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I started the wiki linked in the article (codconsumer.org). Long time HN lurker and was pleasantly surprised to see this here! I was only banned for a week, bu

by nperez 4y ago

I started the wiki linked in the article (codconsumer.org). Long time HN lurker and was pleasantly surprised to see this here! I was only banned for a week, but I'm absolutely certain that there was nothing sketchy happening on my side. It's pretty annoying when they're charging money for time-limited events like Battle Passes, then you lose some of that time. Of course, it's a much bigger problem for the many who have been permabanned and don't know why. And it's still happening to others. I would really like for this to end quietly with some better policies on account reviews, and more transparency on the findings of those reviews. I don't think that's too much to ask after being locked out of a $70 purchase. So far they have been completely silent on the matter. So the wiki stays up and we hope to someday get a word out of them.

dylan604 4y ago
if there's a thing called permabanned and they still take the money from the banned person, that should be criminal
- amatecha 4y ago
  Paying a few bucks doesn't give you a free pass to, say, spam racist epithets over and over in chat, or sabotage every multiplayer game you join by running into the enemy team every single match. That said, yeah, "being blocked from a $70 game for no actual discernible reason" should be prevented by some form of consumer rights that can't be waived by agreeing to a EULA.
  - nperez 4y ago
    The frustrating thing about this is that it's still extremely common for people to spam the n-word over voice chat, that's been a problem for years, and I haven't noticed any significant progress in reducing their numbers.
    - kevingadd 4y ago
      Riot Games recently started testing an AI based system for detecting slurs and other abuse in voice chat, we'll see if they announce results
      - amatecha 4y ago
        I recently got temporarily-chat-banned (and lost all Honor ranking) in League because the players on my team were sabotaging the game purposely and I swore at them. I didn't use any hate speech or slurs whatsoever, but apparently just swearing at people is enough to warrant such penalty, without even a warning first. Coincidentally I had actually just hit the highest possible tier of "Honor" in the game just days earlier, obviously indicating my swearing at people is not a normal thing. I haven't played since. Oh, even more frustrating about this is, the game has a swearing filter enabled by default. If those players saw swear words from me, they quite literally specifically opted into that by turning off the swearing filter! Meanwhile they were allowed to sabotage the game for me and ruin my night AND get me chat-banned.
        aussieshibe 4y ago
        It's surprising to me to hear that LoL actually does something about chat moderation. I play DotA, which seemingly does nothing (at at least, very little). I eventually decided to just disable text and voice chat entirely rather than put up with salt in every other game. Toxicity is contagious.
      - bombolo 4y ago
        Yay more random bans of people with accents! They deserve it for not speaking correct USA english /s
        gambiting 4y ago
        Not to mention that some languages(Chinese especially) have words which sound exactly like the n-word, so yeah, well done for being banned for not speaking English.
  - harry8 4y ago
    If I refuse to serve you (eg in a shop when you want to buy a snack) because I think you are foul I don't get to take your money /then/ tell you while putting your money in my pocket. If I decide to withhold part of my service (eg stop mowing your lawn and leave because you are foul) I don't get to keep all the money for completing the job. This stuff isn't hard. Think about what it is in life when there is no "cpu attached to a network" as a necessary part of the transaction. It's the same. Taking your money for no product delivery, charging you fees for no service is theft even if you are completely foul. Pointing to a "condition of entry" sign at the door of your premises does NOT change the law.
    - amatecha 4y ago
      Your analogy falls flat and is a poor interpretation of the situation of being banned from online games for the reasons I cited. When you buy a snack, you get a tangible good in exchange for money. The implied agreement is the most basic of exchanging goods for cash. When you purchase an online multiplayer game, there's an agreement you have explicitly agreed to that you will not, for example, call other players the N-word or sabotage the match by repeatedly running into the enemy team (griefing). These are really quite clearly-defined rules you agreed to. You bought the game knowing full well these are the rules, also knowing you _will potentially permanently lose access to the game_ if you violate those rules. In my prior example (and the one I just wrote here), there is zero comparison to buying a snack in a store and then the store owner snatching it back and keeping the money. Like I said, I think there should be consumer rights in place to protect the player against losing access to the game they paid for if they were abiding by the rules. I'd say that is a pretty reasonable expectation. Edit: A more apt analogy would be that you go into a store, buy a snack, eat some of it and then begin pouring hot sauce on other peoples' snacks and yelling in their faces. You don't get to just happily stick around and keep enjoying your snack while you're completely ruining the snacks of others.
      - shakna 4y ago
        Except the rules are _not_ clearly defined. The list of "bad words" isn't listed for you, and the matching of bad words is not necessarily well tokenised. You're not always sure what you've said or done, to be removed. And in some cases, they won't tell you what sin you have committed, either.
  - smaudet 4y ago
    Right to trial is a thing, though. The claim that the majority of bans are happening over racist epithets is unfounded, and honestly probably so much hogwash/bunk. Activision/Blizzard aren't courts of law, but they do represent to some degree a "controller of a market", they are absolutely shirking their responsibility here. Maybe after the SBF fiasco Govts outside China will finally start cracking down hard on all these illict online markets with zero rules.
- acdha 4y ago
  They should have to specify the cause and provide evidence. If, say, you’re a Nazi and spammed threats in chat that’s very easy to demonstrate and very few courts are going to even blink at the idea that it’s a terms of service violation which doesn’t warrant a refund. Where that’s harder would be things like “our ML system thinks your input timing wasn’t humanly possible” and it’d be great if this forced companies to be more nuanced about how they handle things like that by doing things like requiring multiple independent checks.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  Microtransaction games will happily ban players without recourse or explanation after they spend hundreds of dollars. No refunds, they make the rules and regulators don't care
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  If the person was cheating then tough shit. If anything, ruining entire online economies by cheating should be what is criminal. Fuck cheaters.
  - cafeinux 4y ago
    If they were cheating. Otherwise it's called stealing.
  - nperez 4y ago
    In this particular case, we're talking about people being banned sometimes before ever even playing their first multiplayer game because of an anti-cheat system with a kernel-level driver and ML-assisted autobans producing a lot of false positives. But yes, people who are actually using cheats are manipulating/attacking the service they're using and deserve nothing from the companies who are trying to defend against it.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    That’s fine if they’re banned from the multiplayer component. Not fine if they ban you from singleplayer.

by nperez 4y ago

dylan604 4y ago

if there's a thing called permabanned and they still take the money from the banned person, that should be criminal

amatecha 4y ago
Paying a few bucks doesn't give you a free pass to, say, spam racist epithets over and over in chat, or sabotage every multiplayer game you join by running into the enemy team every single match. That said, yeah, "being blocked from a $70 game for no actual discernible reason" should be prevented by some form of consumer rights that can't be waived by agreeing to a EULA.
- nperez 4y ago
  The frustrating thing about this is that it's still extremely common for people to spam the n-word over voice chat, that's been a problem for years, and I haven't noticed any significant progress in reducing their numbers.
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    Riot Games recently started testing an AI based system for detecting slurs and other abuse in voice chat, we'll see if they announce results
    - amatecha 4y ago
      I recently got temporarily-chat-banned (and lost all Honor ranking) in League because the players on my team were sabotaging the game purposely and I swore at them. I didn't use any hate speech or slurs whatsoever, but apparently just swearing at people is enough to warrant such penalty, without even a warning first. Coincidentally I had actually just hit the highest possible tier of "Honor" in the game just days earlier, obviously indicating my swearing at people is not a normal thing. I haven't played since. Oh, even more frustrating about this is, the game has a swearing filter enabled by default. If those players saw swear words from me, they quite literally specifically opted into that by turning off the swearing filter! Meanwhile they were allowed to sabotage the game for me and ruin my night AND get me chat-banned.
      - aussieshibe 4y ago
        It's surprising to me to hear that LoL actually does something about chat moderation. I play DotA, which seemingly does nothing (at at least, very little). I eventually decided to just disable text and voice chat entirely rather than put up with salt in every other game. Toxicity is contagious.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      Yay more random bans of people with accents! They deserve it for not speaking correct USA english /s
      - gambiting 4y ago
        Not to mention that some languages(Chinese especially) have words which sound exactly like the n-word, so yeah, well done for being banned for not speaking English.
- harry8 4y ago
  If I refuse to serve you (eg in a shop when you want to buy a snack) because I think you are foul I don't get to take your money /then/ tell you while putting your money in my pocket. If I decide to withhold part of my service (eg stop mowing your lawn and leave because you are foul) I don't get to keep all the money for completing the job. This stuff isn't hard. Think about what it is in life when there is no "cpu attached to a network" as a necessary part of the transaction. It's the same. Taking your money for no product delivery, charging you fees for no service is theft even if you are completely foul. Pointing to a "condition of entry" sign at the door of your premises does NOT change the law.
  - amatecha 4y ago
    Your analogy falls flat and is a poor interpretation of the situation of being banned from online games for the reasons I cited. When you buy a snack, you get a tangible good in exchange for money. The implied agreement is the most basic of exchanging goods for cash. When you purchase an online multiplayer game, there's an agreement you have explicitly agreed to that you will not, for example, call other players the N-word or sabotage the match by repeatedly running into the enemy team (griefing). These are really quite clearly-defined rules you agreed to. You bought the game knowing full well these are the rules, also knowing you _will potentially permanently lose access to the game_ if you violate those rules. In my prior example (and the one I just wrote here), there is zero comparison to buying a snack in a store and then the store owner snatching it back and keeping the money. Like I said, I think there should be consumer rights in place to protect the player against losing access to the game they paid for if they were abiding by the rules. I'd say that is a pretty reasonable expectation. Edit: A more apt analogy would be that you go into a store, buy a snack, eat some of it and then begin pouring hot sauce on other peoples' snacks and yelling in their faces. You don't get to just happily stick around and keep enjoying your snack while you're completely ruining the snacks of others.
    - shakna 4y ago
      Except the rules are _not_ clearly defined. The list of "bad words" isn't listed for you, and the matching of bad words is not necessarily well tokenised. You're not always sure what you've said or done, to be removed. And in some cases, they won't tell you what sin you have committed, either.
- smaudet 4y ago
  Right to trial is a thing, though. The claim that the majority of bans are happening over racist epithets is unfounded, and honestly probably so much hogwash/bunk. Activision/Blizzard aren't courts of law, but they do represent to some degree a "controller of a market", they are absolutely shirking their responsibility here. Maybe after the SBF fiasco Govts outside China will finally start cracking down hard on all these illict online markets with zero rules.
acdha 4y ago
They should have to specify the cause and provide evidence. If, say, you’re a Nazi and spammed threats in chat that’s very easy to demonstrate and very few courts are going to even blink at the idea that it’s a terms of service violation which doesn’t warrant a refund. Where that’s harder would be things like “our ML system thinks your input timing wasn’t humanly possible” and it’d be great if this forced companies to be more nuanced about how they handle things like that by doing things like requiring multiple independent checks.
kevingadd 4y ago
Microtransaction games will happily ban players without recourse or explanation after they spend hundreds of dollars. No refunds, they make the rules and regulators don't care
seattle_spring 4y ago
If the person was cheating then tough shit. If anything, ruining entire online economies by cheating should be what is criminal. Fuck cheaters.
- cafeinux 4y ago
  If they were cheating. Otherwise it's called stealing.
- nperez 4y ago
  In this particular case, we're talking about people being banned sometimes before ever even playing their first multiplayer game because of an anti-cheat system with a kernel-level driver and ML-assisted autobans producing a lot of false positives. But yes, people who are actually using cheats are manipulating/attacking the service they're using and deserve nothing from the companies who are trying to defend against it.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  That’s fine if they’re banned from the multiplayer component. Not fine if they ban you from singleplayer.