Relic and Org need to update their banning policies

EDIT: This discussion has grown very large. Let me clarify my stance: I am banned for good reasons. I do not wish to be unbanned. I would like Relic and Org to add additional info they can pass on to people who are banned.


Last Friday I was banned from Coh2, Coh3, and demoted from Mapper on this website.

I was informed from ORG that my post about some Relic employees was why I got demoted. No details about what exactly is the issue. If I do it again I will get banned from Org. Do what? What is the issue? How can I not do it again? Almost everything I posted was already posted before and after mine. These people were not banned. What exactly is the issue?

I have not contacted Relic, so I have no idea what their problem is.

When I start Coh2, I get a message saying "You are banned for code of conduct".

When I start Coh3, I have a notification such as this (I had to install Coh3 first to see it of course).


So I went to SEGAs support page which reads this:



I do not care about being banned from Coh2 or 3. I do not care about being demoted at Org. I am very concerned with how these people feel they can ban someone for no apparent reason. I have been very vocal about this here for years when people got banned from Coh2.

YOU CANT BAN SOMEONE WITHOUT TELLING THEM WHY AND FOR HOW LONG.

Sega says you can defend yourself, but you cant ask what you are defending yourself from. So how can you defend yourself?

So I am banned for what exactly and for how long? And I should buy more of your products in the future? Why would I?

A person can get banned for some unknown amount of time. They cant ask why? Their ban ends, and they make the same mistake again. This time they may get banned permanently.

HOW CAN YOU FIX YOUR BEHAVIOR IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.

Did your parents just randomly beat the crap out of you then leave your room?

I dont know exactly when it happened. But the last two generations of people have ruined this planet. In the halcyon days, the customer was always right. Now we cant even expect the bare minimum of competence. The people in charge are basically retarded when compared to the standards of only 20 years ago.

The Coh3 release was just the latest indicator that the bar has been lowered yet again. Feel free to watch the South Park Human Centipede episode. Maybe then you guys will gain the intelligence to understand why South Park is the most important show ever made. And you will see where you are all headed if you dont wake up and begin demanding better, not less.

And all this from asking if an employee was male or female?

And all this from asking if an employee was male or female?

I did not even ask m/f. I just showed that people could be confused. I was confused. I would not feel comfortable saying Mr or Mrs at a first meeting as I would be afraid to offend someone. This confusion supported the ESG conversation that people were hired for reasons other than their skill set and caused the failing of Coh3. Which I do not even believe. But you are not allowed to have an intelligent conversation in this world.


What is hysterical from Relics end is, I was giving the people in question full support and saying they are much smarter than I am and hope they fix the game. So I get banned. I could have been a giant a-hole and got the same exact treatment. So the one time I stick up for Relic, I get banned. Wont happen again.

j/k I could care less. I still hope Coh3 gets fixed up soon for you guys.


The scary part for you guys is the mods at ORG are punishing me because that is what Relic wants. The mods here cant give me a precise reason why I am demoted. They say it is cumulative and direct me to the many posts I made on that male/female topic. Which are not that different from the other posts on that topic. So what do I type in the future that will not get me banned???

Are these other people on the chopping block also? Will they be banned if they say something someone does not want to take the time to read and understand?

That is the real underlying problem. You are not allowed to have a conversation about any topic if someone cant read it and fully understand it in under 5 seconds. They will just scan for trigger words and decide from there.

Org Mods and Relic Community Managers are too busy to read every post here. They scan, see a trigger word, and ban. There is no thought. They will not read your post. They will not see if it has valid arguments or interesting information. And you do not have the right/ability to even defend yourself. What a great world we live in.

Things I suggest:
1) Dont say anything even remotely funny in case it may be taken as offensive by someone with a 2nd grade reading comprehension. The Gestapo are watching.

2) Never make a post over one sentence long. People are too dumb to read and comprehend something that long.

3) Dont use any trigger words. Hide them in some other form. Instead of using R*tard, say Relic Management.

4) Never use your real persona on the web. If I posted here as Cornholio, Relic could not make the connection to ban me. They could only attack me because I used Rosbone here and when I did all those 1000's of hours of free work for them, they have my steam account because that is where they got the maps from.

I have other accounts. I could still play Coh2 if I wanted to. But I am banned. I will sit it out. For how long you ask? Dont know. The Relic Management cant say that in the Coh UI. A caveman wrote it. "You bad...Ughhhh".

5) Anyone of us nobodies can get banned for the simplest infraction. However other members of the community can jump in a persons stream and call someone a foul word and receive no punishment. So know who you are. Are you well liked? Be a dick. Are you not well liked? Dont even post here, go somewhere else.

6) Stop buying games from companies with this attitude. You are the customer. You have all of the power. It will keep getting worse if you keep rewarding them for removing your rights.


The moral of the story is this:
1) I put time in here to help others map and I make goofy posts for people to read if they are bored. I was an Org Blue. And Org told me to go F myself with no reason why.

2) I put in 1000's of hours of free work for Relic. They told me to go F myself with no reason why. They have my steam. They have my account here, I can be PM'd.


When I made that post that got me banned I said to myself:
- This will tell me who has reading comprehension above a 3rd grader.
- This will tell me who my friends are and who are not my friends.
- This will tell me if being a member on Org has any merit.
- This will tell me if Relic cares that I did 1000's of hours of free work to just get snubbed and treated like shit by them.

Questions answered.

I do not see this as negativity. I see this as truth.

Different post, but I feel the need to say that you were right all along and I was very naive.
I am sorry about that.

(Context for others: I was annoyed by the negativity before release)

Congratulations, you have been promoted to non-customer.

Ain't nothing good is going to come out when Sega is wasting time policing language with petty bans.


If you want to waste their time, you should contact Steam about wrongful game-account ban. They will have to get the evidence to say no Rosbone, you were a dick, here are the logs.

I mean Rosbones posts were somewhat unhinged, but given what relic delivers and treats their customers, its really not that far fetched what he has posted.

I do not necessarily condone it, but everyone has a breaking point. Given that rosbone has stuck around for as long as he did, is really a miracle.

Oh well, now the chances of decent teamgame maps are even smaller.

Sad day.

Edit: Also weird juristiction of relic to ban, based on a .org post lol. I guess, I'll get banned if I trash talk the devs on teamspeak soon as well.

Sorry to hear this Rosbone. Sounds like its essentially a big misunderstanding that's been blown out of proportion. I think Katitof had a similar issue, it seems as if they can be a bit heavy handed when it comes to handling criticism on their main forum.

And that's why kids you should never link up any real data\information about yourself. Forum asks for account link? Give them the fake one.

But, I guess, you got no-scoped since unlike others (me included) when it came to all male\female shit-posting, you actually took real Relic devs and started describing them.

Not like you did anything criminal, quite opposite really, but most likely it was the reason.

Fine I will raise myself from my Brown torpor:

Rosbine you are listed as barred for violation of section 1.3 of the site rules

1.3 Defamation of other users

Calling names or insulting other users by referring to them with a degrading/humiliating name is not allowed.

This also includes being disrespectful to developers.

Actions:
Any content directly or indirectly related to defamation of other users may be removed and in excessive cases the user may be banned for up to 7 days.


I did not take the decision, so am unaware which part of this you are considered to have transgressed - though I think we can guess

Now if you have truly asked to be banned then confirm via PM and I will see what I can do - though note that I don't think I can do it myself and will probably have to ask someone - and as the staff are as about as enthusiastic about COH3 as everyone else is that might take a while.

Last Friday I was banned from Coh2, Coh3, and demoted from Mapper on this website.

*text*

*more text*


I do not care about being banned from Coh2 or 3. I do not care about being demoted at Org.

*more text which heavily contradicts statements above*

as a semi-outsider who has seen your post history and shoutbox entries since February this year it's not difficult to take a guess on why you got banned. But man, if you truly, and honestly do not care - then why the hell go through the trouble of this all? As I have said earlier, your contributions to CoH2 regarding your maps have been nothing but stellar work. But I assume you with your talent in mapping you must have better things to spend your time on than this petty stuff?

Thanks guys for the support!

As stated, Relic and Org are too busy to read so you can get banned. I got banned. I am responsible for being banned because I write long posts that require reading comprehension. I do not blame Relic or Org for being punished. They are just busy people doing their jobs.


Nick asked "Why do I care about being banned?" I stated I do not care. I also stated I do care very much that anyone can be banned by Relic or Org without explicit reasons and told how long the ban will be.

For the many years I have been here, Sturmpanther was responsible for deciding people should get banned. Not Relic, they were to lazy to do it. So when people got banned they showed up in the shoutbox with "Why cant I play Coh2?" And I would always post "Relic, you cant ban people and not tell them why and for how long they are banned!".

Why should a person have to ask non-Relic employees why the game they paid money for is not working? Why does this fall on Org? We are not Relic. Org runs better and smoother than a giant company like Sega. Org is a lot more professional about things than Sega/Relic.

I wanted to demonstrate this above with the response you get in game when banned.

COH2
I did not pay attention because I was losing any desire to play coh2, but I think you used to get no message you were banned in Coh2. I think the 64-bit patch it was introduced to say the message we see now "You are banned for code of conduct". That is a good start. A person could at least look this up and get a feel for what they could have done wrong.

But there is no indication of how long they will be banned. That is completely unacceptable and unprofessional.

There is no hard evidence why they got banned so they will most likely get banned again if they cant figure out what they did.

COH3
Again, you get a cryptic "You are banned" message. No date is indicated. And since it is Coh3, parts of the sentence are missing because its too hard to make strings and write UI code for the ESG hired 3rd graders at Relic. (<--- Joke)

COH2 and COH3 CURRENTLY
If you go to the Sega website it says "You cant ask why or how long" explicitly. That is completely unacceptable. How can you defend yourself if you cant ask? How will you learn if you cant ask? Is this how your justice system works? Is this how your parents treated you?

COH2.ORG
As stated in this post, I feel Org runs way better and shows more professionalism than Relic. It is not even close. Unpaid volunteers working circles around Relic/Sega. So it was a shock to me that even here you are given boilerplate garbage about being banned/demoted. No additional information. No dates or options of being unbanned.

WHY AM I BABBLING ON LIKE A CICADA
All I am asking for is a little professionalism. As usual, everything is done half assed without the bare minimum of acceptable response. We are the customer. Relic cannot treat us this way. We should not stand for it. If we do, then we deserve what we get. No one should buy any Relic or Sega game until this is addressed.

Rosbine you are listed as barred for violation of section 1.3 of the site rules

1.3 Defamation of other users

My name is ROSBONE. I am now triggered. You are banned!

See how easy it is? It is a slippery slope. Did I give relic a bunch of shit when they could not even spell my name correctly on the maps in the game? Was I triggered? No, I am an adult.

Van Voort, Thank you for reaching out. I will wait to see how things play out. Initially I was fine with being off Org. But, this policy stuff is something I have been passionate about for a long time so I should stick around. If Org wants to ban me that is fine. But I withdraw my request for now.

Different post, but I feel the need to say that you were right all along and I was very naive.
I am sorry about that.

(Context for others: I was annoyed by the negativity before release)

Everyone who has ever interacted with me thinks I am too negative. So I totally get it.

I am an engineer by trade. I look at every situation with the filter of "What will break and how can we prevent it". I dont spend any time looking at how shiny and pretty things are. Most people do not understand this way of thinking.

You coming here to say that means that all of my babbling has been worth it. If one person starts to think different, it was all worth it.

When I am pushing the envelope of good taste it is because I find it entertaining to make jokes. We all love Coh and come here when we are bored and not playing Coh so we can talk about Coh. I like to make it fun for a few people that have my sense of humor. Most people do not. So I always ran the risk of being punished. But it is worth it if it made someones day to come here and get a laugh.

Cheers

Everyone who has ever interacted with me thinks I am too negative. So I totally get it.

Cheers

I dunno, you seem like a pretty self-aware guy. Maybe in their eyes you overstepped the mark a bit but that doesn't undo all the hard work you've put into COH. Don't beat yourself up about it too much, I think most people on here know that your criticisms come from the fact you are just very passionate and love the game. You usually manage to make it pretty funny as well! Hopefully you'll able to get some clarity and it won't be a permanent thing, that would be incredibly harsh.

Every single moderation platform is run by people.

If they don't like you, they are not going to care about your appeal. Trust me, even if they had an inbox to appeal, you would get the same result. Getting unbanned means that they were wrong, which is an extra barrier that to overcome. You are trying to find the agnostic-logic in the process, as if it is some legal battle with the impartial judge. They can enforce their TOS however they like, your only option is to go to the consumer groups or courts if you want to have any chance of appealing such ban.

Appeals work when you have automatic-systems. Locking accounts based on weird logins, patterns, language detection, cheating-false-positives etc. They do not work if someone banned you explicitly.

I think no game should moderate the social media and use that as evidence against your account. It is a game, go moderate the in-game behavior where people are toxic, racist and ruining games in your own platform. You can use evidence outside the game to punish the in-game behavior, but not the outside behavior to punish the game's account.

My name is ROSBONE. I am now triggered. You are banned!

See how easy it is? It is a slippery slope. Did I give relic a bunch of shit when they could not even spell my name correctly on the maps in the game? Was I triggered? No, I am an adult.

Van Voort, Thank you for reaching out. I will wait to see how things play out. Initially I was fine with being off Org. But, this policy stuff is something I have been passionate about for a long time so I should stick around. If Org wants to ban me that is fine. But I withdraw my request for now.

From our PM

1.3 Defamation of other users
Calling names or insulting other users by referring to them with a degrading/humiliating name is not allowed.
This also includes being disrespectful to developers.

Shouldn't really be unloading on relic in any other way other than ACTUAL criticsm. Talking about someones sexual orientation or identity has nothing to do with CoH and has no place here regardless of how you may feel about those things irl. This is the best I can offer honestly, as I wasn't the one who took the action and don't really need to know the specifics for the posts here.

So let me get this straight, you're upset that relic came in and contacted someone on staff about your posts regarding personal attacks on someone employed at relic, and the contacted member reviewed the posts, made them invisible, and demoted you. You're upset about the "boilerplate garbage" response you were given. Fine fair enough.

Next you threaten in the shoutbox, so I message you and attempt to explain everything from my point of view, including at least 3 times in our PMs on why I would say you were demoted, gave you a very blatant safe path to choose to not cause further issues from you, and now you're claiming we still haven't told you what you did wrong.

I don't know how to explain it better than this honestly. You're staff, you should be held to a higher standard than the average person. The fact that being disresepctful to devs is blatantly in the rules, as well as something I personally have let slide for much too long is my fault. However, I've let it slide under the guise that it was normal for you, and that you kept it "on the line" more or less. That line was crossed immediately when you start bringing up completely irrelevent topics such as "is this person a man or woman" or "Could be worse, could be a man disguised as a woman." Sorry but joke or not, that was in no way professional. Even in the case that relic brought the comment to our attention, the action taken for that statement was the correct call regarding demotion. Ingame bans are another topic and I don't think that out of game media should result in ingame bans but that's my opinion not relics.

I'm really just wondering why you're blasting us about this. I've explained it to you in PM and I've explained it above. You wanna blast relic over it fine, cause honestly I don't agree with their policy of not telling people about why they're banned either, but I've done my best to explain and understand.

Everyone who has ever interacted with me thinks I am too negative. So I totally get it.

I am an engineer by trade.

Aha. So you're on the spectrum

You coming here to say that means that all of my babbling has been worth it. If one person starts to think different, it was all worth it.

Fwiw, I'm feeling even more negatively about Relic now. Although I've always been skeptical of pre-ordering games and modern gaming in general (too many games released as a pile of dogshit and then patched to playability), I thought relic was different lol. Bad mistake.

When I am pushing the envelope of good taste it is because I find it entertaining to make jokes. We all love Coh and come here when we are bored and not playing Coh so we can talk about Coh. I like to make it fun for a few people that have my sense of humor. Most people do not. So I always ran the risk of being punished. But it is worth it if it made someones day to come here and get a laugh.

Cheers

Certainly I don't always laugh, but I'll give you the gold star of being the most entertaining poster on this site. And not entertaining like visiting a zoo entertaining. There are other posters that are much better at that who I won't name.

My name is ROSBONE. I am now triggered. You are banned!

See how easy it is? It is a slippery slope. Did I give relic a bunch of shit when they could not even spell my name correctly on the maps in the game? Was I triggered? No, I am an adult.

You're completely correct that Relic needs to be better at communicating bans and having a clear and defined process for litigating it. But man, to be honest it's not surprising at all to me that you got banned after posting pictures of Relic staff and more or less suggesting that they might be examples people who were hired more for inclusion and diversity's sake than job performance and by extension that could partially explain why COH3's launch wasn't great - that's tiptoeing pretty close to "defamation". I doubt that was your intent or that you were being malicious but you have to have better self-awareness when you KNOW that Relic takes that stuff seriously.

Show Spoiler

YOU CANT BAN SOMEONE WITHOUT TELLING THEM WHY AND FOR HOW LONG.

It actually says "poor behavior" in that picture, which is about as much info as you would get anywhere else in a game or online community. Almost nobody gives you the Steam Forum treatment where they show you the exact message or action that got you banned.


I don't know what you did so obviously I'm not gonna act as a referee, but it must have been some completely dumb & unnecessary shit because Relic certainly doesn't hand out bans lightly (remember how they didn't ban Seeking after 200 hints of maphacking until they had system-detected proof?)

Why would you even discuss the gender or sexuality of a game dev on a gaming forum/Discord in the first place It has nothing to do with the quality of the game whatsoever