No field is illegal - Kein Feld ist illegal - A clear message against abusive real-life behaviour

On November 2nd, the resistance fielded the city of Freiburg with multiple blue layers as a clear sign of a zero tolerance policy against the abusive behaviour and real-life insults of local ENL players.

For several years now, the resistance fought valiantly against multi-accounting, spoofing and other methods of cheating in the region with no hear of most of the local ENL players and even their community moderators (which were even involved themselves as we found out later).

In the past seven years of gameplay, the actions of players has only once crossed the border of the game which could at that time be handled quite well by talking to the involved players.

This year in September, a group of ENL players, including the ENL FS POC decided once again to cross the border of the game and let their actions of the game flow into real life.

The involved ENL players identified personal details of their foes, such as their business phone numbers, and decided to make ‘fun’ phone calls insulting the people in question, as well as leaving negative rating on the business entry they found.

The resistance Freiburg has a clear stance against such toxic behaviour in real-life and does not tolerate it within their ranks. Since talking to the affected players did so far not have any reasonable outcome - they simply deleted all related messages in cross-faction chats where the problem was put up - we decided to choose an in-game method of making the players aware of this unacceptable behaviour.

We fielded the first saturday - a clear message with an impact that should not only reach the players in question, but also players not directly involved with the bad behaviour of the ENL FS POC.

We knew beforehand, that this would have an impact on some people's experience during the FS, but with the new and improved display of fields in Ingress Prime, it would be minor and only prevent links and fields from being made during a short time frame until the field was taken down. We apologize to the foreign agents not involved in the local issues that attended the FS for the impact on their game play. We hope that this message clarifies why this was urgently needed to ‘wake up’ the local ENL to think about their behaviour in-game and their real-life actions.

We also want to make clear, that the real-life actions will have real-life consequences for the involved players if they don’t change and apologize for their unacceptable behaviour.

We urge everyone to not accept such behaviour in their communities and to confront agents (of any faction) when such behaviour comes up.

We will continue to fight such behaviour and stand up and raise our voice.

For the resistance and the game we all love to play.


Comments

  • Lächerlich und armselig!

  • Does even a single month pass without hearing Uschi crying arround? Sorry dude but you're accusing many Enlightened Agents in different countries that they're cheating and other stuff... For years... And i'm still waiting for an apologize from you because you called me a spoofer.

    Please get rid of your diapers.

  • I am one of the participants who traveled to Freiburg because of FS. My Travel expenses included the round trip and accommodation. I have paid these costs from my "real-life" wallet.

    To be honest, your action on Saturday was not a special impact for me, because your action had no influence whatsoever on my playing style. But I think now, your action and behavior have deliberately spoiled our stay in Freiburg, since I read this post. Too bad.

  • Well, I was willing to engage the disucssion after you stated in the FS channel about this real life incident. After hours of exchange back and forth in TG, you did not provide any additional insights and pulled back to solving this on an individual basis in real life, whilest the above post was alrady public. Quite a contradiction, I think.

    To be very clear: I am not excusing any abusive behavior. Yet, when getting involved, be it by my own observation or by public posts as above, I would like to be told the entire truth, which you did not provide, for whatever reason. If the rest beyond your accusation cannot be public, you should keep it in private entirely. Else it is only a hunt and the spread of misstrust.

    As said, I was not able up to know to learn the details of the real life abusive behavior this action claims to be about. Yet, I know how abusive you behave, deliberately selecting communities, dedicated channels and events such as this FS in Freiburg to spread your suspicions and accusations like on a scene, each time well tailored to be sufficiently offensive without being really factual and concise. There are more examples beyond this weekends FS, the channel for the field test in Stuttgart would be one more example.

    In return I can say, that the ENL poc in question demonstrated open mind, dedication, cooperation and engagement to establish exchange beyond the factions to get this event started, and there is more of such to come. It is during these events that the real spirit of the game and the community lives for a few hours and this is the experience that agents are seeking when they travel long distances to aprticipate be it for an FS or anomalies. Such contribution to the entire Ingress community I have never seen from you since I am playing Ingress. You even did not react when being apporached for an initial exchange...and I am sure you will reply that you never got the message, only it were many more than only one.

    If I had to chose between one more agent that believes to owning the ultimate moral integrity, or one more that might err but is eager to cultivate the games community, it would be a fast decision in favour of the later.

    For the sake of this game I would encourage each and every agent, nevermind the faction, not to fall for such easy and destructive attitude of intimidating and offending others for what they might have done. Assume that everyone can err sometimes (even oneself), raise the topic in a reasonable manner, stay respectful and have a rl chat with your ingame opponents from time to time, while keeping up competition ingame.

    The entire game is an XF event. Never the ones wthout the others!

  • GuschtelGuschtel ✭✭✭
    edited November 2019

    To stop the discussions here once for all (and avoid further misinformation and accusations):

    Niantic got the full background information several weeks ago about the case here and I will clearly not publicly disclose personal details about involved people as demanded by some (seemingly very angry and insulting) agents in this forum.

    People who know the full background information have a very clear opinion which goes in accordance of the initial message, no matter what additional problems other agents like @Kahego might have.

    The people that were behaving toxic and insulted others were contacted privately and in several XF groups and an apology was asked for their insults which did not happen. On the other hand such requests and information about the case itself were deleted.

    Answers like the following from @Sp1nz and @Laffo are part of another problem in our region.

    We (speaking for the resistance of freiburg) clearly treat other agents with the deserved respect and always try to separate the game from the real-life actions.

    Seems not everyone is able to do so. Once again, I want to make sure that the real message goes through: Ingress is a game and should be played as such. Impacts on the private or business life of agents have no place in the game and should be strictly prosecuted by either Niantic or local authorities and left to them.

    @NianticCasey i think this thread can be closed before it escalates further due to other faction-related issues unrelated to the field or the problem originally discussed.

    Post edited by Guschtel on
  • Hi folks,

    Friendly reminder that the community is not the place to be reporting inappropriate gameplay. This should be directed to in-app support for the support team to review and evaluate.

This discussion has been closed.