Reply To: Rovio’s banning policy

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DisAB.ed
@schmock

From what I saw and heard since I started this thread one week ago, it seems that many players, that were banned by Rovio at the very end of first MEBC season had (only) applied the so-called ‚backup/restore‘ technique in the past (this technique was eliminated with the update early February 2018).

It is highly questionable, whether using this technique can be qualified as a ‚cheat‘ or ‚exploit‘ of the game, because that would conceptually require taking advantage of either an error or unintended malfunction of the program (cheat) or taking advantage of an unintended weakness of the programming (exploit), which obviously does not apply in this case, since Rovio had decided to program this app in way that it also makes use of the storage of the end user’s device (probably to save capacity on their own servers) and therefore must have always been aware and have deliberately taken into account, that any game content being stored on the end user’s device would/could be subject to a restoring (to an earlier state) of that device. You can hardly call this an ‚unintended‘ weakness (or malfunction) of the programming, but rather need to call this a ‚calculated or (at least) consciously accepted‘ weakness of the programming of this app.

Whatever one may think of this technique in legal terms, one thing is very obvious (and should also have been obvious to Rovio): Anyone who took the effort to (repeatedly) run through a backup  and restore process of his device just in order to speed up his progress in this game, must be (or have been) a dedicated/addicted player of AB 2. So, one should think that Rovio – with the backup/restore technique finally eliminated – would be happy to see all (or at least many of) these dedicated/addicted players become (sooner or later) ‚normal‘ – paying – costumers of Rovio (again).

But NO: Rovio decided to ban these players (or at least those, who may have been to slow in resuming to make payments to Rovio again) at a moment, when they could do no more ‚harm‘, and thereby missed a good chance of (re)increasing their base of paying customers.

Maybe Rovio follow the principle ‚Once a cheater, always a cheater‘, BUT: There is quite a difference between applying a technique in gameplay, which cannot be clearly qualified as a cheat (or exploit), and using a hack or any other method, that is clearly illegal.

Another possible explanation for that – I believe unwise – decision by Rovio may have been their urgent need to give some sign/prove of determined dealing with cheaters to their (other) customers (Look here: We are actually catching and banning cheaters!), BUT: It is quite obvious to everyone that the (true) cheating and hacking merrily goes one (just look at MEBC!) – with Rovio seemingly helpless in defending the integrity of this game.

The chances that anyone who has been banned and remains banned on such questionable grounds will simply open a new account and start to play this game all over again, seem to be pretty low.

To sum this up: Rovio’s recent banning campaign against players, that have applied the (now gone) backup/restore-technique in the past, but have evidently been playing this game with great dedication and would therefore very likely go on playing this game as ‚normal‘ (paying) customers, appears not only questionable from a legal point of view, but also counter-productive to Rovio’s naturally given desire to increase their customer base.

Maybe it’s not to late yet for Rovio to review their decision!