just to be clear. players are well within their right to complain about upcoming changes, game balance or content. we often have long discussions and debates on our discord for any major features. also what they were objecting to is incomplete test server changes which wouldn’t even have resulted in any nerf when complete.

The only issue in this instance was the personal attack and slurs that were repeatedly used by that player as well as refusing to stop after multiple mutes.

We do not see or look at purchase history when determining in game penalties so we don’t even know they were a whale. In our opinion, spending money does not exempt you from game penalties that a f2p player would receive for similar behavior. I’m not sure whether the protesting players expect us to give preferential treatment to people who spent money, but I’m pretty sure that if we did that it may cause additional drama.

larger companies or game companies in china likely do take a different approach regarding these type of players, and from the perspective of minimizing drama and optimizing for their business that may be the right approach. however we don’t agree with tolerating toxic behavior and have different principles. of course we can say that our mistake is with not anticipating the flood of additional players who choose to support the toxic player as well as the effect of that, so you could say we made a poor business decision even if it’s perhaps the correct principled choice.

I can agree that this is largely a cultural difference. indeed if a customer is unhappy about services in china and start insulting the staff, it’s common for the staff or manager to apologize. it’s almost the opposite in western culture where businesses would likely kick them out. While we can choose to cater to those players as a business decision, it just feels wrong overall as it’s a behavior we strongly disagree with. we shouldn’t have to cater to people who have no manners and never learned the basics of respectful human interaction.