are all not definable in an objective way as they are based on subjective feelings on the recipients end.
Eg. if i refer to one of my friends with a 6-letter n-word and he refers back to me with a 4-letter n-word, we’re both having a good laugh. If random groups in society do so vice versa, they might not be having a good laugh but some serious riot.
It’s not only very hard, but outright impossible to define “hard” criteria to draw a line between “freedom of speech” and “harrassment” and everyone who starts to try so, will inevitably end up with some sort of authoritarian if not totalitarian set of policies.
I consider EVE an environment aimed at mature people. If one can’t stand being memed, well, who compelled him/her/it (<- is this still pc enough or what’s the current benchmark?) to enter this environment in the first place? There’s a reason why minors are not allowed into eg. a strip bar, but in online gaming they just can sneak in and you’re about to let them complain they got “hurt” cos they saw some naked people in there?
Look, I kinda get where you’re coming from but the expectation that we will publicly outline some exhaustive list of things you can and can’t say, and how they apply to every cultural nuance, is just pedantic and obviously will never happen. That’s not how any game or online service enforces their rules.
But…we do have a good system for telling people when they’re out of line. We send official warnings to people which should help them navigate better in the future. If they don’t work, they stack up on your accounts until further action is needed.
If, however, you commit an offence worthy of an immediate permanent ban (real life threats, hacking, doxxing etc), the cause of that happening won’t be that we didn’t outline the limits of acceptable behavior precisely enough
If u need Eve to offend or threaten people bcz. u have a problem in real life, then u and ur thousands of friends better leave the eve community.
it is definitely possible to play this game with a minimum of decency and respect (and yes it is still a game)
Really sad to see these changes. Some of my fondest memories in Eve involve a guy telling me he works for the FBI and will dox me and send thugs to set my mailbox on fire, if I didn’t refund the 100mil he lost on my isk doubling scam. This is probably why I stayed around as long as I have, and I’m worried the newbies of the future will be denied such amazing experiences.
CCP Guard I get where you guys are coming from, and I understand CCP’s intentions are good. I think the thing that would help the most is a big emphatic “CCP will be the judges of what’s right and wrong, and it will also be CCP who decides what is the appropriate action.”
Thanks for trying to clarify that out of game stuff that is directly related to in game in now higher on CCP’s radar.
You must have known what was going to happen in this thread? Did you draw the short straw in the office?
The toons do not speak, the player does it and it is also a player who receives the message.
But it also depends on the situation and is probably partly tolerable. In the end, everyone has to decide for themselves how they want to deal with other players. It is also a question of decency.
Excuse me, but I don’t think you really got where I am coming from. I don’t want case examples and I am very much in agreement with real life issues (such as self harm, threats, doxxing etc.).
My question was more or less aimed at your companies philosophy, aka whether or not CCP subscribes to “everything can be offensive and thus problematic” or if CCP is more grounded and acts on the base of better established definitions, especially in the context of a Sandbox-MMO where the best thing you can do is to mess with other players.
While warnings are perfectly OK (and if you do warn first, then that’s fine), the opinions on cases of “sexism”, “racism” and “HateSpeech” vary wildly and I for one would have 0 understanding if you would warn me for quoting a fact with a note of “HateSpeech” (just as an example) because it offended someone. I would not know what I have done wrong in such an instance.
While it’s a very nice (and good!) approach on paper, I feel that it just “isn’t enough” given the modern political climate. Please believe me when I say that I wish this wouldn’t be necessary (you are the least of all persons at CCP I would like to have a bad day or a “roll-eyes in annoyance” moment…).
However, even the fair play alliance states that the exact enforcement of the rules highly depend on the environment of the game and CCP basically encouraged “bad behaviour” in the past, so I really feel it’s necessary to have a more refined approach to the whole topic.
This thread already provided for a ton of Eve specific examples like “autism”, “jewing” and others that evolved over the years. If those now become an offense, it is something you should, in the interest of fairness, communicate to your players.
Also, I can accept that I will not get a specific answer to the questions I’ve made, but I hope that I’ve made my point clear and it’s something CCP (and to a degree, the CSM) will consider in the future.
I hereby stand down from this argument with a thank you Guard and a thank you Brisc.
Same CCP, who can ban Stunt for nothing but keep Mittens around for full-blown violation of this policy?
Same CCP, who did nothing about the bots despite dozens of reports for years, because beers?
Same CCP, who is not ashamed about rampant RMTer running free as long as he “generates content” (and beers, more importantly).
Saying “CCP will decide” is like asking inmates to run the asylum. That is EXACTLY what bothers me and others here.
Mittani was punished according to the policy of the time. Took his punishment. Made his apologies.
Since then rules have changed but that is no reason to punish his actions a second time.
The questionable point from a law standpoint is - internet a public place aka public auditorium ? To call someone “dirty homo” is a minor offence while its done vis a vi and can usually only be persecuted with personal request. To call a group of people in public speech “those/ like / as etc. dirty homos” its already a serious hate crime as its directed to public and afflicts a group of people with “homo” characteristic and has to be persecuted by state attorney out of public interest. I guess CCP are afraid by common sense if someone reports chatlogs or similar communique they can get really ugly publicity or even police investigation by tolerance of doing nothing.
Quite the contrary: a hardline approach is the only thing that works and it works pretty well. People in-game or out of the game who get away with breaking the law again and again will feel supported by such lax handling and are likely to raise the stakes: from harassment to threats, from threats to action. If the general rules are enforced strictly as they should, you get rid of the normalization effect of escalating hate speech, threats and actual violence. Most people are doing quite fine when given the chance to not be in constant state of mutual harassment with their surrounding. This is EVEs version of it and enforced, it will work wonders.
The players who want to find a way around this will likely have their accounts banned and they may even face judicial consequences in some cases. The rest will give each other a semi-friendly “f*ck you” and keep on enjoying the game.
You misunderstand.
This is not about what you can or cannot say, it is about who you are.
If you are a toxic person, who goes through life wether real or online, using harassment, racism, threats of violence or anything of the likes, you are not welcome in EVE. That’s the message.
If you aren’t, you will be fine. If you are and you manage to hide the piece of human garbage that you may innerly be, by controlling what you say, you may not get the boot. If you are and you try to push the limits to find out with just how much / in what form you can get away with spreading threats and hatred amongst players, you’ll have your accounts banned.
