This also means that no current innocent ON players can play until they leave ON.
What can I say?
Nothing much than I don't agree.
Why not go with the rule 'ban on sight' ?
These hacks were made for 'testing', and somehow were given to 'disloyal'.Then these 'disloyal' starting making the truth look different,which is wrong - I've said I knew ANO is working on hacks. - Didn't mean I did not have any attempt on stopping him,on the contrary, you can see ANO is very involvish in 'game sync' and 'functions' and would like to test it all,he just didn't give up.
These hacks were not designed to be shared with ON members,neither, but ANO rebelled and gave his work to the soldiers.
Nothing much can be said,other than the fact WE know that you'll do even your impossible,because you DO NOT want us to play in any server,you can deduce it from your own words.
Look hunting, even if you were saying the truth, you are still responsible. For example when someone gets arrested for doing something illegal, they can't "evade" their arrest just by saying they didn't know it was illegal, even if they're speaking the truth. As a clan leader you need to take responsibility for what happened inside your own clan, as clan leader you need to have some degree of control inside your clan, you failed to do that so the responsibility lies with you aswell, stop throwing your members under the bus, you're just as responsible as them, after all, if those members had never joined your clan, they wouldn't have the problems they have now. Your clan is responsible for creating, distributing and using hacks.
I don't think any of the solutions to this problem posted here are satisfactory.
Here is my proposition - it is not perfect, but I think it is more suitable:
Make a list of those people who we know satisfy any of the following criteria:
1) Distributed hacks
2) Used the hacks
3) Were aware of the distribution or use of hacks, and didn't say anything.
This list can be presumed to automatically include all of ON management, but not all ON players.
The punishment should be the following:
1) 1 year ban for everyone on this list, in all abiding servers. After 1 year, these players are only allowed to play in abiding servers if they are clanless. If they create or join a new clan, they will be prohibited from playing.
2) Disallow players who belong to a clan managed by any of these players from playing, permanently. So, for instance, if Hunting creates a new clan, [OT], and John joins OT, John will not be allowed to play in any abiding server whilst being a member of OT. If he leaves OT, he can play again. This also means that no current innocent ON players can play until they leave ON.
The logic underpinning this punishment:
1) It is unfair to ban players who may not have been aware of the distribution or use of hacks.
2) The leaders of ON and the others on the list have abused the informal clan system to damage the game and community.
3) If only ON is banned, the players in its management can just make a new clan, and cause damage again.
4) Therefore a suitable punishment for them would be not just to remove their clan, but to remove their ability to ever make a clan again, or ever be part of one.
5) This truly punishes those responsible, while not allowing their foolishness to ruin the game for those in ON who are innocent.
Problems with this plan:
1) The list we make will be limited, as we cannot be fully aware of who has or did what. This is unavoidable, but it is better that we miss one or two than we unnecessarily punish one or two. The remaining, non-banned ex-ON players can be put on a 'watchlist' for server admins.
2) ON management might evade this punishment by changing their names, IPs, and online identities. Sadly this is a problem that all forms of banning are susceptible to in VC:MP - it is not unique to this situation.
3) This plan is more complicated than just banning ON, it might be hard getting servers all on board. Yes, it is a little complicated. But we as a community have to be as determined to prevent hacking as those who wish to perpetrate it, otherwise the bad guys will win. Fortunately there is at least one admin from every major server who has posted in this thread, and in most cases server management have posted here too.
Ah, always the optimist eh charley
In a perfect world some of those points would be excellent, but let's be realistic here, unfortunately most of those points just aren't feasible. Like you said, that list of people would be limited, it would probably contain about 5 people max, and in the worst case scenario, the list could also be inaccurate because we have no way of knowing for sure who did what, and at this point everyone in their clan is lying through their teeth, so their word doesn't mean anything anymore, unless they're capable of presenting solid proof about what they're saying. Another thing that's just impossible to pull off is to have all servers agree to a decision. I'm willing to try but at the end of the day ,each server owner has their opinions about how to proceed and when server owners end up not agreeing to a decision we will get nowhere.
Also lets not forget about the main issue which is:
They have members inside their clan capable of creating hacks (said by themselves), so if we're going to ban just a few of them, what's stopping them from giving more hacks to more of their members in the future? Or just create new hacks. The clan itself needs to be banned, because the clan is the source of these hacks. Of course some players don't have any fault in this situation, but there is no perfect solution to this issue. It's not their fault they got involved in this but it's not ours either, as server owners we're just trying to make this fair for the majority of our players, they were just in the wrong clan at the wrong time, sometimes bad luck is just bad luck.
I also don't agree with preventing them from creating or joining other clans ever again. Putting aside the fact that we can't actually prevent them from doing it, at the moment I don't really agree with a permanent type of punishment. They're just kids, they act like kids and do stupid shit just like most people did at their age. At the moment their clan cannot be trusted, they need to regain the community's trust, a long 1 year ban or so should suffice for them to demostrate that they can be trusted again. If during the ban period we catch them again, then we make it permanent.