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.

[MOZZYSTAR]

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.

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.

Fully backing this ^ Under no circumstances should harassment, witch hunting, hazing, or any other "abusive"/bullying behaviour should be allowed ever, period. Whatever they didn't see in the stream, I'm sure they had proof of in the chat logs themselves, and possibly witnesses (or report(s) by other people). It's basically conjecture, so there's no use arguing about it. But the GMs do investigate these sorts of things, and if they find substantial enough evidence to enforce ToS/rules for the safety of the gaming environment they should act. Heaven forbid they do their job to keep the rest of us players safe, right? Honestly, I think that streamer was downright lucky that he only got a ten day suspension and not an outright ban with that sort of evidence. Practically a slap on the wrist and a short groundation period. (I know there's a system of marks, but I think that one act alone was bad enough to probably warrant a ban, imo.) Sure, some times mistakes happen, but I don't think this suspension was a mistake.

To be frank, I think it makes people who defend bullies(?) against punishment fairly questionable. If it were me watching that twitch when it happened, I would have unsubbed, grab the link, and reported it to SE immediately.

[Melichoir]

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 these were happening in the video, then I think punishment was justified. We can split gray hairs cause there is nuance to the situation. If he purposefully made a stream or video to crap on someone and didnt even bother to hide the name, thats a step to far and is I think within SE's right to go after said player cause its part of the SE platform. If it was him talking about bad players and parses, and didnt use any specific information or made it as a general video to talk about bad play or other mishaps or even vent a bit (again without doing specifics to a player) then thats fine. It's the act of purposefully singling out a person with specific information thats an issue.

We also need to stop protecting and treating streamers like theyre some journalist, comedian, or otherwise. Theyre not. If youre a streamer and youre being a donkey to someone for the sheer reason to be a donkey and mean, that shouldnt get people going out there and sticking up for the guy and treating SE like theyre the bad guy. Just cause you stream doesnt give you carte blanche to crap on other people and not have some kind of pushback or reprimand for it. If you want to have running commentary or have off hand commentaries, thats plenty fine as long as private player IDs are being masked. Remember, that person theyre streaming isnt a public person. That person could be the worlds biggest butt, but that doesnt make it right for a streamer to use their reach and single them out with the intent and purpose to get them publicly shamed and lynched by their followers, even if its off platform. Even if that isnt the intent, streamers should full well know by now that they cannot control their base and that creating hyperbolic videos that selectively go after someone privately is gonna be an issue.

If this other player was another streamer with their own following and put themselves out there, thats fair game then, even if it may be still somewhat jerkish to go after them.

[MitsukiKimura]

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.



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.

Pretty much this^ If you're going to be toxic then reap the consequences, especially if you're going to be using third party software to do it with.

[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.

[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...

[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.

[Risvertasashi]

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.

You are right. It's shared responsibility, not 100% on either person.

That said, when a streamer has setup a special scene in their broadcast software that enlarges the insult target's name and draws special attention with extra animation and sounds... well, let's just say this isn't what I would call one of the very grey area cases? It's hard to not see that as encouraging the behavior, at least a little bit.

It would be a very different story if he only showed initials or blurred the name or similar. If someone is really determined to find out who that was, they could yes, but then the broadcaster would have done what they can to mitigate it over the medium they control. The broadcaster doesn't control FF logs, of course.

Also if the broadcaster had just kicked, blacklisted, and moved on, it'd have been a nonissue.

[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.