[Silek]

You can view the article at https://ufplanets.com/news.php?1387-...Banned-Account

[darthnovawave]

Interesting story. I had seen the headlines hit various news outlets, but this is the first I saw anything about the resolution.

As fun as it can be to bash Cryptic, I can see both sides of the argument here. The LTS unlocks a laundry list of perks for players, including exclusive ships, player races, items, etc. That's a lot of different subsystems within the game to try to "undo", and it is unclear how many of those exclusives the player may have made use of. We've all seen how even the most simple of fix requests can take forever for the small dev team STO has available. Coupled with a hostile threat of international litigation, giving back the money would be the easiest course of action to avoid that litigation, and locking down the account makes sense if they are otherwise unable to roll back the LTS unlocks. Retaining a lawyer is far more expensive than the price tag of a single LTS after all. It also is one of the worst possible choices that could have been made from a Customer Service angle, and in this case this Reddit post went viral and blew up in Cryptic's face.

Kael stepping in to make amends is good, but obviously a lot of people are going to doubt Cryptic even more going forward. That said, we only know what the Reddit poster is telling us about this story, so there may be pieces of the story we aren't seeing here, such as possible warning of the ban prior to it happening. The LTS sale page explicitly states "Subscription fees are non-refundable. We make no explicit or implicit warranties on the service period of the game.", so the expectation of a refund is an extraordinary action, and threats of "laywering up" suggest some degree of belligerence. I think there were probably faults on both sides of this story.

[deuZige]

I think that there are arguments for both sides of the issue here. I think that mattpoly made too much of an issue about a few shared bank slots but i also think that Cryptic went to far to fast banning a ten year old, life time, account. Both sides might have been less rigid in their communication towards eachother. The outcome, in my opinion, is the best mattpoly could ask for at this point, and both sides would be wise to let the issue rest from here on out.