EA has banned YouTuber and FIFA Pro Kurt "Kurt0411" Fenech from playing any of the company's games and from accessing any of its online services. The harsh punishment was doled out after repeated incidents involving Fenech that involved not just harassment of EA as a company but also threats targeted at developers of EA games.
Fenech has spent the past year or so channeling his anger at EA developers going so far as calling them "cowards," as well as posting videos of spitting on EA scarves. His attacks, which are often vulgar, also targeted his FIFA opponents and members of EA's staff. After several years of disciplinary action from EA, Fenech finally received a permanent ban from competing in FIFA for his actions, which EA deemed as "abusive, harassing, and vulgar." As a result, some of his followers hacked the Twitter accounts of several EA staff members and posted fake tweets under those usernames.
EA recently decided that a permanent ban from FIFA wasn't enough. The company has banned Fenech from every EA game, as well as from accessing any of EA's online services. The company tweeted a statement about the ban, explaining that because Fenech had continued to harass members of the company and "crossed a line of decency," meaning he was in breach of EA's terms of service.
"In November 2019, after a series of Code of Conduct violations as part of the EA SPORTS FIFA Global Series in which he threatened employees and other players, Kurt0411 was banned from competing or attending any EA SPORTS FIFA 20 Global Series events or future competitions. Since that time, Kurt has continued to post abusive and threatening messages and videos about EA employees and competitive players on social media and he has encouraged others to do the same. His messages have crossed a line of decency into very personal attacks and breach our Terms of Service. We will not tolerate threatening behavior. As a result, today Kurt0411’s EA account will be banned from playing our games and accessing our services due to these serious and repeated violations.
We build games and communities for players to have fun. Creating a safe and enjoyable experience for everyone without fear of harassment or abuse is a vital part of that. Our Terms of Service include a Code of Conduct that we ask players to abide by to keep our communities healthy and safe. We have an ongoing focus to create communities where everyone feels safe and respected, including in-game toxicity reporting tools as well as new moderation tools. And, we will continue to add more features."
This is one of the first high-profile bans of its kind, and although it seems extreme, Fenech continued to cross a line into abuse and harassment. Players getting banned from games isn't necessarily a new thing, but most players get banned for cheating and not the kind of behavior that Fenech has exhibited. Unfortunately, Fenech's hatred toward game developers is also not new: for example, Minecraft's Markus Persson received death threats over the shutdown of a free server. The developers of the indie game Ooblets received racist abuse and harassment over its choice to make the game exclusive to the Epic Games Store, too, showing that this behavior is far too common in the industry.
Although most would agree that criticizing a game development studio is okay, there is a fine line between that criticism and taking it too far into abuse. Based on Fenech's previous behavior, this is undoubtedly a case of the latter, with EA sending a strong message that such abuse and harassment will not be tolerated. Most reasonable gamers would probably agree that threatening developers is never right, and it certainly seems this extreme ban is probably warranted. It's a shame that game studios and publishers don't seem to want to deal with player-targeted harassment and threats in a similar manner, but perhaps this harsh-but-justified punishment of Fenech will discourage other players from exhibiting similar behavior.
Source: EA/Twitter