With great power comes great responsibility.

You’ll probably recognize the mundane quote from the first Spider Man movie. It doesn’t exactly take a great mind to come up with such a word of wisdom. Nevertheless it perfectly describes a challenge for any institution of authority or influence. -Be it ETF2L or this very site.

Essentially, both our services are the products of passionate souls doing free work with the best of intentions. But yes, both of us have established a responsibility for fair treatment. And for this site, a dilemma shows it’s face when having to judge what to publish and what to censor.

My latest dilemma concerns both of the mentioned institutions. A player contacted me with frustrations of the ETF2L anti cheat team seemingly doing unfair treatment, supplied with a couple of examples. On one hand [as this site stands as an independent institution] we’re the last instance to be able to voice one’s opinion and share information. But on the other hand, some accusations (confirmed or unconfirmed) can be damaging and should be handled with care.

So in an effort to pretend to be a decent journalist (yesyes, laugh) , I contacted new head admin of ETF2L, Racio to shed some light on the cases in question.

by Torden

Boomeh

I’ll save the backstory behind his ETF2L ban. He was banned last November for the duration of 2 years. ETF2L later changed to ban policy to be one year. Boomeh was the only one [of those banned for 2 years] to get the sentence reduced to 1 year. Others who asked for the same got declined. Racio says:

I didn’t even know boomeh’s ban was changed. Boomeh will have to follow the same procedure as the rest though. I’ll probably change it back for the moment.

Update, In comments, Racio adds: The order of the chatlogs is a bit reversed. In the later one it is indicated that we will look at the (ban-time) situation sometime (hopefully soon). So obviously boomeh will have to wait for that.

Rumor claims boomeh to have been playing under a 2nd account with TwistedPlay, no doubt fuelled further by his appearance on i40 with the team. Maybe, But for the time being “innocent until proven otherwise” seems a pretty decent philosophy of life!

Cook

A couple of demoes submitted to the ETF2L showed the former div1 medic with undeniable speed increase on a public server. He never got a ban, which made people question why only “div6 players” were banned for seemingly the same evidence. Racio explains:

Well cook isn’t really the first. Nivzeh also got nearly banned due to a hex-edited demo. We found proof that it was edited eventually though. To the point though,  it’s not really different from a div6 case. But that does not mean that we have to ban now that the head admin team has changed because of previous bans. The div6 cases will be solved soon. Won’t detail too much though.

The AC team have a policy of not detailing their methods for catching cheaters. You can of course debate why and if it is right or not. But, in reality this is how things are and how they will remain.

Surely, some of you will by now laugh at why something as “unimportant” and “uninteresting” just wasted some minutes of your life. – Reading this was optional, so the joke is on you.

But for some, these things have importance and I hope it answers some of your questions about ETF2L’s AC practice. Nothing will satisfy everyone and you will have the opportunity to voice your opinions in the comment section. I’d also like to thank the anonymous player for the information, and Racio for the responses.

On a side note, some people have voiced their frustrations of this site not allowing articles to be published without a moderator’s quality check. Well, consider what ramifications can come from publishing accusations, lies, or sensitive information…You don’t have to be an Einstein to see how damaging it can be. In the end, some form of power demands some sort of responsibility.

-Torden