Board Game Arena

How is it ok to ruin gameplay, but don't you dare use a curse word.. shit's broken

Nobody said it’s ok. But it is extremely hard to prove. You need to know the game in question well to know what a player’s strategy should have been and to know what they did seemed fishy.

For example, you coming here would tend to imply you think there was kingmaking in a recent game of yours… when you made this post you were mid game and had just finished another game (and the last prior game was something like 17 hours ago). So I looked at both those games and I don’t see it, I don’t see anything that looks like kingmaking (but I also didn’t spend more than a couple of minutes on it because, really, who wants to do that?). Furthermore, your two opponents in both of those games (both games were 3-player) had never faced each other before. No evidence they know each other, no motivation for kingmaking.

On the other hand, swearing is very easy to prove. You don’t need any context or outside knowledge of a game. You just need to know that * is a swear word. And they do want to ensure this is a “family-friendly” site.

Why should we, the victims, be punished instead of the perpetrators?I sympathize. I too have suffered similar harm.
However, voicing your opinion here seems only likely to make matters worse.

How can you prove that? If a game that gives a losing player to distribute their resources, what's the best way to go about it? Flip a coin? Seems like no matter if it's a random choice or a deliberate choosing, the other players are going to hate it.

To be fair, andertikin originally linked to a game (which got them moderated) where I think there could have been a decent amount of evidence (the winner was friends with another player whom they had shared 90-something games with) that kingmaking could have been going on. I didn’t dig into it at all because really, why bother?

But it remains the case that it’s ridiculously hard to prove. Multi-accounting is a lot easier, but kingmaking is a tough sell. Really best to red-thumb all involved and move on, sadly.

This is my personal opinion,A single red thumb doesn't amount to much.
Moderators penalizing comments is far easier than the kingmaking problem. I understand this mechanism,But I wish problematic games would at least be allowed to be exposed. It's the players, not the moderators, who should make that judgment.

andertikin wrote: ↑10 February 2026, 04:14 This is my personal opinion,A single red thumb doesn't amount to much.
Moderators penalizing comments is far easier than the kingmaking problem. I understand this mechanism,But I wish problematic games would at least be allowed to be exposed. It's the players, not the moderators, who should make that judgment.

The players in the game? They would have to be somewhat biased wouldn't they? Players outside the game? Who are you going to choose then? That's why places like this generally have moderators - a group of people who are supposed to be an objective voice on what a particular situation actually is.

I meant, External players who read the exposed article vote for the side they believe has the problem.
We're talking about matters outside the moderator's jurisdiction. Of course, it would be better if the moderator addressed the kingmaker problems.

So you’d need some unbiased players who know the game well enough to recognize kingmaking and who had both the time and inclination to do what you are asking—pass judgment anytime any rando makes an accusation of kingmaking just because they lost a game. You do know that for every valid case there’s gonna be ten cases of sore losers who blame somebody else for their loss, right?

I understand it can't be helped when dealing with limited resources. I am a board gamer. But maybe I just want sympathy. Sorry if my English is weird since I'm using a translator. Thank you.