Cheaters

They aren't responsible for content creators outside of partners, where they have attached their brand to chosen personalities/channels.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

Your correct they aren't responsible, but they are using their product illegally to make money. What you do is alienate your loyal fans because you acknowledge the problem but do nothing to stop it. Their is a few content creators who are blantly cheating on social media and I have sent requests. The issue is what's the fear? Now if you send a cease and desist and threaten them with a lawsuit you will discourage a few cheaters. Cheaters have never been as bad as now. 4 years ago this wasn't a issue. Now that companies have figured out how to cheat well, Rare needs to keep up. If you sue people for ruining your game your trying to make money on, you will get the response you want. Other game developers have kept up and punished cheaters and had positive results .

People say sue for a lot of different things in current times but it's expensive, time consuming, resource consuming, and rarely is ever really worth it in the end.

Very very few lawsuits are worth the money or stress or the PR struggles that happen with public conflict.

Far more worth their time to keep up on patches in regards to exploits and cheats. Quicker and more frequent game patches for cheats/exploits.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

I'm curious if Rare is doing anything to go after content creators who also cheat.

If they cheat and got reported: yes. No one is above the rules. Most streamers however are not dumb enough to do that.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

If Rare has obvious evidence they are cheating, can they go after them legally and shut down their channel?

Rare could file a report to Twitch (or whatever platform they use to cheat) and hope they take the channel down, but they can't take legal action. Cheating is not against the law, it's only against TOS.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

As it stands tons of content creators are using alt accounts, fresh ships and making videos exploiting the game.

Using an alt account is not cheating.
Using a fresh ship is not cheating (it's literaly an option in the menu's)
And making videos exploiting the game also depends on the context. If they make it to point out the exploit so it can be fixed or warn people about it, it can be a good thing. If they make it to brag how they 'owned' people who didn't use it, then they could get in trouble.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

but they are using their product illegally to make money.

No they aren't, because again: cheating is not against the law, so it's completely legal.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

What you do is alienate your loyal fans because you acknowledge the problem but do nothing to stop it.

This is just you inserted your feeling as fact. Rare DOES do something about it. I have reported a couple of people and within a day i already got a message back saying they have been perma banned.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

Now if you send a cease and desist and threaten them with a lawsuit you will discourage a few cheaters.

Again: they can't, because it's legal.

@angularbadger4 said in Cheaters:

Now that companies have figured out how to cheat well, Rare needs to keep up. If you sue people for ruining your game your trying to make money on, you will get the response you want. Other game developers have kept up and punished cheaters and had positive results .

This is not against cheaters, but against cheats-makers. That is a whole other situation. And those cheat-makers are (for the cases i know of) not being prosecuted for enabling cheating, but for copyright infringement. Almost all the cases got dismissed or settled though and i could only find 2 that have reached it to a verdict. One that is already permanent and an appeals court ruled that making cheats is not an violation of copyright law and the second one is now going into appeal citing that previous decision. So even there it looks like making cheats might be fully legal (so also not an violation of copyright).

And there are 2 major differences between Rare and those other companies, because Rare is not an US-company, but an UK one and thus would have to file in UK courts:

1. Courts in the US are heavely leaning towards companies (and as told even there the courts are reluctant to see this as illegal), while UK courts (and European courts in general) are way more neutral. This would make it even more unlikely to win such a case.
2. In US courts everybody pays their own legal fees (wich makes it easier to file lawsuits just to scare), while in UK and EU courts the loser also has to pay the legal fees from the winning party (this is deliberately done to prevent frivolous lawsuits).

But again: this is not against cheaters (wich you argued for), but against cheatmakers. Big difference there.