LBP Moderation Remains Inscrutable, Unaccountable

[wraggster]

Do not take this as precedent, that Kotaku is going to get involved in every level taken down on LittleBigPlanet. But the demise of Azure Palace seems newsworthy for a few reasons — one, it's well made (a little too fly-and-grab for me, but still a good level); two, there seems to be no apparent reason for it; and three, it's the big stink in any forum now discussing Media Molecule's heavy-handed moderation.

Azure Palace's creator is understandably pissed about the whole thing, posting his email to Media Molecule in a GameFaqs forum. He defies someone to show how the level violated the terms of service and, frankly, I do too. A couple of statues' heads resemble Pac-Man (depicted above) but come on, that cannot possibly be it. There also are some bloodstain stickers (you can't really tell in the YouTube video) but likewise, that seems extremely petty for it to possibly be a defensible reason.

If, on the other hand, this and anything else made with care is being flagged by lulz-seeking griefers and MM moderators are blindly taking down levels with zero investigation, then they're just being manipulated by the worst members of the community, and the business consequences there are obvious enough.

http://kotaku.com/5089481/lbp-moderation-remains-inscrutable-unaccountable

[F9zDark]

This is getting absolutely ridiculous. Media Molecule better get their asses in gear and adopt more stringent moderation standards if they wish to build the map making community.

It won't be long before all the truly promising level designers simply quit because this overbearing, communistic moderation completely destroys the community, and makes it so that no one wants to invest their precious free time into making a level that may get deleted for no apparent reason.

Every game that offers a Report function should have a stringent system of which the report is investigated BEFORE action is taken. Why should a person's hard work be negated by a prepubescent punk who is jealous that they cannot make a good map and/or frustrated because a user map is too hard to play because they simply suck?

And said investigations may see that this is the case and action can be taken against "Report Spammers", essentially weeding out the truly bad apples from the community.

[Triv1um]

Moderation is good, aslong as its not overdone.

And it really is overdone. They need to loosen off.

They will eventually, when the fad dies down.

[theotherfreakyguy]

That is an outrage. Azure Palace was undoubtedly my favorite level on LBP. The only way I can see it violating rules is the fake blood, but come on! Can't Mm just release a new patch that slaps an "Online Content not Rated by the ESRB" on there and be done screwing with people's hard work?

Unbelievable.

[F9zDark]

That is an outrage. Azure Palace was undoubtedly my favorite level on LBP. The only way I can see it violating rules is the fake blood, but come on! Can't Mm just release a new patch that slaps an "Online Content not Rated by the ESRB" on there and be done screwing with people's hard work?

Unbelievable.

Its not so easy as that. Games put that on there because they cannot control what people say online (that's really what its there for; a game cannot stop someone from dropping the F-bomb repeatedly, which will make a T rating goto M real fast.). However content that the game company endorses (through online publication and playability) can be controlled.

Think of the Oblivion nude-patch. Bethesda simply covered an actual breasted female model. When modders discovered this and removed it, Oblivion went from T to M because it was something that was actually PART of the original game, just locked away; much like the Hot Coffee scandal.

Had modders went out of their way to hack the models and make these breasts themselves, the game would have retained its T rating and Bethesda could have done nothing about it (instead they had to release a patch which locked the content out again, but to no avail to the modders who found a way around it).

My point is, no game company endorse or facilitate the means to getting content that steps outside the bounds of the game's rating and still comply with that rating.

Games that allow mods do so under the umbrella that users must download these mods on their own from non-game-company sites. In the case of Oblivion, the forums allows talk, discussion and downloading of all mods that comply with the rating and doesn't allow said talk, discussion or linking to mods that don't.