Here’s a question that might have popped into your head just now: How many livestreamers use unlicensed music? The answer: Practically all of them. Anybody who’s ever soundtracked the makings of a nice KDR with a slice of unplaceable dubstep. Those are the people who will be subject to at least a temporary ban from livestreaming under Black Ops 2’s Security and Enforcement Policy.
Any Black Ops 2 livestreamer found to have unauthorized content in their stream is “subject to penalty”, reads the new guideline. “Unauthorized content includes but is not limited to unlicensed music, TV shows, movies and brand logos.”
The penalties range from temporary bans – which can last between 48 hours and 2 weeks – to the revocation of your livestreaming account with a third party like Twitch, service provider willing:
- Minor offense: User will be temporarily banned from using live streaming and may have camera streaming privileges in the game revoked.
- Extreme or repeat offenses: User will be permanently banned from using live streaming.
- Extreme offenders will also be reported to the live streaming service provider and may have their account revoked by that service provider.
Activision define a minor offence as “one in which no quantifiable damage has been done to another user or the game community at large”. An extreme offense, meanwhile, is “one in which a player has caused detriment to other users or has organized large groups of users to commit additional offenses”.
So that’s temporary bans for livestreamers who’ve caused “no quantifiable damage” beyond further inflicting Pendulum upon the world. Is that okay with you?
Earlier this year, Activision announced that Black Ops 2 would be the first game in the series to feature livestreaming without the use of third party software.