* Very * alarming interventions over guild names in recent weeks

Gegensmith · July 19

I would not be posting this on the forums had something very alarming not happened TWICE now in the space of a week.

Last weekend, our long-standing LGBTQ+-friendly guild, Pacrooti's Hirelings (founded 2014 on PC-EU and 2015 on PC-NA, the longest-running guild of this kind on either server) experienced a forced name-change by ZoS. That was on Saturday.

The name was changed to "Ready Room". It upset and alarmed me and my members. I spent literally hours scouring my event logs and firewall logs to see if there was any evidence of having been hacked.

This is partly because when I logged into my support tickets, the message from ZoS was that guild names such as "Catzputin" were not allowed. There was no record of a ticket from me asking to change it to Catzputin. It made no sense whatsoever.

I eventually received a response on Monday that said "I apologize for the confusion. No disciplinary action will be taken against this account and your guild name will remain Pacrooti's Hirelings." However, the guild name was still not restored nor was any explanation offered as to why or how this had happened. They did offer a small number of crowns by way of compensation for the inconvenience.

I responded asking for an explanation and specifically mentioned the time I'd spent trying to ascertain whether my account was secure or not. I also asked them to ACTUALLY restore the guild's name, since that hadn't been done.

I got a response on Wednesday saying that they'd finally restored the guild's name (it had been changed for 5 days by then) and claiming that "Please note that, due to security concerns, we are unable to discuss the details of our investigations."

No reassurance that my account was secure. No explanation about what had happened. This was clearly a wholly inadequate response. I had written that "If it was human error, that is completely fine and understandable" and also that "I appreciate that you may not be able to share all details" but confirming that my account is secure, the guild is safe for my 500 members, and that we did not need to worry any further was the very least we could expect.

On Thursday evening I got this response: "After a careful examination of the account, we found no evidence that it had been compromised. The account was reported for using the name [Pacrooti's Hirelings]. The agent initially believed this name violated policy as it was using proprietary name character from Elder Scrolls Online and issued an educational warning; however, the incorrect name was included in the standard message by mistake. During the appeal process, it was determined that the agent mistakenly referenced the wrong name. Upon further review, it was concluded that the reported name did not constitute a violation."

Now, that IS the kind of response that was needed with the first message.

HOWEVER, this evening I received a flurry of worried messages on discord from guild-members and, logging into PC-NA have discovered that our guild-name has been changed AGAIN!?!

It now appears as "Echoes of Valhalla". This is literally just after having received a support mail from ZoS confirming that the name we have had for a decade is OF COURSE completely fine.

It is also the same day I had launched a new fundraising process for the guild to support our trader, which this has disrupted significantly. Several members had already left the guild before I was able to send out a GodSend ingame mail to reassure everyone.

Furthermore and MOST WORRYINGLY:

These events have another important context. Another long-standing LGBTQ+ guild on PC EU was recently subjected to a forced name-change. That, after some time, was eventually restored to its original name.

Within the space of one week, our guild has been subjected to a forced name-change TWICE, and it just so happens that on BOTH the days (and ONLY on those days), I had spent a little time in zone-chat advertising us as the "longest-standing LGBTQ+-friendly guild on PC" (to top our membership back up to 500).

The first was on a Saturday when an immediate customer service response is unlikely. The second is now on a Friday evening that has similar problems.

There are of course several possibilities as to how this has happened.

ZoS has some new staff dealing with guild-name reports that need better training. OR, these reports are being handled by some form of AI that, again, needs better training. OR, and as it is beginning to look more likely, LGBTQ+-friendly guilds are being subjected to a campaign of malign reporting by bad actors in the game.

That is why I am tagging @Zos__Kevin, @Zos_Bill, @Zos_GinaBruno, (those are the ones I know to tag, please add any others) in the hope (1) that this ridiculous situation is resolved speedily with the minimum of disruption to my guild and its members and (2) that ZoS look into this -- at the VERY LEAST -- surprising coincidence of forced name-changes being imposed on LGBTQ+-friendly guilds in-game.

argyro · July 19

Can confirm that the name appears differently than Pacrooti's Hirelings

baratron · July 19

This is really alarming. Your Guild name shouldn't be changed without your knowledge and consent unless it actually violates ToS in some way. Did it get changed on PC-EU, PC-NA, or both?

I don't know what to say but I hope our wonderful Community Managers can liaise with Customer Support on your behalf and figure out what is going on.

Gegensmith · July 19

Thank you. No, the odd thing is that it's only been on NA. PC-EU has been unaffected.

This suggests that it's not an AI-bot automating these things, since EU would have been picked up.

I am also struck that the same day the two name changes were effected were the same days I'd been recruiting in zone-chat.

That, to me, suggests a targeted campaign.

I AM confused as to why whoever responded to the malign reporting ACTED on it, given the reassurance that no ToS violation had taken place given only days before.

ArchMikem · July 19

The agent initially believed this name violated policy as it was using proprietary name character from Elder Scrolls Online and issued an educational warning;

You cant name a Guild after a Character in the game?

Gegensmith · July 19

You can. ZoS had already confirmed that our decade-long name, Pacrooti's Hirelings, is completely fine.

Which is why it having been changed today seems so very suspicious.

xencthlu · July 19

This is horrible. It looks on the face of it plain bigoted bullying. It might not be relevant, but I've noticed that CS seems to have difficulties with LGBTQ+ issues overall. I reported someone in zone chat for calling a Pacrooti's Hirelings recruiter mentally ill for being gay, and I was told by CS this didn't violate any policies. It gave me pause at the time, but I left it alone. Now, with this, I wonder if there's a larger cultural problem in the CS department.

Destai · July 19

I’m not sure why there’s such an imperative to enforce these kinds of things. If it’s such a big deal, why not have some kind of validation system in the naming itself? Seems like that would cut down on so much drama.

Gegensmith · July 19

Xencthlu, that would have been me (the recruiter). Of course, when I'm running auto-recruit, I only see any zone-chat responses if I don't move on to the next zone immediately. What I would offer is that when I have seen homophobic and transphobic responses, I've screenshotted them and reported the players, and have received a did violate ToS message. If you happen to have any screenshots, please do drop me a discord dm and I'd like to look into it.

Recruiting for an lgbtq+-friendly guild does garner such responses sometimes. "We need an lgbtq+ holocaust" in grahtwood, one time, for example. These things are ToS violations (and, in my country at least, illegal) and should be acted on.

It is possible that this spate of malicious guild-name reports are a more subtle strategy deployed by bad actors in-game.

katanagirl1 · July 19

My guild had its name changed a few years ago, despite being around since the start of the game, I think. I don’t know if someone reported us or ZOS decided it was not an appropriate name. We all logged in one day and saw it was changed to something laughable like Friendly Rabbit, lol.

There wasn’t any harassment involved, though.

16BitForestCat · July 19

In other online services I've used, if it seems like someone is reporting in bad faith, they're the ones who get suspended/banned. I hope ZOS customer support actually follows the patterns of what's going on and punishes the bad actors if that appears to be the case here.

The timing really IS heckin' suspicious. LGBTQ+ communities everywhere tend to see a spike in hate during and following Pride Month. This weird false reporting/name changing happening both times after you do in-game recruiting would be enough to make me take action against the reporter, speaking as a non-ESO mod (after reviewing all the data for myself, of course).

Also...aren't there already guilds in ESO PC/NA called Ready Room and Echoes of Valhalla? Ready Room I know exists, or at least has existed. I have definitely encountered Echoes of Valhalla somewhere before, though dunno if it might've been PC/EU instead. I didn't think there could be duplicate guild names. If these are dupes, what the heck are CS people even doing, if they're not checking whether a name is taken before force-applying it to another guild? Any why are these the names being applied? They have nothing to do with ESO. It seems like something a person filing a name change request would have to ask for, not something CS would have on a list of "names to use in forced changes."

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · July 19

Nobody at any company should be allowed to change Production data, unless

1) proper JIT elevation is in place (permissions granted only as needed)
2) a 2nd person observes the change as a witness and provides attestation that everything went as expected

This is basic security and privileged access management. So what is going on with ZOS Customer Service?

Koshka · July 19

I fail to understand what's wrong with that name. There's tons of guilds referring TES characters, deities and factions.
Seems to me that you guys were a target of report spam or something.

LunaFlora · July 19

that's awful and i hope it gets fixed soon

Djennku · July 19

That's odd, because the name obviously says "Pacrooti's Hirelings" not "Catsputin", and any human can look at it and tell immediately.

Also, like others have said, I know both of those names exist as guilds already, so it's confusing why the forced name change picked them.

If, and this is an if, because I have no clue what the whole story is, this has happened as you are describing and your story is completely true and honest, you need to contact the higher ups at ZoS with all the details, email/in game screenshots, etc., because there may be something more serious going on. If there is a bigger issue, I can tell you it is unrelated to the LGB aspects.

Sarannah · July 19

I'm actually more worried about the type of players who report silly things like this. Wasting the dev's, customer service's, and player's time for no reason.

Koshka · July 19

Sarannah wrote: »

I'm actually more worried about the type of players who report silly things like this. Wasting the dev's, customer service's, and player's time for no reason.

Yeah, I think that people should be penalized for fake mass reporting. Report system should not be a tool of griefing.

emilyhyoyeon · July 19

xencthlu wrote: »

This is horrible. It looks on the face of it plain bigoted bullying. It might not be relevant, but I've noticed that CS seems to have difficulties with LGBTQ+ issues overall. I reported someone in zone chat for calling a Pacrooti's Hirelings recruiter mentally ill for being gay, and I was told by CS this didn't violate any policies. It gave me pause at the time, but I left it alone. Now, with this, I wonder if there's a larger cultural problem in the CS department.

I saw someone maybe like 6 or so months ago with a character clearly designed around being a mockery/caricature of a trans person, including in name. I reported their character name, and CS responded that TOS had not been violated.

SerafinaWaterstar · July 19

This is awful for you & hope is sorted soon!

Find it odd from CS though as when I wanted to change my guild’s name, it was quite a palaver, had to send in 3 different choices etc. Can’t remember if it said could only be GM doing it, but that would make sense, so not sure why that wasn’t checked for you?

(Does sound like malicious intent by a player in my opinion - which is sadly pathetic.)

Tazzy · July 19

Sarannah wrote: »

I'm actually more worried about the type of players who report silly things like this. Wasting the dev's, customer service's, and player's time for no reason.

when I look at the events in the real world over the last few months, i'm not surprised that more and more intolerant people are crawling out of their holes and trying to impose their abstruse values in the gaming world as well....

Vaqual · July 19

A friend of mine once got his name reported in LotRo and a GM changed it by himself. The name was so hilariously bad and out of character for the guy that he decided to keep it as running gag. Hearing stories like this, I just imagine bored CS workers sitting at their desk, just trying to convince themselves of the validity of any report so they get something to do during slow hours.

NeuroticPixels · July 19

I’m just waiting for a troll to see this thread, make a new guild with the name Pacrooti’s Hirelings, and then customer service tell the original owners of the name that they can’t change it back because it’s already in use. 😬

thejadefalcon · July 19

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

xencthlu wrote: »

This is horrible. It looks on the face of it plain bigoted bullying. It might not be relevant, but I've noticed that CS seems to have difficulties with LGBTQ+ issues overall. I reported someone in zone chat for calling a Pacrooti's Hirelings recruiter mentally ill for being gay, and I was told by CS this didn't violate any policies. It gave me pause at the time, but I left it alone. Now, with this, I wonder if there's a larger cultural problem in the CS department.

I saw someone maybe like 6 or so months ago with a character clearly designed around being a mockery/caricature of a trans person, including in name. I reported their character name, and CS responded that TOS had not been violated.

Customer support is consistently terrible at handling hate speech. I know you like to claim it, @ZOS_Kevin, and you can say all you like that reports aren't handled by AI, but I'm sorry, very few people believe you. And if they do believe you, you understand how that makes ZOS look worse, right? It means customer support will see people in full *** outfits, spewing hatred at an in-game pride event and customer service tells multiple people in less than an hour that that's no violation, despite screenshot and video evidence, then takes around a week for someone to look at it again and realise, oh, wait, the *** are bad, actually. If it's not AI, that is a horrifying level of incompetence regarding hate speech concerns. Combined with the issues both my PC EU guild and Gegensmith have been having with forced name changes for being LGBTQ+ friendly, serious effort needs to be put into re-evaluating how customer service handles these things. Surely the agent should have seen that the name had been appealed successfully within the month and skipped over the report?

Edit: HA! So the three identical letter hate group are censored on the forums at least.

Malyore · July 19

Retagging @ZOS_Kevin as this does seem to be a pretty alarming situation that would best have a public response.

Gegensmith · July 19

I would like to hear from ZoS an explanation as to:

1) WHY there are no procedures in place that pause for thought when responding to a report addressed to an LGBTQ+-friendly guild that demands a name-change? The filing of a report should not AUTOMATICALLY lead to a name-change.

2) WHY the agent who made the second forced name-change did not see that the guild had been subjected to the same treatment within the last week and that there was already a support ticket confirming that the decade-long name was perfectly fine and appropriate?

3) WHY the procedures are such that a guild's name that has remained the same for TEN YEARS ON TWO SERVERS is changed BEFORE any communication with the guild leader? That in itself seems wholly inappropriate.

4) WHAT SPECIFIC ACTIONS will be taken to ensure that this reporting process is NOT ABUSED AGAIN.

We have lost members as a direct result of this action. Reconciling our data exports for the guild bank and sales will be difficult as a result of this action. My members are alarmed and feel the game is not a friendly, welcoming place as a result of this action.

It took FIVE DAYS for our guild name to be restored from the first forced name-change last weekend. Our community needs to know that it will be protected from these kinds of actions and that ZoS is taking our concerns for the safety of the game for LGBTQ+ players seriously.

redspecter23 · July 19

As the guild leader of a guild that is actually called Ready Room, I'm rather upset that they would choose the name of an already existing guild to swap you into. Had this remained in place, would there have been two guilds with identical names? I can only imagine the issues that would cause.

In addition to all the concerns raised by the original poster, I'd like to have ZOS please check if the name they are forcing upon a guild is already in use. Thanks.

mrreow · July 19

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

I saw someone maybe like 6 or so months ago with a character clearly designed around being a mockery/caricature of a trans person, including in name. I reported their character name, and CS responded that TOS had not been violated.

Hmm I would like to see that because it does not sit well with me to punish anyone for character creator sliders. What was the name like? Something with transportation means using rails?

Jaimeh · July 19

The question is where did they get 'Catzputin' from? It's wildly different to 'Pacrooti's Hirelings'... I wonder if whoever did the reporting basically made a false claim, and then the claim was automatically processed without proper review, hence the kerfuffle. There's been quite a few threads with things like this have been happening in the past couple of years or so, I think players are losing trust in how ZOS manages situations that involve proper reviewing. I hope you can have your name restored and given an explanation as to why the second change happened, all this must have been so stressful to handle.

whitecrow · July 19

I'm struggling to see what being "LGBTQ" has to do with any of this. Situation is odd but could have happened to any guild.

Gegensmith · July 19

Jaimeh, they addressed how that name had been included in the original support template message (though this explanation only came after several back-and-forth messages that were vague and evasive): "however, the incorrect name was included in the standard message by mistake".

The point, as you say, is indeed that these actions appear to be made without proper review.

Even the most cursory review process ought to have identified that (1) we'd been subjected to this process only days before, (2) that there was a still-open support thread that explicitly said that the original name was completely fine, (3) that we'd had this name for more than a DECADE and, with 500 members, were a long-established guild in the game, and (4) that as a guild that advertises itself as LGBTQ+, we may be subjected to malicious reporting.

The reporting process as it currently exists is clearly able to be used by bad-faith actors in the game to harass LGBTQ+-friendly guilds. That is not acceptable.

I appreciate that ZoS needs to be able to change guilds names when they are offensive, harmful, or illegal. Those changes should be made without consultation.

HOWEVER, if you are dealing with a long-established guild with a significant membership and there is no immediate harm from the guild's name, it should not be changed without prior consultation with the guild leader (a support ticket and an in-game mail to alert the guild leader to its presence on the support site). We need a new procedure to be put in place to protect us from this kind of abuse from players hostile to our existence in-game. It appears that ZoS has become the unwitting instrument of homophobic/transphobic abuse and it needs to stop.

Gegensmith · July 19

Whitecrow, I believe I identified that in the original posting.

(1) another long-standing LGBTQ+-friendly guild was subjected to a similar process only one week before.

(2) we have now been subjected to it TWICE. On BOTH occasions, I had spent some time advertising the guild in zone-chat. Our advert reads "the longest-running LGBTQ+-friendly guild on PC". Those were the ONLY days in the past couple of weeks that I'd advertised. We have had the same name for a DECADE. That these malicious reports were made on the SAME days that I'd been advertising the guild is why I draw that conclusion.