We’re just going to go ahead and offer a free tip for moderation teams across the MMO sphere: Banning people just for expressing support for marginalized groups is basically never a good look. The latest example comes courtesy of Piranha Games, which forced two competitive teams in MechWarrior Online named “Trans Rights” and “Trans Fights” to change their names while suspending team leader Daalpacagirl over her “trans rights” battlecry at the start of matches.
According to tweets from Daalpacagirl, Piranha Games reps told her that her offense was binned under “Harassment/Defamation/Insults/Toxicity/Non-Constructive Behavior” and that her “real-life political discussions” constituted “disruptive behaviour” that was “negatively affecting the experience of other players” as the game was not “the appropriate environment for such discussions.” Eventually, she was able to get Piranha to explicitly demand that she “remove [her] opening line from the in-game chat” – the opening line being “ALL-trans rights.” A follow-up from the gamemaster said that her “misconduct” had continued and that she’d been suspended from the game and the forums for 48 hours, under threat of a permanent ban if she continued after that.
Piranha President Russ Bullock initially responded to the ensuing uproar across Reddit and Twitter by saying that “for super obv reasons the word Trans and others are and have been excluded in the EULA for a very very long time.” In fact, he suggested that “bad trolls” and “bad apples” had led to the policy. But then Piranha’s Live Operations Manager Matt Newman reversed the moderation decisions; in a dev blog yesterday, he asserted that the removal of the Trans Fights and Trans Rights team names “was not the correct decision.”
“We should have asked more questions and determined the true intent behind the name selection, and those having issues with them. Our actions obviously hurt and offended people, I apologize. We will do better. With the understanding that trans rights is not a political issue, we will allow the team to use either of their original choices as their team name. Additionally, we will be reversing any moderation actions taken in connection with this moderation. Finally, regarding symbols of hate and oppression in the game. Images that are created out of the decal system have no moderation tools due to their dynamic placement. Please report these issues to customer support using screenshots and we will do our best to remove them.”
Daalpacagirl’s response sums it all up: “I’m glad they seem to have reversed their position, but that it took some amount of (potential) public pressure to get such a response combined with their (apparently quite long) history of not doing a whole lot to stop harassment, doxxing, and bigotry in the community do a great deal to temper my hopes & expectations going forward,” she wrote. “In the meantime, though, I’ll be happy to go back to playing MWO with my friends, maybe with a little less stress this time around.”
Worth noting here is that Piranha Games was purchased by EG7 last year – the same company that owns Daybreak and SSG.
