Homecoming Code of Conduct Updates - March 7th, 2020

[Hyperstrike]

On 3/7/2020 at 1:49 PM, PumpSmash said:

The only reason I found out about Homecoming was because of YouTube videos. This'll be the beginning of the end for your server. Congrats.

This quote did not age well.

 

[Hyperstrike]

9 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

My point was not "all the other kids doing it, so we should be able to, too", but rather, "Both Twitch and HC have policies against it, therefore it's not unreasonable". 

 

If I get pulled over for speeding, the cop doesn't let me drive away without a ticket just because other drivers have gotten away with it for 100 years before me.  It doesn't matter who or how many times a policy is violated: what matters is that the policy exists and could be enforced at any time.

How can I assign 10,000 likes to this post?

[GM Tahquitz]

Removed some posts.  Please remain on topic.

[UberGuy]

7 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

If, for example, someone made a private City of Heroes server that didn't have any mission text or characters that belong to the IP then NCSoft couldn't touch them. This is why Paragon Chat was completely legal and untouchable.

Small nitpick here (with "small" being relative to your point, but probably not legally): if the private server was using the game company's actual source code and nothing else, it could still be shut down under copyright (rather than trademark) laws. That'd be harder to prove of course, since you can see trademark violations simply by playing, while inspecting source would likely require something more forensic.

 

I would describe Homecoming as existing in a legal grey area. If NCSoft decided to play hardball, the servers would have no recourse but to shut down or at least go into hiding. But NCSoft is keenly aware, having had and reportedly on-going interaction with the folks behind it, The only people who could bring the force of law against Homecoming is NCSoft, and they have chosen not to, but there are "rules" (boundaries, constraints) they require the Homecoming team to abide by for that to continue. I've no way to know whether streaming is something NCSoft has said is a no-no, but the fact that they took enforcement action against anyone for streaming is grounds for the admins here to say it's a no-no, just in case. They are doing these things to keep the servers running as long as possible, and risking it being shut down outright because of streaming when streaming might improve player numbers would be poor risk management.

 

My view is that anyone who thinks Homecoming needs streaming to stay "relevant" is smoking the good stuff. This isn't some new title looking for enough playerbase to keep the lights on. This is a 17 year old game which mostly appeals to people who played it back in the day. A lot of us who are really here for that aren't going anywhere barring unavoidable life changes or outright shuffling off this mortal coil. And, notably, I suspect the primary source of gaming/culture/life updates for such folks don't come from streaming sites to start with.

 

I don't want to suggest streaming has no value to Homecoming, and isn't a potentially useful source of new players. Nor do I want to discount the value of new players. This is an MMO, and it will live on better with a healthy community membership. But I think claims that saying streaming is disallowed will be a strong signal in its eventual death knell are seriously hyperbolic.

[Giovanni Valia]

1 year later and we still know nothing about any of the progress with these so-called "talks". [lol] I myself don't particularly care about the video/ streaming policy. That said, video game streaming is the future of content sharing, and the best method imo to draw in new players.

[lemming]

37 minutes ago, Giovanni Valia said:

1 year later and we still know nothing about any of the progress with these so-called "talks". [lol] I myself don't particularly care about the video/ streaming policy. That said, video game streaming is the future of content sharing, and the best method imo to draw in new players.

Corporate NDAs are annoying and NCsoft is probably not being very responsive.   They don't have a huge incentive either way, but legally this lets them still have some say.   They don't want a backlash, but they also don't want to just let things go, so a snails pace works fine for them and HC can't force them.

This is just my own experience of dealing in corporative life and dealing with stupid legal stuff.  What NCsoft seems to have with this policy is to not have people making money off of what they consider theirs.   Video streaming as noted, can be an income stream for those doing so, hence the policy.

Since it only is an issue for streaming from the HC servers, it's not a huge deal since people can setup their own servers for such purposes.  Biggest issue would be getting some people to join in I suppose, if one wants to show teaming.

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 hours ago, UberGuy said:

Small nitpick here (with "small" being relative to your point, but probably not legally): if the private server was using the game company's actual source code and nothing else, it could still be shut down under copyright (rather than trademark) laws. That'd be harder to prove of course, since you can see trademark violations simply by playing, while inspecting source would likely require something more forensic.

That's certainly possible as well, but they'd have to convince a judge to force them to reveal the source code to them, which isn't likely.

 

However, my original point was that people cannot be criminally charged simply for logging in to HC servers or any other private/pirate server or emulator. You also aren't going to get sued for it. You're playing a game that you've paid for. There's already been a court case that has ruled in favor of people being able to use code that they've purchased. Note that this is in the US and the EU. If you live outside of that then I have no idea what the laws are in your area.

 

I really wish people who don't know anything about laws would stop trying to state how laws work online. It's like an 8 year old trying to tell the brain surgeon how to operate.