Shame! *Rings bell* Shame!
Blizzard is making a list. They’re checking it twice. They’re going to find out who’s naughty. Turning to public humiliation, Blizzard has rolled out what they are calling a “Discipline Tracker” to deter users from breaking the rules, mainly professional players. In the image below, you can see that the tracker details the player name, their team, infraction, disciplinary action, and date of sentencing. Blizzard is famous for making games, but they don’t play.
December 21st was the first day that the tracker was active and, as you can see, seven pros have received suspensions or fines. Teams from all over the world have cheaters apparently. Most of the infractions were account boosting, but they all fall under a general unsportsmanlike behaviour. While many people might think that these penalties are silly, Blizzard is taking taking necessary steps to help legitimize the world of eSports by implementing the Discipline Tracker. According to the official Overwatch League, only players who are under contract with a league team. However, if a player breaks the rules and then joins a league team, they may be subject to penalties.
Just desserts
The Discipline Tracker is not the first time gamers have been punished for cheating. Notable examples include GTA V, Guild Wars, and Monster Hunter 3. If a player is caught hacking in Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar will stick their online avatar with a dunce cap, so everyone can see and laugh at them. Should a single player car is brought into a multiplayer game, it will explode as soon as someone enters. Guild Wars will also publicly humiliate cheaters with an unkillable that hunts a cheater down and slices them asunder in front of the whole server, and then they are banned. Oof. What might be the most extreme form of punishment is in Monster Hunter 3. Cheaters will receive a “temporary” ban. Temporary meaning that they cannot play again until the year 9999. If you cheat in Monster Hunter 3, you will be able to play again, in about 8000 years. After that, Capcom says that if a player offends again, it will result in a lifetime ban, as if you hadn’t already lived and died one hundred times over. TheGamer has even more examples of developers pushing back against cheaters.
What are your thoughts on Blizzard’s disciplinary actions? Would you like to see more of this kind of thing by other publishers? Let us know down below.
Source: Kotaku