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Recently we've been seeing a lot of concerns raised by users when staff take official actions with users, and of course with some recent bans the worries have resurfaced and have reached us. First and foremost I would like to stress that we only ever take steps such as these when there is ample onsite evidence that actions that breech our Terms of Service have occurred.
In this instance it has regarded the "USD Sales of Designs By Artists" section of the ToS, which reads as follows:
"This section governs the sale of derivative works (artworks incorporating official Aywas pet bases, SCC pets that have been submitted already, and HA avatar artwork). Players may only accept USD for their derivative artworks through the Commissions Platform or through the use of Artist Paintbrushes. Players are forbidden from negotiating or selling derivative artworks through any other means, or in any other location. This means that players may only receive USD direct to their PayPal account when in connection with a Commissions Platform official request, or when an administrator redeems a Paintbrush for them."
This was written into the ToS in June of last year when the feature was released, and a news post was made to make everyone aware. There is also a knowledgebase article which was linked in the news post and is linked on the Commissions Panel page, to ensure that the knowledge of this was clearly and easily accessible.
Previous to this all USD sales of derivative works were disallowed by the ToS, except through Paintbrushes when they were initialised. As such any purposeful circumvention is a permanently bannable offence.
The fee that the commissions platform takes is not to punish the artist, but a licence for them to profit from the use of our copyrighted materials. These fees also allow us to continue building and repairing the site, as well as support the many artists that work as contractors for us in the breeding and custom ticket systems.
No one on staff takes banning a user lightly, and none of us take any joy from it - it is simply a necessary part of the work we do to continue maintaining the website. As always, as long as you have read and abide by the ToS then you are not in any danger - and if you are ever in doubt about something you want to do, or something someone has asked you to do for them, then please contact a member of staff. We are here to help you and always happy to do so =)
Posted by Eve
(#2775) on Mon Apr 4, 2016 4:49pm
- Kyu & Mauri
(#1010)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:42pm
mriz & tini & pay (#109) - I personally do not know what God (#4) is talking about, nor do I see any record of such an infraction. As I do not know what staff member contacted God, or even when this supposedly was, or what it was even about, I have no way to respond to your question. If God has concerns he can certainly contact any of us with information and we can see what happened.
- 3 Dumb Sloths
(#557)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:44pm
You guys understand why people are upset though, right? Even this news post doesn't feel like it explains anything. Besides simply being told "we won't tell you specifics" and expecting everyone to have faith that the staff knows what they're doing despite past incidents saying the opposite.
Like you say off-site chat logs have never and will never be used against users, yet we know otherwise;
"I'm curious how https://god4.tumblr.com/post/142258840674/zephkin-aywas-skype-cannot-be-used-as-a-means falls in with the chat logs have never been and will never will be used against users?"
There's a very real air of distrust towards staff based on staff behaviour, historically, and these posts that essentially say "we're right but you cannot come to your own conclusion about this because we won't tell you anything" feels really dismissive, especially right after a big deal was made about transparency.
We're all aware about how it could be seen as a breach of privacy, but the site already has a public forum that lists exactly who is banned and what for and has had to make news posts like this, so it feels very one-sided.
At this point, with how much the users do not trust staff and are upset about how aywas is being run now would be the time to bite the bullet and provide these things. With names and emails removed/blacked out of course.
~UK
- Kyu & Mauri
(#1010)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:52pm
3 Dumb Sloths (#557) - I suspect we probably were writing our comments at the same time, but I responded to the tumblr link in my comment right before yours.
Mythic (#69505) - Any breech of the ToS holds the possibility of being banned, and the only factor in how long that is depends on the severeity of the situation. There are many situations where there are no funds involved that can result in the permanent exclusion of a user.
- bd84
(#2783)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:52pm
Aywas should not cater to people who tried to bend the rules to their favor and got caught. That's shady as heck.
They shouldn't need to make things right after the fact either. They shouldn't have done it in the first place. :/
That's like the whole user error things that don't get refunded on site. You do something, it's your responsibility to make sure you're doing the right thing the right way or you face the consequences.
- Moved to 1599
(#18420)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:53pm
This has been blown out of proportion. The only people that should be concerned with the bans themselves are the banned people and Aywas staff trained to handle this situation. Waving around a link to a post where there is no evidence of the original screen shot used or the people discussing is besides the user in question is only making it worse.
- litwick
(#7410)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:55pm
I hope you guys are enjoying that power trip of yours up in StaffLand while it lasts, because at this rate I think there won't be an aywas staff or an aywas at all.
Nothing that I have to say hasn't already been said, so I'll leave the complaints to my betters who have worded it far more patiently than I would. Instead I'll just say this:
Do you think the users are happy? Do you think the site is fun to play like this? Do you think people want to stick around if this is how the staff is going to treat some of the biggest moneymakers for the site? And if people DON'T want to stick around - and you'd have to be blind not to notice how fed up people are getting with everything to do with this site - then how is this place going to stay afloat?
Like, sure, rules gotta be enforced TOS is basically scripture yadda yadda...but aywas is, first and foremost, supposed to be a game for the USERS, not the staff, and if the users aren't having any fun...
Well.
Strange as it may be for any of you to hear this, I did used to like playing aywas. It was fun. Making customs was fun. Coloring and collecting PSDs was fun.
But now customs are slow. Breeding is slow. Some of the best artists on the site have either been kicked off or left of their own volition. Staff is insufferable, opaque, and - in many cases - liars.
So staff, let me ask you. Are you staff because you want to make a fun game for the users to play?
Or are you just staff because you like the power you get over the users?
One of those answers is the correct reason for being on staff, but I genuinely fear it's not the one you can truthfully give.
Whatever. If anyone needs me, I'll be living it up on a different petsite. As far as I can tell this place is a sinking ship and I'd rather not go down with it.
- New Management
(#47359)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:58pm
Pardon me, Eve (#2775), but there are some mistakes in your post.
First paragraph, end of the second sentence, "breech" should be "breach".
This American-based site should also be kept relatively standard in its spelling of words, especially on official front page news notices, so "licence" in the first sentence of the sixth paragraph should be "license", and "initialised" and "offence" in the fifth paragraph should be "initialized" and "offense" respectively. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I also believe that "USD direct" in the quoted passage from the ToS should be "USD directly".
In addition, the usage of a smiley face, or "emote", at the end of your official bulletin may come off to some users as dismissive of the importance of the issue or somewhat childish in its presentation. Aywas is a business, and it would definitely aid site morale if the administrators of this business could conduct themselves professionally both on a personal level and a site-wide level.
- Dar & Zel
(#43)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 6:00pm
This kind of 'ban-happy' behavior is what drove hoards of people away from Wajas at one point in the past. And it's well on it's way to driving hoards of people away from Aywas, as well. (aywas has the strong mistrust of staff helping to further drive a wedge between players and site, so y'know).
I honestly don't feel comfortable investing a lot of time and effort on aywas anymore. I'm so worried that I'm going to violate some unspoken/unwritten/vaguely worded rules and get myself banned despite not having any priors on my account.
As much as I love aywas, it's not what it used to be. And, this may just be me reading into things, but staff seems much more distanced and clique-ish than they were in the beginning, and it just doesn't feel like a safe place anymore. If it wasn't for having a lair-partner and many good friends here, I would have left a while ago.
With the way the site is being run by seemingly just a handful of people and user concerns trying to be brushed aside and/or written off, it's starting to feel like we don't matter anymore aside from being the cash cows keeping the site afloat. Breedings take a long time, customs take a long time (though these both have seen some recent improvements). Even with team pertinent questions, messages to breeding admins have gone ignored for in excess of a week. Almost everything in the 'staff speaks' thread is answered with 'we're not doing it' or 'low priority' and it's getting to where it feels like nothing is considered important enough to worry about beyond the eventual pipe-dream of an adventure reworking.
The slashbot thing was handed over a few months ago, but there's still nothing to show for it. Though I've heard whispers that something is coming up this month. But I'm not sure if it'll be enough. Events all but stopped for SO LONG (literal years) that there's probably a -lot- of players who have permanently left and would come back. And finally getting new events isn't going to bring them back, so who knows if there will be enough of an activity increase.
IDK. I've been here since night one. I used to have a lot of fun and feel valued and important. But not so much anymore.
And it's not all staff fault, the community in general has gotten pretty hostile over the years, but it all culminates in a feeling of the site almost not being worth staying around for.
(sorry this got so long)
- Honey
(#25910)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 6:02pm
If you don't want to get banned, don't break the rules.
It isn't the responsibility of the Aywas staff to explain themselves or be thrust into the limelight for doing their job. If you break TOS, you are BREAKING THE LAW. The people who get banned are lucky that all that is happening is a ban, because if Ayways wanted to take it further, they could.
Personally, I think a great deal of people here are acting like spoiled children and the staff do not deserve the shit that is being thrown at them, for doing their damned job. Its a position I don't envy!
Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 5:36pm
Mythic (#69505)
Obviously not an admin, but while the first user says that they did everything they were asked to avoid being banned, staff has written earlier in these comments that the user did not do everything exactly as they were asked, and the user has gotten an e-mail explaining this.
So from what I can tell, user says "I did it all, but still got banned", while staff say "they didn't do it all, and that's why they got banned".