Square Enix's new "customer harassment policy"

[TRIPLE A ®™]

Adopted after one of their voice actors received a torrent of abuse online (for whatever reason). Apparently because FF players are mentally unstable 🤣🤣🤣

Well I don't play it so I wouldn't know. Their new policy classifies Harassment as follows:

💥Harassment

- Act of violence, violent behavior
- Abusive language, intimidation, coercion, duress, excessive pursuit or reprimand
- Defamation/slander, denial of personality, personal attack (including email, contact in contact form, comment or post on the internet), advance notice of wrongdoing, advance notice of obstruction of business
- Persistent inquiries, repeated visits
- Trespassing by visiting or staying in an office or related facility without permission
- Unlawful restraint including via telephone calls and online inquiries
- Discriminatory speech and conduct regarding race, ethnicity, religion, family origin, occupation, etc.
- Infringement of privacy by taking pictures or making video recordings without consent
- Sexual harassment, stalking, repeated stalking behavior

Undue demand

- Unreasonable changes or exchange of product or request for monetary compensation
- Unreasonable response or request for an apology (including face-to-face response or request for an apology specifying the position of our employee or partners)
- Excessive requests for the provision of products and services exceeding socially accepted norms
- Unreasonable and excessive demands for punishment of our employees💥

Well...it's no secret that some people have no self control whatsoever, and have the mental maturity of a dog with rabies, but there's surely no way Square Enix won't exploit this to the fullest to shield themselves from criticism.

"If you criticize our useless developers who called you names on twitter, you're banned 4 lyfe.
If you say our new awful woke game sucks, you're banned 4 lyfe.
If you speak out against crappy changes that completely ruin our game, you're banned 4 lyfe.
If you criticize our new best friend Sweet Baby Inc...you're banned 4 lyfe."

They sure picked the worst time to do this, now that the woke culture has one foot inside the grave. They don't exactly have a stellar reputation as it is, now it's only gonna get worse. They would've benefited more if they had done it 4 years ago.

[RPG Gamer Man]

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Considering the death threats and stalking that happened after last expansion launch

Yes; those are obviously in a class of their own and I'm in no way stating that that type of behavior is defensible. It isn't. And if you get booted in the trash for it; then good. That's where you belong.

But it should not be conflated with things like making a post on the internet stating that you've had terrible customer service; because that sets a terrible precedent for censorship of any form of critique and criticism, even if only through the so-called chilling effect.

What happened exaclty after this last expansion? I have not heard of it.

[RiO]

Publicado originalmente por RPG Gamer Man:

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Yes; those are obviously in a class of their own and I'm in no way stating that that type of behavior is defensible. It isn't. And if you get booted in the trash for it; then good. That's where you belong.

But it should not be conflated with things like making a post on the internet stating that you've had terrible customer service; because that sets a terrible precedent for censorship of any form of critique and criticism, even if only through the so-called chilling effect.

What happened exaclty after this last expansion? I have not heard of it.

Wuk Lamat happened.
Basically, with FF14 the Warrior of Light was the classic silent protagonist type throughout. Until Wuk Lamat was introduced. The expansions featuring her basically reduce the main character to an errand boy and the entire main storyline is not yours but is hers. (Like 90% of the quest objectives alone are "talk to Wuk Lamat" so you can get roped into another quest playing second fiddle to her.)

This wouldn't be so bad if the character were actually likable and compelling; and experienced decent growth and development. But she doesn't and what's there is really all written terribly subpar, to the point that it really starts to grate on people and the entire story line becomes pretty much an "are we there yet?" type of slog; just to get it over with.

Of course the general discontent over the character found its way into being intermingled with the hard core of the anti-woke, since Wuk is framed as trans representation. (Let's forget for a moment that the Hrothgar were templated off of the Ronso from FF10, where the women had pretty masculine builds for human standards as well...)

And so, you guessed it, 'game is woke', 'get woke; go broke', etc. etc. happened and they added a massive heaping of oil to the fire of discontent until the blaze flared out of control.

[RiO]

Publicado originalmente por Alasdair:

They aren't saying they wont' do business with people alone they are saying they are going to retroactively revoke products people bought and paid for already to compel behaviour and speech, such actions should be illegal. "fire" I don't work for Square Ennix lmao.

Bingo.
Specifically this is the dangerous precedent.

Let's say, for sake of argument, that this weren't Square Enix's new harassment policy - but would be Ubisoft's.

Let's say some hypothetical gamer, who always purchased and played Assassin's Creed games starts following the news about AC:Shadows. Including all the bungling Ubisoft went through.

The controversy over Yasuke and whether he was or was not a samurai and the resulting backlash from Japan -- accelerated in the west as well, when it was found that the chief source of 'evidence' all of this was based on, turned out to have been a book written by a modern day historian that resorted to corroborating his own work under a pseudonym on Wikipedia.
The unsanctioned use of several pieces of art and other protected imagery, including noble families' coat of arms. The mis-attribution of Chinese musical instruments to be quintessential Japanese, when Chinese-Japanese relations are known to be tenuous at their best of times. And the use of a plagiarized One Piece katana on one of the game's conference stands.
All that, topped by the use of the one-armed Torii gate without realizing its significant cultural reference wrt the nuclear bombings. And finally, the most recent cherry on top of even that complete faux-pas, being that apparently Ubisoft's newly picked launch date that they asked everyone to celebrate apparently coincides with the Tokyo subway massacre's 30th year memorial.

Such a person might be inclined to state that objectively, whoever is running Ubisoft's marketing for the game deserves to be fired for gross incompetence. And they wouldn't be exactly wrong either. Because by god; what a massive litany of screw-ups that is.

Well-- one complaint by a disgruntled Ubisoft employee to the department enforcing these policies; and two disinterested clicks on a remote management system later -- that person will find themselves locked out of their UPlay account and all their prior purchases.

Because the harassment policy doesn't allow for publicly calling for staff resignation; that's a no-no. And the penalty called for by the judge, jury and executioner is all ties; past, present, and future to be cut without recourse or appeal.

[Alasdair]

I think they have on steam the ability to revoke access to games you've bought from them, we'll have to wait and see but I wouldn't be buying any digital games regardless on any platform personally, not a risk I'm willing to take, not something I find valuable etc. already seen this happen with film purchases with red box last year. could happen again with any other digital purchase of media.

[inpurpleshadows]

Publicado originalmente por David:

and may another studio die and their employees and their families go hungry

That's... actually really cold. Why should employees be punished for a policy change they didn't have a say in?

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Publicado originalmente por inpurpleshadows:

Publicado originalmente por David:

and may another studio die and their employees and their families go hungry

That's... actually really cold. Why should employees be punished for a policy change they didn't have a say in?

You say that like life is inherently fair or something.

[crunchyfrog]

There's no evidence they will use this maliciously so you can't accuse them of this unless you have absolute specifics.

And I doubt they would because the PR nightmare would not be good.

Publicado originalmente por TRIPLE A ®™:

Publicado originalmente por Chika Ogiue:

Nah, even for Japan this is pushing it to the extreme. This is more of what you'd expect from the UK police.

they can arrest you in UK for your Facebook posts lol

Publicado originalmente por Chika Ogiue:

The Japanese police are terrible at doing anything when it comes to stalking.

ugh I've seen this, they literally let stalkers stalk their "favorite" Vtubers, even coming right up to them and grabbing them.

The UK is no different particularly to the US.

While that stupid law should never have gone through, it has been EXTREMELY rare that it's been abused by the powers that be to arrest people for dodgy posts. It's usually used for anti-social stuff.

And that's the point with it being like the US - you can watch any of the many arrest cams or court cams on Youtube from the US and come across people who may be arrested for public order offences, or threats of violence and so on.

It's the same.

But a lot of Americans get it round their neck because they think "muh free speech" covers everything. It does not. You can't shoud fire in a crowded theatre for example.

[Start_Running]

I'm honestly confused as to what's so egregious about these rules.

[MonkehMaster]

i say let them abuse their "rules" and if they do they will learn the consequences of their actions, when they go out of business due to shotty products and bad behavior (among a huge list of other things) that lose them money hand over fist.

more and more devs will learn as these companies go under, that angering the hands (people) that feed you, wont work as expected.

in general, some of these gaming companies will learn that without customers, they wont have a business, as it takes money to run them and investers (if used) will not buying into something clearly going to lose them money.

anywho, i said my piece and its not my problem if its not liked, have a nice day

[Doctor Zalgo]

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Publicado originalmente por Doctor Zalgo:

Do you think it would be better if they weren't clear about their expectations? Or do you just want the expectations to be different (e.g. you want them to permit people to harass their staff)?

Be specific about the changes you want.

I would want some checks and balances and stronger examples of what clearly crosses the line; and what does not. Not to the degree that it could help trolls teeter on the fine line of the abyss and skirt by, but to the degree that it will minimize the odds of moderation over-extending and getting away with it. I.e. to the extend that it could offer consumers a viable defense against such unjust over-extension by simply pointing at the rules and saying not so much "it doesn't say that's not allowed," but "what I posted is actually in line with the examples given, so how was this not allowed?"


Which brings me to my next point: I would want a viable, accessible, responsive, and effective appeals procedure -- rather than this carte blanche where you're just cut off at the company's discretion and you have no recourse against faulty decisions; or decisions that are overreacting and disproportionate.

Publicado originalmente por The nameless Gamer:

I have never ever seen developers shoot down polite and honest criticism.

I've personally not seen it happen in malicious form. But it's talked about too much lately to not start considering the old adage that "where there's smoke there's fire." The major problem verifying it, is that posts are typically deleted -- leaving no public evidence of what actually transpired.

(That said - I have personally seen it happen by mistake, e.g. taking out well-meant critique in the midst of a thread gone bad.)

Checks and balances? From who? SQEN can always ban people from their own infrastructure at their own discretion, who could you possibly appeal to? And 'stronger examples sound great' but more detail just leads to more rules lawyering which is not in their best interests either.

The entire policy exists because a subset of gamers (who are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it up for the rest of us) need to be told what they can and can't do. We're going to see more of this unless communities learn to be better at self policing.

[Doctor Zalgo]

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Publicado originalmente por RPG Gamer Man:

What happened exaclty after this last expansion? I have not heard of it.

Wuk Lamat happened.
Basically, with FF14 the Warrior of Light was the classic silent protagonist type throughout. Until Wuk Lamat was introduced. The expansions featuring her basically reduce the main character to an errand boy and the entire main storyline is not yours but is hers. (Like 90% of the quest objectives alone are "talk to Wuk Lamat" so you can get roped into another quest playing second fiddle to her.)

This wouldn't be so bad if the character were actually likable and compelling; and experienced decent growth and development. But she doesn't and what's there is really all written terribly subpar, to the point that it really starts to grate on people and the entire story line becomes pretty much an "are we there yet?" type of slog; just to get it over with.

Of course the general discontent over the character found its way into being intermingled with the hard core of the anti-woke, since Wuk is framed as trans representation. (Let's forget for a moment that the Hrothgar were templated off of the Ronso from FF10, where the women had pretty masculine builds for human standards as well...)

And so, you guessed it, 'game is woke', 'get woke; go broke', etc. etc. happened and they added a massive heaping of oil to the fire of discontent until the blaze flared out of control.

Gosh, anti-wokies ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things up for everyone else? Say it isn't so.

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

i say let them abuse their "rules" and if they do they will learn the consequences of their actions, when they go out of business due to shotty products and behavior (among a huge list of other things) that lose them money hand over fist.

more and more devs will learn as these companies go under, that angering the hands (people) that feed you, wont work as expected.

in general, some of these gaming companies will learn that without customers, they wont have a business, as it takes money to run them and investers (if used) will not buying into something clearly going to lose them money.

anywho, i said my piece and its not my problem if its not liked, have a nice day :gk_smile:

That's a nioce thought but the reality is... Squeenix knows if they need a cash infusion they can just slap FInal Fantasy, Dragon Quest, or Secret of, on any basic ♥♥♥♥♥ game and they'll be swimming in dosh.

[MonkehMaster]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

i say let them abuse their "rules" and if they do they will learn the consequences of their actions, when they go out of business due to shotty products and behavior (among a huge list of other things) that lose them money hand over fist.

more and more devs will learn as these companies go under, that angering the hands (people) that feed you, wont work as expected.

in general, some of these gaming companies will learn that without customers, they wont have a business, as it takes money to run them and investers (if used) will not buying into something clearly going to lose them money.

anywho, i said my piece and its not my problem if its not liked, have a nice day

That's a nioce thought but the reality is... Squeenix knows if they need a cash infusion they can just slap FInal Fantasy, Dragon Quest, or Secret of, on any basic ♥♥♥♥♥ game and they'll be swimming in dosh.

true and i forgot about that mess (never got them as the changes made and means of game/engine being sold, put me off buying those oldies), though imo it will likely dry up, as more people see that for what it is and hopefully way sooner than later.

not just square enix, but all devs/pubs doing it, except the ones doing proper jobs, no matter the rarity.

thats not to say i dont like those mentioned series and wouldnt have bought them, just not interested what their selling.