Banned in Videogames – a Brief History
Today’s article is MAINLY about lifetime, universal, or at last long-term banning.
Let’s break down the component parts first of all. No discussion of legal terms is complete without a glossary, so I’m going to give you the abridged version. There will also be a referral for outside reading to understand the history of community in video games.
Universal banning – A pipe dream. Not yet technologically possible from an economic standpoint. For example, that would be Sony (or Activision) or Microsoft feels you have created a grievance so heinous, or repeated on so many occasions, that your personal ID (not just your gamertag, or your machine-tag, or your IP address, but you PERSONALLY, are banned from their games online at any computer, any console, or any IP address.) Developers can only dream of this type of power.
Banned by gamertag – this is the way of most online games. Depending upon whether player is paying for the gaming, or whether it is free-to-subscribe (and paid via optional add-ons) the banning varies in effectiveness. Tracks you by username and billing/registration information. Obviously if free-to-subscribe it is simple (if you are dishonest) to give an email address and a fake name.
Banned by game console or IP address – This is the most used these days. Especially with Xbox360 and PS3 accounts now updating regularly so as to tie these to the internet, the difficulty of “just playing” and not connecting is very complicated. And so the banning effectively “bricks” the Xbox360 or the PS3 to any additional updates through the company servers.
Starting from most recent to a little earlier: here goes…
Dailytech tells the story of the estimated one million X-box live customers banned from using the service for having modded consoles. The quote from Microsoft is “When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban”
Activision’s proactive legal strategy to give cease-and-desist orders to Websites running programs/addons that Activision feels violates the terms of use. (The Cease and Desist letter posted at Play No Evil video-game security blog).
Blizzard bans WOW glider from ingame use, and is victorious in the lawsuit. This is another version where the users are permanently banned.
Amicus brief filed by Public Knowledge in the case. Incredible background if you’re asking “what’s modding?”.
Ongoing coverage of the case given by Virtually Blind from 2008. Still the superior coverage of the older cases.
Kotaku has a story about Blizzard banning 350,000 users in Battle.net. The justification and method listed is “The Diablo II CD keys associated with the closed Diablo II accounts are now restricted from playing on Battle.net for approximately 30 days. Repeat offenders will have their accounts closed and their CD keys permanently banned from Battle.net. As a reminder, we reserve the right to close the accounts and ban the CD keys of players who are caught cheating on Battle.net. ”
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Here are a couple of places to find some background on the philosophy of games, choices, and banning.
Interview with Raph Koster :A point he brings up during the discussion is that the biggest and most successful games on the market are the ones that present very little choices for the gamer, and pegs them into roles that need to be fulfilled or they fail (World of Warcraft is the example).
So to this lawyer, it makes sense that the games with the fewer choices would be the most vigilant about enforcement to restrict those choices (i.e. mods, add-ons, etc.).
2. Commentary on a video-games Website; “is there a banning quota?”
3. Again, a good sampling of the response from developers as far as banning games.
4. Posts tagged banning at Massively.com (A great resource for MMO news)
5. Why Governments aren’t Gods and God’s aren’t Governments. Great article, especially concerning the whole philosophical reasoning of why an operation must be able to govern in games.
6. And lastly, of course, one for the eggheads. Basically, an article that gave me a headache, so it MUST BE GOOD.
If you’re looking for a broad statement of philosophy from me about this subject, you can move on. It is like all games, the choices on banning reflect the choices of the developers. Whether that is an actionable offense by the developers to kick out a player forever from their world, that legal decision is in my opinion at least 5 or 10 years away at least.
Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.
Tags: banning, Blizzard, gamertags, MMOs, Second Life, Virtually Blind
