Why can’t you just behave…?

In any online medium you run into the problem that internet anonymity and attention of others cause people to show their true colors. This isn’t news to the gaming community at large, Penny-Arcade even made a cartoon about it back in March of last year (warning: strong language). Occaisonally, developers take their game community seriously enough to do something about it.

Bungie (developers of Halo) banned a few thousand players for poor behavior on Xbox Live. If anything, thats the most annoying feature of Xbox live - since so many people are on it and the only communication is via voice - you hear alot of worthless dribble quite often. One choice quote from the developers in that banning notice in regards to racism:

If you’re one of those slack-jawed troglodytes who uses racism as his main form of discourse you probably won’t even understand this sentence, but note that you should keep your vile, bilious crap sealed up. Nobody wants to hear how stupid you are.

Last month the developers for Dark Ages of Camelot posted some comments (via a Q&A) on some of their recent bannings (players cheating in the game):

Q: I think your announcement was all talk. You didn’t ban anyone.

A: Not according to the forums associated with the cheat programs. Reading all the whining was great fun. CLASSIC comedy of the internet variety. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.

Sure other games have banned thousands of people before, they were doing so in World of Warcraft not too long after launch. What is new here is the developers slinging a little mud the other way, makes for good reading when you’re bored surfing the internet I guess.