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Feedback surrounding this week's ban wave

femboyfin
femboyfin Member Posts: 11
in Feedback and Suggestions

I want to preface this by saying as per the Forum Rules, this is not a post about about a specific person’s ban, nor do I need to appeal a game ban. I was not personally affected, I do not personally know anyone who was affected, nor do I know of any specific people in the community who were affected. I am not seeking any additional information about any particular ban or the ban wave as a whole, I am not even looking for a response. This is strictly a knowledgable player providing feedback on the processes by which we got where we are now, what went wrong, how to avoid it in the future, and how best to handle the situation as a whole procedurally in the future.


The way this situation was handled beyond "we should deal with this problem" was largely in error. This is true both from a financial perspective for Behaviour Interactive, and from a community and game health perspective. The decision’s reversion implies that the original decision to hand out permanent bans is now understood to be a mistake. With that as a starting point, I aim to provide some insight as to how this can be avoided in the future, as well as how the situation would’ve been better handled once this was identified as a mistake.

I believe there were two primary contributing factors. Both of which are remediable going forward if implemented and followed procedurally:

  1. Predicting a community response around a subject is something that can be quite difficult. The way in which this community acts is distinct from other games, It takes someone who lives and breathes it day-to-day to be able to gauge the chance, severity, and type of backlash. I suspect if enough of the right people in the Community team had been looped into the discussion of how to handle these players, someone there could’ve flagged the issues beforehand and a risk assessment could’ve been performed for the available options.
  2. An extended discussion with individuals that specialize in player punishments and cheating was not performed to the necessary extent. I’d like to put emphasis on not only ensuring these conversations both happen, and can take as long as the expert needs, but also at ensuring that the individual being consulted is comfortable discussing, explaining, and correcting misunderstandings. In general, anything that involves “indefinite”, “permanent”, or “en-masse” should likely be discussed in-depth with all of the relevant teams, especially Community as they’re the ones who will be most familiar with the aftermath (both positive and negative) of past decisions. Specifically for Community, this will leave them better prepared for the anticipated response from the community that they might need to handle, particularly when decisions have to be made for the betterment of the game despite a chance of backlash short-term or from a small subset of players.

Now to review the choices available and consequences that follow, we first need to acknowledge that illicit content acquisition is a rather quiet form of cheating. One that is relatively inoffensive to the average consumer, as it’s far less impactful than gameplay advantages. For example, you could play with someone who cheated progression years in the past, and never know the difference, as compared to someone flying, speed hacking, etc. This makes the perception from the players we’re punishing a larger consideration than your ordinary “rage hacker”. It also means the community at large will be far more sympathetic to these players, and the optics of over punishing need to be carefully weighed against the optics of under punishing to find the sweet-spot while also accomplishing our core goal of reducing further occurrence of this undesirable behaviour.

Let’s now go over punishment options in rough order of severity, and dive into the benefits and concerns they offer:

  1. Do nothing. This causes distrust within the community, devalues the exclusivity of limited content, and has a clearly calculable loss of potential revenue for Behaviour.
  2. Formally warn players, either by contacting them or temporarily banning them for a brief period of time. This serves as a wake-up call, demonstrates that you're taking action on these players, and scares people on the edge away from illicit options, pushing them towards legitimate acquisitions going forward. This also paints Behaviour in a less adversarial light to the player who is spared the permanent ban upfront, which is more likely to encourage them to make purchases in the future. However, on its own, this only serves as a one-time deterrent, and has no ongoing effects on the players punished if they opt to continue playing, meaning it’s important to pair this with another option to discourage players from using their initial warning as a “freebie”.
  3. Directly remove the content that has been illegitimately acquired. This is the natural consequence when an instance of this has been identified. This does put an end to the potential lost revenue from the duration the cosmetics were used illegitimately thus far, but does not provide an active incentive to not obtain said content again in an authorized manner and repeat this process. It also encourages people obtain content illegitimately once if the only cost is the loss of their cheated content alone, again avoiding this being used as a “freebie”
  4. Remove content that was directly acquired illegitimately, and remove any gameplay progression that was (or could have been) gained during the use of, or amplified by the use of the illegitimately acquired content. This provides a real and felt punishment to players who have illegitimately acquired content, but still provides them with a reason to continue using their account with its current earned content, and their properly purchased content.
  5. Fully wipe all non-purchased content from the account, including legitimate gameplay progression, illegitimately attained content, and legitimately obtained cosmetic content. This provides a more severe real and felt punishment to players who have illegitimately acquired content. However, depending on how much content was purchased on the account legitimately, they could have little reason to remain above board going forward due to the majority of its meaningful content being gone.
  6. Permanently ban players determined to have acquired content by unauthorized means. This is a loud and clear message warning players not to do this by a permanent ban's inherent full stop nature. However, players who have been banned now have no incentive to remain within the rules to any extent going forward, as they are now ban evading, meaning any real purchases on future accounts are now inherently in jeopardy. By permanently banning players, you push them away from buying anything beyond the game itself (which they will likely acquire in the cheapest way possible, often through third parties), and using unauthorized methods to acquire the content and progression they lost previously, and any previously locked content as they’re already in bannable territory. This leads to a greater loss in revenue compared to some amount of legitimate purchases intermingled with illegitimately unlocked content, as well as compared to players only having to rebuy the content they previously illegitimately owned. Additionally, if a player is already at risk of a ban, in particular the type of player who we already know leans away from following the rules, you've now created no incentive for that player to remain legitimate. They effectively are at equal risk of account loss for both playing legitimately going forward, and cheating to the fullest extent available, and they have something to make up (the progression from the original, more legitimate account).

If I wasn’t clear enough, I strongly believe that option 2, paired with option 4, is the ideal decision.

It is also worth retrospectively considering the totality of the decisions made thus far. By first taking an ironfisted approach upfront, and easing down later, you've projected a loud and clear signal, not only to players unlocking content illegitimately, but also players cheating in far more visible and severe ways. This message being, if you're loud enough en-masse, you will receive amnesty for violating the rules.

Additionally, this fosters an environment where some legitimate players will feel as if they should have cheated. Seeing people taking the easy route get punished can feel rewarding to legitimate players, but seeing a punishment walked back can undo this and increase the feeling of wishing they’d taken that easy route. Think from the player’s perspective, if they could've cheated to get that gameplay advantage for the time, speeding up earning their other progression in their non-directly-cheated aspects of the game, and only been served a small penalty, why wouldn’t they? The framing of it going from harsher to more lenient can feel as though cheaters are being rewarded. Many of these players will see that going forward there is a high chance that with enough backlash, they'll be able to get away with it, and be more likely to dip into the illicit side of things in the future.

Overall, this damages trust between the legitimate community and BHVR, empowers cheaters, converts a number of legitimate players into cheaters, and provides past cheaters a reward for only lightly cheating once (all of the additional progression that was accelerated by having certain things unlocked early).

I'm typically not the type to publicly comment on things like this. I'm often the most pro-BHVR individual within my circles. However this is an extreme case that I don't feel confident will be properly addressed without thoughtful widespread community response. I deeply hope this will be passed up appropriately to the people it's relevant to, and that the feedback will both be taken seriously, and implemented procedurally for the future. I hope it's evident this comes from a place of love and compassion for this game, thank you for your time.

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