Board Game Arena

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑11 March 2022, 09:41 It is not a question of "taking side" or whatever, it is a question of applying the rules to keep this service running in the proper way.

Thank you for your understanding.

Okay, that's a more honest response rather than all this disingenuous discussion about peace. BGA clearly cares more about continuing making the profit rather than about children and civilians who have been killed by Russian army or about millions of Ukrainians who have been displace by the war. I'm very troubled by the accusations of xenophobia of those who are in favour of putting sanctions against Russian players. Russian army does not discriminate who they bomb and kill, they created the situation, and actions are required to put pressure on the them and on their population from all sides to stop the killings. Banning Russian flags should be a minimum of what BGA can do.

I heard the proposal about how BGA could be a place where Russian propaganda could be countered. The proposal is also disingenuous, because if Russian players are not banned on BGA, the responsibility to counter propaganda should be on BGA not on other players from other countries. BGA can send every 3-4 days (or a week) to all Russian players updates about the war (this is technically possible), about the bombings, and the children and the war crimes. If a Russian player unsubscribes from BGA emails that counter propaganda, then this player account should be suspended. A more concrete actions are required, but if for BGA continuing making money is more important than they should be more honest about it.

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑11 March 2022, 09:41 Dear players,

We will not make any more statement on this difficult subject: everything has been said in the initial post.

However, I would like to remind everyone that this service rules has not changed.

In particular, like we used to do in the past, we will punish any incitation to violence (which includes supporting a military aggression), and we will punish xenophobia (which includes discrimination based on country of origin). It is not a question of "taking side" or whatever, it is a question of applying the rules to keep this service running in the proper way.

Thank you for your understanding.

Hello please lock this thread. You have already made your point, just pin this thread in the forum and it's enough. This thread has gone too far and beyond BGA policies.

There is no need to lock this thread as long as Ukrainians continue to die because of the Russian aggression, and as long as we don't see concrete action from BGA.

I am sad that BGA is not doing more to put itself clearly on the side of Ukraine as the victim of a war of aggression and have decided not to renew my premium membership.

As I feared after the previous thread, this is an extremely lackluster response by BGA. Multi-billion dollar companies are shutting down their entire operations in Russia and this site can't even take some very basic measures other than a small forum post (which is not even mentioned on the main site).

This took a week to prepare? Props to Asmodee for the donations, but BGA itself is basically doing nothing. Where are the actual actions?

• Banning all (Bela)Russian IPs
• Removing (Bela)Russian flags from the options
• Suspending all sales to (Bela)Russians, which you are probably forced to do anyway
• An unskippable "war denouncement wall" for Bela(Russian) IPs
• Free Premium for all Ukrainian IPs and people who registered with Ukrainian flags before the invasion started
• A permanently visible support message/flag
• Some kind of live event to raise money
• A big news post on the main site

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑11 March 2022, 09:41 Concerning BGA specifically, we see no reason to punish Russian/ Belarusian players as we cannot know if they support the actions of their leaders.

Only 53% of Russians see Russia as the aggressor in this war and just 36% as the guilty party: https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1501123330262380551 (not a methodologically flawless poll of course, but state-run surveys are obviously hogwash)

Also, this isn't so much about punishing people who support the war as it is about sending a message that we, as the civilised world, want nothing to do with Russia until these atrocities are stopped.

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑11 March 2022, 09:41 [...] and we will punish xenophobia (which includes discrimination based on country of origin).

Nonsense. This has nothing to do with xenophobia and it is baffling to even mention it. I for one will be kicking all Russians off my tables and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Ze Monstah wrote: ↑11 March 2022, 18:59 Still, there is nothing you or anyone can do, if the admins of the site don't want to procede exactly like others wish.

I mean we have debated enough, nothing we can do more about it, on BGA.

There is absolutely something we can do: we can push the people in charge to do more than this frankly embarrassing statement.

=

KongKing123 wrote: ↑12 March 2022, 03:09 I disagree, based on both experience and observation. I do not think there is something that would make their mind change, but I am really not interested in testing that.

I don't think your approach is very helpful. We can continue to put pressure on BGA. I suspect that the more people and children will die, the more likely they will change their mind. They clearly only care right now about keeping operations as is and to avoid having any financial impact and they don't want to alienate any Russian subscribers by removing their flag. This is just about business for them, but their initial response will not be forgotten.