[quote=marcmagus]Does FBG have a history of coming down hard on this kind of thing? Those sorts of terms are typically much more focused on the automation part, with scripts which modify the UI in a helpful manner but never act on the player’s behalf left alone, particularly when the author has taken pains as Cac0nym clearly has to reduce the risk of stray bug reports.
"is a violation" rather than "may be a violation" in your warning is a very strong statement that reads, to this add-on writer, as quite hostile to publication of modifications to the game without advance permission from FBG. Given that FBG is understandably slow about responding to such things as it’s a low priority for them, and that their current script policy explicitly says to publish with a forum link before emailing a whitelist request, I’m finding it counter-productive.
I don’t think that’s your intent; I think you want to protect players from the risk of getting in trouble. I know you’ve been an active member of this community quite a bit longer than I have, so I’m wondering if you know something about local enforcement of the rules that I don’t.[/quote]
I couldn’t say how "hard" FBG comes down on unauthorized scripts. I presume that’s kept between violators and themselves.
But I know they have specifically asked players many times, both in the linked ToS and on the forum, not to use any non whitelisted scripts and stated that their use is a violation of the ToS.
I don’t know if you will have an account removed, but you certainly could. It is unlikely. But some folks might want to do it out of respect for the policy, rather than out of fear of punishment.
If you believe that their response to whitelisting scripts is too slow and would like to ignore their request and use scripts anyway, you are free to do so.
However, I feel players who aren’t familiar with the ToS should be given fair warning if they choose to ignore the policy.
EDIT: Also, let me say that I love Userscripts. I think they’re awesome and I use a couple. A few years ago we used to have a lot more of them and most were really cool. Alexis asked they follow only a few, very simple guidelines.
Then a couple of people decided to ignore those guidelines and, unfortunately, all scripts were banned. It wasn’t anything anyone wanted to do, but they were just getting out of hand and the devs made a choice. All scripts banned. No exceptions. It sucked, but I had to stop using a bunch of those cool scripts.
So when whitelisting came out, I was elated. It’s a very cool and reasonable compromise.
My concern is that if too many folks start ignoring the white list and just run whatever they want whenever they want, Alexis may be forced to just ban scripts all together. Which no one wants.
I think waiting a week or so for a script to be whitelisted is a reasonable request and it would not only be polite, but beneficial to the game as a whole, if that request were respected.
edited by Nigel Overstreet on 8/7/2015