Forza Giveth. Forza Taketh Away...

I woke up today like any other wonderful Monday morning! Bright eyed, and ready to start the day! The sun was shining bright in the sky, and I just knew it was going to be a great day! As I sat and sipped my Starbucks Iced Mocha Espresso, I decided to go get my news from the best news source on the planet. Twitter...! One of the first posts that I saw was one from the Forza community/Enforcement manager, "Nitro Glitter." (below) I honestly wasn't sure what to think when I saw it, but knew that something had to have gone done overnight that I had missed as I typically do on the weekends... God, why am I always so damn busy? Anyways, I digress. Her post had my head spinning!

Immediately I move to the comments section. (Duh...) Low and behold, a plethora of people letting off the clip about all of the recent Forza bans that have been issued hand over fist by the enforcement team. I am not going to repeat any of the comments, or show them because honestly, there were some that were downright rude and disrespectful. At the end of the day, this is another Human these people are talking to, and about. Anyways... After scrolling a bit further down, I see a retweet of an AR12 Nick post from a video that he had released on Sunday afternoon. Simply titled, "Bans." As soon as I saw this post, I knew that it was far from coincidental, so I had to check it out. I watched Nick's video, (below) and there was honestly nothing new in there that I didn't already know, however, I found out shortly after watching the video that Nick, 1.3 Million subs, Nick of AR12, had in-fact been BANNED from the official Forza Discord simply due to him sharing his video... WHAT?! This man brings in SO many new people to the Forza Franchise from his daily streams, and his daily video uploads on his Youtube channel, and you ban the man for simply telling the community what is going on, and explaining the bans that have been happening?! I was in dis-belief. How could someone with such clout in the community, and someone whom has done SO MUCH to help the Forza community grow be banned for communicating an issue with the people? I am dumb-founded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS39Z2HxxQQ

I continued on to the Forza Discord out of sheer curiosity, and when I got in to the FH4 General thread, it was flooded with people asking about bans, and people who are genuinely concerned with whether or not they themselves will be banned because honestly, we have no clue what is a punishable offense anymore! All of the queries and concerns were met with "Stay on topic" and were completely brushed aside. If the person continued to ask, they were banned from the Discord, just as Nick was. All because they are concerned about getting banned, FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON! People... This is not OK if you ask me. Community managers and "enforcement" or moderators should not have the power to ban community members for sharing their opinions. Scroll through Youtube, there are thousands of videos uploaded everyday talking about something negative regarding different games every day. Yet, none of those people get systematically removed from that corresponding game's Discord community. This honestly seems as-if there is something more going on. Is there just one person with the power here? If so, why? What happened to the incredible team that we used to have at Turn 10? It was a small team that worked day in, and day out WITH the community... Not against.

You see. Developers depend on not only the community buying the games, but the content creators pushing the game for them. Showing the world what the game is, and how amazing the community and developer is. But when we have things like this happening, it puts a very bad taste in everyone's mouth. There are people getting banned on Forza Horizon 4 for simply taking advantage of a glitch, or issue in-game that the developers missed. It makes no sense to ban someone who spent $99 on the game and simply set a #1 Rivals time on a route using a "shortcut" when YOU are the ones who made the shortcut to begin with! Alas, here we are. Instead of doing what developers and community moderators should be doing, such as talking to the community, figuring out how it happened, and how they can fix it, they are just Ban hammering everyone, everywhere, for absolutely anything... It's very dis-heartening. Especially for a content creator such as myself, who now has no motivation to play their game, and and has a community based around the platform.

This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Not so much by the community, but by management. Discord bans aside because that doesn't matter. It's just a Discord community, and you can create a new profile... But the bans on the community for corner cutting, or taking a line to a checkpoint that straight-lines the route, and vinyls that aren't hateful or inappropriate have to stop... I do agree with some of the vinyls that they have outlawed, and it is great that they advised the community of these things. The problem though, is that they still waited until AFTER they banned people to communicate why. Why ban immediately? Why not just take the paint down, contact the individual whom created it, and explain? It's that simple! Instead, this painter is hit with a ban because of something that took them HOURS to create, all because of one person that has far too much power over a massive community.

Something's got to give, and I am honestly really ready to see a change. We need Co-Pilot, Mechberg, and the rest of the old team back ASAP. What is happening right now just isn't cutting it, and it has to change. For the game, the developers, and the community.

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Thanks so much for taking time to read my ramblings today. This is the first of (hopefully) many blogs that I will post. My hope is to build this blog up to a place where I talk about all things Racing Games! Not only Forza. Please consider subscribing to CS6 Blogs, as well as my Youtube channel. I genuinely appreciate all of the support you all give me day in, and day out. Until next time.

Much love, everyone. See ya soon!

https://www.youtube.com/connerspeed6