If you don't know what I am talking about, the PUBG reddit has been blowing up recently due to a player getting a 7 day ban for killing a popular Twitch streamer. The streamer argued they were "stream sniping" which alone is nearly impossible to prove. The official statement from PLAYERUNKNOWN™© even agrees:

But a ban was still handed out.

Now the argument against this has a few different layers:

1. Should stream sniping even be a bannable offense?
2. Should streamers go out of their way to protect themselves such as adding a delay?
3. Is Bluehole trusting streamers too much due to their free advertising?

And I know us duders, in general, are not big on the youtuber/streamer scene but I can't help but feel these streamers are acting way too entitled. If you are showing everyone where you are, expect to get murdered (in game).

Don't cheat and you won't get banned. It's pretty straight forward.

I think banning (though temporary) is a tough outcome here, but I understand why Bluehole wants to protect and encourage its streamer community. A lot of Battlegrounds success comes from streamers getting the word out, and Bluehole would be foolish not to service that part of their community.

I also think streamsniping is a pretty bullshit thing to do and if it could be proven then a time out is warranted.

That being said there's probably some compromise here. A soft ban that would prevent a "streamsniper" from being matched with anyone streaming the game (though that might be tough in a game with 100 players) or a queue delay if you repeatedly queue up and quit (so if you join and immediately quit 2 matches you can't join another for 10 minutes) or other means besides banning to prevent this behavior.

Certain games have streaming as part of their business model. I don't see anything wrong with trying to protect streamers from miscreants, just like there's nothing wrong with banning people using cheat software or lag switches or other stuff.

Toxic behavior in multiplayer games is out of control. I frankly think developers should do more to regulate it, not less. I think we'd all have a better time online if the toxic people were better filtered out, even if it would sometimes feel unfair to them. You don't even need to ban them. Just segregate them to their own player pool where they can cheat and be nasty to one another and not the rest of us.

How is this cheating though? The streamer isn't being forced to broadcast their position lol. For all we know the person in question just wanted to be on the stream and wasn't actually watching it themselves, seems lame to whine about it honestly and even lamer to ban somebody for it.

Consistently policing this seems impossible regardless of the data that they have. I can't see them even identifying this issue without a streamer issuing a specific complaint against someone.

I don't have a problem with people getting suspended in cases where they can be certain that this is happening, but at the same time, I think streamers just need to accept that this is the cost of streaming a game like this.

@oursin_360: They've stated that shenanigans like this won't be tolerated, just like you can get banned for teaming up with someone. They have rules in place to try and make the game and enjoyable experience for everyone. You may not like the rules, but that doesn't change the fact that he broke the rules. You don't follow the rules, you're cheating.

It's also extremely unlikely that he wasn't watching the stream. There was enough evidence to ban him.

I mean as far as three goes they literally banned one of their biggest streamers the other week so I don't think it is that.

It is interesting that they at least claim to have a reliable way to track stream sniping, if they can great. The problem with a lot of times that if a big streamer even claims stream sniping that person blamed is going to get a ton of reports issued about them even if it isn't right. From what little I've seen of some of these top streamers, it seems many can't even fathom the idea that someone might have got lucky and killed them and that there has to be something nefarious plotting against them.

Twitch is the biggest cancer to gaming since paid online

Like it or not streaming is intrinsically a part of gaming now. The solution to this problem isn't "If you don't like being stream sniped, then stop streaming." This kind of attitude is analogous to "If you don't like abusive online chat, don't play multiplayer games." It places the onus on the victim, not the perpetrator and tries to normalize shitty behavior.

Swatting isn't ok, being abusive in twitch chat isn't ok, stream sniping isn't ok. All can be construed as a form of cyber bullying and nobody is holding these people accountable.

Anti-streamer sentiment from GB fans seems like the worst kind of hypocrisy. What is it that you think GB does exactly?

I agree with the ban 100%.

There's a difference from "Hey I know where that is and I'm in the same game" to "I'ma join that game and get that person".

If said cheater was leaving and rejoining, then they deserve a ban. But that all said, people like to be extremely finicky when a big name is involved (either "cater to streamers and YouTubers because publicity" or "Cost of doing business, and Youtubers/Streamers should just deal with it"). There's no happy medium in that case and I see this as a case-by-case basis.

But the fact of the matter is Hell is other people, and I'm actually glad to see a dev willing to stick to their guns more than most. I mean, I used to join CS/TF2 servers based on their in house rulesets and how well they enforced them. In my case, I'd rather have a more "filtered" environment because I do see gaming as an extremely toxic place on the whole. Heck, when I used to admin a TF2 server, there was a point where we has "instaban offenses" and we just kept a log of the incident. That way, if anyone complained, we had something documented that could corroborate the ban.

That said, on the PUBG side, I could see them looking at logs and seeing "left/joined/left" etc and that's likely how they picked up on it. Its the devs call on how they want to enforce their environment, just as much as it's our call to play or not play the game.

I feel like if your streaming a game, that's just the risk you take. Between this and the ban for the guy who teamkilled a teamkiller they seem pretty overzealous with handing out bans.

Can't prove he was stream sniping, banned him for a week anyway. Great.

Another thing that sort of bugs me about this whole situation is that I have personally took the time to report two obvious cheaters in PUBG that were using aimbots, with video evidence, and one took a week to get banned and the other took two weeks to finally get banned. And these weren't even questionable, these players had like 30+ KDA averages and 70%+ headshot kills, with the kill feeds in both games showing them quickly racking up kill after kill with weapons like the revolver and crossbow. According to the player referenced in this tweet by Playerunknown, he was banned within 20 minutes of the alleged stream sniping incident. How is that even possible? I find it a little suspicious that Bluehole's community team was able to research this player's behavior and issue a ban so quickly, especially now since they're saying they couldn't actually prove anything.

What does it matter if you're trying to fight another player in the player versus player game? It's not like someone was actually hacking the game or something.

Also, how does this even work. You would only have that small setup window to quit and rejoin before the match started. The streamer could also put up a screen during the pre-match so you wouldn't know if you were in the same game.

They put stream sniping in their rules of conduct, probably because it's been an issue for streamers in essentially every previous Battle Royale game.

https://www.playbattlegrounds.com/rulesOfConduct.pu

• Do not stream snipe: this is a form of cheating and you will be banned if you do it.

Now, whether this should actually be a bannable offense or not is another issue, but it's their game and it's in the rules so it is what it is.

If you're playing a multiplayer game on stream, expect people watching your stream to to target you specifically.

@mike: Those first four rules would get 90% of their playerbase banned if they actually enforced it and the majority of them can't really be proven at all. It's great their policies are as broken as the game is.

1. It's up to the developer.

2. It's up to the streamer.

3. I don't know but I doubt it.

Bluehole has already proved that no matter who you are you are not immune to being banned. Hell, they did it to their most popular and prolific streamers. So your point about streamers being too "entitled" I don't think holds water. Yes, they should have a certain expectation when they play games online and yes, Bluehole is completely in their right to say what is fair game and what is not. They have the most popular games out there right now. I actually like that they are paying attention enough to ban people they find aren't playing fair. It shows a dedication to their product and its user base. I trust their judgment and this is far from a black and white issue. It's only a 7-day ban It's not worth getting up in arms about.

This seems like a fool's errand for them to try to monitor all but the biggest streamers. And in which case, then the rule to not stream snipe is fuzzy at best.

I just feel like that's part and parcel to the streaming experience and unless the streamer is actually getting killed repeatedly by the same sniper and having the experience ruined for them that they should just fire up another PUBG game and move on but it's easy for me to say that. Jeff Grubb stream sniped Will Smith and Gary Whitta a few days ago (with their consent) and his crew got destroyed by them personally so it's not a guaranteed success anyways.

@mike said:

So how did this even get started?

Did the streamer call the sniper out and bring it up to the devs? if so how did\would he know he was being stream sniped? Did something in the algorithm start freaking out when a player was frantically quitting and joining games and later learned he killed the streamer?

Did something in the algorithm start freaking out when a player was frantically quitting and joining games and they later learned he killed the streamer?

It's more plausible to me that the player was doing weird stuff and was flagged by their anti-cheat mumbo-jumbo and only banned after it was learned that he killed the streamer (possibly only the steamer?). If that's the case I think it's fair game. Either way, I don't know how their backend works on this stuff so I'm spit balling but I also think we don't have enough information to say one way or the other if Bluehole was just placating to the streamer or not.

How long would a ban have to be before it's worth getting up in arms about? 2 weeks? A month? How long would YOU have to get banned for before it was something getting up in arms about?

@mike: A month probably.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PUBATTLEGROUNDS/comments/6q0otl/duo_partner_banned_for_7_days_for_stream_sniping/

@mike: This is way more he said/she said than I originally thought. We still don't know the process of how the guy actually got banned so I am fine to conceding this to Bluehole for this one. But from what I saw I wouldn't put it past the streamer if he was butthurt and pursued "charges".

Streamers are the Bobby Flay of celebrities.

He didn't, it was his viewers who reported the person who got banned. The ban happened so fast, it happened while the streamer was still playing his next game.

While you all maybe think it sounds extreme. Mr. PlayerUnknown seems to want to cultivate a relatively positive community. Stream Sniping is contrary to that, But a few potentially harsh or harsher judgements like this will ultimately discourage jerkish behaviour like along these lines in the future. That will make a better community and experience for all of us. We all seen the kinda cess pools communities like this can become. I for one applaud the PUBG team for this, and doubly so for explaining their reasoning and standing by it.

I think my biggest problem with this is how contradictory Player Unknown's tweet is. He says they have ways to detect it after he says they can't prove it. Then on top of that there's the logistics of even trying to get into the same lobby as someone. The game takes at least 5 seconds to get you out of a lobby and back to the main menu, then you have to wait for everyone to ready up and for the game to find the match, which can take up to 5 more seconds if the UI hasn't bugged for anyone. Then everyone has to load in. The game start time once in lobby is rarely longer than a minute so that means that anyone trying to stream snipe has a very small window to do so each time a streamer is starting up a game. After all that the person trying to stream snipe has to identify that they are in the same lobby. There's also the looming threat of crashes at any point in this process too. I play with a group that regularly experiences crashes once or twice every 10 games. It just seems so difficult for it to happen and then have such a conflicted response to it from the lead developer that making the decision they did makes no sense at all.

To further the context of how difficult this would be it's also important to note that at any point there's anywhere from 250-400k people playing the game. Even if you take a fraction of the number of people playing in any of the modes it's still a very large number of games going on at any given point in any mode further reducing the chances of someone getting into the same game as anyone else intentionally. I also forgot to mention the several second delay once your in a lobby before enough of the game has loaded and will let you move your player around.

I feel like with a game this popular, stream sniping is an inevitability and trying to enforce rules against it is a fool's errand. I don't really see it as a form of cheating either, since streams are available for the public to see, but hey, it's Bluehole's game and they get to make the rules.

So the ends justify the means? Only taking my own experience into account, that seems sort of like justifying banning a Giant Bomb user even if they didn't necessarily deserve it because other users may "learn a lesson" from that example and not act out in the future. That seems like a very dangerous and foolhardy path to go down.

@mike: Oh, I missed that part. Still, if there is evidence that the dude (and/or his friend) was server hopping after talking about the streamer and then killing him seems awfully coincidental.

That Grimms guy said he's gotten dozens of people banned for it. The same guy that seems to be unable to admit when he makes a mistake or gets outplayed. The same guy claims people camping the bridge at military base must be stream sniping, even though people are always camping that bridge. If he gets killed, his ego gets hurt and he gets the person banned. It seems like the kind of thing that's only enforceable if the streamer in question is popular enough to make a fuss. I promise you they don't give a shit if I get stream sniped with 10 viewers. They can't have people dedicated to researching this stuff. So you aren't allowed to protect yourself from teamkillers (the official statement is "just leave the game". You straight up can't shoot back), you can't kill accidentally kill streamers, what's next? I guess they sold 5 million copies, so they can do what they want as far as keeping poor community managers, enforcing silly rules for some people and not others, etc. They can continue to mishandle everything without consequence.

Yes, it's against the rules. No, it shouldn't be in the rules. Yes, they need to put the rules somewhere ingame. I was unaware there even were any until recently. You shouldn't have to go to their website to find out what you can be banned for.

@thatonedudenick: Not having rules that can get you banned in game is also something I find frustrating, mostly because the only place they have the rules is at the bottom of their website next to the EULA and privacy policy. It's also not found on their own forums or the steam forums, which were the two places I looked for them before just googling it. This is an incredible game, but in just about every way they can't seem to get the most basic parts of running and making it as far as simple QoL details are concerned.

What the fuck?

It's INSANE that this is in the "rules" of the game. I kinda turned sour on the dev reading this story.

This sounds like one of those things they do to make an example of someone in front of a wider audience (by using a popular stream I guess? Is the streamer popular?) to discourage it. I doubt they'll actually enforce this on a large scale, especially because they can't actually know for sure unless the accused admits to it.

Not like they actually enforce any of those other rules on their site.

its stupid. i shouldn't have to worry about being accused of stream sniping some shitty twitch streamer. if they don't want people to that then don't stream.

They should probably not let you keep matchmaking over and over again with no cooldown. Plugging the exploit would be better than banning those who do it.

I don't even see how that would possibly work since once someone is in a game, that lobby is probably going to be full within a matter of seconds. There simply isn't time to exit the lobby you're in, reload the menu, then try to match into another game. MAYBE once, but even that is pushing it.

Streamers concerned about being sniped could also, oh I dunno, look at the ground until they're on the plane. This whole thing is dumb.

I love all the people in the comments saying "if you don't want to get stream sniped don't stream".

I guess that's how we as humans should solve all life problems and tell everyone when anything bad happens to them. We all take risks in life and know bad things can happen to us based on the things we do, but that doesn't mean we should settle for the old "that's the way life is!" attitude. Everyone should be expected to be respectful and fair to each other, whether that's ever a possible achievement or not.

Not saying the ban is fair or justified, but going to the other end of the spectrum is just as ridiculous.

And stream sniping in a game like Battlegrounds is straight up cheating, but if they can't prove it they shouldn't be banning people.

My biggest issue with the Battlegrounds streamers is how they somehow have all decided that the game is not about surviving and winning, but about getting the most kills. The crying about campers is so ridiculous. People camping a house, especially if they aren't a good shot or are ill equipped for long range combat, is playing smart and how the game was designed to be played. Yet they all seem to just complain about campers, as if those people are playing the game wrong. It's not Call of Duty.

I feel like a simple 10-second delay on the streamer's part would alleviate the majority of their issues. You can still interact with your audience with a 10-15 second delay, but it's enough to significantly lower the chances of your viewers being able to join matchmaking at the same time. By the time they see you click play, the match should be almost full. It's especially too late by the time they find where you're standing, find out you're not there, quit, reload, and re-queue. The problem simply isn't there. It's been a concern in other games and people just deal with it. Putting an overlay on minimap, face cam until game starts, etc. It's not so big an issue that it needs to be a ban-worthy rule in any one game.

I think the situation looks terrible for Bluehole

The guy in question still claims innocence, the devs claim (but don't show) they have data otherwise.

The big issue for me is the circumstances under which the guy was banned, and how contradictory the dev statements have been. They say that there is no automatic ban system in place, but the guy in question was banned within 20 minutes or less of the supposed stream sniping. Having watched the clip, there is literally no way to tell if that guy is stream sniping just from video evidence, and in fact there is video that indicates a completely different person in the same match, who wasn't banned, was stream sniping. So that means that the either the streamer's fanbase unleashed a deluge of submissions against this guy, and got him banned with zero evidence, or a dev watching the stream just decided to take the streamers word and ban the guy, again, without evidence. Considering how salty most major streamers of this game are, this is a terrible precedent, and basically enables witch hunts against people who then have to prove they are innocent. Remember, they've said that they don't look at the data before issuing bans.

Even if this guy is guilty, this system is ripe for exploitation, and no one should be happy with how any of this has been handled. Again, it really does not matter if this guy was ultimately guilty, because at the time of the ban, there was literally zero evidence of him stream sniping. He was banned because a streamer and his fanbase got salty. Fuck that.

So, streamer bitches, seemingly innocent player gets banned? Uh-huh..

If you're concerned about people stream-sniping your ass, put a delay on your stream. But honestly, if you're deciding to stream the game, that's kind of on you, not on everybody else.

I think most people agree that stream sniping is a form of cheating - the rule on its own is certainly well intentioned. However, regardless of intentions, it also seems impossible to consistently and fairly police. I'd love to give Bluehole the benefit of the doubt here, but this has the appearance of primarily being an attempt to keep the big streamers satisfied by making a token gesture to them.

I feel like there's something fundamentally wrong here that people are missing. I mean you have some streamer trying to make entertaining content for their viewers and they end up getting stream-sniped. And instead of rolling/dealing with it and keeping the show going they get salty and report the guy ? Doesn't this very blatantly point out the streamers priorities ? Sure, everyone would love to have a job where they could just have fun all the time and make money off it (and I realize this is far from the first time a streamer prioritizes their own enjoyment over their viewers), but this just comes off as unprofessional pettiness.

This is just another example of an early access game getting popular faster than the dev can keep up with. Stream sniping is certainly cheating and a form of griefing, but the ban should only be enforced if it can be verified before taking action. It sounds like Bluehole are trying to protect their image before the game is even complete and they are doing it in a way that is too automated.

They admit the player was trying to join the same instance, but that alone is not proof that he/she was sniping. For example, they might have wanted to compete against the streamer. If they were really thorough, Twitch could compare the IP of the stream viewers against the IP of the player to check if the player was watching at the time of the offence....I'm guessing that would be unlikely to obtain though. However, PUBG does use the AWS servers for hosting.

Just sounds like they aren't putting up with shenanigans. It may be harsh, but it feels like they're just setting a precedent.

I think the problem is that there were indicators that the player was trying to stream snipe (which as you pointed out violates their ToS). However, there is some doubt in their assessment. So how much doubt can you have before you decide not to ban is my question. Why not send a warning and ban the user for an hour? Seven days seems a bit excessive.

There is a real privilege issue that should be addressed. Popular streamers, much like verified twitter accounts, are catered to in a way that the rest of us aren't. Those aimbot users should have been a priority, but users just don't have the clout of "influencers"...

If you stream the game and don't want to get streamsniped, you add a delay. If you don't care, you don't add a delay.

Streamsniping is not a new phenonemon. It has been part of Twitch since it's inception. Starcraft players learned to deal with it, Moba players learned to deal with it, now PUBG players need to learn to deal with it.

That said, i don't think that's something the game devs should concern themselves with. I imagine they won't go out of their way to ban a random guy who streamsnipes someone with <100 viewers, but will be going out of their way to ban a guy that streamsnipes someone with more than 10k viewers. And that's shitty.

1. Up to the devs, and if so they better be able to provide some VERY compelling evidence. I suppose it's worth pointing out that stream-sniping is not a nice thing to do, but how to regulate it fairly I got no fuckin clue.

2. Up to the streamers, but there's no automatic entitlement to not geting stream-sniped. Either accept that or find a way to work around it with delays or whatever.

3. What.

This thing has a lobby browser right? So it's feasible that they could see this player trying to get into the same lobby as the streamer? What about the people who want to play with the streamer but not stream-snipe (or who better yet happen to kill the streamer the good ol' fashioned way)? If you get into a match with someone you're watching, but make sure you don't kill them, are you safe? If you tell someone else where they are and they kill them, do they track your communications and ban you both? Seems like a crazy thing to try to parse.

On the one hand you might want to assume folks are gonna be shit-heads and their lobby-hopping most likely means stream-sniping, because people. On the other hand, dolling out bans based on those assumptions is a good way to discourage wanting to interact with streamers in-game in any capacity, which would ultimately work out towards clamping down on stream-sniping. But you'd have to go into that knowing you'll be banning people less so for explicitly stream-sniping, and really more for just playing with someone they're PRESUMABLY watching on a stream, based on some lobby behaviour. :\

Yeah, I dunno. Seems like a good intention, bad idea situation.

It doesn't. The only way to get into a game with a streamer is to try and queue at the exact same time they do and hope you get matched with them. Many popular streamers cover their screens between games to make it more difficult on snipers.