Article link: Elderscrolls Forum Censorship

Does anyone else notice how the Elderscrolls Forums (now the Bethsoft Game Forums) have really really strict to the point of dumb censorship policies?

Consider the recent example of Morroblivion. Bethsoft's bored legal team decided they needed to do something to justify the obscene salary they no doubt get paid. So what do they do? "Well we can't stop pirates from pirating the game, but at least we can stop a website from hosting a tool that converts meshes. We are the warriors of justice and liberty!". So Morroblivion gets pulled from the internet.

The news hits the forums. Rather than allow the members to discuss the legality and purpoae of the tool amongest themselves what do the moderators (no doubt ordered by the administrators) do? They lock all threads discussing it and ban all discussion. What freaking purpose does this serve other than to show how out of touch with the community Bethesda is.

Do they really think that it is in the same category of something like digital porn (which I think is stupid by the way, grow up all of you who use it and get some real porn)? Is little 12 year old Jimmy going to go up to mummy and say "Mummy, why are the bad people talking about using a program to manually convert the nif files found in Morrowind so that they are able to be run using Oblivion?". Is mummy going to run and email Bethesda and demand to know why her son is being subjected to to such foul language like "illegal", "stealing", "converting nif files"? Of course not. I can understand pulling the tool, but to ban all discussion of it is just dumb and censorship to the point of nazismn.(There I waited to the end of the fourth paragraph to compare them).

Come to think of it why is 12 year old Jimmy on the Bethesda forums in the first place? He probably joined because he played Oblivion and wanted to talk about his favourite race or whatever. Then he discovered the mods forum (in my opinion the forum with the most intelligent posters). If he is playing Oblivion then I would hardly call him an innocent little kid. Killing, stealing, sexual innuendo, drugs, these are all found in Oblivion (especially the killing). Now maybe it is just because Bethesda is based in the USA and people in the USA have this crazy obsession with how sex and nakedness in a video game is bad but killing someone in a video game is perfectly fine (see GTA rerating from the teen to the adult rating only after it was revealed that were hidden files depicting lowly pixellated sex). Perhaps that is why little Jimmy is required to slaughter an entire family as part of the Dark Brotherhood, yet as soon as he sees someone say a naughty word on the forums he will turn into a no good drug dealer criminal.

Moving onto other topics, apparently discussion of banned members is banned. Why? Who knows. If they have a reason they certainly won't tell us. Probably because if discuss it then we'll find out that it was really for some minor issue or something and then we would all complain. So better to just ban all discussion of it. For example the modder qarl, I recently found out from another site that he was banned for making a post with nothing but the word 'spears' in it. And they banned him for that. Okaaaaay. But you wouldn't know that if you asked at the ESF. Why? Because discussion of banned members is banned. No but why is discus- I told you already that discussion of banned members is banned.

The Fallout 3 forum for opened about halfway through last year on the same page as the Elderscrolls Forums (which is why they became the Bethsoft Game Forums. For those of you not aware Fallout 3 is the 'sequel' to Fallout and Fallout 2, although calling it a sequel is a bit of a stretch since it doesn't have any of the same game mechanics. The game is clearly targetted at a more mature audience and there is a healthy amount of swearing in the game. Infact in the demo that a lot of 'game journalists' saw one of the characters was reported as saying "I'm going to effing end you" (the effing was the actual word but I can't write it here either...). Many previews reported this exact line so apparently they have no problems with it. In fact you can link to those same previews. Infact I could even make a post the forums 'compliling information' that just so happens to link to every single preview that has the swear word in it and the moderators wouldn't bat an eyelid. If however I was to link to a site like RPGCodex then the link would be edited out faster than you could click on it and I'd probably get a warning to boot for "linking to a site that contains swearing" (although we all know the real reason is because their review panned Oblivion). Anyway the point is that if there is more swearing in the game itself than is allowed on the forums then it just doesn't make any freaking sense.

"But what if some young kids from the Elderscrolls come to see what the fuss is about and see people swearing? Won't it turn them into drug dealers and criminals?" you might ask? Please actually read the forums and see how many people from Oblivion general are to be found in Fallout 3 General and then come back and say that.

That's all there is for now.

You should read this hilarious (in a bad way) thread for more moderator antics.


http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=812083

Personally I think, after some 200 odd posts on TESNexus and some relatively ambigious Bethsoft staff posts that gradually revealed exactly why the Morroblivion was not allowed, the community finally realised the reason. I agree that the situation can be handled better. Why say "We always said you can't take content from other games so you can't take it from Morrowind either" when the actual answer was much simpler to do and would have meant a lot less crap from everyone? We all know why you can't take content from other games due to copyright reasons, but many people didn't understand why exactly Morrowind fell under this as well. Simply put, if Pete or GStaff had said from the offset "the rule remains the same for Morrowind because of licensing issues, we don't own all the rights to all the work, etc. etc." then I'm sure the community would have been far more understanding from the offset. I know I would have been.

Perhaps with Fallout 3 Pete and Gstaff have better things to be doing that worrying about the ES community, that can often be quite outspoken (point taken with this article!) about some relatively minor things!



Indeed. Allow one thread for discussion and keep everything to one thread. Moderate it as necessary to reduce hate mail, etc.. I can understand not wanting an entire forum of "OMGWTF!!!111 Bethesda haet us!!11", but having an open discussion thread for mature discussion on the matter would not have hurt.



I'd recommend never using "nazi" in your blogs, it's eccentric and unnecessary. You'll find every government censors things (hello America, hello Britain, hello France, etc.), but perhaps some are better at it than others. It shows a lack of understanding from you if you call people nazi's just for keeping a firm grip on their forums.



Bethesda staff definately have better things to be doing than talking about people who have been banned for good reason. With one or two exceptions I don't leave strikes and bans open to discussion here; it's a waste of time.



If I told someone not to write "spears" in a post and they did it they'd get a strike. If they did it twice more they'd be banned. Rules of the forum and my perogative. Don't believe that that is all that happened.

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Just a few thoughts from a popular forum and site admin

The nazism thing was a joke about how that guy who said that the longer internet discussions went on the higher the chance of comparing someone to hitler. The part where I mentioned that I waited until the fourth paragraph was meant to tip the reader off to that.



But you can always allow people to ask why or demand for them to be unbanned even if it isn't going to happen. All you have to do is say "How about no". Discussing banned members is fun anyway, I'm sure you like to hear a bit of the gossip at your university eh Darkone?

At least I'm allowed to mention talking about banned members on this site. Talking about talking about banned members is also banned on the ESF .

Another example.



Clearly a joke, yet the moderator threatens a warning over it.

Well, if you ask me, they were going a bit soft on him. Everyone knows that only dragon statues can be ridden. Oh, and by the way:


I know why you aren't saying hello to China, and I take full responsibility for my actions. I am very truly and deeply sorry for getting you freedom freedom democracy 4 June 4 June democracy Wang Bingzhang freedom free Tibet Tiananmen Square Massacre democracy Mao sex tape democracy freedomed from China.

You all have very good and valid points, and by just browsing i found this article and was interested by reading it, Its a debate that to be honest, is always going to exist, whats right, whats wrong and so on, the point with the boy Jimmy playing this game is a valid point as i myself, just like everyone, even game creators, are going to know that somewhere some small child will be playing games with higher age ratings than they are, and content is always going to be availible to them.

This recent outbreak with Morroblivion for example, i am sure that out there some people downloaded Morroblivion, found out it was banned, yet kept it and are still running it with their oblivion, In my personal opinion (and i pray i have free speech here...) i dont see the massive fuss, yes it is taking content from one game to another, but you still have to own a copy of Morrowind, yes officially there are copyright issues and terms and so on, but unofficially i think many of us will think to ourselves that sometimes... this is just stupid! I actually only used it to convert a Morrowind mod to oblivion which worked, No harm done. infact the Morrowind landmass didnt even work, probably for the better though, but still it did improve my oblivion!

Sorry to witter i just wanted to state a few things.