Re: Increased Harassment towards members of Dev Team

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@AngrySquid270 wrote:

Surprised to see this posted now.  Even at its worst the EA Answers community is kittens and puppies compared to the darker corners of Twitter and Reddit (when filtered by new). Things seem far better now than a year ago 

Consider:

• Dev's home addresses have been posted to Twitter.
• Someone was fabricating 'evidence' that one of the Reddit mods was a pedophile.
• Because the main 2042 subreddit was too 'tame' for some people a new hate focused subreddit was created. R/battlefieldboomers.  I think Pappa Reddit had to step in on that sub, initially it was pretty unhinged. Human trash posting up the most hateful things they could imagine.
• During the Fawsi Mesmer news cycle all the racists came out on Reddit. 2042 was bad because brown people.

All of that over a toy. A toy that costs less than a tank of gas.

I think this DICE response is completely justified based on what I've seen.

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if that stuff was outside of game they have no grounds for any enforcement in game.  is the conduct disgusting?  yes.  do they have the *right* to ban someone in game over something done on twitter or reddit?  *NO*

there are other legal channels to go through for doxing, fabricating evidence etc.  allowing a game company to kick people for stuff done outside of game will lead to people being banned for other reasons like "wrongthink" such as voting for joe biden or donald trump (depending on the perspective of the person with the ban button)

they put this in the EUA:

• Harass, threaten, bully, embarrass, spam or do anything else to another player or any EA employee or representative 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. We won't tolerate any unwanted conduct against any EA employee and representative because of their affiliation with EA in EA Services or anywhere else.

i do not agree to these terms.  i do not haraass anyone but i'm not going to be judged on what i do off platform.  have fun, i'm done with EA permanently.  they go in the bin with patreon and paypal for claiming the right to tie my ability to use a product to something not related to that product

@Prof3ss0r_M1k3 I suspect there's probably some vague statements in the EULA for EA/DICE to do whatever they please regarding player access.

DICE could flip the switch and turn off all of the 2042 servers tomorrow without reason. While we may have the expectation to access, I don't think the EULA entitles it.

While some of those restrictions  are valid, some are not and what some would agree to violate our constitutional rights of freedom of speech by restricting us from fully express our opinions on open public platforms..  

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@fragnstein wrote:

While some of those restrictions  are valid, some are not and what some would agree to violate our constitutional rights of freedom of speech by restricting us from fully express our opinions on open public platforms..  

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Freedom of speech is a freedom from government retaliation to speech and even that freedom only extends up to the point of causing harm.  Private companies like EA are free to censor/punish speech as they please within their power.

As a business I expect that EA has the right to refuse service (assuming they aren't basing the refusal on one of the protected classes).

But then none of us are legal experts.  We can only speculate at the legal risks here.  However as a company of 10k+ people I'd imagine EA has a more than a few legal experts - specifically legal experts in the field of video games - that would have been available to weigh in on this.  Most large corporations are hyper sensitive legal risks.  If there's even a whiff of legal risk then you need to run it by the legal department.  No idea if that happened in this case, but my guess is that they did and it got a green light.

I definitely find the actual harassment of any people for their affiliation with DICE/EA to be objectionable and I am sure there are even actual laws against these things.

There is a lot of room to be critical about the state of the game, without going personal against individuals. Especially when the ones who cause most problems are usually not even inside the dev teams but are managing the devs and their budget.

But at the same time I find that taking ingame action against customers because of things  they said in unaffiliated platforms to be a rather objectionable and Orwellian thing in itself.

It can damage the trust between customer and retailer.

The one other thing that I always find even worse is how all these private companies do not have to provide the receipts about exactly why they did something on someone's account (not just linking some vague rules, but to show exactly what was said and why it was wrong). I wish there were transparency laws about this.

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@AngrySquid270 wrote:

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@fragnstein wrote:

While some of those restrictions  are valid, some are not and what some would agree to violate our constitutional rights of freedom of speech by restricting us from fully express our opinions on open public platforms..  

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Freedom of speech is a freedom from government retaliation to speech and even that freedom only extends up to the point of causing harm.  Private companies like EA are free to censor/punish speech as they please within their power.

As a business I expect that EA has the right to refuse service (assuming they aren't basing the refusal on one of the protected classes).

But then none of us are legal experts.  We can only speculate at the legal risks here.  However as a company of 10k+ people I'd imagine EA has a more than a few legal experts - specifically legal experts in the field of video games - that would have been available to weigh in on this.  Most large corporations are hyper sensitive legal risks.  If there's even a whiff of legal risk then you need to run it by the legal department.  No idea if that happened in this case, but my guess is that they did and it got a green light.

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It amazes me how many people don't have a basic understanding of the 1st amendment. Thanks for the post, I was about to post the same.