Confessed Cheater Sues Valve Over Being Banned

[dizmo]

Valve is a company, it would be the legal department who are assholes which most people in any sort of legal profession usually are. regardless, Valve probably will win or just make an out of court settlement to this dude for the same amount of money.

 

 

The people in the legal profession aren't dicks. I mean they can be of course, people just don't like them because they're usually like the authoritative parent. They take the flak because they're enforcing rules and people don't like being told what to do, let alone be punished or have things not go their way.

 

The rest of what you said though I cannot agree with more.

@Misanthrope

The best point I saw made was in regards to the ToS. Say you have to agree to a new rendition to use the service. That rendition says that they can extend the ban.

The cheater could A) not agree to the new ToS, and lose full access to his account or B) accept it, and take the risk of getting his ban extended.

I'm almost positive Apple would have gone through similar problems with their ToS agreements.

Clearly he chose the latter and wasn't happy with the result. It's America, so he's going to sue.

[JAKEBAB]

lol i hope that guy wins just coz its funny.

[RelentlessAF]

The people in the legal profession aren't dicks. I mean they can be of course, people just don't like them because they're usually like the authoritative parent. They take the flak because they're enforcing rules and people don't like being told what to do, let alone be punished or have things not go their way.

 

Sucks to have to play Devil's Advocate but such is life, it's mostly from personal experience that I've seen legal figures such as lawyers being kind of assholes outside of court I mean. I did however meet a judge that was very nice.

[NICKT]

I wonder what stances people here would take if instead of Valve, we theoretically put EA in instead?

[Sky Daddy]

I wonder what stances people here would take if instead of Valve, we theoretically put EA in instead?

can't spell cheaters without EA

 

if someone gets banned on origin for cheating, good riddance, ea did something right

[nicehat]

So lawyers are free where this guy comes from?

 

small claims court. Its very common to represent yourself 

[HerEscutcheon]

Why does this sound like a little kid doing something bad, and then complaining about being grounded for it?

[That Norwegian Guy]

Valve will win just on the basis that they can change their terms at any time they want and the end user has to accept that or not use the service. 

Not really true, it depends where he's from, most EU countries do not regard 'terms of service' as any sort of legally binding contract. In fact, even if it was considered a legal contract, any country with a healthy judicial system does not allow retroactively changing contract terms without mutual agreement. And by mutual agreement, a signature by hand is required.

[Switchblade Ninja]

I don't care about his interests, if I found someone cheating in my game I'd permaban him immediately there would be no temporary banning to contest.

 

Fuck cheaters and fuck him I hate them with a passion.

+1

[Derangel]

I wonder what stances people here would take if instead of Valve, we theoretically put EA in instead?

 

People would be up in arms, but there is a big difference between being banned on Steam and on Origin. For whatever stupid reason EA designed their system that if you get banned for any reason (even if a mod decides you said something wrong on an EA forum) you lose access to your account completely, including your games. For cheating on Steam you lose access to multiplayer features.

[smjpl]

I have to say that I agree with the cheater. He obviously cheated with the knowledge that, if he is caught he must serve a ban of 8 months. He was prepared to do that. He might not have done that if it were a permanent ban. He didn't agree to that in ToS.

 

It all depends if he agreed to the revised ToS. I can't remember the last time I agreed to revised ToS on Steam. Does anyone else remember if they made us accept a new ToS on a Steam update recently?

[Eroda]

he might not have cheated on that account, but i an quite sure he has multiple accounts and cheats on them.. according to that second image i linked. which will probably be something that will also come back to bite him in the ass

[sof006]

I don't care, he shouldn't be cheating in the first place. Then he wouldn't have having this problem. I think if you cheat you deserve whatever you get. 

[juretrn]

So this guy cheated and got banned... and now he's so upset he wants to sue Valve? :huh:  UWOTM8?

Also, what is the point to cheating? Some people, just wow, wow. 

[smjpl]

Ok So technically hes not suing because he got banned but because Valve recently changed its policy on Overwatch Bans making them permanent instead of temporary and then perm banned anyone who was banned for cheating since Overwatch started who was still currently banned

 

http://imgur.com/a/8s4G5

 

Admitting to Cheating - http://i.imgur.com/1IgmTFT.png

 

Can you make a poll about this? I agree with his reasons for suing as I believe that has nothing to do with the fact that he cheated. I would do it myself but I don't want to hijack your thread. Possibly make a new thread purely for the poll and post a link to this thread if people want to discuss. I would say put it in off topic so nobody has reasons to post farm.

[Exotath]

So lawyers are free where this guy comes from?

 

You can file a lawsuit without an attorney....its like $75.

[Shrubpig]

This guy is stupid... Why would he sue a multi-million dollar company? He deserves to be perma banned for all I care, cheaters are worthless pieces of trash. Also, this guy is an idiot for cheating on his main account

[LAwLz]

I am actually on this guy's side with this.

If I understand this correct, he was temporary banned for cheating. Valve then changed their ToS (after he was banned) and then gave him the new punishment. That is just bullshit and Valve should not have any right to do so. He had already gotten punished for cheating. New rules should not be applied to old crimes when the person has already been punished.

 

I know a lot of people on this forum blindly loves what Valves does but seriously, try to look at this objectively and you will realize that Valve are assholes with this.

Even IF the old ToS allowed them to do this, they are still being douchebags for doing this.

 

I think the problem in this thread is that people are Valve fanboys, and/or look down on anyone that cheats as lesser people who should not have equal rights...

Let's look at it this way. Have you ever cheated in a game? I know I have. I did it a few days ago in the Legend of Zelda. I didn't feel like grinding 250 rupees for the red ring so I edited the amount I had instead. I would be so pissed if they first punished me by not letting me play any Steam game for a few days, but then before my punishment was over they changed the contract I had agreed to, and then removed my entire Steam library forever.

 

I am starting to like Valve less and less. First they start looking through peoples' DNS cache, and now they are punishing people for crimes they have already been punished for, by changing the contract to allow them to do harsher punishments? This is clearly an abuse of power. I highly recommend people to not be Valve fanboys over this. I really like Valve, but if they continue to do things like these (which they most certainly will unless people protest) then they won't be any better than EA in the near future.

If you are a true fan of something, then you shouldn't be scared to tell them when they are doing something wrong. That's how you show that you truly care for them.

 

 

Edit: Oh and I should probably add that if they can do this, then they can potentially ban YOUR account, if anyone in your family has cheated in a game. So if you got family sharing on and your brother cheated in a game 2 years ago, they could ban your account permanently. It boggles my mind that anyone with common sense can think this is OK.

[Misanthrope]

The people in the legal profession aren't dicks.

 

They are. Sorry but I doubt you'll find sympathy for any corporate lawyers, particularly when they try to extend, to the point of abuse (imho) their consumer-fucking tactics. People here are just as sort sighted (if not more infact, again imo) when it comes to cheaters to the point that they can't accept it's no a black and white issue of "fuck all cheaters" i.e. You could have found and exploit and used in due to a game bug without knowing it was supposed to be an exploit, 4 years pass, Valve now considers anybody who used that exploit, intentionally or not, a cheater and not only that but retroactively extends the punishment to this day and fucks you out of 100s of games you legally purchased it for something that wasn't even really your fault but can be considered "cheating" through their narrowly defined terms that get illegally extended to offenses long before the new ToS apply.

[Misanthrope]

@Misanthrope

The best point I saw made was in regards to the ToS. Say you have to agree to a new rendition to use the service. That rendition says that they can extend the ban.

The cheater could A) not agree to the new ToS, and lose full access to his account or B) accept it, and take the risk of getting his ban extended.

I'm almost positive Apple would have gone through similar problems with their ToS agreements.

Clearly he chose the latter and wasn't happy with the result. It's America, so he's going to sue.

 

That's the illegal part: you cannot revisit previous punishments just because the ToS changed now. You can apply the new agreed upon punishment for repeated offenses done after you agree to new terms, but this "extending the ban" it's an end-run around the legality of applying a new contract to a date it just does not apply to.

If that was the case says you got a ticket for speeding in 2002. But now legislators decide to punish speeding with jail time and pass a law to that effect. Should you surrender to the authorities to complete your mandatory jail time for that speeding ticket in 2002? Oh that's right, they're just extending the punishment for that old ticket so too bad, get used to stripe pajamas.

It doesn't works that way, it cannot work that way legally.

[Scia]

I am actually on this guy's side with this.

If I understand this correct, he was temporary banned for cheating. Valve then changed their ToS (after he was banned) and then gave him the new punishment. That is just bullshit and Valve should not have any right to do so. He had already gotten punished for cheating. New rules should not be applied to old crimes when the person has already been punished.

 

I know a lot of people on this forum blindly loves what Valves does but seriously, try to look at this objectively and you will realize that Valve are assholes with this.

Even IF the old ToS allowed them to do this, they are still being douchebags for doing this.

 

I think the problem in this thread is that people are Valve fanboys, and/or look down on anyone that cheats as lesser people who should not have equal rights...

Let's look at it this way. Have you ever cheated in a game? I know I have. I did it a few days ago in the Legend of Zelda. I didn't feel like grinding 250 rupees for the red ring so I edited the amount I had instead. I would be so pissed if they first punished me by not letting me play any Steam game for a few days, but then before my punishment was over they changed the contract I had agreed to, and then removed my entire Steam library forever.

 

I am starting to like Valve less and less. First they start looking through peoples' DNS cache, and now they are punishing people for crimes they have already been punished for, by changing the contract to allow them to do harsher punishments? This is clearly an abuse of power. I highly recommend people to not be Valve fanboys over this. I really like Valve, but if they continue to do things like these (which they most certainly will unless people protest) then they won't be any better than EA in the near future.

If you are a true fan of something, then you shouldn't be scared to tell them when they are doing something wrong. That's how you show that you truly care for them.

 

 

Edit: Oh and I should probably add that if they can do this, then they can potentially ban YOUR account, if anyone in your family has cheated in a game. So if you got family sharing on and your brother cheated in a game 2 years ago, they could ban your account permanently. It boggles my mind that anyone with common sense can think this is OK.

 

I am pretty sure Valve has situations like these covered in their ToS / EULA and so on.

Basically any EULA of everything says they can change contents (retroactively) at will.

And he agreed to them. Besides the fact that Valve now HAS TO MAKE SURE that this guy loses, as it'd be a very very very bad statement to let a cheater win this case or even get his account back.

The last thing a game service wants is more ppl thinking they can cheat or get 10'000$ instead.

And, this is some lowlife out of the desert. Valve has more money than god. They're doing this in america. He's gonna bleed. He would rather have spent his 50$ on a bottle of booze.

[EclipseSkye]

What a douche. That bit about "I lose, I lost $50.00. WTF do I care"

[Misanthrope]

I am pretty sure Valve has situations like these covered in their ToS / EULA and so on.

Basically any EULA of everything says they can change contents (retroactively) at will.

 

People are under the misconception that anything on a contract can be legally enforced when this is simply just not the case i.e. you're contractually obligated to commit murder for hire henceforth you have a legal defense to kill people because you signed a contract? You cannot enforce illegal things with a contract and retroactive punishment it's just not legal no matter if the contract explicitly says it is so.

Contracts cannot make new law or modify it.

[Scia]

People are under the misconception that anything on a contract can be legally enforced when this is simply just not the case i.e. you're contractually obligated to commit murder for hire henceforth you have a legal defense to kill people because you signed a contract? You cannot enforce illegal things with a contract and retroactive punishment it's just not legal no matter if the contract explicitly says it is so.

Contracts cannot make new law or modify it.

 

Contracts containing stuff such as murder and so on are null to begin with so that's a bad comparison =P

 

Still. USA + Corporation + vs troll. He's gonna bleed.

 

And he publicly commited to cheating. He's stupid aswell. If this should actually go to court, and even if they had to unban him, he be instantly banned again because of another paragraph. This guy is getting shit.

 

And possibly even counter sued. For circumventig security features, willingly breaking EULA / ToS he agreed to and so on and so forth.

[JupiteL]

If Valve letting this guy win, I'll pass the next steam sale.