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posted by martyb on Monday December 11 2017, @05:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the big-brother-is-morally-judging-you dept.

On December 7, a Magic: The Gathering player with a YouTube channel called "UnSleevedMedia" ( https://www.youtube.com/user/mtgheadquarters ) was banned for life from the game by the Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast for allegedly harassing others in the MtG community on social media. As a consequence, he immediately lost access to all the virtual items he's previously purchased while receiving no refund, and he may no longer play online, partake in tournaments, or cover events on his YouTube channel (details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIh3ykLBzOM ).

The ban was issued after articles appeared on gaming news sites Polygon ( https://www.polygon.com/2017/11/29/16709796/magic-the-gathering-cosplayer-harassment-youtube ) and Kotaku ( https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/11/magic-subreddit-on-lockdown-after-cosplayer-quit-due-to-alleged-harassment/ ), where a cosplayer accused UnsleevedMedia operator Jeremy Hambly of persistent harassment. (Note: While the articles report on the controversy, neither present any actual evidence for either side.)

While Mr Hambly claims that the allegations of threats and harassment are demonstrably false, and that the evidence against him is based on excerpts from Twitter/Facebook posts taken out of context, he now says he's uncovered something quite chilling while investigating the case: evidence that employees at Wizards of the Coast are trawling the Internet looking for social media activities going back years in search of conduct they might find "objectionable".

In at least one instance they've allegedly requested and gained access to a closed Facebook group only tangentially related to the MtG community, and then issued bans and warnings based on the contents of conversations therein. This includes a one-year ban against professional player Travis Woo, who has now effectively lost his job. Mr Hambly presented the evidence for these claims in a YouTube video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGFcLvDRJNQ ) on his other channel, "The Quartering" ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfwE_ODI1YTbdjkzuSi1Nag ).

In response to this, he has started a change.org petition ( https://www.change.org/p/hasbro-wizards-of-the-coast-must-reinstate-travis-woo-jeremy-hambly ) asking people to boycott all Hasbro products until such time as the bans are reversed. His main argument is that corporations should not be allowed enforce End User License Agreements that dictate what a person may or may not say or do in their spare time on social media.

(Disclaimer: I've signed the petition, as I wouldn't like to see a future where a Twitter spat could cost someone their Steam games.)


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Monday December 11 2017, @07:50PM (2 children)

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Monday December 11 2017, @07:50PM (#608402)

    I don't know this guy, I don't know a lot about the wider MTG community outside my local environment, so bear with me.

    MTGO (Magic The Gathering Online) is a mess. It's just terrible. The interface is bad. The features are bad. I'm not even talking about the potential usual "the man controls me" topics, I'm talking about basic stuff. I played it a little bit and realized how antiquated it is, and got out, years ago. I check back in every year or so and am amazed its actually somehow gotten worse. I could go into this at length but I'll keep it brief to spare you non-gamers. Suffice to say, it has a very early 90s approach to many things. For various reasons many players either don't know this (not realizing there's a multitude of better game environs out there) or just live with it (because they just want to play MTG so badly).

    Now, for various reasons, a lot of players buy into it. Many players, to some degree, have to; Wizards (and by extension, Hasbro) occasionally run tournaments on MTGO that are effectively required for many "professional" players. This was initially (I think) to try to push MTGO adoption but it's become a cost-saving and control-enabling measure.

    Unlike games such as poker, professional players are practically unofficial MTG employees. They end up pushing the product and getting (indirectly) paid by Wizards through tournament winnings (which are only cash at the highest levels), ad revenue they earn talking about MTG, and paid blogs/streams etc. Whether or not they want to, or even realize it, they live and die by the grace of Wizards. Wizards can block them tournaments and cut them off MTGO at their grace.

    Many of the merchants are likewise, practically Wizards' agents, in many senses. The secondary market merchants have more say in their fates though, because they drive a lot of business via their after-market transactions, are much smarter and more organized in general, and Wizards knows it. Any one secondary market merchant guy isn't important (except maybe for a handful like Star City Games who are practically subsidiaries of Wizards, so closely tied to MTG products they are) but they can collaborate very fast.

    Anyway a lot of that was opinion mixed with fact. I didn't have the time to write something more lucid. Sorry about that.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheReaperD on Monday December 11 2017, @08:42PM (1 child)

    by TheReaperD (5556) on Monday December 11 2017, @08:42PM (#608422)

    Even 10+ years ago when I was involved the the gaming industry, we always referred to WotC as "Whip out the Cash" because every action they took was solely based on money generation and nothing else and their purchase by Hasbro has done nothing to improve this fact. I even said it right to their rep's face. Merchant relations, customer relations and nurturing an active community don't even come in second in their consideration. And we thought Games Workshop was bad at the time. WotC passed them up in dickishness in every category.

    --
    Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 11 2017, @09:31PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Monday December 11 2017, @09:31PM (#608449)

      Even 10+ years ago when I was involved the the gaming industry, we always referred to WotC as "Whip out the Cash" because every action they took was solely based on money generation and nothing else and their purchase by Hasbro has done nothing to improve this fact.

      You can trace it pretty directly to the gameplay decisions they've been making the last few years, even. They're kind of warping Standard (the format that actually makes them most of their money) around the strategies generally considered most fun for new players. Which is understandable, but when you go too far that direction it unbalances the distribution of decks people play, because obviously few people want to play a deck that loses often.

      For reference, this year they've banned cards in Standard on 3 separate occasions. The last time that happened before this year was like 10 years ago.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"