I don't remotely see how anyone sides with Blizzard's decision making process in this mess whatsoever, other than you are making money from your relationship with Blizzard which Curse definitely does, so any comments from Curse staff falls on deaf ears (and why Toast himself tempers his explanation due this own admission of his desire to maintain it).
Good think i don't work for Curse, then.
Feels bad then, you represent and are not paid for it.
I don't remotely see how anyone sides with Blizzard's decision making process in this mess whatsoever, other than you are making money from your relationship with Blizzard which Curse definitely does, so any comments from Curse staff falls on deaf ears (and why Toast himself tempers his explanation due this own admission of his desire to maintain it).
Good thing i don't work for Curse, then.
Feels bad then, you represent and are not paid for it.
I moderate Hearthpwn, nothing more, nothing less. If anything i vaguely represent Hearthpwn, but in no way the entirety of curse. I am just a regular dude, with privileges.
I don't remotely see how anyone sides with Blizzard's decision making process in this mess whatsoever, other than you are making money from your relationship with Blizzard which Curse definitely does, so any comments from Curse staff falls on deaf ears (and why Toast himself tempers his explanation due this own admission of his desire to maintain it).
Good think i don't work for Curse, then.
Feels bad then, you represent and are not paid for it.
I moderate Hearthpwn, nothing more, nothing less. If anything i vaguely represent Hearthpwn, but in no way the entirety of curse. I am just a regular dude, with privileges.
Bugs are inevitable when building any complex system, and they take time to fix, even with intensive effort. There's a reason legitimate security researchers sit on exploitable zero-day bugs for days or weeks after reporting them before they share them with the world -- because they take time to fix, and spreading them around means more people are harmed by them.
Blizzard's policies on this aren't to make them look better, they're to protect players from those who would pick up a thing like this and use it to cheat while it's being fixed. Trust me, if it feels bad that playing around with a software bug on stream might get you banned, it feels worse to lose a game because someone used an exploit against you.
I never inferred that bugs shouldn't happen. I realize they will. My point is: bugs are an issue that are blizzard's responsibility, not anyone else's. If there is one, especially if it's a critical one that allows one player to randomly win the game, they don't have an option other than fixing it, temporarily banning the card(s) involved or using some other method to end the abuse ASAP. That's no less than their duty, this is part of the reason why people pay them money.
I don't think anyone disagrees up to this point.
What can be more of a conflict here is wether toast should be punished for informing a bigger part of the community about it.
What he is doing is reporting a fraud. He is letting everyone know that they might lose games unfairly, not because their internet connection failed, not because the servers randomly glitched, but because a set of people have an information that is allowing them to cheat victories out of you. That IS happening. With that information, you can decide to pressure blizzard to fix it, you can stop playing ladder so you don't get unfairly beaten or you can abuse it yourself. Notice that informing people of a problem isn't something bad, what CAN be bad is what people do with that info. Regardless of that, the issue was caused by Blizzard, no one else. I didn't code the game, I can't be blamed. They did, they are to be blamed, it doesn't matter if it's inevitable, it's still their fault the game had a problem.
Recently a channel I follow unveiled a method to cheat MtGO draft system, allowing for a set of players to have overpowered decks and use them against regular opponents. This is good. Now people can do their best to avoid being scammed. Now people can choose to not play the game because games are made to have fun, and losing unfairly is not fun. The problem is a problem, it has to be addressed, you can't just ignore it. You can't pretend it's ok if some more people are getting disconnected and losing and having no clue why.
It's like punishing Justin Bieber for having fans who will slit their wrists for him, you can't make someone responsible for anyone else's actions, unless that person induced them to do so. Btw I don't like justin bieber, random example.
It doesn't really matter whose "fault" it is that the bug exists in the first place. What matters is that putting step-by-step instructions for reproducing it into a video like this that thousands of people then view vastly increases the amount of exploitation of the bug.
This helps protect players who would lose to such an exploit. It doesn't protect players who would use the exploit themselves, but they don't deserve to be protected.
Sharing an exploit like this doesn't punish Blizzard for making an implementation mistake nearly as much as it punishes random people on ladder.
> Blizz f**** up big time, again (yet another game winning bug) > Someone finds out > The information spreads > Someone with relevance spreads it exponentially > Blizz forced to fix their own big f****up (omg, that's terrible right? what kind of world do we live in? Small indie companies forced to clean up after their own f***ups, oh the humanity)
I don't care how hard it is, I actually appreciate how hard it is to avoid bugs. This doesn't change these facts:
1. It's blizzs fault 2. It's blizzs responsibility to fix it
Also, it would be expected that at least players who were affected by the bug to be compensated, if it is hard to track those down, compensate everyone. Not only does that not happen, they issue zero apologies and they actually punish a player for forcing them to get their s*** together. It's unbelievable. I feel like blizzard gets away with too much BS because they have a large fanbase. That's not healthy.
You agreed to the TOS buy purchasing, installing and playing. All streamers know this and you should too.
I don't remotely see how anyone sides with Blizzard's decision making process in this mess whatsoever, other than you are making money from your relationship with Blizzard which Curse definitely does, so any comments from Curse staff falls on deaf ears (and why Toast himself tempers his explanation due this own admission of his desire to maintain it). So with that out of the way, Blizzard apologist aside, bugs are NOT a consumer's problem and should not be held responsible for there use period, regardless of any EULA agreement. A EULA agreement that has not been tested in court does not really hold muster and does not make the company magically right. Self imposed rules in a business environment where there is an implicit, ongoing (on-line gaming) consumer relationship are really not valid since they have not been tested or ruled valid by any entity other than Blizzard and its team of lawyers, so no Blizzard is not in the right here, though they may TELL you they are, does not make it so. Hearthstone is an ever evolving game with constantly changing content with a stagnant EULA that hold the consumer accountable. Any two bid consumer protection lawyer would have a field day with it.
You don't remotely see how people side with Blizzard in this by simply looking at this logically? Toast used his stream, that reaches thousands of viewers, how they can actively cheat on Hearthstone by exploiting a big in the game. What action did you expect them to take?
The real problem that seems to fly over your head is simply this, that he taught, even if without any ill intention, everyone in their stream how to abuse this to cheat in the game. There were two possible ways Toast could have gone about this bug. Either he tested it offstream and reported it to Blizzard, and that way, Blizzard had no reason to suspend him, or he tested this bug live on stream for thousands of people to see and learn how to use and abuse, going as far as to test even other cards interaction that also allowed to trigger the exploit, to further elaborate on how everyone that watched could enjoy exploiting the bug, and after doing this, warn Blizzard of this bug, having already spread to thousands of people how to abuse it.
Yes, you can argue bugs shouldn't be in the game to begin with, but then you should try coding a game with the same complexity and see how many bugs skip by you. There's always going to be bugs that skip past QA that need to be fixed later. That doesn't mean you can just teach people how to abuse a bug that has been found and that translate into cheating other players out of wins.
Out of everything in this whole mess, what surprised me the most was how careless Toast was. I love his content and he seems like a pretty reasonable guy, so it surprised me that he didn't think of the problems he would cause by teaching his whole stream how to cheat in Hearthstone.
The audacity of blaming the use or spread of a bug by a consumer of a damage product that was reported by the consumer then penalizing the consumer seems outrageous to me is my point. His decision making aside, he has no obligation to do nothing else in this matter. Your disappointment is mis-directed. The argument is not a moral one. No one seems to hold Blizzard to any moral obligations.
There doesn't appear to be any issue here - Toast admitted his fault, and accepted Blizzard's punishment. He cheated, and showed thousands of viewers how to cheat, violating Blizzard's Code of Conduct - he's lucky his account wasn't banned, rather than suspended.
If there is any genuine issue here, no one has identified it - instead, people are simply bitching that Blizzard is "greedy, lazy and stupid." Some kid even suggested that the mods are being paid by Blizzard to defend the company. Christ. Lock the thread.
(...) Notice that informing people of a problem isn't something bad, what CAN be bad is what people do with that info. (...) It's like punishing Justin Bieber for having fans who will slit their wrists for him, you can't make someone responsible for anyone else's actions, unless that person induced them to do so. Btw I don't like justin bieber, random example.
There is a flaw in your argument. Toast didn't limit himself to warn the community of the existance of a game cheating bug. He didn't just warn everyone "Guys, there exists a bug in Hearthstone which people abuse to grant themselves free wins. We need to inform Blizzard to patch this fast. I will not EXPLAIN TO ALL OF YOU HOW IT OCCURS TO PREVENT YOU GUYS FROM ABUSING IT"
This is the actual flaw. He informed Blizzard of this bug, but before doing it, he also chose to explore and explain to thousands of people on his stream how they could use and abuse this exploit.
To put it into your Justin Bieber example (doesn't make as much sense considering it doesn't take a genius to know how to cut their wrists, at most, you can teach them how to be more efficient and guarantee more lethal reprecursion...)... Bieber would need to do exactly that, explain to all those people how they would best cut their wrists and be as effective as possible at it. Now is he responsible for sharing that knowledge with all those people and should he be punished for the actions people commit with the knowledge HE SPREAD?
It's a fair point. From my understanding he received the info, tested and confirmed it at first. Later he proceeded to try to understand the cause and possible cases where the same thing would apply. While I'm 99,9% sure there was no malice, I understand people's actions that cause harm unintentionally are to be punished regardless, only a bit more leniently.
Shortly thinking about this, I guess only informing people that there is a bug, but not specifying what it was wouldn't help at all. Everyone who wanted to cheat would start scouring boards trying to find out how to do it, and they would very likely find it out.
So I'm leaning to think that the merit here is "should people be informed they're being scammed, by third parties?", and I still think the answer is yes.
I'm thinking that blizzard should themselves make the information public. Sort of a statement, "we are aware of a bug involving bla bla bla, we're working to fix it. Please refrain from doing it, we will punish those who abuse it", something along those lines.
@Skyl101 I'm sure the TOS will protect blizzard from anything and everything. I can still disagree with bullshit. And FYI I'm actually slowly retreating from the game, for multiple reasons, one of them being Blizzard doing Blizzard stuff.
Had it been an unknown person, that cheated and showed others how to cheat that person would have been permanent banned, but it have its benefits to be a known person.
I don't remotely see how anyone sides with Blizzard's decision making process in this mess whatsoever, other than you are making money from your relationship with Blizzard which Curse definitely does, so any comments from Curse staff falls on deaf ears (and why Toast himself tempers his explanation due this own admission of his desire to maintain it). So with that out of the way, Blizzard apologist aside, bugs are NOT a consumer's problem and should not be held responsible for there use period, regardless of any EULA agreement. A EULA agreement that has not been tested in court does not really hold muster and does not make the company magically right. Self imposed rules in a business environment where there is an implicit, ongoing (on-line gaming) consumer relationship are really not valid since they have not been tested or ruled valid by any entity other than Blizzard and its team of lawyers, so no Blizzard is not in the right here, though they may TELL you they are, does not make it so. Hearthstone is an ever evolving game with constantly changing content with a stagnant EULA that hold the consumer accountable. Any two bid consumer protection lawyer would have a field day with it.
You don't remotely see how people side with Blizzard in this by simply looking at this logically? Toast used his stream, that reaches thousands of viewers, how they can actively cheat on Hearthstone by exploiting a big in the game. What action did you expect them to take?
The real problem that seems to fly over your head is simply this, that he taught, even if without any ill intention, everyone in their stream how to abuse this to cheat in the game. There were two possible ways Toast could have gone about this bug. Either he tested it offstream and reported it to Blizzard, and that way, Blizzard had no reason to suspend him, or he tested this bug live on stream for thousands of people to see and learn how to use and abuse, going as far as to test even other cards interaction that also allowed to trigger the exploit, to further elaborate on how everyone that watched could enjoy exploiting the bug, and after doing this, warn Blizzard of this bug, having already spread to thousands of people how to abuse it.
Yes, you can argue bugs shouldn't be in the game to begin with, but then you should try coding a game with the same complexity and see how many bugs skip by you. There's always going to be bugs that skip past QA that need to be fixed later. That doesn't mean you can just teach people how to abuse a bug that has been found and that translate into cheating other players out of wins.
Out of everything in this whole mess, what surprised me the most was how careless Toast was. I love his content and he seems like a pretty reasonable guy, so it surprised me that he didn't think of the problems he would cause by teaching his whole stream how to cheat in Hearthstone.
The audacity of blaming the use or spread of a bug by a consumer of a damage product that was reported by the consumer then penalizing the consumer seems outrageous to me is my point. His decision making aside, he has no obligation to do nothing else in this matter. Your disappointment is mis-directed. The argument is not a moral one. No one seems to hold Blizzard to any moral obligations.
This is like saying: I found a faulty airbag with my Ferrari, I reported the issue to Ferrari. Next; knowing said airbag doesn't work I drive my Ferrari into a brick wall. Now I'm suing Ferrari for their faulty airbag. After all it was their fuck up. No go, it's not moral obligations (such things don't actually exist in business, maybe you meant ethics ina legal sense?) so much as stupidity by the customer for not reading the fine print or choosing to ignore it.
If you don't understand what I mean please go watch the South Park I Centipede episode.
I can understand why Blizzard did what they did. While it's true I do enjoy Toast's content, he did technically 'cheat' the game.
Sure he only did it because another person told him about it and so Toast being Toast want to test the bug out to see if it is true. I also enjoyed that he went further into the problem to see if there were any other interactions that caused this bug to happen. Information like this could be useful for Blizzard to fix that bug.
To me this issue is a double edged sword in my opinion. I liked that Toast tested the bug and reported it so that Blizzard could fix it. However the fact that he showed the bug to a huge audience is why I understand Blizzard had to do something about the matter. And to be honest I'm a little surprised Blizzard hasn't done something about this sooner, especially with some of the other videos that have showed him pointing out the other game breaking bugs.
However at the same time I do believe that because he showed the bug it means that Blizzard will have to do something about it. Now I know some players may reported this already. But because it was Toast that showed it, it means Blizzard will now have to work to fix that bug and if they don't it will make them look bad.
So yes I can see why Blizzard did what they did, but at the same time I can see why people are mad about the situation. It's clear that Toast has shown certain faults that needed to be fixed (For example, the 'transform' term wasn't clear when compared to other 'transform' cards back in the past), but at the same time the game breaking bugs need to be sorted out quickly but quietly, rather then being shown and then have Blizzard rush to fix it (after all this could create other bugs if not done correctly).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Entry for this week's Card Design Competition - Season 8.16:
I started watch Toast's videos after hearing about this, and I really enjoy them. I get why Blizzard acted in the way they did though. It makes sense. But as he said, I wonder what this means for his future content.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Bugs are inevitable when building any complex system, and they take time to fix, even with intensive effort. There's a reason legitimate security researchers sit on exploitable zero-day bugs for days or weeks after reporting them before they share them with the world -- because they take time to fix, and spreading them around means more people are harmed by them.
Blizzard's policies on this aren't to make them look better, they're to protect players from those who would pick up a thing like this and use it to cheat while it's being fixed. Trust me, if it feels bad that playing around with a software bug on stream might get you banned, it feels worse to lose a game because someone used an exploit against you.
I never inferred that bugs shouldn't happen. I realize they will. My point is: bugs are an issue that are blizzard's responsibility, not anyone else's. If there is one, especially if it's a critical one that allows one player to randomly win the game, they don't have an option other than fixing it, temporarily banning the card(s) involved or using some other method to end the abuse ASAP. That's no less than their duty, this is part of the reason why people pay them money.
I don't think anyone disagrees up to this point.
What can be more of a conflict here is wether toast should be punished for informing a bigger part of the community about it.
What he is doing is reporting a fraud. He is letting everyone know that they might lose games unfairly, not because their internet connection failed, not because the servers randomly glitched, but because a set of people have an information that is allowing them to cheat victories out of you. That IS happening. With that information, you can decide to pressure blizzard to fix it, you can stop playing ladder so you don't get unfairly beaten or you can abuse it yourself. Notice that informing people of a problem isn't something bad, what CAN be bad is what people do with that info. Regardless of that, the issue was caused by Blizzard, no one else. I didn't code the game, I can't be blamed. They did, they are to be blamed, it doesn't matter if it's inevitable, it's still their fault the game had a problem.
Recently a channel I follow unveiled a method to cheat MtGO draft system, allowing for a set of players to have overpowered decks and use them against regular opponents. This is good. Now people can do their best to avoid being scammed. Now people can choose to not play the game because games are made to have fun, and losing unfairly is not fun. The problem is a problem, it has to be addressed, you can't just ignore it. You can't pretend it's ok if some more people are getting disconnected and losing and having no clue why.
It's like punishing Justin Bieber for having fans who will slit their wrists for him, you can't make someone responsible for anyone else's actions, unless that person induced them to do so. Btw I don't like justin bieber, random example.
It doesn't really matter whose "fault" it is that the bug exists in the first place. What matters is that putting step-by-step instructions for reproducing it into a video like this that thousands of people then view vastly increases the amount of exploitation of the bug.
This helps protect players who would lose to such an exploit. It doesn't protect players who would use the exploit themselves, but they don't deserve to be protected.
Sharing an exploit like this doesn't punish Blizzard for making an implementation mistake nearly as much as it punishes random people on ladder.
There doesn't appear to be any issue here - Toast admitted his fault, and accepted Blizzard's punishment. He cheated, and showed thousands of viewers how to cheat, violating Blizzard's Code of Conduct - he's lucky his account wasn't banned, rather than suspended.
If there is any genuine issue here, no one has identified it - instead, people are simply bitching that Blizzard is "greedy, lazy and stupid." Some kid even suggested that the mods are being paid by Blizzard to defend the company. Christ. Lock the thread.
Shortly thinking about this, I guess only informing people that there is a bug, but not specifying what it was wouldn't help at all. Everyone who wanted to cheat would start scouring boards trying to find out how to do it, and they would very likely find it out.
So I'm leaning to think that the merit here is "should people be informed they're being scammed, by third parties?", and I still think the answer is yes.
I'm thinking that blizzard should themselves make the information public. Sort of a statement, "we are aware of a bug involving bla bla bla, we're working to fix it. Please refrain from doing it, we will punish those who abuse it", something along those lines.
@Skyl101
I'm sure the TOS will protect blizzard from anything and everything. I can still disagree with bullshit. And FYI I'm actually slowly retreating from the game, for multiple reasons, one of them being Blizzard doing Blizzard stuff.
Had it been an unknown person, that cheated and showed others how to cheat that person would have been permanent banned, but it have its benefits to be a known person.
I can get behind that. No player though can claim that the was no inappropriate behaviour via Toast that under the TOS wouldn't warrant the outcome.
I don't necessarily agree with Blizzard TOS, but it's there and like you said it's meant to protect them and their products, not the user/customer.
After he informed blizzard, they said "this guy's toast" and banned him.
I can understand why Blizzard did what they did. While it's true I do enjoy Toast's content, he did technically 'cheat' the game.
Sure he only did it because another person told him about it and so Toast being Toast want to test the bug out to see if it is true. I also enjoyed that he went further into the problem to see if there were any other interactions that caused this bug to happen. Information like this could be useful for Blizzard to fix that bug.
To me this issue is a double edged sword in my opinion. I liked that Toast tested the bug and reported it so that Blizzard could fix it. However the fact that he showed the bug to a huge audience is why I understand Blizzard had to do something about the matter. And to be honest I'm a little surprised Blizzard hasn't done something about this sooner, especially with some of the other videos that have showed him pointing out the other game breaking bugs.
However at the same time I do believe that because he showed the bug it means that Blizzard will have to do something about it. Now I know some players may reported this already. But because it was Toast that showed it, it means Blizzard will now have to work to fix that bug and if they don't it will make them look bad.
So yes I can see why Blizzard did what they did, but at the same time I can see why people are mad about the situation. It's clear that Toast has shown certain faults that needed to be fixed (For example, the 'transform' term wasn't clear when compared to other 'transform' cards back in the past), but at the same time the game breaking bugs need to be sorted out quickly but quietly, rather then being shown and then have Blizzard rush to fix it (after all this could create other bugs if not done correctly).
My Entry for this week's Card Design Competition - Season 8.16:
I started watch Toast's videos after hearing about this, and I really enjoy them. I get why Blizzard acted in the way they did though. It makes sense. But as he said, I wonder what this means for his future content.