BATTLEGROUNDS Developer Responds To Controversial Stream Snipe Ban

The concept of “stream sniping” as a form of cheating is relatively new and has only grown in notoriety thanks to services such as Twitch and YouTube. Recently a player was banned by PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS developer Bluehole Inc. for doing this exact thing, raising an interesting question: how exactly can it reliably police this kind of misbehaviour or more specifically, how can it know someone is watching a stream for such a purpose?

The game’s lead community manager, Sammie Kang, provided some guidance on Friday in an attempt to make the whole situation a little less mysterious:

For team-killing and stream sniping, we require evidence to be submitted as with all reports against players. We do not ban players based on what we see on social media or streaming platforms ourselves. We ask players to submit reports with evidence on our forums which is a temporary measure. We take action when the evidence is sufficient to warrant a ban.

Kang goes on to say that the system is not automated in any way and depends entirely on player reports. As it stands, the system isn’t “final” and despite an appeals process being in place, Bluehole admits that it “may not be enough”:

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by the current system. We don’t have an automated system to ban players who violate our Rules of Conduct yet. But in the future, our team will work with the engineering & platform team to implement tools and systems to effectively address the issues that could ruin anyone’s experience in the game. We’re currently designing the new systems.

Given the game’s popularity — and the inevitable flood of false reports — it’s no surprise Bluehole is working continually on updating its bans / appeals process. Unfortunately, the pace at which improvements are implemented might not be fast (or good enough) for some.

Regarding the current ban process [PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS]


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