On the XBox platform, it appears that the updated Community Guidelines are purposely being abused / misused to target individuals so that they receive a chat ban.
I am aware that one cannot call out any specific player by name.
One individual received a chat ban
Other individuals changed their names to support banned player and were also banned.
Players publicly supporting this individual were reported and received chat warnings
The fear is that a group of players can collectively activate the gameās auto banning feature and target any individual whom they dislike or disagree.
We all understand that no ban is discussed beyond the person banned, but I would ask that this āfeatureā be examined with the possibility of abuse. No one outside of the company knows the full implementation of this auto banning program, but it would be great if someone would address the likelihood of abuse.
I know which case youāre talking about and Iām going to review it later today. Weāve also had a request that a different staff member handle the ban appeals so weāre going to do that to give the player(s) involved peace of mind.
We donāt have auto banning based on player reports for the reason you outlined - itās too easy for players to gang up on someone to get them banned - so we never implemented any bans to trigger based off player reports (not for chat and not for cheating).
I know other games do have auto chat bans based on player reports, so it is a standard practice in games, but for me, as long as we have a block button, Iād prefer to handle the chat manually. I donāt think our chat is so toxic we need an automated system to keep up with it and I hope we never hit a point where we do need that.
Thereās only 2 ways Iām aware of for a player to be banned from chat currently:
Spamming swear words will trigger an autoban for maximum several minutes
A staff member reading the chat/chat logs and manually making the ban
I prefer it if the staff member who made the ban is not the staff member handling the ban appeal where possible as well. I trust our team but 2 heads are better than one when reviewing logs and it also has the possibility to give the banned player peace of mind.
Iāll be honestāIāve tried to make a conscious decsion to stay out of global on Xbox because itās trash. There are constant attacks, random nonsense, and the lack of ability for people to joke around. As far as this particular player, Iām wondering when it became globalās mission to harass the devs to appeal a player ban? The devs have always said that they canāt comment on other players, yet here we are on this forum discussing it.
Ridiculous. Maybe people not antagonizing other folks and getting their friends to pile on in global would be a better solution? Just throwing that out there.
It sounds like the issue might possibly be one particular admin not treating a specific group of players in a fair way, which might possibly be difficult to appeal the usual way if those appeals are handled by the very same admin. Of course, I havenāt been there, I donāt even own an Xbox, so thereās really no point in speculating. Kafka is reviewing the issue.
Just like we discussed a pretty prominent ban issue a few months ago, which turned out to definitely be the proper thing to do, even though the devs always said theyād never comment. Itās a bit like the parley rule in Pirates of the Caribbean, itās more like a good idea, sometimes itās a better idea to wing it.
This particular ban is pretty simple, I also witnessed the incident and being someone over the age of puberty saw nothing even slightly offensive and there should certainly not be a ban imposed. I understand that in this day and age that you have to tread on egg shells pretty much in case of offending one group or another but this was just a case of somebody using terminology that was at worst a little naive but perma banning is a punishment far outweighing the crime.
Upon reading the thread Iām locking it - it got too specific, it also became more of a ban appeal than general feedback about the community guidelines, ban procedures and policies and then there were complaints about moderating homophobic language and a reference to the holocaust - 2 things we absolutely donāt accommodate in our community and are absolutely not up for debate.
If you see someone say something in chat you think breaks community guidelines and it makes you uncomfortable send in a report and it will be actioned appropriately if it did break community guidelines.
