stances the company has with this kind of situation and yes, Square Enix has the right to action offenses anywhere:

It sets a really weird precedence. Since, technically now, the entirety of the TOS applies to third party websites/third party interactions. Which means that, if reported over certain things, like if you just say -- on a 18+ marked stream -- "aw, [expletive]" that can be an actioned offense just as saying an expletive in game can be. And people say expletives (and no, I'm not talking about slurs, I'm talking about the adult frick) because people do get frustrated, or even just excited. No one's going to be an eternal ray of sunshine, everyone gets frustrated. In the same vein, sometimes when you accomplish something that was incredibly difficult, plenty of people do reach for the 18+ "frick yeah" phrase.

If you run ACT on a stream, that'd also become reportable and actionable whereas before they didn't care about it in this off-site context, only if you mentioned it directly in game.

If you're streaming prog, and one player gets heated at another player and the instance is clipped + sent in as a report: that's actionable, even if both involved parties don't really care about the interaction.

People, players, who take an interaction a streamer has and harass on their own are doing just that: A streamer can't control their base anymore than I can, say, control what dumb things my friends end up doing that get them into a bad situation. (Which is to say, is a different context than a streamer advocating for people to go and harass x, y or z person, but that's not something that happened in the highlighted case, nor is it something that happens in any cases I've seen -- every streamer I've seen usually advocates to not do that. But at the end of the day, they don't literally control the individual people watching, nor do they have physical control over their keyboards.)

Even then, going after a streamer who made fun of someone playing poorly is a less important thing to be concerned about than, say, all the advertised Discords in PF that're RMT selling things.

I'll also add: I don't necessarily think SE will action against people who use ACT on streams, because they haven't previously, but they also didn't action people through offsite interactions of this nature before on a platform they don't own/control, so who's to say what of the TOS and what not of the TOS would be applied going forward. Who can report for what, what report of what content has merit to them, there's no set rules for off-site behavior that's consistent with the GM moderation (and the GM moderation isn't consistent to begin with, which is a problem, and this just plays into that inconsistency).

(And while yes they actioned the offsite death threats, that's a bit more extreme of a case that'd warrant that kind of response. And while they actioned the lewd mods situation some people had on twitter, that always came off more to me as a "We don't want sexual content of our game representing us" moreso than a behavioral fix, and even then, those players largely got warnings from what I remember -- not an immediate escalation)

And while we can all guess, assume, and say "probably this is why" and point to specific things... fact is none of us know, exactly, what tripped it over the line. Most I feel should be put out by SE is just... a defined line for these situations, especially when there's people whose livelihoods depend on it. No one ever wants a "well, maybe you'll be fired" floating over their head 24/7.


That said, I've been put on blast on a stream before. It's not fun, no, but it's not really something that's as big a deal as people say it is. Generally, it's forgotten about within the day and no one will generally care going forward.

Personally? I uh, I got over it.

[Tomoebi]

No party involved treat this fabulous drama with a clear head tbh

SE just being stupid as always, and arthas just like any other streamer with stupid screaming and over-reaction over the pettiest thing.
one think i heard is the BLM is the one who talkshit first, however i havent found a receipt for this. but if its true, then it's a "dont hit if you dont want to be slapped" scenario

"Offensive expression" means an expression in general that inflicts emotional distress by being offensive to another person. Offensive expression may include:

TOS was always vague as shit, and its been like that for a long time. but, what if i get offended because a healer not dps-ing/not healing when i Q as a dps? what if i offended because ilvl 400 blm perform worse than ilvl 350 healer??

this fabulous great community always said "just dont be an asshole lol"
but, if you think a little bit. wouldnt people who dont do their job properly and not reading their tooltip also an asshole??
people also said "you dont pay my sub bro"
but, if you think a little bit. wouldnt the deadweight also not paying my sub and the other sub in the party?? (the deadweight also not paying my electricity bill fyi)

So, yoshida i have a proposal for you to end this hostile environemtn called Eorzea.
Lets ban everyone under 99 percentile, ban the stream sniper, ban the erp-er, ban the MB undercutter and ban everyone on r/ShitpostXIV.
Yup, das right, we need to ban all player to end harrasment for once and for all.

[Risvertasashi]

The guy was clearly toxic, but Square Enix crossed a risky line to punish him.

It's a fair point. It's probably the death/rape/etc threats (from the world first ultimate clears, not this incident) that opened pandora's box. That was out of game too but since SE responded to that, I think that is why they now respond to some reports about behavior connected to but not necessarily entirely within the game.

People, players, who take an interaction a streamer has and harass on their own are doing just that: A streamer can't control their base anymore than I can, say, control what dumb things my friends end up doing that get them into a bad situation. (Which is to say, is a different context than a streamer advocating for people to go and harass x, y or z person, but that's not something that happened in the highlighted case, nor is it something that happens in any cases I've seen -- every streamer I've seen usually advocates to not do that. But at the end of the day, they don't literally control the individual people watching, nor do they have physical control over their keyboards.)

While it's true they don't control their viewers, broadcasters do have a certain amount of liability about what they broadcast - and this extends into legal territory, not just SE's/Twitch's ToS. (And, you know - I know this was just hurling insults and very unlikely to escalate - but if it did escalate thanks to some dumb viewer, SE and Twitch could also potentially share some liability if it were shown they had reports they didn't act on.)

There's a reason both big name TV broadcasters will blur faces, and content creators on youtube/twitch will often anonymize names of people that appear on their content. "I don't control the viewers" isn't a free pass.

Even then, going after a streamer who made fun of someone playing poorly is a less important thing to be concerned about than, say, all the advertised Discords in PF that're RMT selling things.

Yeah, I do wish they'd do more about the blatant RMT too...

[Vnolan]

While I do not believe they will go the route to moderate ALL forms of media, I also am not willing to tolerate cherry picking of what they want to consider ban worthy.

You're free to unsub at any time. It's SE's product so they can do whatever they want with it. If you're unsure what is and isn't allowed you can check with GMs or the ToS.

Not sure what slippery slope people are worried about.

[Alaray]

While it's true they don't control their viewers, broadcasters do have a certain amount of liability about what they broadcast - and this extends into legal territory, not just SE's/Twitch's ToS. (And, you know - I know this was just hurling insults and very unlikely to escalate - but if it did escalate thanks to some dumb viewer, SE and Twitch could also potentially share some liability if it were shown they had reports they didn't act on.)

It's a bit different when it's not a real life identity (which you can be banned for having on your stream of someone who didn't give permission), but even if a streamer went through all the steps they could to minimize the information, people can still find the information extremely easily -- namely, just going to FFlogs and looking up the parse from the encounter (that someone else in the party may have uploaded). While yes mitigating the possibility is good practice, it doesn't 100% solve the issue of people taking things into their own hands. And, in the latter case, the people who are taking actions into their own hands and actively going after a player, are the people who should be actioned.

[HyoMinPark]

I would say that I am less concerned about “slippery slope” and more concerned about cherry-picking situations for punishment. In other words: punishments still being as thoroughly inconsistent has they have always seemed, but now expanded to include evidence from third-party media...Except when it’s suddenly “too inconvenient” to take into account third-party evidence for specific reports.