Permissibility of Using Multiple Accounts

[Bray]

As has been part of the ToS since, as far as I know, ever.

Do you have the quote from the ToS handy?

It's not against the rules, and I don't think it ever has been. What's prohibited is having multiple accounts that you use to play against yourself to boost your ranking.

[tcarlaw]

On the other hand, there are many cases where no action is taken by BGA admins. For instance, I've noticed that it's a quite common (and some would say rather endearing) tradition in the Terra Mystica community for experienced players to create alternate accounts with humorous names to compete in each new arena season. I can think of a number of other very-popular games on BGA where two or more of the accounts with the ten highest ratings are widely-known to be operated by the same person. Again, these are not cases where the player is playing against themself, rather they are playing in rated games independently with more than one account.

This is problematic and a reflection of the failure of BGA to create an arena format where high ranked players are not punished for playing once they achieve a certain ranking. Creating multiple accounts allows users to sit atop the ranking and continue playing and defeating other similarly skilled players with a lower ranked account. If the site ensured top ranked players played each other regularly without being paired with much lower ranked players it would almost guarantee these multiple accounts would be paired against each other which would constitute cheating. Multiple family members from the same ip address can easily cheat and even without cheating they have an edge just from familiarity. ELO works well with games with a low level of chance. It could be tweaked by lowering the penalties when unlikely results occur which are a result of chance but as it stands once strong players develop a lead they are better off to park their account atop the rankings and create another account. There have been cases of extremely obvious cases of cheating where the perpetrator has been penalized but their victims are punished more harshly because BGA does not void their results with the players that have cheated and their entire season is sabotaged while the offender continues playing with dummy accouunts. It would be extremely easy with the way ELO works to cancel all results in an Arena season with a player that cheats which would encourage players to red-thumb cheating accounts. Instead of relying on reports of cheating BGA could review players with a large number of red-thumbs and see why players chose to red-thumb them. Possible reasons could be obvious cheating, suspected cheating, unpleasant chatting, slow play, etc... It could also allow players to provide anonymous feedback about their opponents and partners instead of the confrontational style chats you see regularly. For some card games there are reasonably good AIs that could be used for partnerships increasing the number of games available and ensuring people had access to good partners without cheating. The policy of not allowing people to change their profile names more than once is also of questionable value as people with poor reputations just create a new account and the people who would like to avoid them are left with a guessing game about who players are. It is not that difficult for BGA to correlate ip addresses with different accounts and combine that with red-thumbs to identify abusers. BGA faces the same challenge Twitter and other companies face where revenue is linked with the number of users and the cost of policing outweighs the benefits.

[N_Faker]

As has been part of the ToS since, as far as I know, ever.

Do you have the quote from the ToS handy?

https://boardgamearena.com/legal?section=tosv
• not to create several Accounts: the User undertakes to create only one Account corresponding to them. If BGA deletes a User's Account in the event of non-compliance with these Player G.T.S., the User undertakes not to create another Account without prior authorisation from BGA;

[RicardoRix]

There is this section too:

VIII. Fair Play
BGA will not tolerate any cheating and/or lack of fair play, whether through the use of cheating software, analysis of communication protocols or code, use of multiple Accounts, collusion with other Users, leaving the game before its normal end, use of game blocking tactics in order to force other Users to quit, or the use of obscene or foul language, etc.

Any User caught cheating or failing to meet their fair play obligations will receive a warning and then be subject to one of the following sanctions at the discretion of BGA:

◦ freezing of the Account,

◦ resetting of scores and rankings,

◦ suspension of Services,

◦ or even the outright deletion of their Account.

Violation by the User of the rules of conduct or the essential rules of fair play may have consequences for the User's reputation on the Player Site, under the terms and conditions specified in the Privacy Policy.

[N_Faker]

BGA has always had a reluctance in enforcing this though, to the point that it has become comparably common for high ranking users to create multiple accounts to then play ranked games again, some with the deliberate intent to reduce the rankings of their contenders with no risk to their 'main account'.

Not to mention the few users that create multiple accounts to psychologically and emotionally manipulate others.

Then there are also all the moderated users that immediately make a new account whenever they do get moderated with anything more than a karma penalty. Functionally making the whole moderation system moot, short of a permanent ban or ELO resets.

[Jellby]

There is this section too:

VIII. Fair Play
BGA will not tolerate any cheating and/or lack of fair play, whether through the use of cheating software, analysis of communication protocols or code, use of multiple Accounts, collusion with other Users, leaving the game before its normal end, use of game blocking tactics in order to force other Users to quit, or the use of obscene or foul language, etc.

But I read that as forbidding using multiple accounts for cheating or unfair play. Just as it doesn't forbid the analysis of code, if it's not used for cheating.

[MANNY-OLIVIA]

There is absolutely no reason why any player should have more than 1 account.

BGA should make it illegal to have multiple accounts!

[RicardoRix]

Yes, I read it the same way.

I think the point is that to distinguish multiple account use cheating can be very tricky from the observer. Much easier to just not allow multi-accounts.
It also draws a clear and distinct line.

If you're going to have a multi account, then it needs to be friendly-only mode games, otherwise it's just too difficult to set standards and police.

I guess the whole point of this thread, is Players flirting their own ideas of what's considered right or wrong.