It seems there have been a number of issues brought up surrounding the recent case of
keran and
shy of
Pro5 receiving bans for cheating on a public server. The following news item will hopefully explain further details of this case to those of you who have only heard a certain point of view regarding it.
Firstly we shall take the player bans themselves. Each player was given a 6 month ban in accordance with the ClanBase cheating and abuse policy. During this time they will be unable to participate in any ClanBase competitions as punishment for cheating. We at ClanBase think the punishment should fit the crime. There is absolutely no evidence of keran or shy having cheated during any ClanBase matches therefore there is no reason to change the result of any match in which they've played. ClanBase will only take action when we have solid proof that an offence has been committed, not just someone's opinion that because a player has been caught cheating in the past that automatically means they must be cheating every subsequent time they load a game.
Giving out 6 month bans for cheating outside of ClanBase is not what we would consider lenient. Whatever the context or excuses given in this case (or others) everyone is, and should be, treated the same way. The bottom line is, keran was not caught cheating in a CB match, similarly 1000s of other players are also not caught cheating in CB matches. Their results are never changed, so why should we do it now for keran?
The other bans brought up in comparison were all dealt with in accordance to the
ClanBase cheating and abuse policy at that time. In the past we have removed all of the player's results as it was deemed they cheated in all matches they had played. That rule has now changed.
You all know that our policy has gone under a few changes since then. To bring up old bans as an example is just futile, unless they were handled with the same policy. We try to keep our policy updated and it is always evolving to take into consideration unique situations and events.
Secondly we had a point brought up that ClanBase took too long to ban the player in question. Punkbuster logged keran's catch on the 7th of March and the ban was proposed to the Cheating and Abuse Chiefs on the 16th of May. Due to some of our personnel taking time off (yes, volunteers can take holidays too!) it took longer to process the ban than we would have liked, but given the amount of work our C&A team have to get through it certainly wasn't an obscene amount of time. During this period we cannot disallow the player from playing in our competitions purely because people are innocent until proven guilty, and players are only guilty when their bans have been properly processed and verified by our C&A team.
Thirdly we have the interesting situation brought up by the fact keran's ban was processed whilst he was playing in a ClanBase match, it's fair to say that common sense should prevail here. We should not punish the player for playing when there was no way he could have known a ban for him had been processed, by the same token his clan should also not be punished for playing in the same match as him. It is ridiculous to suggest that we should take an unnecessary hard line and punish the player and clan in this case since there was no opportunity for them to take action by dropping the player for the match. We will, however, be looking at the wording of the policy to take into account the small possibility of a situation like this occurring again. As with real life law there is always the likelihood that we will update our rules based on cases that arise.
Finally we'd like to thank all the people who continue to put their hard work and effort into the ClanBase ET community. It is easy to sit on a pedestal and criticise others who are trying to do their best, it's quite another to actually get off your bum and be one of those selfless people who are willing to give up their own spare time for the benefit of others. There may have been some inconsistencies in the past, we're only human after all, but we will now work hard to eradicate these so that everyone gets the same fair treatment. We only hope that others will mirror this attitude and perhaps realise actions do in fact speak a lot louder than words.
Source: ClanBase