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Updated Terms of Service - Rules of Conduct in game


TrixxieTriss

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Looks like EA/Bioware updated their terms of service back in May 2018 which better define the rules of conducts, especially with regards to harassment and cheating and general conduct in the game.

One would hope that are actually going to enforce these rules and punishments for severe violations, ie hackers can have their EA accounts terminated. I would hope this is what will now happen the first time they get caught.

 

Excerpt:

 

Rules of Conduct

 

When you access or use an EA Service, you agree that you will not:

Violate any law, rule or regulation.

Interfere with or disrupt any EA Service or any server or network used to support or provide an EA Service, including any hacking or cracking into an EA Service.

Use any software or program that damages, interferes with or disrupts an EA Service or another's computer or property, such as denial of service attacks, spamming, hacking, or uploading computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, cancelbots, spyware, corrupted files and time bombs.

Interfere with or disrupt another player's use of an EA Service. This includes disrupting the normal flow of game play, chat or dialogue within an EA Service by, for example, using vulgar or harassing language, being abusive, excessive shouting (all caps), spamming, flooding or hitting the return key repeatedly.

Harass, threaten, bully, embarrass, spam or do anything else to another player that is unwanted, such as repeatedly sending unwanted messages or making personal attacks or statements about race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated.

Contribute UGC or organize or participate in any activity, group or guild that is inappropriate, abusive, harassing, profane, threatening, hateful, offensive, vulgar, obscene, sexually explicit, defamatory, infringing, invades another's privacy, or is otherwise reasonably objectionable.

Publish, post, upload or distribute UGC or content that is illegal or that you don't have permission to freely distribute.

Publish, post, upload or distribute any content, such as a topic, name, screen name, avatar, persona, or other material or information, that EA (acting reasonably and objectively) determines is inappropriate, abusive, hateful, harassing, profane, defamatory, threatening, hateful, obscene, sexually explicit, infringing, privacy-invasive, vulgar, offensive, indecent or unlawful.

Post a message for any purpose other than personal communication. Prohibited messages include advertising, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes and other types of solicitation or commercial activities.

Impersonate another person or falsely imply that you are an EA employee or representative.

Improperly use in-game support or complaint buttons or make false reports to EA staff.

Attempt to obtain, or phish for, a password, account information, or other private information from anyone else on EA Services.

Use any robot, spider or other automated device or process to access this website for any purpose or copy any material on this website.

Use or distribute unauthorized software programs or tools, such as "auto" software programs, "macro" software programs, "cheat utility" software program or applications, exploits, cheats, or any other game hacking, altering or cheating software or tool.

Modify any file or any other part of the EA Service that EA does not specifically authorize you to modify.

Use exploits, cheats, undocumented features, design errors or problems in an EA Service.

Use or distribute counterfeit software or EA Content, including EA Virtual Currency.

Attempt to use an EA Service on or through any service that is not controlled or authorized by EA.

Sell, buy, trade or otherwise transfer or offer to transfer your EA Account, any personal access to EA Services, or any EA Content associated with your EA Account, including EA Virtual Currency and other Entitlements, either within an EA Service or on a third party website, or in connection with any out-of-game transaction, unless expressly authorized by EA.

Use an EA Service in a country in which EA is prohibited from offering such services under applicable export control laws.

If an EA Service requires you to create a "user name" or a "persona" to represent you in game and online, you should not use your real name and may not use a user name or persona that is used by someone else or that EA determines is vulgar or offensive or violates someone else's rights.

Engage in any other activity that significantly disturbs the peaceful, fair and respectful gaming environment of an EA Service.

Use information about users publicly available in any EA Service (e.g. on a leaderboard) for any purpose unrelated to the Service, including to attempt to identify such users in the real world.

Promote, encourage or take part in any prohibited activity described above.

If you or someone using your EA Account violates these rules and fails to remedy this violation after a warning, EA may take action against you, including revoking access to certain or all EA Services, Content or Entitlements, or terminating your EA Account as described in Section 8. In case of severe violations, EA may take these actions without issuing a prior warning. Some examples of severe violations include, but are not limited to: promoting, encouraging or engaging in hacking, selling EA accounts or entitlements (including virtual currencies and items) without EA’s permission, extreme harassment, or threatening illegal activities. When practical, EA will notify you of the action it will take in response to violations of these rules or breach of this Agreement.

 

Specific EA Services may post additional rules that apply to your conduct on those services.

 

If you encounter another user who is violating any of these rules, please report this activity to EA using the "Help" or "Report Abuse" functions in the relevant EA Service, if available, or contact Customer Support at help.ea.com.

 

Full TOS link.

https://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/#section6

 

This TOS is now black and white as to what constitutes a violation.

I know from now on I will be copying the appropriate section of the TOS and adding it to any reports I make in case CS haven’t read up on the updated TOS. That way there can no confusion as to what is and isn’t an offence.

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Dont kid yourself, at most they'll get a slap on the wrist because EA would rather have games full of Hackers - i.e. paying customers - than ban anyone who might be contributing money to their company.

 

Maybe, but the stronger TOS has better definitions of what a violation is and I think linking the definition to each report will allow CS to feel more confindent in implementing harsher penalties.

 

I do know that a heap of wintraders lost their ratings and some got bans for doing it. I’m not sure how long those bans were. I guess it depended on how badly they cheated or if they got caught selling their wintrading service for money (hope those guys got perma banned).

This is the most Bio has acted against wintraders since seasons started 5 years ago.

 

I’m hoping this is a new paradigm towards all cheating or bad behaviour in the game. Cleaning up the game helps it’s reputation and may bring people back to it.

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Thanks, Owen.

 

I don't run all-gay guilds in SWTOR, but used to belong to them in other MMOs. This post of mine was a lot longer but after reading in the TOC "Discussion of political, sexual, or religious topics is prohibited on the forums" I wasn't even sure I could mention much about all-gay guilds and the zealots who want to declare open season on them so I've redacted my post to this.

Edited by xordevoreaux
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"statements about race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc..."

 

Oh dear lord good luck keeping up with that one. That is such a broad rule literally any opinion can be seen as "statement" for people to freely get trigger by and demand censorship over. Better turn off your chats bois.

 

"using vulgar language"

Then why do we have "turn off profanity filter" for if you cant swear anyway? roflmao

Edited by Kiesu
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Oh dear lord good luck keeping up with that one. That is such a broad rule literally any opinion can be seen as "statement" for people to freely get trigger by and demand censorship over. Better turn off your chats bois.

 

Because it works the same as laws in real life.. unless you create them and publish them... you cannot enforce them.

 

Terms of Service represent what is enforceable in terms of behavior.... not an automated enforcement to the letter of the text. In other words.. by publishing said terms.... said terms are grounds for enforcement of any reported violations. They still need to confirm any reported incidents, then review the account for "priors" and then make an sanction determination.

 

Then why do we have "turn off profanity filter" for if you cant swear anyway? roflmao

 

Simple really. By giving players a method to filter out profanity... you mitigate studio culpability for the behavior. They cannot sanction in real time so they rely on reports of offenders, review the report and take action accordingly.. after the fact. A player can then report profanity.. and if they find it annoying.. filter it until the studio reviews the report.

Edited by Andryah
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Because it works the same as laws in real life.. unless you create them and publish them... you cannot enforce them.

 

Terms of Service represent what is enforceable in terms of behavior.... not an automated enforcement to the letter of the text. In other words.. by publishing said terms.... said terms are grounds for enforcement of any reported violations. They still need to confirm any reported incidents, then review the account for "priors" and then make an sanction determination.

 

 

 

Simple really. By giving players a method to filter out profanity... you mitigate studio culpability for the behavior. They cannot sanction in real time so they rely on reports of offenders, review the report and take action accordingly.. after the fact. A player can then report profanity.. and if they find it annoying.. filter it until the studio reviews the report.

 

I think the point being made wooshed straight over your head. But thank you captain obvious. Nobody was saying anything otherwise.

Edited by DarthWoad
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Because it works the same as laws in real life.. unless you create them and publish them... you cannot enforce them.

 

Terms of Service represent what is enforceable in terms of behavior.... not an automated enforcement to the letter of the text. In other words.. by publishing said terms.... said terms are grounds for enforcement of any reported violations. They still need to confirm any reported incidents, then review the account for "priors" and then make an sanction determination.

 

Simple really. By giving players a method to filter out profanity... you mitigate studio culpability for the behavior. They cannot sanction in real time so they rely on reports of offenders, review the report and take action accordingly.. after the fact. A player can then report profanity.. and if they find it annoying.. filter it until the studio reviews the report.

Lol why are you telling me that for. I know exactly what it means, that wasn't a question buddy. This is a form of cencorship over whatever little thing might offend and by deciding to make their terms of service morally biased they just gave themselves a good amount of extra work over an easily exploitable TOS. Youtube has been suffering from this for years, letting any little thing demonetize of even ban a video because it even dared to touch an area a singular person might find sensitive enough to press the Flag button over.

 

That doesn't explain why we would be able to turn off profanity filter. If they wanna ban all vulgarity, just why do we need the option to SEE vulgarity.

Just *** everything and you don't have visible vulgarity, problem solved.

Edited by Kiesu
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Lol why are you telling me that for. I know exactly what it means, that wasn't a question buddy. This is a form of cencorship over whatever little thing might offend and by deciding to make their terms of service morally biased they just gave themselves a good amount of extra work over an easily exploitable TOS. Youtube has been suffering from this for years, letting any little thing demonetize of even ban a video because it even dared to touch an area a singular person might find sensitive enough to press the Flag button over.

 

That doesn't explain why we would be able to turn off profanity filter. If they wanna ban all vulgarity, just why do we need the option to SEE vulgarity.

Just *** everything and you don't have visible vulgarity, problem solved.

 

So you ask questions in the forum, but don't want answers. :rolleyes:

 

If you were just being cyncical... then kindly use { and } to bracket your sarcasms. It will save a lot of confusion in discussions. If you were just "editorializing" or "opining" then just say so up front and stop using question marks. ;)

 

Now.. off to /ignore with you. Bye.

Edited by Andryah
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And what's new on the TOS? Everything I saw is what's been in place that I remember.

Those are the cover all/blanket rules companies have nowadays so they don't get in trouble if they choose to act on behavior they deem wrong. Not necessarily acting on every case though.

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And what's new on the TOS? Everything I saw is what's been in place that I remember.

Those are the cover all/blanket rules companies have nowadays so they don't get in trouble if they choose to act on behavior they deem wrong. Not necessarily acting on every case though.

 

Before the TOS had holes in the definitions or allowed ambiguity. Now they have defined things better, it will be easier for them to enforce and it also allows us to know “exactly” what constitutes a violation.

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Lol why are you telling me that for. I know exactly what it means, that wasn't a question buddy. This is a form of cencorship over whatever little thing might offend and by deciding to make their terms of service morally biased they just gave themselves a good amount of extra work over an easily exploitable TOS. Youtube has been suffering from this for years, letting any little thing demonetize of even ban a video because it even dared to touch an area a singular person might find sensitive enough to press the Flag button over.

 

That doesn't explain why we would be able to turn off profanity filter. If they wanna ban all vulgarity, just why do we need the option to SEE vulgarity.

Just *** everything and you don't have visible vulgarity, problem solved.

 

I'm honestly not trying to bait you on this, but what are you so worried you won't be able to say anymore that you seem to already know will set someone off?

 

As far as the profanity filter, the game is still Rated Teen (yes, there is the warning about online interactions not being rated, that goes with every online game in existence). They'd rather err on the side of caution and not expose kids (omg, kids play video games?!) or at least give the control to the parent to decide to turn it off or not.

Almost every safeguard in existence on consumer products is to protect the consumer from themselves. This is no different. Some idiot irons his clothes while wearing them, horribly burns their skin and sues, and every iron-maker for the rest of history must put a warning on the label to not iron their clothes while wearing them.

With the filter--there should be less complaints to EA from hysterical parents for letting their kids be exposed without protection than if it was the other way around. Less complaints (can never snuff them all out, no matter what you do) = success to corporate.

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Almost every safeguard in existence on consumer products is to protect the consumer from themselves. This is no different. Some idiot irons his clothes while wearing them, horribly burns their skin and sues, and every iron-maker for the rest of history must put a warning on the label to not iron their clothes while wearing them.

 

I always wondered about that warning. I mean who could be such a moron as to iron their clothes while wearing them?

 

Now they just need to put warning on keyboards to say, “do not roll your face on keyboard” :D

If a day ever comes that I see that, I’m going to laugh so hard.

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Lol why are you telling me that for. I know exactly what it means, that wasn't a question buddy. This is a form of cencorship over whatever little thing might offend and by deciding to make their terms of service morally biased they just gave themselves a good amount of extra work over an easily exploitable TOS. Youtube has been suffering from this for years, letting any little thing demonetize of even ban a video because it even dared to touch an area a singular person might find sensitive enough to press the Flag button over.

 

That doesn't explain why we would be able to turn off profanity filter. If they wanna ban all vulgarity, just why do we need the option to SEE vulgarity.

Just *** everything and you don't have visible vulgarity, problem solved.

 

Youtube demonetization is a completely different issue, as it mostly comes down to advertisers not wanting their advertisements shown next to, before or after something controversial, and youtube needing those advertisers, so youtube does their best to demonetize anything controversial in hopes of advertisers not pulling their ads away. Giving a lot of leeway in TOS seems to be the rule, not the exception, at least in my experience. That way people enforcing the rules can't be stopped by someone who happened to find a neat little loophole.

 

If you don't have much trust in Bioware using common sense while enforcing these rules, I can understand getting upset. I, however, do have some trust in them. I'd like to think Bioware is not stupid enough to start banning everyone who sometimes swears. If I'm wrong... Well, I suppose I'll know after I get my first warning due to making a bad mistake in pvp and writing "Sorry people, I ****ed up really bad there" to the chat. :p

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I always wondered about that warning. I mean who could be such a moron as to iron their clothes while wearing them?

 

Now they just need to put warning on keyboards to say, “do not roll your face on keyboard” :D

If a day ever comes that I see that, I’m going to laugh so hard.

 

You be surprised. I am a paralegal and you would be surprised at some of the cases I have seen.

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If they updated the ToS shouldn't we have been given notice? Like when we log in shouldn't we have had to agree to the ToS again? I could be wrong, but I don't remember that happening. While I'm all for them banning hackers, I'm against them moving the goalposts without warning.
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So you ask questions in the forum, but don't want answers. :rolleyes:

 

If you were just being cyncical... then kindly use { and } to bracket your sarcasms. It will save a lot of confusion in discussions. If you were just "editorializing" or "opining" then just say so up front and stop using question marks. ;)

 

Now.. off to /ignore with you. Bye.

 

Wow you must not have even read what you replied to. Here let me help you by pointing out the questionmark you apparently didn't see. http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=9637351&postcount=6. Its there on the second part. The first part wasn't a question. :rolleyes: how about read what you are replying to next time before putting on the fedora.

Edited by Kiesu
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Youtube demonetization is a completely different issue, as it mostly comes down to advertisers not wanting their advertisements shown next to, before or after something controversial, and youtube needing those advertisers, so youtube does their best to demonetize anything controversial in hopes of advertisers not pulling their ads away. Giving a lot of leeway in TOS seems to be the rule, not the exception, at least in my experience. That way people enforcing the rules can't be stopped by someone who happened to find a neat little loophole.

They remove vids all the time for non-legal reasons for they have taken a moral and political side while while still trying to protect their censorship by hiding behind private company tag. Same with twitter and many other social media platforms, youtube is just the most saturated example as according to their policy if you get flagged by anything, you're guilty untill proven not guilty, which is complete reverse logic.

You really haven't been following the news for a few weeks have you? It's been blatantly obvious they don't respect freedom of speech because none of the banned people have not done anything criminal. Their views were just very saturated one way, but not the other. aka political cherry picked censorship.

 

And they can by all means ban anyone they want to because of the protections private companies currently have. Doesn't change the fact that its dumb. And the more companies start doing this type of censorship the closer we're going to get to getting regulations by law to restrict what can be restricted by these companies... Ironic, but thats how it is.

Just saying "trust the company" really doesn't work in this situation, when so many have proven not worthy of that trust. Personally I wouldn't trust EA to even tie my shoelaces without a hidden motive.

Edited by Kiesu
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Freedom of speech in the USA only means that the government cannot pass laws limiting your speech or arrest you for criticizng. It does not mean that private companies cannot set whatever rules they want regarding speech and conduct. Censorship? They aren't stopping you from saying your piece else where, they are just telling you that you won't do it on their services. That is their right. By using the service you agree to their rules.
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They remove vids all the time for non-legal reasons for they have taken a moral and political side while while still trying to protect their censorship by hiding behind private company tag. Same with twitter and many other social media platforms, youtube is just the most saturated example as according to their policy if you get flagged by anything, you're guilty untill proven not guilty, which is complete reverse logic.

You really haven't been following the news for a few weeks have you? It's been blatantly obvious they don't respect freedom of speech because none of the banned people have not done anything criminal. Their views were just very saturated one way, but not the other. aka political cherry picked censorship.

 

And they can by all means ban anyone they want to because of the protections private companies currently have. Doesn't change the fact that its dumb. And the more companies start doing this type of censorship the closer we're going to get to getting regulations by law to restrict what can be restricted by these companies... Ironic, but thats how it is.

Just saying "trust the company" really doesn't work in this situation, when so many have proven not worthy of that trust. Personally I wouldn't trust EA to even tie my shoelaces without a hidden motive.

 

Yeah, for some reason the kind of news I read are missing the "Here's news about twitter, youtube and facebook". Strange, isn't is? :p

 

Trusting the company is the only thing we can do, and not only in the internet but in the real life, too. The "terms of service", so to speak, you sign when you walk into a restaurant or a store is much more open to interpretation. All you need to do is to be distruptive towards other customers, and you're out. There's absolutely no protection for your speech apart from the company wanting your money and therefore not wanting to throw you out unless you're actually making a scene and costing the company money by driving away other customers. The alternative would be much worse - - not being able to eat your food in peace because some loudmouth is spewing their religions or political agenda next to you and the restaurant is not allowed to remote them or tell them to be quiet due to freedom of speech. I don't want people trolling my warzones by spamming their agendas in the chat and Bioware not being able to do anything about that, thank you very much.

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Yeah, for some reason the kind of news I read are missing the "Here's news about twitter, youtube and facebook". Strange, isn't is? :p

 

Trusting the company is the only thing we can do, and not only in the internet but in the real life, too. The "terms of service", so to speak, you sign when you walk into a restaurant or a store is much more open to interpretation. All you need to do is to be distruptive towards other customers, and you're out. There's absolutely no protection for your speech apart from the company wanting your money and therefore not wanting to throw you out unless you're actually making a scene and costing the company money by driving away other customers. The alternative would be much worse - - not being able to eat your food in peace because some loudmouth is spewing their religions or political agenda next to you and the restaurant is not allowed to remote them or tell them to be quiet due to freedom of speech. I don't want people trolling my warzones by spamming their agendas in the chat and Bioware not being able to do anything about that, thank you very much.

This has been aired on international news on the television. Because especially one of these situations of fishy banning was so systematical they got banned from like 7+ media platforms, including ones they never even posted anything on. And they've done nothing legally wrong, nor the others who got the ban hammer after. And other people got their live podcasts forcibly shut down for even talking about it on air. You missed this if you don't follow news at all, or you cherry pick your news and shut down the tv the minute twitter is mentioned, which is unfortunate. But ignorance is bliss I guess.

 

How would the alternative be worse? We haven't had these line in the TOS before, theyre new (correct me if I'm wrong) and I'm pretty sure we haven't had religious or political propaganda airing in SWTOR 24/7 before we had these rules. Apart from the occasional troll, and no matter how many more rules you write, there will always be the occasional troll. I play PVP most times I'm on and I haven't had any Jihadists trying to recruit hutballers even once. You're imagining worse case scenarios which are easily avoidable by pressing the ignore button. You're not as hopeless as you think you are. Not every corner of the internet needs to be a "safe place" where opinions of any kind are not allowed for they might trigger some poor soul.

 

Also I'm not sure why you are repeating things I already stated in my comment. Maybe you didn't finish reading it.

Edited by Kiesu
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