I hate cheating and dislike cheaters, and I can't imagine a single scenario where what CG did with Skywalker is okay.
I don't think CG will publicly address this situation because anything they say will make the situation worse for themselves
There isn't anything they can say that would put them in good light imo
Its one of those situations where things are bad and its better to not make it worse by saying anything extra unless there is more to the story that we are unaware of
I disagree. I think generally speaking, institutions tend to react out of an odd combination of arrogance and fear and take exactly that approach of going silent and hunkering down. But that PR approach just doesn't work nowadays, I think: people see right through that. I think that now, customers value not infallibility but authenticity, transparency, and humility. Let me try to demonstrate what CG could be saying that I think would make things better. It's pipe dreams, I know, but this in theory is what I think they could do (but warning—it's long!):
"Hello Holotable Heroes,
"We've spent the last couple days reading and processing your feedback over the banning of Ahnaldt101's secondary account that was transferred to him in violation of our Terms of Service.
"After hearing your feedback and discussing things internally, we've realized that we messed up on this one. The way we handled this situation wasn't entirely fair to Ahnald and to our community. Yes, Ahnald violated our TOS, which prohibits account sharing. But as you've observed, our enforcement of our TOS has been selective and inconsistent, which undermines the legitimacy of any particular action we take against violations.
"As we hope you realize, this situation puts us in a tough spot: Do we undo the ban on Ahnald's secondary account and, in effect, say that TOS violations are actually OK, which would be unfair to anyone else we've ever acted against for account sharing? Or do we say that from now on, we're going to crack down consistently on each and every instance of account sharing that comes to our attention, which we've honestly been loath to do?
"Our discussions have led us to a few conclusions.
"First, we recognize that among the ways a player could violate the TOS, there is a distinction between someone accessing another's account for benign purposes that benefit the community—such as informing and entertaining the community, providing a remodding service, or babysitting an account—and someone accessing another's account for selfish reasons that could erode the integrity of the game—such as creating a market for buying and selling accounts and, obviously, cheating, which we will address below. We'd like to look into whether it is possible, in consultation with ours and EA's legal departments, to clarify our TOS to allow for currently prohibited benign actions while still preventing harmful actions. We're not sure this possible, but we'd like to let you know that we're looking into it.
"Second, we've come to realize that in this particular instance, the reason Ahnald used a secondary account was at least partly to address a need that we have failed to meet. If we had provided Ahnald and other players a legitimate way to test units and teams, this situation would have likely never happened. As many of you know, we recently closed the test accounts of those who were formerly involved in our Game Changers program. In hindsight, ending that program was a bad move for us and the community. At the time, our company culture tended to overreact to negative feedback, and we tried to exert a level of control over their content that was perhaps beyond what other developers have used in their relationships with content creators. We're consulting with some of those other developers, and based on what we've learned, we have plans to restart the Game Changers program and hope to restart our relationships with previous Game Changers as well as welcome new ones. As before, members of the program will have access to test accounts that they can use to inform the community about new content and strategies.
"Third, we've now realized that the need to test units and teams goes beyond just content creators. Another way we could have prevented this situation was to have a sandbox mode. We'd like to communicate with members of our community to find out what features would be most useful, prioritize those, and then see which of those we could implement without excessively burdening our current production pipeline. Expect more details in the coming days.
"Fourth, the way we have been handling cheating in the game is entirely unacceptable. The exchange Ahnald revealed between a member of our staff and a known cheater is real, and we are deeply embarrassed by it. Among TOS violations, cheating of any kind is one the most serious and most harmful to the integrity of our game and to our community. That we have negotiated in that manner with a known cheater while dealing so strictly with Ahnald's use of a transferred account doesn't seem fair, and we recognize that so much of the community's anger is over exactly that point. We are now implementing a zero-tolerance policy against deliberate cheating, regardless of a player's standing or spend level. Appeals are still possible so that players who have unintentionally abused a game system or who have been erroneously flagged by our filters can challenge their bans. But if after further review, our findings confirm intentional cheating, a permanent ban will result. We know that we've said such things in the past and failed you. We hope to demonstrate that this time we are following through.
"Finally, we're back to the question of what do we do in this situation with Ahnald's use of a transferred account. Do we explicitly condone TOS violations, or do we crack down harshly across the board? From our perspective, the first is impossible, and the second has serious drawbacks as well, including the resources that we'd need to devote to hunting down every shared account (instead of actual cheaters). Unfortunately, nothing short of a full ban on shared accounts makes logical sense for enforcing our current TOS: anything less still leaves the illicit account in the user's hands. Until we are able to potentially make changes to our TOS relative to account sharing, we feel bound at this moment to let the current ban stand on the account he received.
"But as Obi-Wan said (somewhat ironically), 'Only a Sith deals in absolutes.' Ahnald has a legitimate grievance against the way we've interacted with him, as well as a legitimate need that he was trying to fill. In light of this, and in recognition of his contributions to this game and our community, which can hardly be overstated, we've decided to reinstate the test accounts of all of those who were members of our Game Changers program at the time we discontinued it. Once we've restarted the program, only Game Changers will have access to test accounts. In addition, we're communicating with Ahnald about ways can we meet him in the middle, including potentially transferring to his main account some of the investments he'd made in the banned account.
"We'd like to apologize to everyone in this great, passionate community for our shortcomings in the way we've handled this situation and especially for our inexcusable failure to adequately respond to cheating. We hope that you can understand the reasons why we don't feel that simply unbanning the transferred account is a viable option for us right now, given our current TOS. Ultimately, our TOS may not be able to be changed to accommodate benign account sharing, but we want you to know that we're looking into the possibility. In the meantime, hopefully you'll see our attempts to meet Ahnald halfway—while still not condoning TOS violations—as a good-faith effort on our part. We've also learned from this experience that a functional Game Changers program, including test accounts, is something that would benefit both us and the community. And stay tuned for more information about an upcoming sandbox mode.
I hate cheating and dislike cheaters, and I can't imagine a single scenario where what CG did with Skywalker is okay.
I don't think CG will publicly address this situation because anything they say will make the situation worse for themselves
There isn't anything they can say that would put them in good light imo
Its one of those situations where things are bad and its better to not make it worse by saying anything extra unless there is more to the story that we are unaware of
I disagree. I think generally speaking, institutions tend to react out of an odd combination of arrogance and fear and take exactly that approach of going silent and hunkering down. But that PR approach just doesn't work nowadays, I think: people see right through that. I think that now, customers value not infallibility but authenticity, transparency, and humility. Let me try to demonstrate what CG could be saying that I think would make things better. It's pipe dreams, I know, but this in theory is what I think they could do (but warning—it's long!):
"Hello Holotable Heroes,
"We've spent the last couple days reading and processing your feedback over the banning of Ahnoldt101's secondary account that was transferred to him in violation of our Terms of Service.
"After hearing your feedback and discussing things internally, we've realized that we messed up on this one. The way we handled this situation wasn't entirely fair to Ahnold and to our community. Yes, Ahnold violated our TOS, which prohibits account sharing. But as you've observed, our enforcement of our TOS has been selective and inconsistent, which undermines the legitimacy of any particular action we take against violations.
"As we hope you realize, this situation puts us in a tough spot: Do we undo the ban on Ahnold's secondary account and, in effect, say that TOS violations are actually OK, which would be unfair to anyone else we've ever acted against for account sharing? Or do we say that from now on, we're going to crack down consistently on each and every instance of account sharing that comes to our attention, which we've honestly been loath to do?
"Our discussions have led us to a few conclusions.
"First, we recognize that among the ways a player could violate the TOS, there is a distinction between someone accessing another's account for benign purposes that benefit the community—such as informing and entertaining the community, providing a remodding service, or babysitting an account—and someone accessing another's account for selfish reasons that could erode the integrity of the game—such as creating a market for buying and selling accounts and, obviously, cheating, which we will address below. We'd like to look into whether it is possible, in consultation with ours and EA's legal departments, to clarify our TOS to allow for currently prohibited benign actions while still preventing harmful actions. We're not sure this possible, but we'd like to let you know that we're looking into it.
"Second, we've come to realize that in this particular instance, the reason Ahnold used a secondary account was at least partly to address a need that we have failed to meet. If we had provided Ahnold and other players a legitimate way to test units and teams, this situation would have likely never happened. As many of you know, we recently closed the test accounts of those who were formerly involved in our Game Changers program. In hindsight, ending that program was a bad move for us and the community. At the time, our company culture tended to overreact to negative feedback, and we tried to exert a level of control over their content that was perhaps beyond what other developers have used in their relationships with content creators. We're consulting with some of those other developers, and based on what we've learned, we have plans to restart the Game Changers program and hope to restart our relationships with previous Game Changers as well as welcome new ones. As before, members of the program will have access to test accounts that they can use to inform the community about new content and strategies.
"Third, we've now realized that the need to test units and teams goes beyond just content creators. Another way we could have prevented this situation was to have a sandbox mode. We'd like to communicate with members of our community to find out what features would be most useful, prioritize those, and then see which of those we could implement without excessively burdening our current production pipeline. Expect more details in the coming days.
"Fourth, the way we have been handling cheating in the game is entirely unacceptable. The exchange Ahnold revealed between a member of our staff and a known cheater is real, and we are deeply embarrassed by it. Among TOS violations, cheating of any kind is one the most serious and most harmful to the integrity of our game and to our community. That we have negotiated in that manner with a known cheater while dealing so strictly with Ahnold's use of a transferred account doesn't seem fair, and we recognize that so much of the community's anger is over exactly that point. We are now implementing a zero-tolerance policy against deliberate cheating, regardless of a player's standing or spend level. Appeals are still possible so that players who have unintentionally abused a game system or who have been erroneously flagged by our filters can challenge their bans. But if after further review, our findings confirm intentional cheating, a permanent ban will result. We know that we've said such things in the past and failed you. We hope to demonstrate that this time we are following through.
"Finally, we're back to the question of what do we do in this situation with Ahnold's use of a transferred account. Do we explicitly condone TOS violations, or do we crack down harshly across the board? From our perspective, the first is impossible, and the second has serious drawbacks as well, including the resources that we'd need to devote to hunting down every shared account (instead of actual cheaters). Unfortunately, nothing short of a full ban on shared accounts makes logical sense for enforcing our current TOS: anything less still leaves the illicit account in the user's hands. Until we are able to potentially make changes to our TOS relative to account sharing, we feel bound at this moment to let the current ban stand on the account he received.
"But as Obi-Wan said (somewhat ironically), 'Only a Sith deals in absolutes.' Ahnold has a legitimate grievance against the way we've interacted with him, as well as a legitimate need that he was trying to fill. In light of this, and in recognition of his contributions to this game and our community, which can hardly be overstated, we've decided to reinstate the test accounts of all of those who were members of our Game Changers program at the time we discontinued it. Once we've restarted the program, only Game Changers will have access to test accounts. In addition, we're communicating with Ahnold about ways can we meet him in the middle, including potentially transferring to his main account some of the investments he'd made in the banned account.
"We'd like to apologize to everyone in this great, passionate community for our shortcomings in the way we've handled this situation and especially for our inexcusable failure to adequately respond to cheating. We hope that you can understand the reasons why we don't feel that simply unbanning the transferred account is a viable option for us right now, given our current TOS. Ultimately, our TOS may not be able to be changed to accommodate benign account sharing, but we want you to know that we're looking into the possibility. In the meantime, hopefully you'll see our attempts to meet Ahnold halfway—while still not condoning TOS violations—as a good-faith effort on our part. We've also learned from this experience that a functional Game Changers program, including test accounts, is something that would benefit both us and the community. And stay tuned for more information about an upcoming sandbox mode.
"See you on the holotables."
None of this will happen. (And most of it shouldn't)
Candidly EA & CG, you do not have enough in game content to keep patrons and players like me without contributors like him keeping my interest.
Well-put.
CG, your game is terrible, because you let it get terrible.
People like Ahnald work their butts off to make it interesting and exciting. They bring players to the game, encourage them to play and in many cases encourage them to spend.
You know full well, just like I do, just like every watcher of SWGOH videos does, that Ahnald did not have that account banned because he was "cheating".
You know that. We're not stupid and you're not stupid.
In all honesty CG really created this whole mess by ending the game changers program. That event really set into motion where we are today.
At this point I feel 5 things need to happen to right this issue
1) A sincere apology to the entire SWGOH community for how they handled the cheating scandal
2) restore game changers accounts so content creators can make videos to show case new characters
3) make meaningful reparations to all player accounts in good standing (like hyperdrive bundle big not 5 clone wars chewy shards big)
4) publish an action plan on how cheating in the game is handled and follow up with the community on the results
5) remove @CG_LucifersDaddy from SWGOH since the community can no longer trust him.
This guy is on pointlike 99.99% i would just like to add at 2) reboot the game changer program or atleast have a better communication with the game changers.
In all honesty CG really created this whole mess by ending the game changers program. That event really set into motion where we are today.
At this point I feel 5 things need to happen to right this issue
1) A sincere apology to the entire SWGOH community for how they handled the cheating scandal
2) restore game changers accounts so content creators can make videos to show case new characters
3) make meaningful reparations to all player accounts in good standing (like hyperdrive bundle big not 5 clone wars chewy shards big)
4) publish an action plan on how cheating in the game is handled and follow up with the community on the results
5) remove @CG_LucifersDaddy from SWGOH since the community can no longer trust him.
This guy is on pointlike 99.99% i would just like to add at 2) reboot the game changer program or atleast have a better communication with the game changers.
No chance CG does any of this. They’ll just keep waiting for the fire to die out, like always. Expecting them to be accountable for their mistakes is just fool hardy at this point.
Basically the SWGoH community has a few, major issues that this entire situations strikes a nerve at. I would like to encourage whatever statement you make answers the following questions:
1. Will the ban be removed, will the gamechangers (or anyone) have a means to test teams easily? If the answer is "NO" then it is clearly due to the ToS violation, understandable, but we need a way to test.
2. Why was anyone at CG talking terms with someone caught cheating? ZERO Tolerance means absolutely none is acceptable. Please explain.
3. EA support as it stands for the SWGoH community is lacking, unacceptable, broken, and does not help your product or us when an issue happens. Please take dramatic steps to fix this.
4. Communication from the studio to the player is lacking, unacceptable and leads to a lot of frustration. Please consider a bi-weekly update (about anything) and please less us see more of the design, development side of the game. If this is not possible, please explain.
5. Conversations with community creators need to happen. Create a private discord with whatever rules you need to make it work, assign someone to be active on it, invite whomever you want.
I think he deserves that ban, that's clear TOS violation, ahnald should have expected that. But he's good for the community, he brings really good content and many valid points from the community. CG should just have let them keep the test account ... that would not have happened. I think stuff like letting someone else mods or pass event at ur place should still get punished. just do ur **** things don't try to take shortcuts.I take 4-5 hours to mods my account every like 2 months max, I don't pay someone or let the software do it. Kind of a mess situation created by both parties. CG being agaisnt the community as always, and ahnald trying to get the most money out of his youtube channel.
Shame on CG for banning Ahnald because he made critics about GL; we all think the same about GL.
Shame on CG for not banning cheaters.
It's time EA higher-ups set into this mess.
Trolling again, very ironic you find the need to control other people's posts
Not one for reading, are you? I was asking a genuine question. But of course I would not expect you to understand what a question is. If you did I would be stunned.
Oh, I am one for reading. You comment nonstop on Moon's posts, and are very irritated by their gifs. Try focusing on yourself and stop trying to tell others what they can and cannot post
Show me one comment when I am genuinely irritated by their posts. Not a joke. A genuine comment.
Since my original comment was removed i need to repeat again:
I stand with Ahnald 100%
I do understand he violated the TOS, so a sanction is due. Probably even he agrees to that. A permaban is an absolutely hostile move. It saddens me greatly that a tempban for 24 hrs with an official warning to stop sharing accounts would have resulted the same thing without the anger of the ppl and you just fail to realize this.
Also, negotiating with cheaters is unacceptable. I agree that @CG_LucifersDaddy should be fired on spot, anyone who even remotely approved this move should be charged with disciplinary offense.
After reading 33 pages of this thread I should probably watch the video now. I'll hold judgement until I have a better understanding of the situation, but if it's true that they bargined with a confirmed cheater with a zero tolerance policy in place, then we have some clear issues here.
Look, im not gonna go watch any of his videos to find out what happened. I dont want him in my youtube algorythms. But if you wanna tell me here, even if its a little exacerbated, im into it. I come here for the flaming bags of terds littered all over this dumpster fire. And this one sounds like a stinky one
Maybe their new tools autodetect enjoyment across all platforms and auto ban?
They didn't ban his main account, but another account that wasn't originally his
1. Account transfer is against the Terms of Service (Violation #1)
2. The other issue (unconfirmed) is that the account was originally a chinese account so there might be illegal crystal purchases (in the past) or since China is removing the game and CG is no longer supporting it after the next Title Update, the account was going to go away eventually
The second point is unconfirmed but Ahnald still has his main account which he has used for all his videos so far, so its not as big of a loss, and he's still able to make the same videos as he always has
Watch bulldogs video about the guy who got is account banned for 6 months and sold it. I really don't care what Ahnald did on his account or the previous owner. What I care about is CG doesn't apply the rules equally to all players.
THIS
CG is applying the rules unequally just like Twitter and Facebook does against Conservatives.
Look, im not gonna go watch any of his videos to find out what happened. I dont want him in my youtube algorythms. But if you wanna tell me here, even if its a little exacerbated, im into it. I come here for the flaming bags of terds littered all over this dumpster fire. And this one sounds like a stinky one
Maybe their new tools autodetect enjoyment across all platforms and auto ban?
They didn't ban his main account, but another account that wasn't originally his
1. Account transfer is against the Terms of Service (Violation #1)
2. The other issue (unconfirmed) is that the account was originally a chinese account so there might be illegal crystal purchases (in the past) or since China is removing the game and CG is no longer supporting it after the next Title Update, the account was going to go away eventually
The second point is unconfirmed but Ahnald still has his main account which he has used for all his videos so far, so its not as big of a loss, and he's still able to make the same videos as he always has
Watch bulldogs video about the guy who got is account banned for 6 months and sold it. I really don't care what Ahnald did on his account or the previous owner. What I care about is CG doesn't apply the rules equally to all players.
THIS
CG is applying the rules unequally just like Twitter and Facebook does against Conservatives.
This game is on her deathbed, only some higher in EA can bring any life in it, to ban someone who give any kind of hope that game is going to be better it is ridiculous, and LD should get fired for not working his job, and nagotieting with cheaters. In our arena we have one who is cheater, and we all reported him through game and directly to LD and he is still in game. I love this game but i will rather see her gone than to continue like this
Whatever, pride goes before the fall. 33 pages and still no statement. That is arrogance in its purest form. I just hope that this really turns out to be a profit killer.
Its just adding up to my impression, that they slowly let this game die. Maybe they are secretly working on SWGoH 2 or something. No new content in the sense of REAL content, not some dumb RPS game stolen from Harry Potter Mobile.
New Raid? Cancelled!
Sandbox Mode? Cancelled, too expensive!
Vehicles? Cancelled!
CG has been promising an ocean of new content. Now, as of June, this community is thirsting as if they had been in Sahara for 10 years or so.
CG, show that you value your community! Give us a road ahead! Start pouring content out! Unban Ahnaldt!
Gosh begging for something new to do is so humiliating...
Did they focus on it or did he put it in front of them in an indisputable way that forced them to deal with it?
Kyno - you're better and smarter than that.
You know full well, just like I do, just like every watcher of SWGOH videos does, that Ahnald did not have that account banned because he was "cheating".
You know that. We're not stupid and you're not stupid.
I actually know for a fact that this happened because he brought the account to them and showed them exactly what he was doing and it was a violation of the ToS.
Did they focus on it or did he put it in front of them in an indisputable way that forced them to deal with it?
Kyno - you're better and smarter than that.
You know full well, just like I do, just like every watcher of SWGOH videos does, that Ahnald did not have that account banned because he was "cheating".
You know that. We're not stupid and you're not stupid.
I actually know for a fact that this happened because he brought the account to them and showed them exactly what he was doing and it was a violation of the ToS.
"Their hands were tied" at that point.
Surprisingly their hands were not tied when they negotiated with the cheaters...
Did they focus on it or did he put it in front of them in an indisputable way that forced them to deal with it?
Kyno - you're better and smarter than that.
You know full well, just like I do, just like every watcher of SWGOH videos does, that Ahnald did not have that account banned because he was "cheating".
You know that. We're not stupid and you're not stupid.
I actually know for a fact that this happened because he brought the account to them and showed them exactly what he was doing and it was a violation of the ToS.
"Their hands were tied" at that point.
If you want people to beleive you you should replace "Their hands were tied" with "At that point they finally knew his ally code and they could take revenge"
Did they focus on it or did he put it in front of them in an indisputable way that forced them to deal with it?
Kyno - you're better and smarter than that.
You know full well, just like I do, just like every watcher of SWGOH videos does, that Ahnald did not have that account banned because he was "cheating".
You know that. We're not stupid and you're not stupid.
I actually know for a fact that this happened because he brought the account to them and showed them exactly what he was doing and it was a violation of the ToS.
"Their hands were tied" at that point.
Respectfully what you "know for a fact" is simply what they have told you. You may choose to believe them. Others might doubt their credibility. If their credibility is widely questioned by the community they might want to look inwardly and ask what they can do to rectify that situation.
It's really just a shame that Ahnald didn't have a "bad battle" or two on the shared account. At that stage their hands would have become untied and they could have entered into negotiations, thus avoiding this whole scenario.
Did they focus on it or did he put it in front of them in an indisputable way that forced them to deal with it?
Kyno - you're better and smarter than that.
You know full well, just like I do, just like every watcher of SWGOH videos does, that Ahnald did not have that account banned because he was "cheating".
You know that. We're not stupid and you're not stupid.
I actually know for a fact that this happened because he brought the account to them and showed them exactly what he was doing and it was a violation of the ToS.
"Their hands were tied" at that point.
Surprisingly their hands were not tied when they negotiated with the cheaters...
What Avihas says, one gets a permanban, the other one gets to negotiate and choose time of his punishment freely.
Either you have rules which apply to everybody (including however big spenders!) or you dont.
Banning Ahnaldt and hiding behind ToS feels totally chinese (or russian, to offend not only one ethnic group). You want to silence critical voices. CG bans Ahnaldt because im the past few months he has has been a loud and critical voice for the community. He criticised the more-than-lame Galactic Legends and the even lamer Event leading up to it, he criticised the lack of communication and the lack of new content. He criticised the cancellation of the promised content like sandbox and new raid.
We all know that CG hates criticism probably as much as Donald. And now they saw their chance to hit Ahnaldt where it hurts and used it.
I am not surprised that they totally ignore the backfire this has caused so far.
They will be like: Ah, let them rage an hate a few days. Eventually they will calm down and return to buying those wonderful overpriced packs.
I actually know for a fact that this happened because he brought the account to them and showed them exactly what he was doing and it was a violation of the ToS.
"Their hands were tied" at that point.
C'mon ... that's ridiculous to say "their hands were tied" ... they are the arbiters of ToS (as evidenced by how they handled a malicious cheater). If they want to 100% strictly enforce the ToS, then there's lots of accounts to shut down and services to end ... that will certainly damage the game to a large extent.
If they want to ensure that individuals do not gain a selfish, unfair advantage ... that's fine (but apparently they don't always do that) ... that's the spirit (probably the actual intent) of the ToS. If some in the community want to call this 'selective' that's fine ... the ToS just wasn't written to adequately capture the intent. To me, the best example given is, what if I walk away and let my son take over my account ... should that account be banned? is that really the violation they're trying to stop? I don't think so. [TBH, my kids found the game uninteresting and stopped playing it about 2 yrs ago]
If they want to go after individuals that provide a service to others that enhance the game and make it enjoyable for the community ... that's just bad business in general. When you couple that with the fact that the game has become stagnant ... this was a poor decision on their part. However, this is just a series in decisions to reduce the ability of content creators to support the game, and alienate the base.
Replies
I disagree. I think generally speaking, institutions tend to react out of an odd combination of arrogance and fear and take exactly that approach of going silent and hunkering down. But that PR approach just doesn't work nowadays, I think: people see right through that. I think that now, customers value not infallibility but authenticity, transparency, and humility. Let me try to demonstrate what CG could be saying that I think would make things better. It's pipe dreams, I know, but this in theory is what I think they could do (but warning—it's long!):
"Hello Holotable Heroes,
"We've spent the last couple days reading and processing your feedback over the banning of Ahnaldt101's secondary account that was transferred to him in violation of our Terms of Service.
"After hearing your feedback and discussing things internally, we've realized that we messed up on this one. The way we handled this situation wasn't entirely fair to Ahnald and to our community. Yes, Ahnald violated our TOS, which prohibits account sharing. But as you've observed, our enforcement of our TOS has been selective and inconsistent, which undermines the legitimacy of any particular action we take against violations.
"As we hope you realize, this situation puts us in a tough spot: Do we undo the ban on Ahnald's secondary account and, in effect, say that TOS violations are actually OK, which would be unfair to anyone else we've ever acted against for account sharing? Or do we say that from now on, we're going to crack down consistently on each and every instance of account sharing that comes to our attention, which we've honestly been loath to do?
"Our discussions have led us to a few conclusions.
"First, we recognize that among the ways a player could violate the TOS, there is a distinction between someone accessing another's account for benign purposes that benefit the community—such as informing and entertaining the community, providing a remodding service, or babysitting an account—and someone accessing another's account for selfish reasons that could erode the integrity of the game—such as creating a market for buying and selling accounts and, obviously, cheating, which we will address below. We'd like to look into whether it is possible, in consultation with ours and EA's legal departments, to clarify our TOS to allow for currently prohibited benign actions while still preventing harmful actions. We're not sure this possible, but we'd like to let you know that we're looking into it.
"Second, we've come to realize that in this particular instance, the reason Ahnald used a secondary account was at least partly to address a need that we have failed to meet. If we had provided Ahnald and other players a legitimate way to test units and teams, this situation would have likely never happened. As many of you know, we recently closed the test accounts of those who were formerly involved in our Game Changers program. In hindsight, ending that program was a bad move for us and the community. At the time, our company culture tended to overreact to negative feedback, and we tried to exert a level of control over their content that was perhaps beyond what other developers have used in their relationships with content creators. We're consulting with some of those other developers, and based on what we've learned, we have plans to restart the Game Changers program and hope to restart our relationships with previous Game Changers as well as welcome new ones. As before, members of the program will have access to test accounts that they can use to inform the community about new content and strategies.
"Third, we've now realized that the need to test units and teams goes beyond just content creators. Another way we could have prevented this situation was to have a sandbox mode. We'd like to communicate with members of our community to find out what features would be most useful, prioritize those, and then see which of those we could implement without excessively burdening our current production pipeline. Expect more details in the coming days.
"Fourth, the way we have been handling cheating in the game is entirely unacceptable. The exchange Ahnald revealed between a member of our staff and a known cheater is real, and we are deeply embarrassed by it. Among TOS violations, cheating of any kind is one the most serious and most harmful to the integrity of our game and to our community. That we have negotiated in that manner with a known cheater while dealing so strictly with Ahnald's use of a transferred account doesn't seem fair, and we recognize that so much of the community's anger is over exactly that point. We are now implementing a zero-tolerance policy against deliberate cheating, regardless of a player's standing or spend level. Appeals are still possible so that players who have unintentionally abused a game system or who have been erroneously flagged by our filters can challenge their bans. But if after further review, our findings confirm intentional cheating, a permanent ban will result. We know that we've said such things in the past and failed you. We hope to demonstrate that this time we are following through.
"Finally, we're back to the question of what do we do in this situation with Ahnald's use of a transferred account. Do we explicitly condone TOS violations, or do we crack down harshly across the board? From our perspective, the first is impossible, and the second has serious drawbacks as well, including the resources that we'd need to devote to hunting down every shared account (instead of actual cheaters). Unfortunately, nothing short of a full ban on shared accounts makes logical sense for enforcing our current TOS: anything less still leaves the illicit account in the user's hands. Until we are able to potentially make changes to our TOS relative to account sharing, we feel bound at this moment to let the current ban stand on the account he received.
"But as Obi-Wan said (somewhat ironically), 'Only a Sith deals in absolutes.' Ahnald has a legitimate grievance against the way we've interacted with him, as well as a legitimate need that he was trying to fill. In light of this, and in recognition of his contributions to this game and our community, which can hardly be overstated, we've decided to reinstate the test accounts of all of those who were members of our Game Changers program at the time we discontinued it. Once we've restarted the program, only Game Changers will have access to test accounts. In addition, we're communicating with Ahnald about ways can we meet him in the middle, including potentially transferring to his main account some of the investments he'd made in the banned account.
"We'd like to apologize to everyone in this great, passionate community for our shortcomings in the way we've handled this situation and especially for our inexcusable failure to adequately respond to cheating. We hope that you can understand the reasons why we don't feel that simply unbanning the transferred account is a viable option for us right now, given our current TOS. Ultimately, our TOS may not be able to be changed to accommodate benign account sharing, but we want you to know that we're looking into the possibility. In the meantime, hopefully you'll see our attempts to meet Ahnald halfway—while still not condoning TOS violations—as a good-faith effort on our part. We've also learned from this experience that a functional Game Changers program, including test accounts, is something that would benefit both us and the community. And stay tuned for more information about an upcoming sandbox mode.
"See you on the holotables."
None of this will happen. (And most of it shouldn't)
Well-put.
CG, your game is terrible, because you let it get terrible.
People like Ahnald work their butts off to make it interesting and exciting. They bring players to the game, encourage them to play and in many cases encourage them to spend.
These are three things you won't, or can't, do.
@Kyno - you're better and smarter than that.
You know full well, just like I do, just like every watcher of SWGOH videos does, that Ahnald did not have that account banned because he was "cheating".
You know that. We're not stupid and you're not stupid.
This guy is on pointlike 99.99% i would just like to add at 2) reboot the game changer program or atleast have a better communication with the game changers.
No chance CG does any of this. They’ll just keep waiting for the fire to die out, like always. Expecting them to be accountable for their mistakes is just fool hardy at this point.
Basically the SWGoH community has a few, major issues that this entire situations strikes a nerve at. I would like to encourage whatever statement you make answers the following questions:
1. Will the ban be removed, will the gamechangers (or anyone) have a means to test teams easily? If the answer is "NO" then it is clearly due to the ToS violation, understandable, but we need a way to test.
2. Why was anyone at CG talking terms with someone caught cheating? ZERO Tolerance means absolutely none is acceptable. Please explain.
3. EA support as it stands for the SWGoH community is lacking, unacceptable, broken, and does not help your product or us when an issue happens. Please take dramatic steps to fix this.
4. Communication from the studio to the player is lacking, unacceptable and leads to a lot of frustration. Please consider a bi-weekly update (about anything) and please less us see more of the design, development side of the game. If this is not possible, please explain.
5. Conversations with community creators need to happen. Create a private discord with whatever rules you need to make it work, assign someone to be active on it, invite whomever you want.
Shame on CG for not banning cheaters.
It's time EA higher-ups set into this mess.
Show me one comment when I am genuinely irritated by their posts. Not a joke. A genuine comment.
I stand with Ahnald 100%
I do understand he violated the TOS, so a sanction is due. Probably even he agrees to that. A permaban is an absolutely hostile move. It saddens me greatly that a tempban for 24 hrs with an official warning to stop sharing accounts would have resulted the same thing without the anger of the ppl and you just fail to realize this.
Also, negotiating with cheaters is unacceptable. I agree that @CG_LucifersDaddy should be fired on spot, anyone who even remotely approved this move should be charged with disciplinary offense.
#standtogether
Donald? Is that you?
Can't be. Not enough self praise.
These are the newest ratings in the App Store for SWGOH 😃
Its just adding up to my impression, that they slowly let this game die. Maybe they are secretly working on SWGoH 2 or something. No new content in the sense of REAL content, not some dumb RPS game stolen from Harry Potter Mobile.
New Raid? Cancelled!
Sandbox Mode? Cancelled, too expensive!
Vehicles? Cancelled!
CG has been promising an ocean of new content. Now, as of June, this community is thirsting as if they had been in Sahara for 10 years or so.
CG, show that you value your community! Give us a road ahead! Start pouring content out! Unban Ahnaldt!
Gosh begging for something new to do is so humiliating...
I actually know for a fact that this happened because he brought the account to them and showed them exactly what he was doing and it was a violation of the ToS.
"Their hands were tied" at that point.
Surprisingly their hands were not tied when they negotiated with the cheaters...
If you want people to beleive you you should replace "Their hands were tied" with "At that point they finally knew his ally code and they could take revenge"
You NEVER should have picked this fight.
At this rate, you should consider changing “the road ahead” to something else. “What could have been” perhaps.
Jedi luke soon huh? Feels like it’s time for a cash grab.
Respectfully what you "know for a fact" is simply what they have told you. You may choose to believe them. Others might doubt their credibility. If their credibility is widely questioned by the community they might want to look inwardly and ask what they can do to rectify that situation.
It's really just a shame that Ahnald didn't have a "bad battle" or two on the shared account. At that stage their hands would have become untied and they could have entered into negotiations, thus avoiding this whole scenario.
What Avihas says, one gets a permanban, the other one gets to negotiate and choose time of his punishment freely.
Either you have rules which apply to everybody (including however big spenders!) or you dont.
Banning Ahnaldt and hiding behind ToS feels totally chinese (or russian, to offend not only one ethnic group). You want to silence critical voices. CG bans Ahnaldt because im the past few months he has has been a loud and critical voice for the community. He criticised the more-than-lame Galactic Legends and the even lamer Event leading up to it, he criticised the lack of communication and the lack of new content. He criticised the cancellation of the promised content like sandbox and new raid.
We all know that CG hates criticism probably as much as Donald. And now they saw their chance to hit Ahnaldt where it hurts and used it.
I am not surprised that they totally ignore the backfire this has caused so far.
They will be like: Ah, let them rage an hate a few days. Eventually they will calm down and return to buying those wonderful overpriced packs.
C'mon ... that's ridiculous to say "their hands were tied" ... they are the arbiters of ToS (as evidenced by how they handled a malicious cheater). If they want to 100% strictly enforce the ToS, then there's lots of accounts to shut down and services to end ... that will certainly damage the game to a large extent.
If they want to ensure that individuals do not gain a selfish, unfair advantage ... that's fine (but apparently they don't always do that) ... that's the spirit (probably the actual intent) of the ToS. If some in the community want to call this 'selective' that's fine ... the ToS just wasn't written to adequately capture the intent. To me, the best example given is, what if I walk away and let my son take over my account ... should that account be banned? is that really the violation they're trying to stop? I don't think so. [TBH, my kids found the game uninteresting and stopped playing it about 2 yrs ago]
If they want to go after individuals that provide a service to others that enhance the game and make it enjoyable for the community ... that's just bad business in general. When you couple that with the fact that the game has become stagnant ... this was a poor decision on their part. However, this is just a series in decisions to reduce the ability of content creators to support the game, and alienate the base.