“Our goal is to create a safe, secure, inclusive, and enjoyable experience for all players. Moving forward, the use of the Confederate flag on any car and under any circumstances will be categorized as a “Notorious iconography” in our enforcement guidelines and its use will result in a ban.”
One of the most well-known examples of this would be the Dodge Charger livery from The Dukes of Hazzard.
Please remember that specific enforcement cases are not open for discussion on the forums; if you are affected by this policy and have questions they need to be directed via ticket at Forza Support.
And other things like the Japanese rising sun I see. I have a livery shared like that, I guess I better go unshare it before I get banned? I would hope there is a grace period as these things have been allowed for ~15 years and people made them in good faith thinking they were permitted.
(The Japanese rising sun is currently used by the Japanese navy and is not a hate symbol.)
The new havoc created by PG and MS.
I think all players should be respected.
And it’s clear that big global corporations like MS had a social responsibility to address current issues like BLM.
But how many players were using these two pieces of content with discriminatory intent?
Probably almost all of them were without discriminatory intent, like the General Lee replica or the Liberty Walk logo.
Did they not consider that by abruptly banning these thousands or tens of thousands of content, a very large number of players who created and downloaded them would risk being banned?
I think they should enforce these new terms of service after the FM8 release or after one month.
There should be a reprieve for revisions to the guidelines that will fatally affect a very large number of players.
If you want to keep your account safe, you should stop sharing it right away.
And if possible, you should also delete the livery.
*even if you don’t share the livery, there is a risk that your drivatar will use it.
In an issue like this, you should basically assume that the argument that “there is no discriminatory intent in the content I created” doesn’t hold water.
While this is definitely the right move, it no doubt created some havok within the painting community. Across all games, there’s probably hundreds of thousands of General Lee and Rising Sun JDM style paints by now. I agree, there definitely needs to be a grace period before bans start getting handed out because it’s going to take time to get all the liveries out of the system (i.e. clearing storefronts and getting AI to stop using them). And I’m sure this caught many General Lee and JDM painters by surprise.
If you have such a livery, make sure you actually delete it. Unsharing it most likely won’t cut it because your Drivitar can use unshared paints.
I was a child of the 80s, and I remember Dukes of Hazard when it was on. But I was really more of a Knight Rider kid. So I don’t really have any kind of strong attachment to the liveries. And I’m almost 100% certain I never downloaded one for the charger.
I kinda figured it was only a matter of time before they made this decision. It’s been at the forefront of public consciousness for a few years now. I agree with the decision. It’s time to move on. Though I would also agree with giving people a chance to remove their designs willingly, or at least deleting currently shared designs without penalty before fully enforcing the new rule.
Twitter reflex is mostly USA and youngest generation, not applicable everywhere and not for all ages.
People regularly coming to forum are few.
Some players are no longer active and may share some unexpected content
… surprise you were banned …
Any livery that was shared previously to a new rule, should just be deleted when reported / user notified.
Before sharing a livery, there should be user notice listing all restrictions.
And for already shared liveries that got applied on some cars, I guess that since the liveries have an id, it’s quite simple to block online display.
I am aware that what I am proposing requires dev, therefore less straight than ‘ban th’m all’ .Nevertheless, having taken a courageous decision doesn’t mean applying it needs to happen with aggressiveness. I fully and strongly support that evolution here, just wish it comes to the game in an educated manner.
Like Peregrine, I was kid at the time of ‘Dukes’ , I never did any link to some racism until recent events. As from a childhood memory, I would have enjoyed having the famous horn but here again, possible that it has some racism meaning I never detected.
But here we are dealing with ban subject and I guess MM will soon put an end to it as not allowed to be discussed on the forum, so, let’s see how it will be dealt with…
This bugs me more than the Dukes of Hazzard ban. We cant talk about it? Thats telling me they dont care what we think. Henry Ford is a known racist so better ban Fords too as well as all the Germany cars because we know what that country did or are you only banning selective history? Banning History because someone doesnt like it doesnt make it go away. I thought this was a car game for car lovers. It’s bad I’m going to get banned just for a iconic tv car. I dont want to cause trouble I just want to race my cars.
The simple use of the word ‘ban’ used to result in closing the topic…
Up to me, what they aim to is removing symbols used by racists to be identified as being racists. Mercedes etc are not symbols used by any racists groups I know of. I would not identify anyone as a racist because driving a dukes’ car, kind of collateral casualty imho.
The big issue is they have now very limited resources, any phased moderation requires communication, communication has to be localized like 40 country/languages, takes money and a lot of time. I guess we will just suffer the unexpected ban accidents …
To me it’s like removing the “SS” from the cars because it supposedly offends Jews.
Might as well remove the Beetle from the game, since we all know how the Beetle was created. Or remove the Auto Union and Mercedes, whose sporting successes were sponsored by… well, you know.
Volkswagens probably won’t get banned. Despite the brand’s history, Volkswagen cars aren’t viewed as “hate objects” like a swastika flag or a noose would. People won’t call you racist for driving a Beetle around but they definitely will for waving a swastika flag around.
Oh yes they will on occasion (well not racist, but it is in the word associated with said meaning), often yes as a joke, but still will be said towards people who drive/own old Volkswagens and/or are fans of them
I agree. It’s a bit of a stretch to ban the use on a livery of one of the most famous TV cars of all time. If it was being used with actual racial intent, to try and generate hate, or incite fear or intentionally offend someone I could see an argument for it. Now people actually being able to determine intent is like people having common sense in this day and age, very few and far between.
Are we going to remove all Ford vehicles from the game because Henry Ford was a huge backer of a certain leader in 1930’s and 1940’s Germany?
Are we going to remove all vehicles in the game that use parts manufactured by Bosch (from lights and filters, right on through to injectors) because they had a hand in the construction of the gas chambers at the concentration camps? They also used slave labour to build these and other products around that time.
Is use of the United Kingdom flag going to be banned from use on the likes of the Mini’s? A few of them now incorporate this design into the rear lights of the car. The flags inside of this, and the flag itself surely was flown at the events of numerous atrocities, some even including slavery over the years.
The Italian flag in many racing liveries? The country committed multiple atrocities as well during the wars.
The American flag, the Willy’s Jeep, the Hummers, etc etc. I could go on.
I could come up with a lot more examples but these are a few right off the top of my head.
Quoting actual experience, yet you need not believe me, doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. Not trying to win anything, don’t even see how it is this.
After reading the whole thing here, on Reddit, and on Twitter, I think that most people would agree to ban the confederate flag and that it’s time to get over the General Lee thing and move on. What people are angry about is the execution, with PG and T10 coming after people from the get go. I think these revised guidelines would go a lot better if you…
Give the players a grace period to get all the offensive paint jobs out of the system.
Don’t put the onus entirely on the players to get rid of each and every one of them. Let’s face it, 99.9% of players who put the Confederate or Rising Sun flags on their cars didn’t do it to be racist. They just wanted to replicate an iconic car or logo. So they’re definitely caught off-guard here. The developers should be working together with the players to get rid of such paint jobs without penalty during this grace period. Many people here own many Forza games and it can be a pain to have to go through each and every game purging all your potentially offensive paints. And it would suck if you got banned just because you missed that old Rising Sun paint job in a past title you haven’t touched in five years.
Hi Max, thanks for the link, I hadn’t checked that in a very long time and realised I have a featured item bearing one of those symbols specifically mentioned on the list - namely the Iron Cross. It’s on the Lemmy tribute I painted/shared Boxing Day 2018.
I’ve unshared the design but as you can see it’s had over 32,000 downloads so I’m wondering if other players will still have that file in their collection? If so, will they then be able to apply it to the car and sell it in the AH, leaving the Auction open to being reported and the possibility of a ban being issued?
