Banning Schroedinger's Cat

In an interesting discussion about cheating on the Gamergod forums AFFA said:

If you were banned, what you did was bannable. Until you're banned, you don't know whether it was bannable or not. It's almost a Schroedinger's Cat problem. This is actually a real problem, in my view. Players deserve more confidence in regards to what is and is not an "exploit" or bannable offense. I understand the legal reasons for the game owners to phrase things in a way that lets them redefine "cheating" whimsically, but I think clearer definitions do help prevent cheating in the first place.

Very true. My favorite crazy example of a bannable offence was in Everquest, where reporting you had been hacked was a bannable offence. Official logic was that hacking wasn't possible, if you got hacked you must have given out your password to somebody, and letting somebody play on your account was against the TOS. Obviously the first couple of people banned for this were highly surprised.

Another example of people getting banned who didn't know they were committing a bannable offence was when somebody published a nice little addon for EQ which allowed you to control WinAmp from the EQ command line. Very useful, because EQ at that time didn't allow you to Alt-Tab out of the game. But obviously SOE just noticed that people were modifying their client with third-party software, and promptly banned them.

I never got banned, but I spent some time in EQ pulling the Hermit in the Karanas by targeting him through a crack in the door of his hut. I later heard rumors that this was a bannable offence as well, because there was a way to call out to him and make him run out of his hut and attack you, and pulling him through the crack gave you the first shot and was thus "cheating". A typical example of a case where one persons "clever strategy" is another persons "bannable cheating offence".

I have never seen a game in which there was a clear list of bannable offences posted on the website. You might get a developer stating deep down in a message board thread that one thing was considered cheating, but gathering all that information is pretty much impossible for the average use. The EULAs usually just say that you can be banned for anything the developers see fit, which I find legally dubious. What if I pay for a 6-month subscription, and in the first month I get banned in a "Schroedinger's Cat" situation where I couldn't have known that what I was doing was considered cheating. Do I get my money back, at least for the 5 months?
- posted by Tobold @ 1:40 PM Permanent Link