Elder Scrolls MMORPG appears to use AI to ban players as soon as they type the wrong words in the chat

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Numerous fans of The Elder Scrolls Online report strange bans that were apparently issued without the involvement of a fellow player or a Zenimax employee.

What kind of reports are these? Both in the official Elder Scrolls Online forum and in various Reddit posts, the MMORPG community is speculating whether Zenimax has recently started using an automated moderation tool that relies on artificial intelligence (AI).

The reason for this assumption: Numerous players report that they have been banned because their chat messages allegedly violated ESO’s user agreement. The funny thing about this is:

  • According to those affected, sentences that were written in a private context – for example as a direct message to another player, within the instanced home or in a solo instance – were marked as violations.
  • None of the players involved reported the affected account because there was no victim in the respective situation. Sometimes a somewhat harsh comparison was made, sometimes it was about “roleplay”, sometimes a player simply ranted about a boss in the Endless Archive.

    • You can visit the Endless Archives of Elder Scrolls Online solo or in duo, here is the trailer:

    The Elder Scrolls Online – Endless Archive Introduction

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    Statement from the developers is slow to arrive

    How does the community react to these reports? ESO players share their concern that the assumption that Zenimax would henceforth use an automated AI tool for moderation could be confirmed.

  • Jorgesarrada writes (via Reddit): “I’m writing to say that I too find bans governed by AI regarding NO REPORTS to be extremely dangerous to the health of the game and the community. I don’t like this at all.”
  • EveryWonderous2289 explains in his post on Reddit: “While many have pointed out how bad this is for the RP community, it is really bad for all sides of the game. Playful taunts between PvPers will be banned, as will messages about strategy if they accidentally contain any keywords. The same goes for PVE […].”
  • megacts has had enough of AI (via Reddit): “Ugh. I’m really getting sick of this AI nonsense. It’s suddenly everywhere and I don’t know a single person who wants it.”
  • Tandor admits on the ESO forum (via forums.elderscrollsonline.com): “There are some unacceptable words and phrases that are not allowed under the TOS, and while I respect roleplaying and roleplayers, I would be very opposed to players being able to avoid effective moderation by saying ‘but I was only roleplaying.'”

    • How does Zenimax respond to the allegations? While the thread in the official ESO forum (via forums.elderscrollsonline.com) already has eight pages and more than 350 comments, only one official statement has been made so far. Community manager ZOS_Kevin writes:

    “We’re looking into some of the questions in this thread and reaching out to the team for feedback. Since it’s quite late on a Friday, we probably won’t have a response until early next week. But we wanted to confirm that we’ve seen the issue and are investigating it.”

    MeinMMO will continue to keep an eye on the thread for you and will provide an update as soon as Zenimax makes a concrete statement on the allegations. So, there is a bad mood in Tamriel. Things looked different a few days ago: “This is the best day of my life” – players celebrate innovations for the Elder Scrolls MMORPG

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