Banning in Games

What rights does a player have not to be banned; and what responsibility does a developer, and further an administrator, of a game have to ban cheating, harassing, or obnoxious players?
First I’ll talk about banning a player for in-game conduct, either through speech that’s found problemsome; or either through conduct in playing the game, spamming players about selling gold, or using bots or game-leveling devices to improve your game-play against the game’s terms of service. To finish, I’ll talk about some actions taken by developers and administrators to combat these issues, and what more might be done.

There are few reported court decisions of a player appealing an in-game ban. One of those rare cases was mentioned on Techdirt, when a Federal Judge upheld a gamer ban(Case variously cited as C-09-03007 RMW; SD Cal Estavillo v. Sony Computer Entm’t Am. Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86821). The player’s complaint protested against his ban from a Sony site. An intelligent and thorough discussion of the case may be found at this site, and another more approving tone from this site, which approves the idea of increased responsibility for a company as a “virtual company town”. I rather side more with the latter point of view, as the resources of a multinational corporation running a multimillion-dollar business rather make them more of a landlord than as a poor helpless forum-owner.

A very well-informed viewpoint is espoused at “Law of the Level“. It’s pointed out that an in-game monitoring system could make the publisher/administrator liable, by giving them certain “red-flag” knowledge. I’d advise a close reading of the well-written article, especially if you’re building or supervising a chat room associated with a game.

The second common reason to get banned in-game is conduct; usually for using bots or scripts to improve your online performance, or for “spamming” fellow players with offers to sell gold or places where they can buy gold. The current most discussed game is Aion, which is having spam troubles even before being totally out of beta stage. Basically the game is being beseiged to such an extent by “gold spammers” that it is hurting the initial launch of the game, at least in the public perception.

The important lesson to be gotten from these public conflicts is what can be done to eliminate them at an early point. Blizzard (Now Activision/Blizzard) has taken an aggressive stand against any users they feel in violation of their Terms of Service, which has led to some hard feelings. Another company to “celebrate” their hardline stance is Silk Road Online.

Here is a short collection of links as to other articles concerning gold spam and “illegal bots”
Epic Toon Blog
Massively article on how spam “drains” MMOs
Twinking(sending gold to another character whom you own) is another form of cheating
A good first place to look for MMO banning concerns

So, what to do? Throw up our hands? There’s a couple of good common-sense ideas being tossed around; first for the developers/publishers. Stroppsworld talks about three simple ways to fight gold spam. These are (1) Reduce the need for gold (2) Remove mechanisms that facilitate the gold trade (3) Provide players with moderation tools. Another novel way is discussed by Sony Creative Director Laralynn Williams at the GDC conference in Austin. The banning issue is mentioned two-thirds into the discussion under “Solutions Lead to New Problems”. To the question “How do you deal with hackers when everyone can create a free account? Player char dressed as referee. All our C/S agents wear this outfit when are in game – only our GMs can wear these”

Finally, for the gamer, remember who the gold farmers are, and whether it’s worth all the risks. After all, an MMO downloads a client on your computer, a bot to bypass that client does so as well, we’re reminded by a blog named playbbg. That script downloads directly into your operating system and the blog points out those hidden dangers. And also, the common-sense realization should be that in participating in gold-purchasing that is clearly outside the game’s terms of service, that you have no one to complain to or get enforcement from if the offer terms out to be fraudulent or not executed properly.

Jay Moffitt is a TN attorney. The statements here are not legal advice, and no attorney/client relationship is created. Jay Moffitt claims no certification in this specialty, and TN does not offer a certification in this area of law. Copyright, Jay Moffitt, 2009. Comments are welcomed and will be answered promptly and courteously.

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2 Responses to “Banning in Games on “Banning in Games”

  • We are all for banning spammers in the game. But sad to say, NcSoft is using the wrong approach by mass banning. It’s the equivalent of shooting everything that moves! I know they are only concerned with the in-game spam or whatever, but I think they should try another approach to get rid of this because they actually ruin the game experience of the players. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of posts today from disgusted players.

    jaymoffitt Reply:
    October 16th, 2009 at 10:28 am

    I don’t know personally about NcSoft in particular. But I think my article points out that companies range from being too soft (resulting in running off legitimate players) to being too harsh (again, running off legitimate players). Hopefully the administrators running each game know more about what it is taking to combat “gold spam” and other participants in the game who hurt the total experience. Luckily, most games have in-game forums where you can complain directly to the administrators as to their policies… plus the strongest statement is with “your vote”… i.e. whether or not you stay playing the game. In subscription or in free-to-play, if a particular policy towards the players results in an overall decrease in playing, the supervisors in the game get the message.