The banning waves continue in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. A few days ago, one of the largest Twitch streamers of the MMORPG was banned for misconduct.
Who is Arthars? The streamer from Singapore is one of the most well-known personalities in the English-speaking community of Final Fantasy XIV. He is a hardcore raider who plays on both US and Japanese servers.
Arthars is primarily known for his raid streams of Alexander Ultimate with random groups, as well as his loud manner and vulgar language. This has become a problem for him.
Streamer freaks out because teammate deals too little damage
What happened? A few days ago, Arthars had a meltdown during a Twitch stream of the epic Eden raid. One of the players in his group, a Black Mage, died twice and dealt about 7,000 DPS. This was displayed to Arthars by the damage meter tool ATC.
Following this, the streamer began shouting at his screen and insulting the Black Mage. The in-game name of the Black Mage was clearly visible to the viewers, and Arthars additionally played a background sound with “Boo!” calls.
Since Arthars is an international streamer and has also made a name for himself as a raider in the Japanese community, the clip of his outburst went viral on Livedoor, one of the largest Japanese blogs about Final Fantasy XIV. There, Square Enix Japan likely became aware of the Twitch clip.
The terms of service of the MMORPG explicitly prohibit insults and harassment of players based on their performance in-game as well as the use of third-party tools like a DPS meter.
Because Arthars is one of the most well-known FFXIV streamers, his Twitch account is officially verified. Additionally, the link to his stream is on his FFXIV character page. This provided the GMs with enough evidence to ban him for 10 days.
The clip has since been deleted at Square Enix’s request.
The ban divides the community
The community discusses: The temporary ban for Arthars has caused a stir in the community. The discussion thread on Reddit has over 6,000 upvotes and nearly 1,500 comments, making it one of the largest threads there ever.
Opinions on the ban are, however, divided. While a large part of the community believes it is right that the streamer was punished for his misconduct, he is defended by another part.
This group claims that Square Enix has no right to ban Arthars for something that happened outside the game. He has not behaved inappropriately in Final Fantasy XIV’s chat at any time or violated the guidelines there.
They can moderate the communication in-game as much as they want, but they should not have the right to moderate the communication of someone using a third-party medium. […] What happens next? Do we have to censor the names of group members? […] This is simply censorship and we should not accept that.
jazz71286 on Reddit
Arthars is also by far not the only streamer who insults and uses third-party tools in his streams. Square Enix has been accused of allowing other streamers who openly use hacking tools like Zoomhack and Cactbot in their streams to go unpunished.
However, it is unclear whether the cited examples of streamers who violated TOS are comparable to Arthars and also have verified Twitch accounts.
What does the streamer say about it? Arthars himself views the situation more casually. On his Twitter he admitted that he overreacted at that moment and even said that he feels sorry for the Black Mage. However, he also made jabs at the vague behavior guidelines of FFXIV:
[…] And it’s good that the GM even linked my VOD and specifically stated that it was my on-stream behavior that violated the TOS.
That’s a breakthrough and good to know. I don’t care about the ban, I want to know what streamers can and cannot do.
It is unclear how this precedent will impact the future and whether further bans for misconduct on Twitch will follow. However, Square Enix appears to be swinging the ban hammer more frequently at present:
