DICE BFBC2 Rules of Conduct

[wraith1200]

Online Conduct
Players are expected to abide by the EA Online Terms and Conditions while playing on ranked Battlefield servers. You agreed to the EA Online Terms and Conditions when you established your EA Account.
The purpose of these Rules of Conduct is to illustrate how the EA Online Terms and Conditions apply when you play on ranked Battlefield servers. Multiple or critical violations of the Terms and Conditions may result in the loss of online play or stat/award reset. Violation may also result in the termination of your EA Account and the loss of anything associated with it (such as points, tokens or in-game items).
The following are examples of conduct that is not permitted by the EA Online Terms and Conditions:
You are not permitted to use offensive soldier names or clan tags. Also, you may not actively encourage other players to violate the EA Online Terms and Conditions while in-game.
You may not organize any Clans or groups that are based on, or espouse, any racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethnic, anti-gay, or other hate-mongering philosophy.
You may not attempt to interfere with, hack into, or decipher any data streams or transmissions to or from EA or partner services, or use any application or software while using the Battlefield services which are not approved by EA or partner.
You may not exploit any bug or abuse any game system (such as the scoring or award systems) in an EA product or service. You may not intentionally use or share any bug found within any Battlefield games, real or fictitious, regardless of whether or not it grants an unfair advantage. You will not directly or indirectly communicate the existence of any such bug to any other user of EA's games or services.
Examples of abuse include, but are not limited to:
Playing on restricted kit servers (knife, shock, and pistol only)
Taking turns killing, reviving, receiving ammo, etc.
Abusing world geometry to your advantage without risk
Exploiting vehicle damage to repair indefinitely
Creating a play environment which, by definition or action, creates an inflated scoring scenario
Ranked Server Administrators
If you are an administrator of a ranked Battlefield server (referred to below as a "Server Administrator"), you must also comply with the EA Online Terms and Conditions.
Server Administrators are in violation of the EA Online Terms and Conditions if they enforce server rules on ranked servers that prohibit or severely limit players from using any roles, kits, weapons, vehicles, or other features of the game while playing on their server. Examples of such rules that would violate the EA Online Terms and Conditions include:
Preventing players from using certain vehicles such as ATV's, helicopters, or armored vehicles
Running knife / specific weapon / pistol-only servers
Preventing players from using all game assets (mortar strike, vehicles, UAV or motion sensors). If using the Infantry-only server-side option, this should be clearly stated in the game's loading screen
Preventing players from using certain weapons or items (such as flash bangs or C4) or enforcing a "pistol only" or "knife only" server rule
Server Administrators may implement and enforce rules that result in minor changes to gameplay behavior or styles as long as these are clearly stated before a player starts playing on a server. These rules typically introduce minor or limited restrictions on how a certain aspect of the game can be used, but do not create or promote an environment that would allow abuse of the scoring/award system. Examples of such rules that are acceptable are:
Limiting movement of combat assets, such as Aircraft and Vehicles during game play - For example, disallowing all aircraft is not acceptable.
Disallowing repeated main base camping/attacking of bases that cannot be captured. In some cases, however, attacking the base with reasonable intent to take out assets (artillery, M-Com points) is acceptable.
Limiting the use of mortar strikes or in-game assets to a particular region of the map.
Server Administrators will also violate the EA Online Terms and Conditions if they (i) use offensive server names, server art or clan tags; or (ii) encourage other players to violate the EA Online Terms and Conditions while in game.
Exploit/Abuse Reports
To report players who are cheating or intentionally violating the Terms and Conditions (including scoring abuse, exploits, or map errors), use the following link:
ANSWER
You can also report unapproved software or applications that provide an unfair advantage or manipulate the game in a way it was not meant to the PunkBuster staff at: research@evenbalance.com
In all cases, please provide as much information as possible when making reports. EA's support staff will be the final decision makers regarding investigations. Intentional submissions of misinformation or false abuse reports can be considered a violation of the EA Terms and Conditions and may result in disciplinary actions.

[Palin]

hmm all I can say is WTF!!

[Ciel]

Screw that. My server. I'll play it how I want to play it. They can ban me for all I care.

I wonder if these rules would even be legal if enforced on people who own private servers. I'll have to look it up.

[wraith1200]

Yes DICE can enforce those rules if they so wish. In 2142 there were a lot of knife only servers and people that played more than an hour on one of the servers had a perma ban slapped on their accounts and the servers were shutdown by DICE. So they don't like it when you don't play the way the game is meant to be played.

[Palin]

Well on the up side Crap like this will keep CS mods and servers popular for a while longer. I say boycot!!! Too bad enough people won't get behind that concept though. But the hurt to the pocket book and then they will beg for people to set up servers and mod the game types. Hey If you dont want to play knife only dont join that server.. but I'll be damed if DICE can tell me I can't play a knife only.

Its the principle of it!!

[Morod]

It's their game and their intellectual property. Sadly, they can do whatever they please.

[Ciel]

There's a lot of moral issues I have with this EULA. It's about like buying cable tv and your service provider giving you a huge group of channels. Of those channels that are available to you, they tell you that you cannot watch the Travel channel only. That you have to watch more than one channel or else you will lose your service. If you paid for the service you should be allowed to watch what you want. In the case of this game, if I bought the game and own my own private server, I should be allowed to play the game in my private server how I want.

I'm going to play the game how I want to play it. If I want to have a smoke-grenade or defib-only squad deathmatch for a few hours then I'll have one. I'll look up the legal validity of this when it comes to owning a private server and whether or not this infringes on one's liberty, as the our server is not owned by Dice, it's owned by Game Servers, and they have no such policy. Thus this is about like Dice dictating how another company conducts it's business, which I know a company can't do. Wal-Mart cannot tell Target that they cannot sell PS3s.

If this would be illegal and I get banned, I'm suing DICE. Otherwise I don't really care. If I can't have fun then I don't care to continue playing the game.

[Morod]

Your whole argument is flawed because:

a) You bought the game, their intellectual property. They can't tell you how many hours to use it and such, but they can enforce game-wide policies since the product was made with a specific use in mind, and they get to choose said use. Like a patent.

b) The servers are not GameServers (they may host the webspace, but they did not have to do with the game process); they are hosted by GameServers (as an third party, and the link between clients and provider) using an algorithm created by DICE (the provider) and rented to GameServers, which is still intellectual property of DICE.

While highly unfair and somewhat debatable, they have the right to say what you can't and can do. Pressure will, however, make the policy change, as it has happened before.

And there's nothing unmoral or unethical about the EULA, it isn't telling you what's right or wrong. It's more of an technological / limited use issue.

[Ciel]

How is that not telling you what's "right or wrong?" Banning people for wanting to waste 20 minutes doing knives only is DICE broadcasting to the world "that is the WRONG way to play, and we will ban you for it!"

You really didn't convince me my logic is flawed in any way, shape or form. If something impedes on their intellectual property in any way, such as causing them to lose customers, breaking the game itself, forcing DICE to lose profit, etc., yeah, that's fine. But anything that does not effect others in a negative manner should not be an issue, and I view it as immoral to force something on another when it does not hurt themselves or others.

This does not have a lot to do with intellectual property, but it's "somewhat" similar. It's illegal for a public school to tell you that you cannot wear a wrist band. Granted this wrist band cannot have a swastika or profanity or anything similar, but a plain wristband, something advertising like Star Wars or something, or anything similar is alright. If a school attempts to force you to remove the wristband they are in violation of U.S. law (I believe it's one of the Due Process clauses.) That's why I question whether or not this would actually be legal. You would think that being on the property of the school they could tell you what you can and cannot wear, but in reality they are very limited. You cannot impede on the free rights of American citizens. (Note that this rule does NOT apply to private schools.)

So I guess it depends on whether or not a private server on BF:BC2 is considered private property (owned by DICE), or the property of the user (us).

[Morod]

I meant right/wrong in a sociological context, as in good/evil, not right usage/wrong usage.

And you hit the nail right there -- the servers are considered DICE property. That is the whole substance with this dilemma. And their intellectual property is infringed in usage terms, even if the product is not affected in any manner (we could use toasters to make waffles, but toasters are for bread and waffle ovens do not get sales if all people do this). That's why they're so bitchy about this.

The thing with the school is because it's public property, whereas a game is private property and you do not own the license for the game, only the license to USE it. It's still their intellectual, private property. In other words, if DICE said no one can fart while playing, they can do it. It can be unconstitutional and a pletora of law-breaking policies which would get modified and cause new laws regarding cybernetic software usage to be written up, but until that happens, they can do as they please.

[wraith1200]

The main reason the knife only servers were hit so hard was that they are considered stat boosting. Also the game and the software on the servers is DICE's software covered by copyright and their IP so they have the authority to make sure the game is played the way it was meant to be played and no used for stat boosting, or anything else that hurts the other players. You agreed to the EULA for EA, and DICE and there most likely is a section in there pertaining to the use of the game as most games have so even if you wanted to sue them or something they still would be protected legally.

[Morod]

You are correct in your EULA statement, Wraith. It's clearly stipulated in the EULA. Or it's supposed to be.