Bans Policy Revised
November 25, 2009
Our position on cheating
ETF2L does not tolerate cheating in TF2 in any form. If we receive evidence (demos, server or anti-cheat software logs, etc) of someone cheating anywhere in TF2 – be it on public servers or in PCWs or pick-up games or league officials – that person will be subject to our penalties. In return for taking part in our league, we expect all of our participants to keep the accounts they use in ETF2L totally cheat free.
VAC bans
Because we cannot prove that someone has cheated in TF2, there will be no player suspensions for VAC banned accounts. However, if your account is VAC banned and you wish to participate in our competitions, you will be subject to the following obligations:
- You must notify an admin about your new account
- Your player profile will be tagged with a VAC ban status flag
- You will be suspended from ETF2L if you fail to provide a POV demo on request
Suspension times lowered
2 year bans will be phased out. We’re currently investigating options into banning players from participating in all ETF2L competitions for the duration of 2 or 3 seasons. So the ban period will be shorter and it will no longer be possible that they end mid-season. After suspensions have been served, players who fail to provide POV demos upon request will be automatically suspended again.
Separating community and game sanctions
We’d like to make it clear that any community/forums based offenses will only result in community bans. Players will no longer be banned from playing in league games, for example, for forums based offenses.
Still a work in progress
Please note that we’re still working out some of the finer details of our bans policy. It has proved to be a very difficult area for our admin team to reach consensus on. That said, we will of course continue to make our best efforts to police our league in a common sense and thorough way. If you have any suggestions or advice, don’t hesitate to contribute in a positive manner.
Posted by JimmyBreeze in League
content rss
jimmybreeze could have had 0 role in the implementation of this and he’d still be the savior of tf2
YAY JIM
God job, admin team.
Bravo!
Step in the right direction :)
Looks good.
next step: remove fastlane and well from the map pool
and ban fan
faslane and well is ok, remove turbine :S
“We’d like to make it clear that any community/forums based offenses will result in community bans”
Might wanna revise that line to say “we’d like to make it clear that any community/forums based offenses will only result in community/forum bans”. Unclear in its original iteration, unless I’m reading it wrong D:
Good job ETF2L admins. I applaud you.
Excellent. Community ideas and complaints listened to, action taken, alternative solutions found… can’t ask for more than that really can you.
To the above, thats bs. Small portion of the community perhaps who cry and bitch till they get there own way. Some one cheats slap on the wrist see you in 9 months clever.
Jimmy your an idiot, and liek wise to those who agree with you :)
^ Someone cheats, see you in 2/3 seasons you mean? And forum trolls not getting banned from matches? How is THAT a bad thing?
uh oh looks like wildcard just defamed an admin, time to ban that ass
and it’s especially funny because he’s retarded enough to think that Jimmy is the only admin behind the decision
How long do you think it takes to play 2 -3 seasons :) 9 months is quite a long time to play 2 season in….
And for the other muppet, unlike alot of people I look into things before forming and opinion and im well aware of whos idea or more to the point who has pushed the above into happening.
Also applies retroactively or only in the future?
i also look into things before forming an opinion and i can name you roughly 8 admins who have been pushing and pursuing this idea for at least two weeks. would you like a list of them so that you can get incessantly mad at them, as well?
bunfi – the ban length wont be changed retroactively afaik
finally anyone can cheat and flame and be sure everything he does will not have too bad consequences on his possibility to play :V
hooray! :V
Seriously, reading this i ask myself for what strange reason one would NOT cheat/flame:
– you flame and have disruptive behaviour? no in -game consequences, you are banned from the forum OMG I GUESS NOW EVERYONE WILL STOP FLAMING GJ!
– you cheat and aren’t detected = you win
– you cheat and your are suspected but you are smart and don’t give them the possibility to have definitive proof (and everybody knows HOW HARD it is to have definitive proof) = you win
– you cheat and are detected by VAC = no consequences = you win
– after you miss all the previous possibilities you are so dumb to cheat blatantly in an ETF2L match AND are caught = the consequences are NOT IRREVERSIBLE = over (not so much) time, you win
AND I AM NOT EVEN TRYING TO HINT AT THE REAL THING, THE TRUTH THAT I’M GOING TO REVEAL TO YOUR ASTONISHED SELVES: cheaters use the incredible, unsurmountable sum of 15 dollars to have another account right away!!!!!11111
I am waiting to see a decision about giving cheaters a medal, because we are on that way.
This is like some kinds of european societies i have examined in my studies, where – to put it in simple terms – who whines more, automatically wins.
Tiny minorities with no real impact on society and not contributing at all to it don’t get as much as they represent but as much as they WHINE.
The more the fuss the more they get.
Here is the same: cheaters, who i simply consider sh*t to be wiped off the face of this game, whine and they get red carpet and tea.
Yeah after all they are right, aren’t they? After all they JUST RUINED THE EFFORT OF EVERY TEAM THEY PLAYED AGAINST TO BE BETTER with their artificial aim, but who cares, am i right?
The important thing is the league not loosing any player, lets take everyone cheater or not just to survive forever… am i right ?
*snicker*
I’m thrilled to know when this league is going to do SOMETHING TO VALUE THE CORRECT PLAYERS.
Because the rightful, the correct ones, are all but encouraged to continue like this. No honour. no prizes, no respect and no punishment for the bad guys.
The standard honest guy is the real victim, because in this society of lament where everyone tries to get rights and privileges out of the sense of guilt instead of trying to achieve them by acting GOOD, said man has no excuses to blame others and victimize himself. So he is regularly bashed and mistreated.
What i am saying is SO true that even Valve thought about it and gave the cheater’s lament, a thing i proudly have and – what a strange fact – is mocked and bashed by almost everyone.
Because merit, honesty, correctness are not considered important anymore, no more moral codes here. The important thing is to get where you want as fast as you can. If you recognise this you understand the reason of the actual siotuation. After seeing a cheater and theorically equalling him to a person who, after all, just tried to “get as fast as he could to his objective”, everybody absolves them.
Thats the way it works nowadays. In short the good guys are always at the end of the queue, with the difference that this is not only a practical knowledge, because now we managed to put this reality of life in coded rules.
In italy where i was born and live, jail for life does not exist. People sentenced to be in jail for life have the maximum penalty of 30 years of prison, and the law says that if you act correctly in jail after one third of the time you can exit from prison – remaining under surveillance. This means my daughter’s killer can kill and – IF he gets a life sentence – live roughly as a free person in 10 years.
This is what is happening on ETF2L, and it was not a random example. CHATERS KILL THIS GAME AND GET AWAY WITH IT EASILY in one of the many ways they can ridicule laws, rules and honest players who strive to earn their leagues success through hard work and skill.
Very good job.
Oh and i guess the time continguity between the boomeh case and this decision is absolutely casual…
Joliet Jake: “merit, honesty, correctness are not considered important anymore”
You are correct. That also means, the admins can’t stop cheating no matter what the rules are. Even if you’d get a permanent ban just because an AC admin had a hunch on you, there’d still be cheaters. In fact, someone could argue that it would make cheating even more popular, but that’s beside my point.
The only option left is to encourage cheaters to admit their mistakes and come clean, and the new rules are designed to do exactly that.
no wait….no retroactively?
WHY?!
lol ridiculous enough to let me without words…was this made for FRIENDS…or for ALL people playing here?
stay tuned lol
quote:”The only option left is to encourage cheaters to admit their mistakes and come clean, and the new rules are designed to do exactly that.”
LOL?
You don’t have to encourage cheaters to admit their mistake and come clean, cheater DON’T HAVE TO PLAY ANYMORE! Are u jokin mate?
What a coincidence?? Just after boomeh being caught…(we are still waitin for the news like for ALL previous idiots)
This’s really ridiculous, who cheats once in every fuckin game DO NOT deserve a second chance, if he wants can always BUY a new account.
Think about what could be the consequences to this type of rules…
does it mean that now I could start using racist jokes and insults without being banned from the league?
Joliet Jake’s last activity was over 400 days ago, must be a long-winded troll. Nobody (not even Italians) could ever be that outspoken about their fascist beliefs and still expect to be taken seriously.
Bash what your problem with italian people? He just explain a problem, a problem that affects also you div1 player, if u think that a cheater can play back in few months there’s no problem cause on this way, really soon, there will not be a decent league anymore.
Go have fun.
Like I posted above, it’s still a work in progress.
Ambra: If you really want to act like a huge dick in the forums, feel free. You’ll be in clear breach of the rules and your posts will be deleted and you’ll be banned from the forums/comments. It’s no skin off our noses. If we get complaints about your in-game behaviour, though, and they’re legit, then you risk in-game sanctions from our league.
About the “2 or 3 seasons ban length”: This is still being considered. We’re interested in the games/seasons suspension so players don’t come back in half way through a season. Regardless, it’s something we’re looking very carefully at. The point was we won’t be banning for as long as 2 years anymore.
These discussions have taken place way before we discovered about Boomeh and they’ve needed to be sorted out for ages anyway.
Also I don’t have any friends who are cheaters, nor do I care for people that are. I’m only acting in what I believe are the best and most common sense interests for the league.
Ok i understand your point, but don’t u think that to reduce the ban lenght is a system that encourages people to use cheats?
oh hi bash
I believe I found a picture that suits perfectly to you
http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt14/Ka0s337/1258406189159.png
inb4 nvc rage
Seppo and Mario, were they racist in the forums or a league game?
Gonna be a lot of “grey areas” with this rules.
We’ll work hard to eliminate grey areas. And where there are grey areas we hope you have the confidence in the admin team to work them out fairly.
bash you are exactly the (well-known) kind of person who says he’s a democracy promoter and a promoter of free speech for everyone, then labels as “fascist” and secretly desires to mute any human daring to disagree with you.
That means that by calling me fascist without starting a democratic and peaceful discussion you are enacting the kind of acts you label as fascist, becoming fascist yourself. With the aggravation that you think you are the paladin of freedom and open-mindedness. Oh sorry, i am getting into mind games too complicated for you.
I therefore appreciate how there was no intellegible and motivated answers to ANY point of my post, this means you have no reasons whatsoever to support your opinion, OR you are not able to express them. In neither case i am surprised.
I also appreciate how the only real answer to my post has been:
Joliet Jake: “merit, honesty, correctness are not considered important anymore”
You are correct.
that confirms i am right. This is THE problem. The problem is COHERENCE with statements made.
– In the Net cheating is easy and busting difficult
– Cheaters have the possibility to buy for 15 bucks a new account
Seeing HOW it’s easy to fool hard working players, there are 2 possible stances:
1) “WE PUNISH CHEATING BECAUSE WE ALUE CORRECTNESS” = we prevent cheating, we punish it and we make every effort to make cheaters stay AWAY fom our league. A cheater returning is a DEFEAT of our ruleset.
2) “WE CONDONE CHEATING BECAUSE WE DON’T GIVE A F*CK ABOUT CORRECTNESS” = we don’t care if a cheater plays or not cheaters are welcome.
In both cases ETF2L is not COHERENT.
I simply don’t care what the outcome is, but there has to be a choice.
What pisses me off is the overwelming hypocrisy of making rules that actually almost condone every cheater stating at the same time that cheates will be punished. It’s an offence to my brain.
Punish severely or don’t punish, that’s all. I think, instead, that this dodgy ruleset is absolutely intentional, aimed to keep players in the league: “i have been banned and i don’t want to buy a new copy but hey, its just 2 seasons and then i’m on again… ok i won’t delete my account and wait after all it’s not much time.. and continue to train…”
If thinking that only HONEST and CORRECT players have to play in an electronic sport where everyone is supposed to play honestly is fascism, i am fascist and proud.
Some time ago this belief of mine was called “meritocracy”, and what you call fascism is simply a cry for some kind of more-than-ridiculously-mild punishment for a crime.Because we are into the internet and into THIS enironment cheating is the worst kid of crime.
Cheaters should just STFU about their supposed rights and get another copy of the game, or go play COD or CSS, for what matters to me they cant contribute to the future of the game, just give it bad and unneded reputation.
I am not an ETF2L admin so its their choice to keep the league alive at the cost of a diminishing reputation or – if necessary – make it slowly die but with a significant reputation.
Do i have to mention Clanbase? No i don’t.
Regards.
PS
After this post i wont reply anymore because frankly i couldn’t care less about you bash. BTW i am courious: i never cheated in any game nor had any cheater in team, and when my team took an ex-cheater i quit the clan because i wouldn’t have to do anything with a cheater, even EX and so on. So i AM clean. What about you and your mates? What is your interest in defending cheaters?
what just happened
i listen in the air one word… boomeh …. boomeh …. there is link with boomeh’s ban :O ?!
As Jimmy already stated, these discussions between admins started many weeks before boomeh’s ban. He has absolutely nothing to do with this. A majority of admins felt that banning people for cheating in cs or dod was not particularly conducive towards running a productive league.
Draconian 2 year bans are also utterly pointless, since this game will be near enough dead in 2 years. People deserve a second chance…after they’ve had a period of time to reflect on their mistakes.
We’re banning people that are caught cheating in TF2. Treat this as a positive move forward. Thanks :)
thats the point
you have 2 years of bans meaning that you dont have to play this game anymore (which is ok for everyone except for the cheaters themselves and their friends).
I dont get whats wrong with this: can anyone enlight me please?
inb4 “I CHEATED ONCE 2 YEARS AGO JUST TO TRY IT: IT WAS A FUN SERVER, WHO CARES”
“HE WAS GOOD AT LANS”: dropping F-bombs as soon as I read those.
“What a coincidence?? Just after boomeh being caught…(we are still waitin for the news like for ALL previous idiots)”
Boomeh is already banned(2 years http://etf2l.org/about/bans/) and like every other ban it will be reported along with other news in a summary newspost.
Most of you have to SHUT THE F- UP.
Nice job admins. Cheaters like boomeh will still be banned and non-cheaters in tf2, can APPEAL to their VAC bans, josh can prove it and everyone has supported him.. others? Not as easily.
Good work admins! This needed to be done :)
baerbel – this is really said. if i cheated last week i’ve got 2 year and say bye-bye, BUT if i’ll cheat next week, i’ll get 2 or 3 season ban (which is less than 3/4 year). in my opinion it ISN’T FAIR ENOUGH.
Bunfi,
please read the last part of the newspost. Some details, like what happens to the 2 year bans, are still being worked out.
“baerbel – this is really said. if i cheated last week i’ve got 2 year and say bye-bye, BUT if i’ll cheat next week, i’ll get 2 or 3 season ban (which is less than 3/4 year). in my opinion it ISN’T FAIR ENOUGH.”
Cheating is not fair to begin with…
It seems a bit wrong to play unfair and cheat and then afterwards complain about not beeing treated fairly.
Anyway, there will always be some problems with new rules.
IRL the time people have to go to jail usually doesn’t change afterwards if there is a new law giving newer criminals a shorter time in jail. I don’t see why we should do anything different here
can somebody plz explain me why “new” cheaters have to be banned for 2/3 season while “old” cheaters have to be banned still for 2 years?
this is the most stupid thing ever…and makes all the good job done made for “somebody” and NOT FOR ALL.
Why 2 or 3 people are whinging like babies i just don’t understand. I suggest you go and read this (http://etf2l.org/forum/league/topic-7773/page-5/) by arx which explains the ins and outs of why “banning forever” is MORE detrimental to countering cheats than a shorter ban with random checks to ensure they remain legit.
Even if the rules are left flat out as they are now, AND boomeh was punished by the new rules, we would not see him for the better part of a year. And when he did return, he’d have lost ALL the respect of everyone he used to play with, he wouldn’t be easily trusted, and he’d be reduced to playing for some shitfest whilst CONSTANTLY recording demos to have his play monitored. BUT WE’D HAVE AN EXPERIENCED PLAYER BACK POSSIBLY PLAYING IN LOWER LEAGUES TEACHING LOWER PLAYERS HOW TO PLAY BETTER MAKING THE LEAGUES MORE SKILLED.
I’d like to draw the 3 or so of your combined attentions to the statement at the end of this update which says “If you have any suggestions/concerns please discuss them on the forum in a nice manner and we’ll take it all in.” — We GOT to this stage by discourse, why not take it further in the same manner? Admins CANNOT know all the outcomes and problems with the new rules they introduce, consider this like beta testing. The admins need LOTS of people to put their combined league experience together and raise the problems before they arise catastrophically.
The points you raise are good ones. May i suggest instead of writing a 3 metre long rant in the comments section, you put them in a clear manner in a forum post so that the admins can take it all on board and find a way to solve those problems you raise.
^ At least they’re fucking listening to us, this is historic ETF2L business! You whinge when things AREN’T listened to/done, then you whinge when things ARE listened to/done.
Nyctal – Please stop repeating the same thing over and over again. This has already been addressed in the comments. Ban lengths and details are still being discussed, and nothing has been set in stone yet. The news post clearly tells you that, and so have more than one admin here as well.
If/when the ban lengths are changed, it will be clearly noted in a fresh news post and on the rules page of ETF2L.
ahhh vlad_drag … now a cheaters is called “experienced player ” omg …
etf2l = cb
Rotty- “ahhh vlad_drag … now a cheaters is called “experienced player ” omg …
etf2l = cb”
And thats because…..he is also an idiot. Vlad that is not you ;)
oh god can someone please ban the weed smoking wannabe-great-thinker university students from the internet. TL;DR
Great work on listening to the community admins though :)
Tramsig
“Seppo and Mario, were they racist in the forums or a league game?
Gonna be a lot of “grey areas” with this rules.”
Just to clear things up, first of all i got banned from flaming in the forum (a newspost to be precise), there was nothing racist in what i wrote, unless referring admins as nazis by the way they handled things back then is considered racism? (Flaming gives a warning first, thanks for painting me as a racist :)) but thats not the point of my post.
What im trying to say here is that since admins are slowly coming to their senses, they should reconsider the countless cases in past where people have been banned for years from something as small as saying jokingly “admins die.” and there have been alot of similiar bannings which have been just ridiculous, without a warning and long lenght. Now with this nice new ban policy you could transfer these league bans to forums and everyone would be happy :) now it seems to be otherways around (if this post can actually be seen :D)
Racio – sorry for my irritability, but this should have been done long-long time ago, not now, when there are mistakes, what you need to be correct.
time to unban seppo and joske from the league ;x
All ex-cheaters of all times are welcome here!
It’ll be a pleasure to play vs (ex)cheaters, thanks for this opportunity!
NICE JOB!
Epic fail imho
l2think pls
with this new rule people who get caught cheating will have an incentive not to make another account and possibly keep cheating
Wildcard and his pal of course took 2 sentences from my entire post, quoted them out of context and called me an idiot based on it. Nice work guys, at least this gives me a reason to believe that evolution might not be true after all. Do you have sloping foreheads? I assume you were flinging your own poo at your shiny bright light maker monitor and it covered up the rest of my post?
skinnie +1
gj ac team!
No matter how we play this there are pros and cons to each argument. This way isn’t perfect, but I think it’s a big improvement on the old system. Personally, my one objective was to pursue the most common sense and fairest route possible and that’s pretty close to what we’re getting to now.
i’m sorry to say, but NOW, not over the past half year.
@D2M i actually think you did not read what bearbel said in his first comment here:
“bunfi – the ban length wont be changed retroactively afaik”
since he is an admin i should believe this so…and btw i said it just twice.
every time a news post goes up that does something good for the community, 32 billion insane people have to come post about it
I think Bash was spot on with his “fascist” comment.
Excerpt from Joliet Jake:
Sounds pretty much like standard right wing propaganda :D
I still don’t see any form of news highlighting an uk flag with boomeh’s name like it always has been by the past.
Is that a kind of indulgence ? because he’s a brit ? a div1 player ? the both ?
oh and please, don’t even mention the previous news that talked about the “””loss of boomeh”””.
as has been mentioned at least five times in various threads, we don’t put up who has been banned until a generic summary/round-up post happens. And there hasn’t been one.
And boomeh is no special case, so he doesn’t get a special post. He’s just a regular cheater.
Some people seriously have to learn to read. Not giving boomeh a special post but including him in a general update post is the best possible way they could handle this. It shows that there will be no difference between the div5 cheater and the div1 cheater.
And besides, ETF2L does something good, and most of the people whine nonetheless. What the hell is going on.
Sounds great and btw, can anyone tell me when the next ETF2L season is?
Perhaps you could make the new policy retroactive for that players that received a two year ban?
Tho people would prolly go whine about Boomeh getting a better treatment then.
Please dont say
most ac admins were against this and because of this “consensus”
a lot will/ might stop working
oh no we’ll lose the services of:
Iller, who knows literally nothing about anti-cheat
baerbel, who does nothing without Anakin’s approval
Anakin, who is essentially a tyrant who holds grudges and vendettas very easily
how terrible…….
congrats Aye doc you just joined that special group of people I mentioned earlier.
Yeh who needs AC team anyway tbh since letting cheaters off now lightly as it is may as well not even bother in the first place. /endsarcasm
oh no somebody thinks i’m an idiot
i love the presence of an AC team
i love the idea of an AC team
i do not love our AC team because the one who is qualified is an asshole and the rest are entirely unqualified
i’d rather have a mediocre anti-cheat program than a bunch of people who don’t know what they’re doing or have no kind of capability to interpret and judge a situation.
The admin team has no place for anyone who feels like leaving just because something didn’t go their way.
I know the active part of the AC team works very hard, and I have faith that they’ll stick around. Because obviously the league matters to them more than some personal agenda does.
Come to think about it, if every admin left because something went against their ideas, we’d have no admins left!
Great job admins, finally these issues seems to be on the right track.
Anyone seeing this as bad is a news is a retard and should do their fucking homework. Asking for an explanation for these things after 100+ forum threads of discussion should give a lifetime ban instead of friendly admin replies.
Again, gj :>.
Oh thank you so much for the opportunity of playing with cheaters, thank you so much!
I understand, you need to keep your community alive and everything, but I’d prefer a dead community without cheaters to a live one with cheaters. Hell, some cheaters I know have been playing legit for years and they still haven’t washed away the shame, and here they’re let off light, with at most 3/4 of a year ban. GG for a step in the wrong direction.
inb4:”INACTEIV TOLLR COEMS BAK TO TROEL LLPOLPOPLOLP”
Keep in mind that a 2 season ban is a 20+ game ban with the league matches and other tournaments/fun cups they’d be suspended for. And a 3 season ban would be over 30 games.That’s nothing to sneeze at imo.
Cheaters will still be branded as cheaters, everyone of them will be on the list of banned players, although their ban might have expired.
I think it will be quite hard for cheaters to even find a team, and they will be watched closely I guess. So if someone who cheated before comes back, has learned his lesson and stays clean there is a lot more achieved than if he just gets another account and keeps on cheating.
People might not deserve a second chance, but granting one shows character.
And I don’t think ETF2L encourages cheating, at least I’ve never ever felt tempted to use cheats, so do most of the community.
good job admins? no, not appropriate wording. the admins only investigate the reports (from the very best of the community) which they recieved. and boomeh case… good job aequitas.
What about make a poll ?
fuck polls, useless shit
This is the beginning of the end.
GL
It’s funny to see the same people posting over and over again, expressing the same thing in different words.
More ontopic:
If a player gets a 2 season ban, I assume that includes the period in between the seasons, so should there be a cup in between them (something that has always happened except this season) they won’t be able to play as well. That’s another few weeks added to that ban.
This has 2 major consequences:
1) The ban will most likely be longer than just 2 seasons
2) There is a rather significant possibility that some cheaters will get a longer punishment then others.
Nyctal, I think you need to re-read the statement you quoted:
@D2M i actually think you did not read what bearbel said in his first comment here:
“bunfi – the ban length wont be changed retroactively afaik”
since he is an admin i should believe this so…and btw i said it just twice.
To change the ban length retroactively means that players that got banned prior to the new rules will not have their ban lenght reduced according to the new rules.
The actual ban length that the new rules perscribe are still not set in stone as D2M said.
second paragraph was not meant to be italicized
All good points. Basically the main thing we want to avoid is people rejoining teams half way through seasons (in an attempt to minimise the disruption cheaters have on the competitive integrity of divisions. Same logic applies to addressing how default losses/replays are handled when a cheater is discovered, which is definitely something I want to see looked at).
So we may just keep the date format, but use the per season ban in spirit. Or add some rule that says if your ban runs out in the midst of a season/cup, you cannot participate in it. Something simple hopefully.
tsss, xtala, did you really think I would miss that? :p
can no1 in this league just shut up.
I’d be dissappointed if you did my love <3
so all the people that you didnt prove to be cheating youll unban? sweet see you guys in however many seasons :)
@ azured exactly what i do not agree to lol
ban the fan.
The fan doesn’t kill people, people kill people.
The fan doesn’t kill people, Jon Lajoie does.
tl;dr
dicker pot