Tag: Ban

Hero Siege Taken Offline After Hacker Bans Everyone


Let’s start the new year off with a bit of comedy.

Hero Siege servers have been taken offline for a period of time today. The problem? A hacker managed to make his way into the system and ban every account in the game. According to the news post which we have reposted below for your pleasure, this attack has been ongoing for several weeks with the most recent escalation taking down every account.

Hello,

Unfortunately there is a hacker attacking our servers and the person has managed to ban every account in the game. This attack has been going for weeks and has now escalated. We are currently looking for a fix to this and have disabled multiplayer for a while.

We are sorry for the issue.

As of 5:07p.m. EST, the issue appears to have been fixed with the servers brought back online and everyone unbanned.

Source: Steam (Credit to Gonzo for the tip)

Day of Dragons Dev Accused Of Hardcoding Ban Of Critics


There’s malfeasance (allegedly) afoot in Steam early access. Today’s piece comes to us about the game Day of Dragons, currently in early access on Steam. Day of Dragons bills itself as “an online creature survival game set in a large, beautiful, sandbox open world with multiple biomes and distinct creatures. Rule the world as one of several dragon species, or play as an elemental.”

We here at MMO Fallout have dealt with plenty of dirty Steam devs, but the accusations being levied this week really take the cake. The developer of Day of Dragons, Jao, has been accused of hardcoding bans of two Youtuber critics into the game’s files that apparently cause the game to crash on startup if either try to play. The two Youtube creators are IGP_TV and IcyCaress, both of whom have been very vocal in criticizing Day of Dragons for being a cheaply made prototype using store bought assets. So another day in the indie neighborhood.

The video posted by IGP_TV creates a dump of the game’s memory and then checks the files in a hex editor. Among the code they find six Steam ID’s that have been hardcoded to prevent the game from running.

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Youtuber SidAlpha confirmed through his own investigation that the dump contains the six hard coded Steam ID’s.

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Several parties including MMO Fallout have reached out to Valve for comment. Current Steam Terms of Service for developers state that game bans cannot prevent a user from launching the game. It will have to be seen how Valve respond to these allegations, if they do.

In Plain English: Court Throws Out Jagex Ban Lawsuit After Five Days


Today’s In Plain English is going to be a short one, but you’ll understand why when you see that the gist of it is about six sentences long. It comes to us from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and involves everyone’s favorite developer of RuneScape: Jagex. Along with their parent company Shanghai Fukong, Jagex last week was sued in Pennsylvania court by one Amro Elansari, who is alleging that Jagex muted him without reason. The lawsuit goes on to claim that the UK developer refused to provide an explanation and denied Elansari’s request for an appeal. Elansari’s suit alleges violations of due process, free speech, and human rights.

Elansari was granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis, fancy legal speak for nulling filing fees, however the court took some umbrage with his claims. Judge Kearney noted that Elansari’s claims of constitutional violations were implausible, adding that the first amendment and its constitutional free speech guarantees do not restrict private entities. More so, the fifth amendment due process clause also does not apply to private companies.

As such, Elansari’s lawsuit has been dismissed just five days after being filed. Elansari cannot make any further constitutional or federal claims however if he decides to bring the lawsuit back on state charges in state court, he absolutely may do so.

As always, MMO Fallout is hosting the relevant dockets at our expense at the Google Drive. As the lawsuit was filed pro se, MMO Fallout has removed some personal contact details from the documents for the sake of the plaintiff.

Nepal Supreme Court Demands Justification On PUBG Ban


You may have read the news that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds had been banned in Nepal and thought “this makes no sense,” and you would have the backing of the Nepal Supreme Court on your side. The South Asian country took the banhammer to the popular battle royale shooter just two weeks ago and directed all internet service providers and mobile data centers to block access to the game.

Justice Ishwar Prasad Khatiwada demanded an explanation for the ban and asked the government to provide justification beyond the vague excuse that the game was distracting children from schoolwork and chores, as well as unsubstantiated claim of violent behavior coming from addicted gamers.

Unlike India where more than a dozen people were arrested for violating its own ban, it doesn’t appear that anyone has actually been punished in the two weeks that the law was in effect. As of right now, PUBG is once again playable. Whether the government will be able to come up with a convincing excuse to put access back on the kibosh will have to be seen.

Source: Gamasutra

PUBG Banned In Nepal


PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is addictive and dangerous to teenagers, at least that is the justification that Sandip Adhikari, deputy director at Nepal Telecommunications Authority gave to Reuters this week in justifying the total country-wide ban of the game. The ban went into effect on Thursday, meaning it is now in place, and directs all internet and mobile service providers to block access to the game.

It should be noted that there haven’t been any incidents related to PUBG, however the ban is due to parental concerns over children being distracted from studies and other duties. The ban comes nearly one month after Indian authorities arrested more than a dozen for violating a ban on the title in Gujarat. The Reuters article does not discuss possible sanctions for those who bypass the ban.

Source: Reuters

Reminder: Playing PUBG Is A Criminal Offense In Gujarat


PUBG Mobile: It’s not just a shooter you can play while walking down the street, it’s also a crime if you live in the Indian state of Gujarat.

It may sound like a joke that over a dozen people have been arrested after being spotted playing the battle royale shooter, but more than a dozen people in India found out the hard way just how serious the police are taking this law. The Indian Express reported this week that ten people were arrested for playing the shooter, following the game’s ban earlier this month. According to the same news story, twelve cases have been registered so far in the city of Rajkot.

“Our team caught these youths red-handed. They were taken into custody after they were found playing the PUBG game. We have registered two cases against them under IPC Section 188 for violating the notification issued by Police Commissioner and under Section 35 of the Rajkot police arrests 10 for playing PUBG despite ban Gujarat Police Act,” SOG police inspector Rohit Raval told The Indian Express.

Six more youths were arrested for playing PUBG despite the outright ban on the title. PUBG received a ban by police commissioner Manoj Agarwal, who stated his opposition to addictive mobile games negatively impacting behavior, attitude, and language of students and children.

Chinese Government Reviews 20 Games, Passes None of Them


This month marks the establishment of the Chinese Online Ethics Review Committee, a government organization tasked with reviewing online games and determining if they are fit for sale in China in guidance with the country’s ethical rules. Confirmed by Tencent in August, China instituted an approval freeze around March of this year for games being sold within the country until the government can establish newer guidelines on approving or banning certain titles.

Of 20 popular titles to be reviewed, none of them passed muster. Judging from the list of games and the reasons for their refusal, most of the problem stem from blood and gore, vulgar content, overly revealing female characters, and ‘inharmonious chat.’ Incidentally, titles like Diablo and Chu Liu Xiang were also refused for “missions including fraud.” Of the twenty titles, eleven were held for corrective action while nine were prohibited outright and are presumably banned. PUBG, Fortnite, H1Z1, and Paladins are in the list of titles prohibited under these new guidelines.

These guidelines are hardly new, as in 2017 PUBG faced a ban over deviating from socialist core values. Tencent has seen a hit to its net worth as China due to the crackdown, and Ubisoft took a lot of heat last month after it attempted to globally censor and remove content from Rainbow Six: Siege in preparation for a Chinese launch.

Z1 Battle Royale: We Ban By Hardware ID, and Hardware ID Scramblers


Z1 Battle Royale has been on a warpath since being taken over by NantG Mobile, and Jace Hall wants everyone to know that the company is taking cheating very seriously. In a post on Twitter, Hall noted that over 800 accounts were banned on December 7 alone with plenty more to come.

In response to another user’s question about cheaters coming back, Anthony Castoro responded that the company implements hardware ID bans as well as bans on HWID scramblers.

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Source: Twitter

Steam Cleaning: Valve Has Banned More Than 150 Games This Month


Who says Valve doesn’t clean up their trash? Other than everyone.

Back when Valve issued a new directive that the company would no longer be curating titles with the exception of illegal games and troll titles, opting instead to merely allow its algorithm to bury lower quality titles in the furthest depths of the Steam store where nobody will see them anyway. More recently, the company has been on a bit of a ban spree, seemingly taking out developers releasing shovelware and asset flip titles.

According to Steam Tracker, Valve has banned more than 150 titles this month alone. Most of the titles appear to fall into categories of asset flips, obvious troll titles, and low quality flash-looking games. We were unable to ascertain how many developers this list spreads across, but Valve often deletes a developer’s entire catalog when one title is banned. Many of the titles had initially released as far back as January/February, but some others hadn’t even hit the market yet.

Bad Press: Saudi Arabia Did Not Ban 47 Games Over Child Suicides


If you’ve been reading the news this week, you may have come across a story that the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media has banned a list of 47 video games following the suicide deaths of a 13-year old girl and 12-year old boy. You might be more confused by the fact that the two were playing the “Blue Whale” social media game and not a video game at all, let alone one on the list of banned titles. The news piece caught me by surprise as I was fairly certain that I had read about games like Yo Kai Watch and Okami being banned in Saudi Arabia years ago.

Your confusion would be well founded, because much like the Blue Whale game itself, this appears to be a case of fake news with patient zero as none other than the Associated Press. Other than the AP’s claim that the ban list was associated with the Blue Whale Game, there has been no confirmation and the AP article even admits that the agency did not specify a connection. If you try to check local Saudi news on a new video game ban wave, you won’t find anything.

Thankfully the crack investigative team at MMO Fallout was able to get their hands on a list of prohibited games dating back to June 2017, showing that not only is the AP report incorrect, but that the conclusion it leads to is rather easily fact checked. Through the power of the Web Archive (please excuse the slow servers), you can view the list of prohibited titles published in June 2017. The list includes numerous titles that are on the current list: Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, Yo Kai Watch, God of War, Assassin’s Creed, etc.

Unfortunately the web archive only goes back to 2017 for the Saudi website, but it is evidence enough that the AP’s report on the General Commission is inaccurate. MMO Fallout is not the first to bring this to light, as Ubisoft’s head of communications and localization for the Middle East took to Twitter to call out the Associated Press and request a retraction on the article. The AP report is still up as of this publishing, as are most of the websites that source their news stories from the AP.

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Among the press that carried this coverage, Nick Santangelo over at IGN pointed out that there are no secondary sources for the AP’s claim. Games Industry has fully retracted their article. None of the other press websites at this time appear to have altered or retracted their coverage.