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League of Legends enforces 'zero tolerance' policy on test server
Riot Games is cracking down hard on noxious player attitudes and actions on League of Legends' public beta environment (PBE) server. The studio admits that it has not done enough to enforce player behavior guidelines on the server. Riot also says that this ends now. "Our take-away message today is quite simple," the studio posted. "The PBE has zero tolerance for toxicity, and change is coming." The studio says that the PBE is a premium server that should function under higher standards, and as such the devs are working on ways above and beyond the norm to enforce and improve player behaviors as well as hold players accountable for their actions. One of the new features is an automatic system that will deliver bans to so-called toxic players, starting with 167 such bans today.
Blizzard bans thousands of bots from Diablo III
Diablo III is a few thousand players lighter today, as Blizzard announced that it had culled the unfaithful (read: botters) from its fold. Community Manager Lylirra issued the grim proclamation: "We've recently issued account bans to several thousand Diablo III players who were found to be using botting programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair play, botting, hacking, and other forms of cheating can also cause technical problems with the game as well as contribute to performance issues with the Battle.net service." Lylirra also said that the Diablo III team is working to add a feature that will allow players to directly report naughty bots through the game itself.
Halo 4 gets tough on sexist players
343 Industries wants to make it clear: It will brook no further discrimination of any kind in Halo 4. Executive producer Kiki Wolfkill and studio head Bonnie Ross say that sexist discrimination of any kind will be met with a lifetime ban from both the game and the Xbox Live network.Ross says that "most people look at a franchise like Halo, and automatically assume it's run by a guy," but this particular franchise is run by a few ladies, and they're not having any discriminatory nonsense in their latest sequel.We agree with the sentiment, and hope that the harsh penalties make sure that the losers who make sexist and other offensive comments get shown the door for good. The ideal should be to make sure all forms of this offensive discrimination are squashed as far and wide as possible, no matter who's running the show.
Australia's R18+ guidelines published, industry 'concerned'
The Australian government today published its new guidelines for the classification of computer games, but those guidelines were met with concern by the country's games industry. The R18+ classification for video games comes into effect on January 1 2013, but Australia's Interactive Games & Entertainment Association responded to today's guidelines with only a "reserved and qualified welcome."The IGEA's concern centers on a couple of the guidelines' assertions. Firstly, the guidelines state that similarly themed content is more impactful in video games than in film, and potentially more harmful. Secondly, the guidelines attribute this greater impact to the medium's interactive nature. In short, the new classification will hold games to a higher standard than film, and may see some games that were banned without the R18 classification stay banned despite its effectuation.Shortly after the guidelines were announced, the IGEA released a statement. While that statement does express a welcome to the guidelines, the language is laced with skepticism and disappointment: "Given the opposition to the introduction of an R18+ category from a vocal yet unrepresentative section of the community, along with a largely conservative group of Attorneys-General, it is no surprise the new guidelines hold video games to a higher standard across a number of categories compared to film and what originally existed for video games. "As we have previously stated, we are concerned with the acknowledgment in the guidelines that interactivity has greater impact on players, despite the Federal Attorney-General's office publishing a literature review in September 2010 that found no evidence to support these claims. There will be continued debate about whether the interactivity of video games has a greater impact than other forms of media, and we will continue to refer to the lack of the evidence to support these claims."There are four months to go until the R18+ classification comes to Australian video games, and this isn't the last we'll hear about it before then. You can find the government's guidelines here, and read the IGEA's response to them here.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's launch week in review
It's been quite the week in the world of Guild Wars 2. Launch, issues, near-daily server updates, fixes, and launch parties have likely kept the entire team high on adrenaline and low on sleep. If you're one of the folks in attendance at one of ArenaNet's launch parties, you likely saw a lot of very tired but very happy people. If you're not hounding the Guild Wars 2 Twitter account or subreddit, it's easy to miss a lot of communication, and even if you do, it's a lot to sort through. So what's been going on? A great deal.
Steam deletes games with 'Half-Life 3,' offensive content from Greenlight
Steam's Greenlight service allows anyone to upload a game idea for community vetting, no matter what stage of production it's in – including "not real." This is an issue Valve predicted, and it has started taking measures to ban games that are obviously fake, such as anything called "Half-Life 3," and those that are patently offensive, such as "Best WTC Plane Simulator."The only way Greenlight will succeed in its intended purpose is if its users take it seriously, and unfortunately for Steam, "the users" are "the internet." We'll keep an eye on Greenlight's progress once the initial hubbub dies down.This is why absolute freedom is a terrible idea, people. The rabble can't be trusted with such a liberated, unchecked service, and let's be honest, most of them need to be kept on a short government-dispersed leash. That in mind, check out our new game on Steam Greenlight, Freedom Sucks: Revenge of the Plutocrats.
ArenaNet offers clarification on Guild Wars 2 bans
With so many players descending on Guild Wars 2, it is understandable that ArenaNet has taken a few swings with the banhammer over things like offensive names and inappropriate behavior. In order to clarify what names and behavior are specifically targeted for action, ArenaNet has posted an explanation of what's unacceptable. The post also includes the consequences for breaking the rules. The company emphasizes that it will take action against racist names, hate speech, and unacceptable behavior. Accounts participating in a chat offense will be given a three-day suspension; players suspended for name offenses will be required to rename the offending characters. The company also assures players that anyone unsure of the reason behind his or her suspension can ask and the company will respond in detail.
WoW Archivist: A raid exploit compendium
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? One week after Mists of Pandaria goes live, the expansion's first raid will become available and the race to world first will officially begin. To the most dedicated progression raiders, a world-first kill is a dream come true, the ultimate achievement in raiding. Other raiders are just as excited to get a regional or a realm first. To realize those dreams, however, some guilds bend the rules. Whether you call it cheating or a "creative use of game mechanics," it's been happening throughout WoW's long raiding history. The myriad methods have been as varied and creative as the bosses themselves. Let's take a look back!
League of Legends nerfs Rumble, buffs Urgot and Cho'Gath
In addition to getting a new champion every few weeks, League of Legends is continually updated with balance changes and gameplay tweaks based on player feedback. Yesterday Riot Games released its early August patch preview, detailing incoming champion nerfs and buffs in addition to big changes for the player-mediated banning tribunal. Players who are punished by the tribunal will now be emailed a reform card showing the case made against them and highlighting the exact behaviours they need to improve to avoid further bans. Following a bugfix to Rumble's Flamespitter ability in the Jayce patch, his damage suddenly increased. Rumble's Danger Zone passive and Flamespitter abilities will have their damage reduced to compensate for the increase. The previous patch also gave Urgot some heavy nerfs that went a little bit too far, and in the next patch, some of those nerfs are being reverted. Classic champion Cho'Gath will also get a number of tweaks to remove random cast time delays and make him more fun to play. Skip past the cut to watch the full patch preview video in HD.
Diablo 3 bans not based on Linux software, says Blizzard
A handful of players using Wine, a program that allows Linux users to run Windows, recently reported being suddenly and unreasonably banned from Diablo 3. These players have sent in support tickets and one in particular notes his account remains banned, posting the following response from Blizzard:"An additional review of the action taken against the Diablo 3 account has been completed. We have confirmed our initial findings, and the account action will not be reversed or changed."These players assert that they have not cheated. Blizzard community manager Bashiok has responded to these claims, saying that players are banned for cheating, not for running benevolent software. "We've extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating system setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly," he writes. "We've not found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found that the circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and we are extremely confident in our findings."Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned – cheating will."A Reddit post (now complete with a "[Misleading Title]" preface) saw more Wine players speak up, saying that they can play with no problems. It appears the bans themselves may be more isolated than the initial thread made them appear, and they may be less scandalous, at least on Blizzard's end. The moral of the story is, as always: Don't cheat, whiners Winers.
Thousands of players banned in Diablo 3
You read that right: Several thousand suspensions and bans have gone out to Diablo III players using account hacks or bots or otherwise cheating at the game. Zarhym (he who often shows up in monster form while I'm playing Diablo III) posted to the official forums to announce the action. Diablo® III Players Banned We recently issued a round of account suspensions and bans to several thousand Diablo® III players who were in violation of the Battle.net® Terms of Use for cheating and/or using botting or hacking programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair play that's essential to everyone's enjoyment of the game, botting, hacking, and other such exploitive behavior can contribute to stability and performance issues with the Battle.net service. As always, maintaining a stable, safe, and fun online-gaming experience for legitimate players is a top priority for us, and we'll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed. source Seems fairly straightforward to me -- don't cheat, won't get banned. With the move to require an authenticator for the Real-Money Auction House and now this, it is pretty clear Blizzard is taking Battle.net very seriously moving forward. Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo III for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.
Blizzard's banhammer visiting Diablo 3 cheaters in 'near future'
Have you used any "hacks, bots, or modifications in any form" that would violate Diablo 3's instinctual scroll wheel-friendly end user license agreement? Well, don't come crying to us when the company drops the banhammer."Playing Diablo 3 legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client," Blizzard warned today. "Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future."The permaban from Battle.net means players will not be able to access their account for Blizzard's single-player, online-required game. Perhaps Blizzard would be so kind as to allow purchase of an unbanning from the real-money auction house?
League of Legends mastery point exploit fixed, banhammer incoming
We all know that League of Legends breeds a fairly competitive community, but unfortunately there are players out there who don't let little things like rules and common decency get in the way of their desire to win. A number of such players were recently found to be taking advantage of an exploit that allowed them to place more mastery points in a given talent than they would legally be able to, thereby giving them an incredibly unfair advantage. Riot Games' Lead Community Manager, Tamat, stopped by the forums today to let everyone know that "that's bull****" and that it's not going to be tolerated. The post goes on to state that a fix for the exploit has been implemented, and the studio is about to lay the smack down on the guilty parties. Tamat says that the studio has "comprehensive logs and data" that have been used to identify the players who used the exploit. Riot is "going to be taking firm action against their accounts." May all the exploiters meet a swift and terrible demise at the hands of Riot's banhammer. For the full details on the matter, head on over to the official post on the League of Legends forums.
EVE Online nukes over a thousand botters from orbit
Look upon CCP's works, ye botters, and despair! EVE Online players recently noticed "by virtue of reading various shady forums" that the CCP team has suspended or banned a large number of botters. CCP Sreegs stopped by the official site today to respond to some of the community reactions to the mass bot-nuking. Many fans seem to believe that the bannings are a publicitity stunt to drum up interest in the upcoming Fanfest. CCP Sreegs responds that, of course, this isn't the case. He notes that during CCP's recent periods of turbulence, there was no team responsible for "handling the technology responsible for nuking botters," but now that there's a full team once more, "[CCP has] now thrown the switch again and turned on the catching bad guys machine." Other players are crying out that the current three-strike system is too soft-hearted. Sreegs respectfully disagrees, citing the fact that, of all players that go on to receive two strikes, only something like 3% go on to earn a third. But what's to stop these problem players from transferring their characters to a new account and carrying on as usual? Sreegs also announced that a new system is being put in place that will indefinitely revoke the character transfer privileges of any suspended players, no matter how many strikes they have against them. For the full story as well as a bit of insight as to how CCP deals with botters and cheaters, just click on through the link below.
Over one percent of League of Legends players have been banned
Handling antisocial behaviour has always been a problem for online game developers, and MOBAs like League of Legends certainly get the worst of it. The inherently team-based nature and slippery slope gameplay in MOBAs makes it very easy for one antisocial player to ruin a game and cause your team to lose. The problem is normally tackled head-on with a report tool and a suite of hired GMs, but what do you do if your game is free-to-play and has over 15 million registered players? It would be impractical to hire thousands of GMs to police a community of that size, so Riot Games came up with an alternative in the Tribunal system. The Tribunal allows players who have played enough games to reach level 30 to vote on whether to take action against a reported player. Once enough votes are tallied, either the player is pardoned automatically or his case is submitted to a smaller GM team to await punishment. The system went live earlier this year, and Riot has now revealed how incredibly successful the system has been with the publication of some very interesting banning statistics. The biggest shocker is that a whopping 1.4% of LoL's over 15 million players have been banned with the system, a workload that far exceeds the capacity of a traditional GM team. Ninety-four percent of players submitted to the Tribunal are punished, with about 50% of them never reoffending. Skip past the cut for an image showing these and other statistics, and stay tuned to our weekly Not So Massively column every Monday for more LoL news and updates.
SOE hands out suspensions to over 700 players as 'a first warning'
A couple of weeks ago, Sony Online Entertainment threw down the gauntlet to the ne'er-do-wells of EverQuest, telling them simply to "stop now." Well, as often is the case with the scum of the MMO world, many didn't listen to SOE's ominous words of warning. On Friday, December 9th, they paid the price... in blood! [Insert maniacal laughter here.] SOE has since suspended over 700 accounts "for a number of days by way of a first warning." Community Manager Piestro closes out with another word of caution: "Remember that these suspensions are merely the first wave, and further action is on the horizon. We will not rest, but will instead continue to gather data and take action as necessary on behalf of the entire player base. Don't cheat -- it's not worth it." Also, it still makes you a jerk. In still other EQ news, SOE has announced that it is tweaking the rate of experience gain on progression-locked servers.
Syria bans iPhone in attempt to curb protests and silence citizen journalists
Times are tough in Syria right now, but that isn't stopping the Assad government from making things a whole lot worse. The nation's customs department, a branch of the Syrian Finance Ministry, has officially banned the iPhone in an attempt to curb citizens from sharing news and videos of the massive protests and violent crackdowns throughout the nation. For those not keeping score, foreign press have been largely barred from the nation since March, which necessitated the use of citizen journalism as a means to report news from the streets. As Syrians come to grips with new economic sanctions against the country, the banning of the iPhone is, sadly, certain to escalate the unrest.
CEO bans email, encourages social networking
Who needs email when you have text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and a menagerie of alternative communication tools? Not Atos, a French IT firm that's planning to give email the boot. Over the course of the next eighteen months, CEO Thierry Breton hopes to ween 80,000 employees off of the old standby, pushing text messages, phone calls and face-to-face chats as alternatives. Breton strives to promote a collaborative social network similar to Facebook or Twitter to fill email's void and suffice as an easily accessible global network. Having himself been email sober at work for three years, Breton claims email is inefficient, and a burden to the workflow. Will this new social environment promote efficiency, or will pet photos and status updates become the new spam? If employees can't keep their social inclinations under wraps, Atos may have to resort to the Medieval carrier pigeon. Delivery estimates for long distance range from five days to never.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 bans affect 1,600+ users
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 isn't a safe place for anyone on the business end of a sniper shot or cheats. MW3 community czar Robert Bowling recently announced on Twitter that Activision issued over 1,600 bans and reiterated "any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in [Modern Warfare 3] will not be tolerated." "Reporting [cheaters] in-game through [Modern Warfare 3] goes directly to our security team, who issues the bans directly after verifying," Bowling noted. "Every ban unique to the level of douchiness of the offense. The greater the douche, the greater the length. PermaDouche possible." We appreciate the effort Activision apparently goes through to keep each ban fresh and clean. Last week, Battlefield 3 went through a similar cleansing.
Battlefield 3 bans issued across all platforms
EA has dishonorably discharged "hundreds" of Battlefield 3 cheaters and boosters. The publisher has banned and stats-wiped offending accounts that used known exploits. The company is still on the hunt, saying it has a "zero tolerance policy for cheating," so consider that fair warning. The known glitches involve players earning tens of thousands of points in a round. If you happen to have experienced the "invincibility glitch" in a round, you likely didn't earn yourself enough points to garner attention on radar and a smack from the banhammer. DICE is currently working on a patch for Battlefield 3, which should likely resolve known glitches, and will reduce the distance of those horribly annoying, blinding flashlights. Guys, seriously, keep those things pointed at the enemy!
