Account warned for advertising guild in zone chat

Mathius_Mordred · July 29

Hi folks,

I am really confused, I have received an official warning on my account for advertising.

"This account is receiving an official warning due to violating the Code of Conduct. We cannot allow Advertising, as it is in direct violation of the following sections of our Code of Conduct

2.3 You may not harass, threaten, intentionally humiliate, “stream snipe”, “name and shame”, engage in acts of “griefing”, or cause distress to another user, guest, or ZeniMax staff member/teams using ZeniMax sites and Services. This includes but is not limited to verbal attacks (both text and voice chat), unwanted messaging, personal attacks, stalking or any other undesired behavior used to cause discomfort or disrupt another user’s experience. At all times users will refrain from attacking age, race, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, lifestyle, pregnancy, gender or any other personally identifying factors protected category under applicable law. You may at no time share or refer to personal information of another person, account name, persona or avatar using ZeniMax or its affiliates. We encourage you to share feedback, suggestion, and requests with us, but we expect all of our users to refrain from abusive and disruptive behavior or resorting to demands or threats. Threats of real-life violence, in particular, are something we take very seriously and do not tolerate.

We do not tolerate discussion that is created for the purpose of "naming-and-shaming" other users. "Naming-and-shaming" is the act of creating a discussion to call out an individual or group by name, and making them the subject of public accusation, ridicule and/or shaming.
2.8 You may not disrupt the flow of chat in chat rooms, message forums or games with abusive or vulgar language or disruptive behavior, multiple key returns or posting large images in an attempt to disturb other users on ZeniMax Services. Spamming, flooding [posting repetitive text], thread bumping, trolling, baiting and any other disruptive behavior will not be tolerated. Purposefully circumventing any profanity filter or otherwise cursing or using profanity is not permitted. Certain topics and subjects are deemed inappropriate and not permitted on ZeniMax Services. Things that we consider inappropriate are usually illegal, extremely volatile or violent, obscene, vulgar, or simply inappropriate for the ZeniMax Services and platform. Inappropriate content includes, but is not limited to discussion of extreme violence, illegal substances and activities, pirated copyright-protected material, pornography and other sexually explicit topics, real-world religion and politics, and other material deemed to be derogatory, vulgar or obscene.

Here is the advert I posted once in each zone once per day, as I have been doing and as every other guild does for years

07/26/25 06:58:43 PM - |H1:guild:544048|hSkyrim Red Shirts Everyone welcome. *FREE Ebonheart Trader*|h Unique Guild Village WITH FULL MASTER CRAFTING, Discord, Raffle, Advice, Competitions, Daily Events, twice weekly trials, Saturday Cyrodiil, ranking with prizes. UK-based, worldwide membership, Click link, DM or go to www.skyrimredshirts.co.uk

I have asked for clarification as to why I have received a warning, and are we now no longer allowed to advertise our guilds in zone chat?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin please can you shed some light on this issue as it will affect ALL guilds if we are no longer allowed to advertise in zone chat.

SeaGtGruff · July 29

The only thing I see that looks remotely questionable is the inclusion of a web address at the end of your ad text. Perhaps that is the part which is considered advertising?

Although, nothing in your text seems to have any relevance to the two sections of the CoC which were specifically cited.

Edit: Although maybe the fact that (as you say) you're posting it in each zone is also part of the issue?

Elsonso · July 29

Ultimately, I think this goes back to the training of the customer support staff that decided that this was an infraction.

I don't think they realized that this was an in-game Guild due to the external reference to the guild website. Maybe drop the external URL and just have it in the guild listing that is linked?

Mathius_Mordred · July 29

Weird that I've been using that listing for years and never had an issue. Also weird that the specific terms of service referenced have nothing to do with advertising. I think my safest course of action is to use my throw away account to advertise the guild. I think my account has a flag because I recently received a 72-hour forum ban for something I am not going to repeat for obvious reasons.

Liukke · July 29

Most of the customer support communication is through bots...I doubt they'll ever change their opinion, good luck

spartaxoxo · July 29

I would guess it's the combination of the name and the link. Someone not familiar with the joke probably thought y'all were really advertising red shirts.

I'd just leave the external site out of the message.

ssewallb14_ESO · July 29

Likely due to the URL.

Aylish · July 29

I guess it was an auto warning due to the website. This automation was likely integrated to find gold sellers who advertise their gold selling platform or other commercial websites.

Mathius_Mordred · July 29

Yes, I'm definitely going to remove the URL from the ad in zone chat. But what's next? Are they going to warn us if we put the URL in our MOTD or Guild Description? We need some ZOS feedback on this I think.

LootAllTheStuff · July 29

Maybe you could use your Discord invite link instead of the external website address? Although most of the guild advertising I see in zone chat on XB-NA doesn't even include that, so it might be better to leave it out entirely.

scrappy1342 · July 29

i would leave out the address. keep it in your guild description so they can see it when they click to apply. when i skim through that really quick without taking the time to read i see "free shirt" and a website address lol

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · July 29

Most likely this is the part you are breaching:

Spamming, flooding [posting repetitive text]

You mentioned that you post it in every zone, seems a little excessive.

Also you should try and avoid URLs as others have posted.

valenwood_vegan · July 29

Yeah like others have suggested, it's probably the web address. Unfortunately, that's often an indication of gold selling or other undesirable activity... and I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in a false positive and was flagged for review, and/or one or more folks just saw the web address and didn't read the rest and just reported it.

It's worth noting that there's a *very* pervasive gold selling group that spams messages with a very similar format, including an in-game link of some kind and then a url for their website (though they often disguise it now by adding spaces or gibberish characters).

Mathius_Mordred · July 29

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Most likely this is the part you are breaching:

Spamming, flooding [posting repetitive text]

You mentioned that you post it in every zone, seems a little excessive.

Also you should try and avoid URLs as others have posted.

There are addons that will post in each zone for you, although I don't use them.

Each zone chat is independent of the next, so in order to get your message over to the entire population currently online, you have to go to each zone. Every recruiter knows this. The question is how often you should do it. Many do it hourly, some more often, I do it daily or every other day, as we are at the top of the guild finder, so we get 5-10 people a day applying to join. But for new guilds, they have to spam it out everywhere in order to grow their guild. So I do not believe in this scenario that this was in any way spamming.

I believe that most people posting here are correct; the issue is with the website link. Why they quoted the wrong section of the ToS is unknown; it is probably just an error. Had they taken the time to read the ad and visit the website they'd have seen it was only an ad for a guild, there is no advertising on the website and I'm not selling anything, quite the contrary, I spend thousands per year on this game to pay for both ingame prizes, the trader and the website.

But as is often the case, those putting in the most effort to support the game and therefore the Dev's jobs, are unfairly targeted because somebody hasn't holistically read the complaint and seen what good this person is doing for the game, the community and ultimately their jobs.

SeaGtGruff · July 29

Yeah, I definitely think it's the web address, and certain content on the web page might be related to why they referenced rule 2.3 in their warning, so you might want to consider removing that content, or at the very least moving it off of the front page of your website.

Posting the ad in all zones might be related to why they referenced rule 2.8.

Mathius_Mordred · July 29

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Yeah, I definitely think it's the web address, and certain content on the web page might be related to why they referenced rule 2.3 in their warning, so you might want to consider removing that content, or at the very least moving it off of the front page of your website.

Posting the ad in all zones might be related to why they referenced rule 2.8.

Which content on the website, can you be specific?

DenverRalphy · July 29

Likely it's not the content of the site in question, but more that posting links in public chat allows for generating clicks for ad revenue. Regardless whether or not the url points to a site that benefits from clicks.

SeaGtGruff · July 29

Looks like it's been removed. It was pretty much dead center in the middle section, now everything that was in that section seems to have been replaced with a link to "latest news."

ZOS_Kevin · July 29

@Mathius_Mordred do you have a ticket number for this? If so, could you please provide it?

Mathius_Mordred · July 29

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@Mathius_Mordred do you have a ticket number for this? If so, could you please provide it?

Thanks Kevin

250729-000438

Mathius_Mordred · July 29

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Looks like it's been removed. It was pretty much dead center in the middle section, now everything that was in that section seems to have been replaced with a link to "latest news."

I took a look and saw what you were referring to so moved it, a long shot but you could be right, thanks for the heads up.

Desiato · July 29

I wish they'd come down on the guild that has members sitting at wayshrines autoinviting everyone with this vigor.

ZOS_Icy · July 29

Greetings,

This thread has been moved to the General Help section, as it is better suited there.

The Elder Scrolls Online Team