[i4Games]

With about 500 active players a week and more than 15000 members, i4Games is a well known Unreal Tournament community. Many players mean a lot of different personalities and this causes friction on the servers every now and then. Some players curse, some players just play very lame.
Of course this is a normal event every day, but the i4Games staff is not there without a reason. We do not have rules for no reason.

The last few months we noticed some negative signals from within the community. We had quite some people joining our admin channel on IRC questioning our banning policy. It's not always clear why we take certain measurements. Some people are still very young when we have to decide that they are not welcome anymore on our servers.
Why don't they deserve another chance? Why are we banning them and not other players?

In this story we, the i4Games staff wants to inform the community about why we take certain decisions. We will do this by replying to certain statements or rumours that reach our ears every now and then.
We hope that by the end of this article you all will have a little more insight on why we make certain choices.

"i4Games ban because they can!"

i4Games is a community with quite some trustees around. Sometimes we give you all the impression that we are here to spoil your fun whenever we can. Whenever we are around on the server we have the intention to whoop someone's ass or ban them because we don't like them.

We never ban without any good reason!

Before we think to have a reason to place a ban we always check that person's history. Based on the history we decide how long a ban should be. Trustees will not ever ban longer than 3 months without discussing it with the staff. A 3 months ban is already a very drastic move to make. Someone must have had a pretty bad history before we actually do that.

"i4Games admins are power abusers!"

Yes we do have extra possibilities than you all when we are on the server. But that doesn't give us a reason to use our tool without any reason. All i4Games players have the same rights on the server. You might not have an admin tool, but you do have an internet connection. Whenever you join our admin channel on IRC and leave your complaint we will look serious into the situation. Sometimes we can't do that straight away as being a trustee or admin is a hobby not a job. We do notice the messages and then try to research what has happened. This means that sometimes action is being taken later than the actual event.

Trustees and admins should be role models, but we are only human so we might actually break a rule every now and then too!

If you ever feel you are being lamed by a trustee you also have every right to say something about it. Sometimes it actually occurs that a trustee takes actions towards another trustee. The only thing about it is that you can't see it, as we have a private in-game chat. With this chat we can discuss a situation so we can find a proper solution to a problem.

Language and attitude

We only place a ban when it is really necessary. We look at the situation very carefully. When a player has an attitude problem and he or she has a very big mouth and insults players, then that player can expect a warning or a mute. This decision goes up for players who place minor insults. When these players are into verbal abuse after a warning or a mute they can expect a short ban. But at some point we need to draw a line.
How many times does a player need to be warned or kicked or even get banned shortly? Sometimes we notice that these small bans are not working anymore and we will place a longer ban. This sometimes can actually vary from 1 month till 3 months.

In the end there is a difference between "verbal abuse" and "verbal abuse"!

When someone actually swears with nasty diseases or is threatening other players, we place a ban straight away. This ban can vary from a day till 1 week.
If this kind of misbehaving continues then we won't be very nice anymore and we place a longer ban. Most of the times this is 1 month. As you can see the small verbal abusers are being treated nicer than the heavy verbal abusers.

Verbal abuse in the form of racism is not tolerated at all. When we notice this and when it is so bad that even our eyeballs might pop out, we are not very interested in having such players within this community and we might place a ban for life.

"i4Games admins never ban their friends!"

Well hopefully not! We hope that our friends know how to properly play on i4Games. But yes in some situations it can occur that a fellow clan mate or a buddy is actually being very annoying. Depending on that situation we don't treat them any differently than anyone else. We must say that it depends on the situation. Trustees know pretty well how to judge a certain situation. They are very well aware of who are playing on the server and if their playing style is any different from what it should be.

If a regular player is laming, trustees most of the time give them an in-game warning in the chat. Trustees don't expect all players to read this, so sometimes it's needed to give them a warning. When it is clear that they have read it, and they still continue with laming we kick them from the server. Regular rule breakers are being treated harder and most of the time they get warned straight away but then again we always have a look at their history.

"i4Games bans the best players!"

Yes it has occurred that we had to ban very skilled players, most of them still very young. But being skilled and young should not be a reason to be immune for bans. The players who faced a very long ban had many chances to behave better.
We can start talking about education and family responsibility. But why do we have to do something with that? That isn't our responsibility in the end. When a player joins i4Games, he or she is forced to read the rules we have for this community. When time after time after time and we mean: "after a lot of times!" we have to point a player out on his or her problems, then at some point we don't feel up to that anymore either.

Do we have to take insults? Do we have to discuss a ban with a banned player if he or she can't even take the time to have a normal conversation with us? Do we have to trust a player who was given many chances and blew it?
For instance, it happened quite often that we put a certain date on a ban, and in the meanwhile that banned player deceived us by making a new account and playing on that one. Personally we see that this is just a way of insulting us. In the end we try to keep the server as fun and enjoyable for everyone. But we don't have to accept everything.
I doubt any of you would like it if someone would constantly deceive your trust and mock the chances you given him. That doesn't mean we aren't willing to negotiate with banned players, but there has to stay some respect from both sides.
Yes we agree, maybe a lifetime ban is a very long time for some people. And at some point we might actually say: "I think he or she has learned his or her lesson by now." If that player has actually been punished hard enough after all the chances he or she had, we might actually reduce the lifetime ban to something more appropriate.

"They think they are always right!"

I doubt any of us, player or trustee ever feels to admit he or she was wrong. But sometimes we actually are. Sometimes players point us on something they feel misjudged on, sometimes someone else from the staff points something out. We have doubts about certain decisions we make too!
In the end we are human.

Sometimes we come back on a decision we made and sometimes we don't, it totally depends on the situation. If we know we are 100% right about a certain event, then we shouldn't be blamed for having taken a decision. If we have doubts, we are willing to change a decision we made.

"i4Games bans people who disagree with them!"

We can say on this statement that this does not happen. You all should understand though that when we take a decision and someone comments on that we don't mind. But we don't have to agree with that comment, we took a decision because we felt it was the right thing to do. The funny thing is however that most of the time we get a comment it's not very nicely formulated. We actually get insulted a lot.

Would you let yourself get insulted?

A warning should not always be seen as a punishment, a warning for instance should be seen as a reminder of a rule. When we warn and as feedback we get a "fu" or "a**hole" or maybe a "fu gay" we don't have to tolerate that. Most of the time in this situations we give a kick, if after a kick someone comes back and actually starts to flame us more, we do ban, because we have every right to ban. Like we said before if there is a bit of mutual respect we can be very relaxed. There comes a time our buttons can't be pushed any further.

"i4Games doesn't care about players!"

You will be surprised, but we actually do. Being a trustee or admin is not always fun, we actually notice quite a lot of thing going on. We get personally involved into situations. One of us personally can't stand it when young children are very bad mouthed, this kind of language is not necessary and should not be in the vocabulary of young kids.
We actually are also worried when some very young players have a weekly playing time of more than 30 hours.

We don't like to take actions against players, we can relate to them and understand that we are taking away one of their favourite things to do. But in life you have to set boundaries, anarchy isn't something we need around here.

"Why don't you tell me why he or she is banned?"

Indeed we won't tell you the reason why he or she is banned.
We have one main rule and that is that we don't discuss the bans in public and we don't have to. If you ever wonder why someone got banned, you should ask that player because that player will know very well what he has done. Bans are private and remain private unless a player is willing to discuss it. Discussion is between us and the player. Not between us and a friend of that player.

"This is a very long post!"

Yes it sure is, but we really feel that we owe you all some insight in why we take some decisions. We don't just take actions for no reason. I hope all of you can understand a little why we take some actions against players. Sometimes it might seem very harsh from our side, but most of the time you don't know what happened before we took these decisions. We are more than willing to have a good talk with a very long banned member but of course that person shouldn't have deceived or insulted us in a very bad way. We are more relaxed with banned players who just had their share of the punishment and indeed showed they learned something of the ban. We might then unban them or reduce the ban they have, but we expect that they will be very cautious with causing trouble.

We hope you now understand that we don't just ban for no reason. We have always very good reasons to take measurements against players, but we don't always owe you people an explanation for that.

If you all have any more questions about our policy, feel free to ask it here and we might answer it in this article later on. We will edit this post on a regular basis and add the questions you asked with a proper answer. People with questions about personal bans or other non-general questions about our banning policy will be referred to the #i4Games.admins channel on IRC.

Yours sincerely,

The i4Games Staff