They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
So you're under the impression they can just look at the screenshot and act immediately? Interesting.
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
So you're under the impression they can just look at the screenshot and act immediately? Interesting.
Did I say this? You are imagining a lot of stuff my friend. They can look at the screenshots, confirm (or cross-reference) it with real data and be done with it
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
So you're under the impression they can just look at the screenshot and act immediately? Interesting.
Did I say this? You are imagining a lot of stuff my friend. They can look at the screenshots, confirm (or cross-reference) it with real data and be done with it
Yes, that's just what I said. It's the data that takes time.
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
Thanks for the update. While you’re here, any hints as to what the Cyber Monday offers contain? 😁
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
This summarizes the legal situation correctly, but I'm going to amplify this just a tad. The problem is not whether it is legal or not to disclose this information, and the problem is not whether Kabam's legal counsel wants to take these situations on either. The problem is Kabam's legal counsel has performed the legal analysis you've outlined above and decided for whatever reasons they chose to make the decision to set policy to not disclose this information.
This means if a Kabam employee decided to reveal this information to us, they would not necessarily be violating the law, they would instead be violating a directive from corporate legal counsel. This will get you fired. Not for breaking the law, but for insubordination, violation of corporate policy, and failing to fulfill the responsibilities of their employment. And they would be taking the further risk that this act would hang around their necks like an albatross and follow them to any potential future employer.
Years ago I made the argument to Kabam that it was perfectly legal to disclose this type of information. And the argument went much further than the armchair legal scholars on the forums typically take it, delving into the areas of disclosure and privacy policy. What I was ultimately told was words to the effect that they will take their legal counsel's opinion on the matter over mine. And I had no response to that, because they are right to do so. When your lawyer says one thing and some schmuck on the internet says something else, your lawyer should have the last word and in this case they do, and there's nothing I or anyone else on the forums could possibly say that would or should matter.
Kabam's operations personnel must follow the directives of their managers, their supervisors, their corporate officers, and their corporate legal counsel. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong, if their legal opinions are valid or invalid. They are the ones in charge. And the people in charge don't answer to us.
Both you and the poster you're replying to are operating under an assumption that this was actually run through corporate legal and not simply a reply given by a mod who didn't actually present said concern to corporate legal. As someone who works in corporate legal, I can advise that this is a very big assumption to make.
No, I am making no such assumption. As I said in the very post you quoted and have said several times in the past, I actually took this up with Kabam years ago, and this was escalated to Kabam's legal department, whereupon I received the pretty much final statement from them on the subject. Kabam Jax more recently on the XN podcast echoed a similar statement where he said while he hasn't specifically tackled the subject directly, his own internal conversations with the development staff parallel what I was told: the directive not to share information about bans publicly comes from legal.
My own conversations with Kabam go back to 2018, but Jax joined more recently and this is almost certainly still the current position at Kabam.
By policy, I do not directly quote private conversations, especially from Kabam staff or developers, without permission. I will bend that rule a very small amount just so you know that when I say my information comes from Kabam's lawyers, that is not me just inferring stuff from off-hand conversations. I went back to the exchange I had back in 2018, and this is the first sentence from the first message I got from the person I was discussing this with after they said they would consult with Kabam's legal team back in 2018:
Back from NYCC and have a response from our lawyers.
This is not a case of me inferring the person I was discussing this with was passing information along from Kabam's legal department. I was told they presented my inquiry to Kabam legal, and legal responded in kind. Also, while I will not quote the full response without permission, I will say that what was said was consistent with someone more or less quoting a lawyer addressing my points from a legal perspective.
They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
So you're under the impression they can just look at the screenshot and act immediately? Interesting.
Did I say this? You are imagining a lot of stuff my friend. They can look at the screenshots, confirm (or cross-reference) it with real data and be done with it
Yes, that's just what I said. It's the data that takes time.
You have to be kidding me. I'm literally wasting my time here
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
Firstly thank you for clarifying some of these issues, but is anything going to be implemented in the future for alliance and members to be able to move people in and out freely without being handcuffed by waiting for pending rewards? It’s unfair that members are being kicked without their rewards because some leaders don’t want to wait, and for us leaders that aren’t douchebags it’s unfair for us to wait so long before we can make changes within our alliance. We already have the 5 war season rule, now we are waiting yet again for another part of the games content to release rewards before we can make changes again. Something needs to be implemented in the future to avoid this if at all possible
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
based on your professional assumption is there any chance it will be released today or better to expect it for tomorrow and onwards?
They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
So you're under the impression they can just look at the screenshot and act immediately? Interesting.
Did I say this? You are imagining a lot of stuff my friend. They can look at the screenshots, confirm (or cross-reference) it with real data and be done with it
Yes, that's just what I said. It's the data that takes time.
You have to be kidding me. I'm literally wasting my time here
Perhaps. I pointed out how there's a process to it, and it takes time. Then you said how much data do they need, with the evidence given. You then doubled back and said the exact same thing I did.
They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
So you're under the impression they can just look at the screenshot and act immediately? Interesting.
Did I say this? You are imagining a lot of stuff my friend. They can look at the screenshots, confirm (or cross-reference) it with real data and be done with it
Yes, that's just what I said. It's the data that takes time.
You have to be kidding me. I'm literally wasting my time here
Perhaps. I pointed out how there's a process to it, and it takes time. Then you said how much data do they need, with the evidence given. You then doubled back and said the exact same thing I did.
Any chance you guys can give it a rest and grow up? You are literally spamming the thread with needless nonsense to try and get your points across, when indeed you are actually going round in circles with your incessant dribble and we are having to read it.
They can't really give a definite answer if they don't know.
That's the thing. They SHOULD know. Or they should have been banning people when the season was on and not waiting till it ended
I can't speak for their process, and I can't say they don't know, but it takes more than a Report and some screenshots. You need to comb through the data. From what I gather, I believe we saw some actions during the Season as well. This whole idea that people should be able to send a Report and have an instant ban isn't realistic, and it's also quite dangerous to think about. Every dissatisfied Loss would lead to a ban. It takes time to verify, and it also takes time to manually make adjustments and take any other punitive actions. As much as people want an instaban system, I'd rather shut the mode down. Can you imagine if it were your Account falsely accused?
Comb through what data? If someone kills Peni Parker in 6sec or in 5 hits, what more evidence do you need? I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
So you're under the impression they can just look at the screenshot and act immediately? Interesting.
Did I say this? You are imagining a lot of stuff my friend. They can look at the screenshots, confirm (or cross-reference) it with real data and be done with it
Yes, that's just what I said. It's the data that takes time.
You have to be kidding me. I'm literally wasting my time here
Perhaps. I pointed out how there's a process to it, and it takes time. Then you said how much data do they need, with the evidence given. You then doubled back and said the exact same thing I did.
You said: You need to comb through the data
That implies that there is too much data to go through. I said that they simply have to cross-reference it. I'm done here
Any idea how many Fights are reported, and how many you have to search through? I'll admit, I'm not aware of their specific process, but it's a little more detailed than Report X shows Evidence Y. Either way, we can certainly move on. My bottom line is it takes time. For good reason.
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
You have had countless months of bg beta testing. Even how many aw seasons to get this straighten out and you still don’t have the bugs worked out in catching cheaters? Seems someone dunno how to do their jobs
there is no game in this world that doesn't have cheaters. Its never easy preventing cheaters.
This summarizes the legal situation correctly, but I'm going to amplify this just a tad. The problem is not whether it is legal or not to disclose this information, and the problem is not whether Kabam's legal counsel wants to take these situations on either. The problem is Kabam's legal counsel has performed the legal analysis you've outlined above and decided for whatever reasons they chose to make the decision to set policy to not disclose this information.
This means if a Kabam employee decided to reveal this information to us, they would not necessarily be violating the law, they would instead be violating a directive from corporate legal counsel. This will get you fired. Not for breaking the law, but for insubordination, violation of corporate policy, and failing to fulfill the responsibilities of their employment. And they would be taking the further risk that this act would hang around their necks like an albatross and follow them to any potential future employer.
Years ago I made the argument to Kabam that it was perfectly legal to disclose this type of information. And the argument went much further than the armchair legal scholars on the forums typically take it, delving into the areas of disclosure and privacy policy. What I was ultimately told was words to the effect that they will take their legal counsel's opinion on the matter over mine. And I had no response to that, because they are right to do so. When your lawyer says one thing and some schmuck on the internet says something else, your lawyer should have the last word and in this case they do, and there's nothing I or anyone else on the forums could possibly say that would or should matter.
Kabam's operations personnel must follow the directives of their managers, their supervisors, their corporate officers, and their corporate legal counsel. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong, if their legal opinions are valid or invalid. They are the ones in charge. And the people in charge don't answer to us.
Both you and the poster you're replying to are operating under an assumption that this was actually run through corporate legal and not simply a reply given by a mod who didn't actually present said concern to corporate legal. As someone who works in corporate legal, I can advise that this is a very big assumption to make.
By this same logic one could argue that they would encounter the same issue by posting in-season AW rankings because, again, they are not final and are subject to change. If an alliance is docked due to the actions of members who are cheating, the entire community can see which alliance was docked from the last leaderboard before the final one is posted. The exposure for this would likely be significantly larger when you're looking at 30 members in an alliance who could potentially get marked with a scarlet letter.
Again, in game names are not personal data. If someone chooses to identify themselves by their in game name then they make a conscious choice to be identified. Otherwise an IGN is completely unidentifiable unless either you post your IGN online in public places (such as on the forums here)or on social media. Kabam legal would have no responsibility for someone choosing to self-identity and it would be a damn near impossible legal threshold to hit for them to be proven liable for damages in such a case.
Also, last I checked, a simple disclaimer that "results are subject to change" would legally absolve them of any real legal responsibility for any changes on the leaderboards occurring.
And I'm sure I'm inevitably going to get a strike for this comment because, you know, something something "not constructive" 🤷🏻♂️
I would also like to add something here as well( i agree with you )
I am not legal expert or something like that. But i have seen many MMOs or other games to publish the names of cheaters ,eg MLBB
Now from my experience it's is company specific policy whether they want to show the names of cheaters or not. Because whenever we install any game and play, we agree by all terms where it is also mentioned SUBJECT TO CHANGE. And teh defination of cheating totally depends upon the organisation. So it's thier choice if they want to show the names of those who didn't complied with thier laws. Now the whole debate i saw above, i grasp it's about the legal action and privacy. Well IGN isn't the actual legal privacy unless one self identifies with it voluntarily. It's the identification of oneself with the regards to law and regulations of the game and have to be tied with it. I don't think i will be jailed if someone on other part of world just said BUGGYDCLOWN stole my purse. Organization have rights to publish the VIRTUAL NAME CREATED ACCORDING TO THEIR LAW & RESERVE OTHER RIGHT AS WELL IN TAHG REGARDS.
It's the personal breach of data if Emails or real life identification is revealed. Tho through IGNs people can be identified like youtubers. But did company said then to reveal themselves to community???? Who chose it do???? They have right to publish information which virtual name didn't complied with thier law and thus publish it as gesture of fair play policy and equal opportunity in game. I don't know if someone actually in real world will file a lawsuit against game company if they are banned and their VIRTUAL NAME which they might have chosen themselves according to their real name or something they love but under certain rules of game company falls under personal data. And in case of cheating it becomes of game company to do it more easily.
For my perspective, kabam simply chose not to publish the names banned accounts but that doesn't mean they don't have rights to do. It's just they don't want to.
From a legal perspective, there are several flaws in your position. Two in particular come to mind.
First, disclosing that a particular player cheated would not necessarily be considered a breach of personal information if that player ID cannot be directly connected to a real life person. However, that doesn't immunize Kabam from libel. There have been cases where people have successfully sued for libel where the libelous content only targeted a pseudonym and not the actual person's personal identity. It is difficult to win, but a person can legally argue that the damage done was not to their personal identity, but rather the pseudonymous identity when that identity itself has a reputation that can be damaged. For example, if I write novels under the name DNA3000 and someone makes false accusations against DNA3000, while they might not know who I am, I can still sue claiming they are damaging the reputation of DNA300 as an author. It would be a novel argument, but a player could argue that being called a cheater damaged their reputation in the game, which deprived them of the opportunity to join alliances or otherwise associate with other players. And if they are a Youtuber, now there's income on the line. They could argue deprivation of revenue as damages.
Second, when Kabam punishes someone they believe to be cheating, they are operating under their umbrella rights in the terms of service to take any action against any game account they believe is reasonable and necessary. They do not need to prove in a court of law that the player cheated. The player has no real recourse. Even if Kabam can't prove beyond preponderance of evidence that the player cheated, they can simply exercise their right to refuse service to anyone. But when they *declare* that someone cheated, they could expose themselves to a legal challenge to that statement, as above. And even if they are in a position to win, they would still expose themselves to many things they could want to avoid. For example, the publicity of a civil trial. Or the discovery process whereby a player can demand that Kabam disclose to the player all of their evidence of cheating and all of the processes they use to find cheaters. They could tie up the fair play team at Kabam to the tune of hundreds of hours or more in documentation, discovery, and testimony.
Again, the issue is not what's legal. The issue is what Kabam wants to expose themselves to. What risks they are willing to take. You can't force or demand Kabam to take risks they just don't want to take. And they just don't want to take these.
And as I was told once by an experienced lawyer: in criminal court the question is what's legal. But in civil court the question is what's winnable. Those are two completely different things. And in civil court, just because you walk out the door with the decision, doesn't mean you won. You can win a piece of paper, and still lose big overall.
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters? Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members! Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned? We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long? There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and time spent on giving the best update you could. I do wish there was more information in here though. I mean one of the more notable cheaters in season 2 was in the top10 most of the season with suspicious reports filed all season, I feel like if in season monitoring is seriously happening that account would have been banned in week 2/3. So while I can’t refute that in season monitoring and bans of cheating did occur there is an easy anecdotal example to point at of it not being serious as well.
It would be good to get more solid timelines attached to rewards payouts. While in some ways this is only season 2… the presence of these low life modders was well documented in arena scores, Facebook adds selling the mod tools, and throughout the Beta. So while a part of me is happy that the team is taking it seriously now I remain frustrated that it took this long and about the residual impact
They could at least give an update. After more than 3 days, they should have a rough idea when they'll be done going through the leaderboard. Will it be another 6 hours? 1 day? At least 2 days?
If after 3 days you can't estimate how much longer will take, then you kinda don't know what you're doing in the first place...
Hi, got a friendly update about the timeline. It'll be done sometime between 2 seconds from now, and 5 years.
I understand the frustration of the community since we don't know the timeline, but it would be much worse if kabam said we would get rewards Friday and still hadn't finishing kicking cheaters by then and had to delay it further. Hopefully next season will be better since they got an anticheat person hired so they can hopefully be more proactive about their banning.
I didn't say "gives an exact date". I said to gives us an update on how it's going and an estimate on when it will be done. They can say Friday or they can say two weeks. All I'm asking for is Communication. Which they just did. Still not great news, but it's something.
"Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end? The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded."
What a LIE. The number 1 guy was a well known cheater and you didn't even banned the obvious number 1 player in the leaderboard throught the season. If you don't even ban the obvious player who has been in front of everyone's eyes the whole season then I don't trust this comment.
They could at least give an update. After more than 3 days, they should have a rough idea when they'll be done going through the leaderboard. Will it be another 6 hours? 1 day? At least 2 days?
If after 3 days you can't estimate how much longer will take, then you kinda don't know what you're doing in the first place...
Hi, got a friendly update about the timeline. It'll be done sometime between 2 seconds from now, and 5 years.
I understand the frustration of the community since we don't know the timeline, but it would be much worse if kabam said we would get rewards Friday and still hadn't finishing kicking cheaters by then and had to delay it further. Hopefully next season will be better since they got an anticheat person hired so they can hopefully be more proactive about their banning.
I didn't say "gives an exact date". I said to gives us an update on how it's going and an estimate on when it will be done. They can say Friday or they can say two weeks. All I'm asking is Communication.
If they say Friday and it isn't Friday, they will be called liars. So they can't just arbitrarily say Friday. If they say two weeks from now, everyone will be complaining that it is going to take two weeks, when it might not take two weeks.
Estimates have to be reasonably close or they are less than worthless. And if an accurate estimate can't be determined, it is usually better to say nothing. My recollection is that after the end of the season they said it would take a few days at least, which I interpreted to be in the general vicinity of a week. Absent further information, I think that's still a reasonable guess. I don't expect them to be giving out daily progress reports, and in fact I don't want them to stop and take time to give them while they are working on it. In this case, we just have to let them do their work as fast as they are capable of doing it, and if that's not fast enough for some players, I can understand that, but there's nothing else you can do about it. Complaining about it and demanding updates will only slow things down, not speed them up.
@DNA3000 You're not wrong about the difficulties in providing accurate timelines...They're damned if they do, and they're damned if they don't.
I will however disagree regarding the updates they can give.
I have no doubt they can ascertain how many people participated in BGs through the season. With that knowledge, at the end of each day they could say "We cleared 400 accounts." (better articulated as a percentage...let's call it 5%). The next day they could provide their close of business update to say "We've cleared 20%." Then "We've cleared 30%".
I think most would welcome that update, cause while it doesn't explicitly call out a date the rewards will come out, it does provide the desired status update without detracting from the more important work of actually clearing the accounts.
Kabam has had four days to go through and sift out cheaters including Monday, what the heck is going on??? Some communication would be nice, at least an ETA I feel like the first thing you should do before filtering then out. Is find some sort of earliest we can theoretically be done and the latest, at least thats what I do before starting a project Establish sprints.
Can we just have the alliance clock extended for the milestones to include processing time so you don’t have to close and moderate 500 bg plus bg posts? Give yourself the extra week sure that’s understandable but ensure it shown in the game not just the forums.
Comments
I didn't talk about an instaban system. You are giving arguments to something I never spoke about. Wanting to fill up those lines I guess.
The team is still working hard to get these rewards out asap; please be patient.
In the meantime, Q&A:
Why not ban cheaters incrementally throughout the season, instead of at the end?
The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded.
Why not send out rewards, then double back to remove cheaters and claw back rewards, then adjust them for non-cheaters?
Woof, just typing it is a lot - this approach has many issues. Firstly, there is zero clarity for who's been removed for cheating. And secondly, it is infinitely more work for the team.
Cheaters should have their solo and alliance points revoked! Alliances should be punished for their cheating members!
Not a question, but, yes we will be removing contributions to Solo and Alliance Events from players found cheating. At this point in time, there is no additional punishment for alliances with cheating members, because it is often outside of Alliance Leadership's capabilities to know when their members are cheating.
Can you post a list of all the cheaters who have been banned?
We've seen a lot of speculation on the reasons that have been previously provided for not posting cheaters in-game IDs, legal and otherwise. The short answer is: no, we will not be publicly posting names of accounts that were found cheating. There are a number of contributing factors, and regardless of whether you think there are legal grounds to stand on, the precedent was set long ago and will continue on this matter.
Why is the wait so long?
There will be a short period after each BG season where we do these checks before providing rewards. In the name of transparency, there has been a snag internally with some software refusing to co-operate resulting in a longer wait than anticipated. As the team problem-solves these issues they are also working to try to shorten the wait time for future seasons.
They can look at the screenshots, confirm (or cross-reference) it with real data and be done with it
Dr. Zola
cf:
My own conversations with Kabam go back to 2018, but Jax joined more recently and this is almost certainly still the current position at Kabam.
By policy, I do not directly quote private conversations, especially from Kabam staff or developers, without permission. I will bend that rule a very small amount just so you know that when I say my information comes from Kabam's lawyers, that is not me just inferring stuff from off-hand conversations. I went back to the exchange I had back in 2018, and this is the first sentence from the first message I got from the person I was discussing this with after they said they would consult with Kabam's legal team back in 2018:
This is not a case of me inferring the person I was discussing this with was passing information along from Kabam's legal department. I was told they presented my inquiry to Kabam legal, and legal responded in kind. Also, while I will not quote the full response without permission, I will say that what was said was consistent with someone more or less quoting a lawyer addressing my points from a legal perspective.
It’s unfair that members are being kicked without their rewards because some leaders don’t want to wait, and for us leaders that aren’t douchebags it’s unfair for us to wait so long before we can make changes within our alliance. We already have the 5 war season rule, now we are waiting yet again for another part of the games content to release rewards before we can make changes again. Something needs to be implemented in the future to avoid this if at all possible
You need to comb through the data
That implies that there is too much data to go through. I said that they simply have to cross-reference it. I'm done here
Either way, we can certainly move on. My bottom line is it takes time. For good reason.
First, disclosing that a particular player cheated would not necessarily be considered a breach of personal information if that player ID cannot be directly connected to a real life person. However, that doesn't immunize Kabam from libel. There have been cases where people have successfully sued for libel where the libelous content only targeted a pseudonym and not the actual person's personal identity. It is difficult to win, but a person can legally argue that the damage done was not to their personal identity, but rather the pseudonymous identity when that identity itself has a reputation that can be damaged. For example, if I write novels under the name DNA3000 and someone makes false accusations against DNA3000, while they might not know who I am, I can still sue claiming they are damaging the reputation of DNA300 as an author. It would be a novel argument, but a player could argue that being called a cheater damaged their reputation in the game, which deprived them of the opportunity to join alliances or otherwise associate with other players. And if they are a Youtuber, now there's income on the line. They could argue deprivation of revenue as damages.
Second, when Kabam punishes someone they believe to be cheating, they are operating under their umbrella rights in the terms of service to take any action against any game account they believe is reasonable and necessary. They do not need to prove in a court of law that the player cheated. The player has no real recourse. Even if Kabam can't prove beyond preponderance of evidence that the player cheated, they can simply exercise their right to refuse service to anyone. But when they *declare* that someone cheated, they could expose themselves to a legal challenge to that statement, as above. And even if they are in a position to win, they would still expose themselves to many things they could want to avoid. For example, the publicity of a civil trial. Or the discovery process whereby a player can demand that Kabam disclose to the player all of their evidence of cheating and all of the processes they use to find cheaters. They could tie up the fair play team at Kabam to the tune of hundreds of hours or more in documentation, discovery, and testimony.
Again, the issue is not what's legal. The issue is what Kabam wants to expose themselves to. What risks they are willing to take. You can't force or demand Kabam to take risks they just don't want to take. And they just don't want to take these.
And as I was told once by an experienced lawyer: in criminal court the question is what's legal. But in civil court the question is what's winnable. Those are two completely different things. And in civil court, just because you walk out the door with the decision, doesn't mean you won. You can win a piece of paper, and still lose big overall.
It would be good to get more solid timelines attached to rewards payouts. While in some ways this is only season 2… the presence of these low life modders was well documented in arena scores, Facebook adds selling the mod tools, and throughout the Beta. So while a part of me is happy that the team is taking it seriously now I remain frustrated that it took this long and about the residual impact
They can say Friday or they can say two weeks. All I'm asking for is Communication. Which they just did. Still not great news, but it's something.
The team does monitor and ban players throughout the season, then do a further, more meticulous skim once the season has concluded."
What a LIE. The number 1 guy was a well known cheater and you didn't even banned the obvious number 1 player in the leaderboard throught the season. If you don't even ban the obvious player who has been in front of everyone's eyes the whole season then I don't trust this comment.
Estimates have to be reasonably close or they are less than worthless. And if an accurate estimate can't be determined, it is usually better to say nothing. My recollection is that after the end of the season they said it would take a few days at least, which I interpreted to be in the general vicinity of a week. Absent further information, I think that's still a reasonable guess. I don't expect them to be giving out daily progress reports, and in fact I don't want them to stop and take time to give them while they are working on it. In this case, we just have to let them do their work as fast as they are capable of doing it, and if that's not fast enough for some players, I can understand that, but there's nothing else you can do about it. Complaining about it and demanding updates will only slow things down, not speed them up.
I will however disagree regarding the updates they can give.
I have no doubt they can ascertain how many people participated in BGs through the season. With that knowledge, at the end of each day they could say "We cleared 400 accounts." (better articulated as a percentage...let's call it 5%). The next day they could provide their close of business update to say "We've cleared 20%." Then "We've cleared 30%".
I think most would welcome that update, cause while it doesn't explicitly call out a date the rewards will come out, it does provide the desired status update without detracting from the more important work of actually clearing the accounts.
Now more is being done... more != less time. Let's at least try to be patient people.