AgentBrown123:
mkg335:
Is it unreasonable to consider the possibility that they're mistaken and that an innocent man has paid the price for their mistake?
It isn't unreasonable by any means. But going by what they've done in past, they have never ever given out a permanent ban that I have seen from an auto ding or cheat suspect before, at least not a top player. They've closed accounts for multi-accounters before for sure. I have seen some people do some pretty crap things for their bans to be just temporary.
If there is a chance he wasn't cheating, I think wgt will hear your points. But there must be something else to it. I think if they find something wrong with their reason for the ban they will change their decision. This thread certainly has all the points possible to support the condemned.
MainzMan:
In my opinion, absolutely not Mark. This trial by 9 hole streamed game seems to be justice in the very loosest interpretation of the word.
There's obviously some speculation that other factors came into play but the official WGT version of events is very suspicious to say the least.
Why on earth would they ever even in a private message explain why they decided to ban someone permanently? As has been said a million times now. I find it hard to fathom. They made a huge mistake if they did by not only saying it but for allowing that message to be published to a public forum.
All they should have said is that we have beyond a reasonable amount of evidence to believe he was manipulating game. I think some random incompetent employee went way out of bounds with that response and didn't have all the info to be completely frank.
WGT has by no means come out with anything official on this and they shouldn't ever imo. All that we're arguing his innocents on is this random email by who knows who wrote it from the wgt staff.
Hi AB
Why shouldn't they explain (be it in a private message) why they ban a player? The way I see it, there is really only a few ways you can cheat, auto ding, CE or editing the code of the game. Obviously there are other ways of "cheating" e.g., multi accounts or selling credits on the "black market". To me anyway, those last two are slightly different. With regards to multi accounts, surely WGT can monitor the IP address, and therefor is easily explained. With regards to selling credits on the "black market" (assuming the player obtained the credits legitimately in the first place), this is "cheating" WGT out of their profits and harder to find who is actually doing this.
But if they do have systems in place to "actually" monitor auto dinger's, CE or code editing, then why not say "you have been banned because we detected an auto dinger (called "abc") or CE or a code editing pack? I think this gives more credibility to WGT and more of a deterrent to players who think they can use these means and get away with it. I am not suggesting they provide details on how they determine this or what they use to detect these, but I do suggest they provide proof if they make the accusation (and ultimately the decision).
But to basis the assumption on %, which WGT will need to determine what is acceptable or not, is still an assumption (albeit a good assumption but still an assumption). In my opinion, that's what these new "security sweeps" were, a compilation of data giving the ability to determines one's %.
From all the time I have been on this site and reading the forums, I do not recall any discussions on ding %. All of a sudden, and we can only go on what we know WGT advised, that the ding % is (or a large part) in determining if one is cheating. I agree with you "some random incompetent employee went way out of bounds with that response and didn't have all the info to be completely frank", but the simply fact that was in the forefront of their thinking (and no one else's here or in the past prior to this situation) is proof enough that that is part of their decision making.
Now please do not get me wrong, I applaud WGT in trying to eliminate cheats, we all do. But I do believe that they need to be reliable in their detection and able to provide proof without question (not giving details in how or what they use). If that where the case then we wouldn't even be having this discussion.