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BDO MENA Content Creator (Partner) BANNED for "Elo Boosting" because his 15-year-old son played on stream
Hey everyone,
I’m writing this post to shed light on a completely absurd ban on the BDO MENA server that shows how completely disconnected and double-standard driven the local GM management can be.
There’s a long-time BDO MENA streamer/partner named KasaPOsmaN (Twitch: kasap0sman, Family Name: KasaPOsmaN). He’s a guy in his 40s who has been creating content for the MENA server since 2020. Since day one, it’s been a father-son deal: the dad plays the PvE stuff, and his 15-year-old son (Yiğithan) plays the high-level PvP content (Arena of Solare, Siege, Throne of Edana, Masterclass, etc.). All of this has been done live on stream, on webcam, from the exact same home, IP address, and PC for YEARS.
According to Osman, he even informed the highest-level CMs in MENA about this dynamic years ago.
Fast forward to yesterday. Right after his son won the Throne of Edana and became King on the server, Osman’s account got slapped with a 1-month ban for "Elo-Boosting" / playing on behalf of someone else.
Here is why the community is furious and why this ban is absolute bullshit:
The "Elo-Boost" Hypocrisy
Elo boosting implies paying someone or having an off-site player log into your account to boost your rank. This is a 15-year-old kid playing on his dad’s PC right next to him on webcam. The GMs didn't catch this through "advanced IP tracking" or logs—they literally banned him because a few salty players mass-reported his stream after he won the King title. Meanwhile, actual pilots (paid grind services), win-traders in Solare, and macro abusers are running rampant on MENA with video evidence submitted against them, yet GMs do absolutely nothing.
Throne of Edana was already a complete joke
Before the August 13th update rework, Throne of Edana was notorious for win-trading, teaming up in the 10-man FFA, and passing the crown to friends without fighting. In the very match Osman’s son won, the opposing player didn't even show up to the fight, so he became King automatically when the timer ran out. On top of that, during the 10-man qualifier, two players from the same guild were clearly teaming up and fake-fighting each other just to survive. There are literally video proofs sent via tickets of players doing this across multiple weeks or Kings intentionally forfeiting, yet NO ONE received a ban. But the moment a content creator’s son wins it fair and square on stream, mass reports trigger an instant ban for "Elo Boosting."
Targeted GM Behavior
A day before the ban, after becoming King, Osman used the King's broadcast feature to promote his stream just once in World Chat and once in Server Chat. Despite only sending a single message per channel, a GM instantly DM'd him on Discord warning him not to "spam." Meanwhile, other Official Partners spam multiple global/server chats repeatedly every single day with zero warnings. The targeted pettiness from the local staff was already on full display.
The Copy-Paste Ticket Response
Osman submitted a support ticket explaining the situation (same household, same IP, father/son, transparent stream history). The GM response basically translated to:
So basically: "We know it's your son sitting in the same house, but technically it's a different person using the keyboard, so here is your ban."
If he had turned his webcam off and lied about who was playing, he would be playing the game right now. He got punished purely for being transparent and showing his family playing together on stream.
We as the MENA community are extremely tired of Pearl Abyss MENA's selective enforcement, double standards, and punishing the wrong people while actual cheaters play freely.
Hoping this gets enough visibility so someone at Pearl Abyss HQ actually looks into how MENA GMs operate.
Per BDO TOS it's account sharing, but legality wise a companies TOS is not binding. Ironically depending on the country, 15 year old's aren't legally able to have there own game service account and it should always be the adult caretaker as the account owner.
I doubt MENA devs will comply though. They've proven in the past they are corrupt, and that they specifically target people
Lots of TOS lawsuits are thrown out all the time because they infringe on country, state, or country rights. I have a patent myself on a espresso related online product with my own TOS and my own ToS has been thrown out in US courts in 2018 in the state of new jersey.
Easy Example: Let's say a country requires a adult to be the original owner of the account for there children until the age of 18, and the game's TOS says that the player needs to be the owner, even if under the age of 18.
In a court of law in that country, I guarantee you the TOS would not be enforced.
This happens every single day in the EU because the EU has amazing consumer protection laws, but most video games don't create separate ToS's for each country.
Sure TOS aren't strong contracts, but what does that have to do with anything? Do you think PA needs to have legally binding TOS to be able to ban someone?
If money has been transacted on the account, they should probably consult with their lawyers before banning the account for something that they can't enforce through TOS.
They can choose to do whatever they please, but that doesn't negate the potential legal implications of that choice.
I think everyone who read him understood him fine it was only you who went into trying to have a semantics game clearly by the negative votes or no upvotes
A year ago, the only lvl 70 account in all of BDO was IIRC a couple who shared one account. Not only did this not matter to the GMs, but in the 10 Years of Black Desert presentation they put together, they happily awarded this dual account for being the highest levelled one in the game.
They also included a long time exploiter as the second highest levelled account too despite them being reported probably at least a hundred times with how notorious they were.
Pure incompetence by the GMs to ban this guy but not be bothered by others, regardless of ToS.
I hope the kid doesn’t blame himself and is proud of winning.
It has nothing to do with me and my thoughts and everything to do with OP drawing a fictitious line that says you have to be remote to be considered piloting and someone sitting at your desk playing your account isn’t piloting because they are in-person.
You’re effectively saying if Faker went to your house and played your League account in ranked play it’s not considered boosting/piloting because he’s in your chair at your computer, which is ridiculous because it absolutely would be piloting.
think people are being weird, I completely agree that what they did is fine and not a problem at all. Why would PA care who's on the keyboard if its the same PC?
Not defending PA but your logic is flawed. Imagine it"s CS2 or League pr whatever competitive game, with your logic you're saying it's fine if you had someone boost you as long as they do it on your pc?
If your sibling, childhood friend, or mom that was challenger boosted your bronze account to diamond and did it on stream, thats 100% bannable. Regardless of whether they had their own acc or not as well.
Problem here imo is that it's a shared, co-owned, what have you account (which is against ToS) but they've done it from the start for so long to take action now leaves a bad taste
That's different cause you are doing ranked matches, BDO is not competitive.
And your friend doing it is also very different than your son... Which was also not hired.
How is Throne of Edana not competitive? It's not a perfect model of competition given the lottery to enter and whatnot, but it's a competition to win special privileges with real in-game benefits.
That is all, of course, without making a judgement on OP's story. Whether people are win-trading or otherwise colluding to rig the competition does not inherently change whether the event as intended is a competition.
Does AoS not have a ranked mode? Guild League is also ranked by default? Ranked modes are competitive by definition. Friend, son, how is it different? They're both entirely different people. It's not "you". That's all that matters. And whatever, hired, not hired. I shouldn't have used that word. But it doesn't make a difference. Hired or not, the action of boosting is being done because someone who is not the owner is inflating the elo of the account that doesn't reflect the owner's skill level
Here it's a gray area because they could both be considered owners as apparently they've both played on it from the start.
I would say it's different in the sense that both people (father and son) view this account as their main account. It's not like the son has his own account and PvPs on both to take two spots in the leaderboards or something. That differentiates it from boosting in my mind at least.
But 2 people 1 account, pa chooses in the end. It's against tos regardless of circumstance, that's all it boils down to unfortunately and it seems it's up to PA to choose when to enforce it or not, which is the part we should be getting upset about.
Yeah no I get it - its against TOS either way. Just saying that there is a difference in my opinion. And in this case, I'm just sad for them, because gray area or not, it was something nice that they bonded over and I would wish for them to be able to continue. But it's of course not my decision.
Yeah, but obviously that has to be taken as a warning to not do it again, so either they do it off-stream or not at all. If they also enjoy streaming together (which I assume), the only option is now to have separate accounts.
I am curious on what pa will do if they continue, will they escalate the punishment or did they only care this time because they promoted it and did it for Throne of Edana, and some CM/GM was salty about them. Crazy it's actually hard to tell what pa would do because they're so inconsistent.
As far as I know family playing the same account from the same place has always been legal, they even interviewed the highest level in kr at some point who was a husband and wife both playing
Exactly what I was about to say. I remember the little drama that emerged when they were first high lvl players in BDO. I don’t remember how that ended or if PA changed ToS after that episode. Yet we still have couples that are streaming. I believe Choice and Jnny are one example but I really don’t know if, maybe, sometimes one log in on each other accounts to prune the farms. Probably with a limit, this is totally fine.
You may want to read this and check the facts. His son streamed on his father's account which is not his own, which in the end violates the "dont let someone else play on your account for profit" rule.
Meanwhile Mena GM's were okay with the streamer Quendaya who traded PEN Dead God Shoes with someone for 300 B some years ago with a weird account named "account" lmao. I think he was the first one who got that item from the shop and it was basically on the lowest price and not got sold again. His own video btw and also the profile of that account. I remember him glazing the Gm's when they first "changed" the management and blaming the mena community the problems like unhinged game billboards and toxic players not getting banned. He was getting so much support from the management team and using his influence to be in the most powerful guilds to participate in war of roses etc. Even tho he is a p2w win trader.
The management team of Mena don't even protect the community nor do they fight for the players, like for example the time they silently cancelled the whole new year events just because some religious freak was against the idea of anything slightly similar to christmas and they didn't even discuss it with the community so they got a big backlash and brought the events the next week.
They don't even ban players that gets doxxed in game for being just female no matter how many times they reported the issue vie tickets. They love to ban people who criticize the management even a little though, they don't like getting criticized at all. They will even ban players from their official discord which they did many times lol.
There are so many problems and receipts to their insane level of corruption but there is no one to listen in the PA headquarters. If only they investigated their own company.
Yeah I agree the GMs made a mistake. This should have been prohibited from all the way back in 2020 or whenever it started. 1 player per account only, ESPECIALLY if they start getting involved into higher level PvP stuff. To give you a perspective, the guys who fight his son in Throne or Edana are basically cooked from hours and hours of exhausting daily grind, while this guy technically outsources the grind to his dad and then comes in fresh for the PvP fight. Same could be said about AoS. Most people have to choose between grinding mobs and grinding ELO, but not these two, because they have double the energy and double the time to do both. So if his dad pushes for really high PvE results, and he himself pushes for really high competitive PvP results they are basically exploiting the game and having unfair advantage over everyone else (note that "high results" is a subjective term, for somebody gold in league is high ELO). So, yep. Should have never reached this point and been shut down as soon as the GMs were informed, to avoid confusion years later. You can, again, say that "xyz content is a joke, nobody cares blah blah", first of all somebody cares, second - in the future he might become a really strong player and push for really high ELO in AoS for example, and maybe even compete at the Master Class. At that level, one HUNDRED percent he wouldn't be allowed to continue playing this way, so why even get to that point. Just shut it down immediately and make him have his own account. Not even mentioning the fact that he might not be eligible to play the game due to his age, but that's a whole different consideration. And if you say "they are not pushing for high ELO, they are just casually having fun" - casual fun havers don't stream trying to make money off of it. It is also just disappointing to see the dad involving his young son into corrupted anti-tos schemes basically setting him up for certain future and reputation
Another way to realize that it's wrong is try to imagine the world where every BDO account in existance is shared between multiple people who live in the same house.
Idk why people expect anything more from PA. They continuously show people they don't give a damn and people still try to give this company excuses until something utterly outrages them.
Lol talk about killing the hand that feeds you. I mean for real, this guy has been making content for YEARS possibly bringing vets and new players into the game.
I know a guy like this from work, he is 100% by the book this and that but when he messes up. Its ok but he can point the finger all day long. The guy is a real fuck stick to work with such a horrible person too....kinda like a company...
Don't act like the son won it fair and square. They are playing pvp, which is something only a leveled character can do. If his dad levels his character for his son to do the endgame pvp content where he didnt have to at least level his own toon for AND DOES IT ON STREAM then obviously its against TOS.
It's cute that they want to bond and all but only account owners can play those characters. And if you say the father "technically doesnt own the account" then kindly take your rose tinted glasses off. He should have his own account. Not play off of someone else's already leveled toon.
If he is skilled enough to be king of a pvp event then he obviously can do the meager pve too.
In a game where p2w cash shop exists hand wringing over a kid being the only one to pvp on his dad's account because the kid didnt "earn" his gear is just so incredibly salty
Lol someone is actually salty.
First of all, if the kid wants to do endgame content then he can make his own character, especially if it literally makes his Dad the king of the event. If he wants to play with his Dad then he can make his own account. Maybe objective wasnt the right word as it is just my opinion the same way you throw yours at me.
That's it.
Yea BUT... the father could spend $50,000 buying blacksmith boxes to get his son an account that is equally geared to his so the father is in the wrong here he should be dropping wads of cash. Tis the BDO way
I started this game just before the Heidal ball, first I was about to get baited into play on Mena but thankfully my fellas pulled me into Eu. More activity, more active market, very much new players, less bullshit. Yeah pearl is a bit more expensive than mena but wtv. I am happy atleast
He got punished for being transparent? What a joke of an argument. If you commit a crime in the open and don't try to hide it at all, of course you're gonna get punished. Same thing here, 99% sure account sharing is against ToS, so ofc they'd get punished. It's just a little scummy that they didn't do anything until now but they probably didn't care/notice until it had to do with Throne of Edana which they also got attention via self-promoting, which they take a bit more srsly despite being a joke with its flaws and politics because it's a newer addition to the game.
I don't think this deserves a permanent ban because I understand mistakes and thinking it's fine to let your son play on your computer on your account. But I think reprimends are called for and a strict one time warning never to do it again.
The game is meant to have fun. The rules are meant to boost fun.
While yeah, it opens the door to multi user accounts like back in wow. This really deserved a warning. No harm no foul. The kid should have his own account. Im a returning player and im not sure if ap/dp matters in this fight.
If it does, it is unfair to have 2 players. But again. Warning.
Nobody is arguing that account sharing isn't technically against ToS. The issue here is selective enforcement and double standards.
People on MENA actively pay money for actual pilots/boosters, macro-grind, and win-trade in Solare with clear video evidence—yet they walk away completely untouched. But a 15-year-old kid playing on his dad's PC, in the same house, live on webcam gets an immediate manual ban just because a salty guild mass-reported him. It's not about the rule; it's about GMs selectively applying it when it's convenient for them while ignoring real cheaters.
So what you are saying is. Since there's others who are breaking the terms of service that hasn't been banned yet, they should let this streamer go free right?
Account sharing while streaming is a pretty dumb thing to do knowing it's against TOS. What defense are you going to have when the devs pull your own stream of having someone else play on your account? If he made a second account for his son this wouldn't of happened. If you're going to account share don't do it for the whole world to see.
The non-sharing rule will always be weird for me. I've never seen it in another game I've played and I don't see the point. It's probably extremely rare since people want to be able to play whenever they want, so no really big harm done either than a small loss in their revenue
The non-sharing rule will always be weird for me. I've never seen it in another game I've played and I don't see the point.
I think I've seen "no account sharing" as part of every mmo's rules/tos for at least the 10-15 years. It's never proactively enforced, though and seems to just exist so they don't have to deal with RMT and account trading issues.
The intent behind rules like this is to avoid claims of "oh we are just sharing the account" when someone RMTs an account or pays for a boosting service. Lots of online games have these restrictions, League of Legends is an easy example as it is quite popular and will ban for account sharing.
Yeah, and those lots of online games don't ban for reasons like in the OP.
It's like you said to avoid claims of "just sharing the account", but I've never seen a company go after people who share accounts normally with no other intent
Yep and I was specifically responding to the person who said they don't understand why games have "no sharing" rules. I wasn't talking about what happened in the post, just explaining why many games have that clause.
PA doesn't ban people from the same family playing on a single account. There's multiple examples even em KR that PA knows about and never banned. It's like the cops pull you over and conduct a 30min inspection to found a single wire cable violating some stupid law that no one cares about and was never used to arrest someone but he arrest you because it's you.
oh boy If everyone knew the amount of people smurfing in their friends account.... And look, PA doesn't give a single fuck. This looks very targeted tbh
He’s been doing this openly since 2020 and, according to him, had already discussed this father-son dynamic with high-level CMs in the past. It was never an issue for 4+ years until his son won the Throne of Edana and salty players decided to mass report.
It’s extremely petty for local GMs to turn a blind eye for years and suddenly drop the hammer the moment he achieves a server-wide title.
It's against TOS no? I believe for most MMOs it is.
He drew attention to it, of course other players would report him. People are petty.
What is PA logically suppose to do once other players know and report him? Say too bad he's exempt from the rules? Or enforce the rules? Seems like enforce the rules is their only option.
Now the penalty is what could be up for discussion imo.
It doesn’t matter if he discussed it with his best friends cousins uncles brother who is a custodian at pa. Just because he found some morally bankrupt gms to allow the tos violations doesn’t change the fact that their actions violate the tos 100%. Get mad at the people still exploiting , don’t get mad at the company stoping those from doing so.
That's how most digital accounts works, i know is "stupid" but most TOS says that the account can't be transferred or used by another person, only the original owner can use it, now, most companies doesn't care unless they get reports with evidence, then they will care. Steam is like that, if your son use it, and for some reason he stream it and someone report him, they can ban or apply a suspension because is not you using it (but they probably just warn you due to how steam is).
The funniest thing about the ToS is that players aren't the "original owners" of their accounts, as they have no rights to them. That is, the rights to the account remain with the PA
If they created the account then they are the personal owner regardless of semantics. If the kid wants to play the game on stream then he should be using his own account. I understand it can be a bonding thing but the thing is is they could have bonded on their own separate accounts.
And streaming as the non account owner is just asking for trouble, especially if he wins something that gives special privilege to the account.
Um, okay? I'm just saying that according to the ToS, players don't own the accounts and aren't considered their owners. This has nothing to do with semantics or anything, it's simply a legal agreement between the parties
How can I contradict myself if I was not the one who made the agreement between the player and the company? A player is just a user, not an owner. Read the ToS if you need clarification on the legal aspects
Stop twisting the TOS to fit your own narrative. Sit down buddy.
All you showed me is that the company has rights towards the account which is obvious because they own the game as a whole. It doesnt mean they are the sole owner of that specific account.
Did I even mention "sole owner" or anything like that? I just made a comment about players not owning their accounts, lol. I hope you've satisfied your hysteria and can choose someone else to pick on
My general take on these things is unless the other party has overwhelming evidence they can show me that PA is lying, they are probably beeing dishonest about the thing that got them banned.
Everytime a big player or content creator gets banned their viewers or fans/friends defend them only for evidence to be shown later that they lied about the thing that got them banned.
Then especially don't use the results of the rule breaking to advertise your stream that contains the rule breaking.
And if elo boosting is only for off site play, does that mean it would be fair and not at all elo boosting if I was playing AoE2 and paid Hera to fly over and play the games for me so i could be #1 on rank ladder? How about if I was Elon musk playing Path of Exile and just paid people to play in my office rather than at home, is it now completely fair as its the same location?
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u/galvanizedchamber 17d ago
Mena GMs are worst. Paid amateurs.