Faded's Predictions Punishment

[GlimsTC]

The one thing I want to add, is that since HO operates off of precedent, does this mean we can expect cheating of this level this to never result in a suspension, or is this something that'll be case by case? And if so, can we get an explanation on where the bar is for that at some point? Just seems like there's more in favor of attempting to cheat than there is against cheating at this point

[r0tzbua]

44 TPE and 128 million against 7 TPE and known acquaintances who even counts these things.

[GlimsTC]

44 TPE and 128 million against 7 TPE and known acquaintances who even counts these things.

To be honest, I don't really see the removal of this stuff as a punishment. To me, it's like robbing a grocery store, returning the goods because you got caught, and the staff saying "returning the stolen goods was punishment enough". He wouldn't have had this stuff to begin with if he didn't cheat, so it's not like an actual loss in the end, at least in my opinion.

[r0tzbua]

44 TPE and 128 million against 7 TPE and known acquaintances who even counts these things.

To be honest, I don't really see the removal of this stuff as a punishment. To me, it's like robbing a grocery store, returning the goods because you got caught, and the staff saying "returning the stolen goods was punishment enough". He wouldn't have had this stuff to begin with if he didn't cheat, so it's not like an actual loss in the end, at least in my opinion.

At this point I'm reacting to most decisions in this league (either direction) with a shrug.

[Net]

rip bozo

[AdamS]

The punishment feels virtually nonexistent.

Remove the TPE that was stolen, a tiny fine made even smaller by existing pay. No job punishment. No time out of any kind.

No accountability for league management.

I've worked hard not to criticize league management these last few months but holy fuck gang.

I'm getting a vasectomy this year. I'm not using my balls and I will nvite HO to borrow them for big decisions.

[Swanty]

Good morning friends,

I'm going to try and address the questions that have been brought up here from a personal perspective, but please let me know if there's something we haven't yet responded to or that you'd like addressed. I know we might seem like a faceless organisation but we're individual users of the league just like you, trying to do the right thing for everyone, so I'll try and answer your questions as best as I can.

blatantly cheating should be a ban

A ban/suspension wasn't really considered as part of a potential punishment as we saw nothing malicious about this, it was his first punishment and there was nothing that would negatively affect other users or teams. You could argue that the extra 15-20 TPE or so helped his team at the expense of others but I don't think anyone's league experience was negatively affected by him doing it.

Noble was suspended for 2 weeks for modifying claim threads and covering his tracks to gain 73 TPE, but it was his second offense. All other instances of cheating haven't had suspensions attached. If Faded had a previous punishment and clearly hadn't learned from the last time, then yes a suspension would have been on the cards.

However, it's since come to light that some of his casino winnings came from a user bet where he likely knew that he was guaranteed to win. I definitely consider cheating someone out of their own money a step above everything else so far, so I would support additional action.

I wonder if a suspension would've been better in that the reaction would've been lessened, and Faded would have some time to cool off. People have done some pretty bad stuff which has been largely forgotten about after they've returned from a suspension.

Who knows, though the way it's played out wasn't something we ever expected. Faded was vehemently denying everything even after being informed of the impending punishment and had drummed up support among some users that HO were going after him, so if anything, I expected a stout defense from him and his supporters questioning how we could punish someone without any hard evidence. No doubt there would have been a subset of other users that sided with him if there was even a sliver of doubt. The admission of guilt immediately afterwards was unexpected and has changed the narrative completely.

It's been a little demoralising to me personally to see people who were on the heck HO train for going after Faded now saying the same thing for not suspending him.

Beyond what people have already said regarding this warranting a ban, I think the lesson here is we should buckle down on making sure people have permissions/access taken away in a timely manner when stepping down from a job. With how many people I hear about still having access literal months after resigning from their positions, the most shocking thing here to me is that this didn't happen sooner.

Agreed 100%. We're taking steps to make sure that relevant access/permissions are taken away as soon as possible when someone leaves a role, whether that's under our jurisdiction or others, as well as setting up periodic checks on things like YouTube to make sure no one has access that shouldn't.

For all you department heads and GMs, please use the 'Job Changes' channel in the Management Discord server when someone leaves a post going forward!

The fine is pretty much negligible.

Fine amounts are a weird one (both in the ISFL and in real life). For some they're extremely punishing and therefore effective, for others they're a drop in the ocean and aren't a deterrent in the slightest. I would be open to exploring modifying fines to be more along the lines of '$7M or 50% of the user's bank balance, whichever is larger' to make it a better deterrent for all. But will have to see how the rest of HO feel about that one (feel free to share if you have opinions on that or an alternative that works better!).

Can we talk about the fact that HO took the 44 tpe away, and then linked to punishments in which the tpe removed was double what the person in question illegally obtained? I know it doesn't matter now since he retired and all, but he really should've lost 88 tpe at the minimum if HO was trying to keep the precedence of losing double the amount of tpe. Doesn't really matter now since he retired though

88 was definitely on the table. I personally voted for 44 for a few reasons. One being that even though we knew it was virtually certain that he cheated overall, we could not be certain that he cheated in each one of the 11 instances.

The other reason, and the thing that makes this one different from the other cheating punishments, was that there was no actual smoking gun evidence. I understand the sentiment that we as HO should 'borrow some balls' as Adam so eloquently put it (btw Adam, there are those in HO with big balls already who were vocally supporting 88, so we don't need a full set ty), but I personally was conscious of how this unprecedented punishment would be received, especially as we were expecting a bitter reaction from Faded, his supporters and from those who would question how we could levy such a harsh punishment to someone with no hard evidence. But as I said earlier, things look very different now that Faded immediately heel-turned and admitted it.

To be honest, I don't really see the removal of this stuff as a punishment. To me, it's like robbing a grocery store, returning the goods because you got caught, and the staff saying "returning the stolen goods was punishment enough". He wouldn't have had this stuff to begin with if he didn't cheat, so it's not like an actual loss in the end, at least in my opinion.

I don't see it like he's just been told to put the stuff back on the shelf with no repurcussions. I see it as someone saying 'Here Faded, have 2-3 free TPE', and he went out of his way to steal 4 instead. Now that he's been caught, he's not getting the original 2-3 TPE that everyone else got. He's now permanently missed out on 11 weeks worth of predictions that he'll never be able to get again in this player's career. If he'd done them normally, he'd be around 25-30 TPE better off than he was before retiring.

The one thing I want to add, is that since HO operates off of precedent, does this mean we can expect cheating of this level this to never result in a suspension, or is this something that'll be case by case? And if so, can we get an explanation on where the bar is for that at some point? Just seems like there's more in favor of attempting to cheat than there is against cheating at this point

I think other members of HO might feel differently about this but my personal thinking is that if whatever the offense is, if it's not malicious, not trying to hurt anyone, not negatively affected someone else's experience in the league and is their first offense, then I wouldn't support a site suspension. Maybe that's too simplistic to work for all punishments but it feels right to me. As for precedent, applying it is a tough one as things change and details are different. We will try to point to other cases to justify why a certain level of punishment is appropriate, but we won't hesitate to deviate from it if there are differences in the exact nature of the case, which there almost always is.

---

Let me know if you have a question about anything else and I or someone else will try and address them as they come in! But please be gentle, I'm a sensitive soul probably in the wrong line of work.

[Pat]

The punishment feels virtually nonexistent.

Remove the TPE that was stolen, a tiny fine made even smaller by existing pay. No job punishment. No time out of any kind.

No accountability for league management.

I've worked hard not to criticize league management these last few months but holy fuck gang.

I'm getting a vasectomy this year. I'm not using my balls and I will nvite HO to borrow them for big decisions.

No accountability for league management? Elaborate on that one please. The kid got removed immediately from HO, a position he's held for a number of seasons now. What else would you have done? Fine all the other HO members for... What? Not catching this sooner?

Yes, people messed up by not removing his permissions. Things fall through the cracks. It happens. It's life. 

What would you have done in this situation? Completely nuke Faded from the league as well as dismantle the entire stream and sim teams for their oversight? Shit, might as well blow up the entire PT team and the casino for not catching suspicious behavior sooner, too.

[Memento Mori]

@Swanty First, thanks for responding to many of the points made.

A ban/suspension wasn't really considered as part of a potential punishment as we saw nothing malicious about this, it was his first punishment and there was nothing that would negatively affect other users or teams.

This is mindboggling to me. Cheating is always malicious. Everyone loses when they play with or against a cheat. It cheapens the game for all those involved. Faded's teammates were among those advocating for a bigger punishment, as was someone who (I think?) gets on really well with him. As you know, in punishments where there are any shades of grey, people usually jump to the defence of their friends/teammates. Given how heavy-handed one famous recent punishment was, this looks incredibly tame and as others have pointed out, the precedent in cheating cases has been a larger punishment. Plus as you mention later, he did cheat another user out of their money.

Noble was suspended for 2 weeks for modifying claim threads and covering his tracks to gain 73 TPE, but it was his second offense. All other instances of cheating haven't had suspensions attached. If Faded had a previous punishment and clearly hadn't learned from the last time, then yes a suspension would have been on the cards.

However, it's since come to light that some of his casino winnings came from a user bet where he likely knew that he was guaranteed to win. I definitely consider cheating someone out of their own money a step above everything else so far, so I would support additional action.

I think what Faded did was at least as bad as what Noble did, personally I think it was much worse. Noble abused his powers to cheat his way to 73 TPE and Faded 'only' did the same for 44 TPE, but the 128m that Faded cheated his way to from the casino/user bets is enough to fund max earning for about six seasons. He'd still be spending this money on training and equipment on his next player. It's an insane amount of money. I wrote 40,000 words of media in my first few months on the site, and I have never had close to that amount of money in my league account.

When you do something like this, I don't think it matters whether or not it's your first offence.

Who knows, though the way it's played out wasn't something we ever expected. Faded was vehemently denying everything even after being informed of the impending punishment and had drummed up support among some users that HO were going after him, so if anything, I expected a stout defense from him and his supporters questioning how we could punish someone without any hard evidence. No doubt there would have been a subset of other users that sided with him if there was even a sliver of doubt. The admission of guilt immediately afterwards was unexpected and has changed the narrative completely.

This isn't true. This punishment was posted at 5:52pm in the superior timezone, and Faded admitted it in his retirement thread at 6:26pm. All the replies in the thread for the first 34 minutes were prior to Faded's admission. In those first 34 minutes (among the jokes and memes), we had people calling for a suspension, a ban, people calling the punishment "very light", another person calling for a ban, an "I can't believe there wasn't at least a short ban" and one person saying that it wasn't 100% definitive. Numbers' post pointing out that this was a light punishment compared with the most similar previous case (Noble's) came 2 minutes after the retirement post and 1 minute after Faded linked it, so was probably before seeing it.

The admission of guilt did not change the narrative. The overwhelming response was already that this punishment was very lenient.

Fine amounts are a weird one (both in the ISFL and in real life). For some they're extremely punishing and therefore effective, for others they're a drop in the ocean and aren't a deterrent in the slightest. I would be open to exploring modifying fines to be more along the lines of '$7M or 50% of the user's bank balance, whichever is larger' to make it a better deterrent for all. But will have to see how the rest of HO feel about that one (feel free to share if you have opinions on that or an alternative that works better!).

I don't see it like he's just been told to put the stuff back on the shelf with no repurcussions. I see it as someone saying 'Here Faded, have 2-3 free TPE', and he went out of his way to steal 4 instead. Now that he's been caught, he's not getting the original 2-3 TPE that everyone else got. He's now permanently missed out on 11 weeks worth of predictions that he'll never be able to get again in this player's career. If he'd done them normally, he'd be around 25-30 TPE better off than he was before retiring.

I've grouped these two together as they address a similar point.

Taking into account his casino "winnings", he cheated his way to 128m worth of casino winnings and 44 TPE, the result of which was the removal of 135m and 44 TPE. I asked spreadsheet man what the average predictions score was last night, and if Faded had performed averagely in the weeks where he made his predictions after the video was uploaded, he would've earned 30.352 TPE.

So he's 7m and 30 TPE worse off compared with not cheating.

Let's say tomorrow I phish the Youtube password from someone and start doing the same thing for the same amount of time. I'll assume I don't earn any other TPE for simplicity's sake.

Scenario A: I cheat, and don't get caught. I now have 178m and 1390 TPE.
Scenario B: I cheat, and get caught: I now have 43m and 1346 TPE.
Scenario C: I don't cheat. I have 50m and 1376 TPE.

Do you really think that's a deterrent?

88 was definitely on the table. I personally voted for 44 for a few reasons. One being that even though we knew it was virtually certain that he cheated overall, we could not be certain that he cheated in each one of the 11 instances.

This is a big part of why cheating is so awful. It stops you being able to trust the things in front of you. I don't envy you having to go through this evidence. But this is why you have to punish cheating harshly.

If you're considering cheating, you can probably live with losing your ill-gotten gains. They weren't yours in the first place. That's why cheaters in video games keep making new accounts and continue to cheat. Having something you didn't earn in the first place get taken away isn't a punishment. But the idea you might lose something that you actually earned, because it was impossible to distinguish between the times you cheated and the times you didn't? That's a deterrent.

I want to thank you and @DarknessRising for continuing to engage with the community in these situations, I (and many others) think it's really valuable. But the cycle we seem to find ourselves in recently is that HO makes an unpopular decision, we express our frustration to the two of you, are told that this will be a learning experience and then HO makes an unpopular decision and we do it again. The same 'we didn't expect this reaction' was the response after Kya was removed from her post, and HO has badly misread the community again here. You (as a group) need to get better at understanding the community you represent.

Honestly, I think Faded retiring his player kinda bailed you out here, as the only further punishment left is a site suspension to delay him coming back and recreating (if he even wants to) or issuing him a further fine/job restrictions to put him at more of a disadvantage if he does come back. Him apologising/criticising himself (rightly) garnered some sympathy and stopped the reaction becoming more vitriolic.

[Swanty]

@Memento Mori Re points 1, 2 and 4, you mentioned the 128M in your responses, but my post was me explaining my thinking behind the original punishment, before the casino stuff came out last night. I've already said that I support further action for that.