I want to summarize / respond to some things I’ve seen throughout this thread.
The moderators often justify strict rule enforcement with statements like "By using FAF services, you agree to follow FAF rules" or lean on technicalities like "security through obscurity" to explain why things like exploits cannot even be shown. But this approach leads to situations where enforcement becomes detached from common sense. For example:
A fully consensual 1v1 game, with no harm done to anyone, can still lead to a ban just because it was streamed.
A player can get banned for using an exploit in a private game — even when no participant was negatively affected — simply because a third party decides to report it.
A team that agrees a game is over can still get punished if someone Ctrl-Ks their base instead of using recall — even though the result is functionally the same.
While I do think parts of the rule wording could be improved, my main point is that the core problem is how and when the rules are applied. There is no, or at the very least, very little room for context.
Gieb said, "We've had people trawling through reports just trying to cause problems for another user, this is easily spotted and dealt with accordingly."Clearly not, because in my case, someone who wasn’t involved in the game went into my replays, reported an exploit in a private game, and I was banned — even though the game was fully consensual (everyone was aware of what was happening). Yes, it was streamed, but the fact that someone could just look into my replays and report it proves this isn’t “dealt with accordingly” as claimed.
Not to point fingers, but the person who told me to do it / gave me the idea probably didn't get a warning!
On top of that, previous bans for the same offense aren’t taken into account when issuing new ones, which further shows that context and history are often ignored in enforcement. I do not mean penalties, this is, ofc, included, but rather the reasoning or context.
I want to see the focus shift away from blanket enforcement and move toward reasonable enforcement, where context and the actual impact of an action are meaningfully considered.
