Recent Developments of TOS Actions Taken

[linay]

Yeah, but has someone ever been banned for saying something on twitch regarding FFXIV community?
We live at times where anyone can get offended by anything. Even if you sit in the corner of your room, there will be someone who will be offended by that x) Thus people can find twitch stuff offensive even if it wasn't offensive in the first place.
As I said, I did not see the clip and I can't tell what was there, my point is that a player got banned by saying something outside the game and this is bringing the question if next time you will get banned by saying something about another person in a public discord.

Anyone can be offended at anything and can report the offense, but SE will still have to make a judgment call on whether it is an actionable offense. The potential to offend someone with anything does not excuse actions that are actually meant to be offensive (again, SE will have to make a judgment call on that). (I didn't see the actual clip, so this is not talking specifically about this incident.)

[Alleo]

I do believe that its bad that the streamer did badmouth that person but until recently SE never took any outside information to punish people and I am not sure if I like that they suddenly are allowed to do that. Especially if they still turn a blind eye to famous raiders that are using parsers for their raids.

So if they do suddenly take outside information than be clear about this and fair. First tell us about this so that people can take actions (like not showing their streams with parsers) but also that everyone needs to "fear" this and not turn a blind eye on certain cases.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I do believe that its bad that the streamer did badmouth that person but until recently SE never took any outside information to punish people and I am not sure if I like that they suddenly are allowed to do that. Especially if they still turn a blind eye to famous raiders that are using parsers for their raids.

So if they do suddenly take outside information than be clear about this and fair. First tell us about this so that people can take actions (like not showing their streams with parsers) but also that everyone needs to "fear" this and not turn a blind eye on certain cases.

I don't think his ban was about the parser at all. He was a complete and utter jerk, had a special window set up that put act in the middle with a booing crowd effect, and ranted about the guy publicly.

He then complained that "they'll ban my character but let me play another account. I'm still going to trash talk players, if they don't want me to do that they shouldn't let me play at all"

Clearly he's not one who just did this in the moment, he had a whole setup for shaming people and it sounds like he does it often.

[ForteNightshade]

I believe once the line is being crossed about whether the player knows they are being talked about is honestly the turning point. I can't seem to find any clips of what was going on exactly, all of them have been deleted now - but from what I understand, the BLM in the group was also being an ass, and sassing him a bunch.

BLM was most likely in his stream as well, and when you start doing things like this:


(without the red box, I added that)

You are pretty much asking to be banned by SE.
He also apparently had some sounds that would trigger when the BLM messed up or something, and received donations from viewers also shit talking the blm.

This isn't even the first time he's done something like this, but I assume it's more of a character he plays up.

To clear a little bit of this up. Yes, the BLM was in Arthar's stream—which is what led to the report being filed.

And while Arthars does use cut aways like this for play up a "character," he doesn't have sound effects, triggers or anything that specifically go off for any one player; nor are people encouraged to donate/sub based on these images.

Finally, no. This is far from the first time. Arthars has several cut away images like this. Some poke fun at bad players while others have poked fun at SE themselves. An example of the latter being his Ninja clip after the 5.1 buff.

[FedoraTheExplorer]

Ahahaha at all the people fearmongering. You guys are a real riot.

I'm with SE on this one. If you don't want to get punished, don't act like a douche. It's really that simple. In what world is publicly harassing someone okay?

[Alleo]

I don't think his ban was about the parser at all. He was a complete and utter jerk, had a special window set up that put act in the middle with a booing crowd effect, and ranted about the guy publicly.

He then complained that "they'll ban my character but let me play another account. I'm still going to trash talk players, if they don't want me to do that they shouldn't let me play at all"

Clearly he's not one who just did this in the moment, he had a whole setup for shaming people and it sounds like he does it often.

No he may not have been punished because of the parser but he could only truly bad mouth that player because of having one. And as we know parser are against the Tos. Right now people are save from punishment because before that SE did not take outside informations as something to punish but that line has blurred now.

So if they are fair and are now using outside information, anyone streaming with a parser should theoretically be punished. Because they are using something which is against the ToS. If they turn a blind eye on that (and Yoshida and his teams are probably watching such streams for world first clears) but do punish someone else then they are purely biased.

Also this means that they somehow until now also turned a blind eye to any other evidence about hacking or botting yet somehow followed that one example through..

[MrKusakabe]

I am good with that decision. It's just a suspension, not a permanent ban. When someone's doing "bad things" with our company's property - might it be intellectual or actual - steps are also taken there.

The rest boils down to being FFXIV's equivalent of "Why didn't the cop pull THAT other speeder over?" or "Why was the speed camera taking me instead of the others?" - instead of asking, why you were speeding in the first place, you fall into Whataboutism. That's been never an adult's solution.

[HyoMinPark]

How? Are they going to lose subs as a result?

Because you shouldn’t arbitrarily decide when to enforce rules and when not to. It leads to inconsistency in moderation, and I know you’ve been around long enough to know how people feel about that. Just because they’re still subscribed doesn’t mean it’s an okay thing to do, and it doesn’t mean that people are okay with it.

How many players have canceled their sub because SE does not enforce their ToS? The argument could be made they get more subs from allowing players to use bots and sell content for money.

It doesn’t matter if players are still subscribed or not. It’s the principle of the matter and the possibility of bad press as a result. These forums are a good example of how inconsistent and bad moderation has earned them a not-so-favorable reputation with a portion of the playerbase. The bad press surrounding them and previous bans is what caused the moderation team to set up a “ban appeal system”. Sadly, the system is pretty much a flimsy attempt to save face. It hasn’t reversed any previous ban—no matter how silly—to my knowledge.

Only if they were to go after parsing, which they won't given how many use it and the current rules around it.

I wasn’t talking about going after parsing? I was talking about cherry-picking moderation and how that can hurt the reputation of the game. Where are you coming up with these statements?

Doesn't mean anything if they stay subbed.

I disagree. It can still very well hurt the reputation of the game and the company. Using this as a defense of poor practice is as concerning as your statement appearing to support SE enforcing their rules whenever it’s deemed convenient for them. That’s not how rules should be enforced.

They should start banning for use of hunt radar, triggers, visual mods that provide combat advantages, automated waymark placement and account piloting? What about uploading logs? You can't argue it falls into what's allowed regarding parsing. That's a lot of people to ban.

Where on earth was I talking about any of this? My entire post was dealing with my concern over your statement (“SE’s game, SE’s rules; they can enforce them whenever they want”) being problematic because inconsistency in punishment and moderation is problematic. Did you actually read what I wrote, or are you too busy coming up with illogical responses to do that?

[Warghoul570]

I haven’t seen the video but if the player that was being talked about by the streamer name is clearing visible then I can see it being against TOS. At the same time however, SE has demonstrated for years that there’s a lack of uniformity in how it polices it’s TOS. There seems to be a pick and choose approach to how and when they enforce something

[Seddrinth]

I was really confused when I read about this as well. I understand Arthars was trashing the guy but it was not done in game. I always thought SE would not punish for things outside of the game. I was in Limsa and a guy was shouting that he was going to shoot up a school and kill a bunch of kids, so I screenshotted and reported to the GMs. They said they can't do anything about it because they can't take outside evidence since screenshots can be altered. So that's why I was confused that they would use outside game media to ban someone in this instance. Some type of clarification would be appreciated.