Augustus Marceus

For a game that touts itself as being 'anti pay to win', PoE sure treats its free players way worse than any p2w games out there. Some of the staff members have serious god complex problem. I just recently found out they have dedicated staff members policing the games, locking random free accounts for absolutely arbitrary reasons. So I have an account with a character named ChokinChris that I created in 2018 (it was just a random thing about Chris Brown that I read on social media at the time and just pops into my head while I was naming my character). I recently logged into that account after a few years hiatus, it was promptly locked just after stepping into town a few times, and I was requested to contact support, which I did. This is the reason they give me, and I quote, "This account has been locked for making character names which reference physical violence towards a Grinding Gear Games staff member.". Needless to say I was completely caught off guard by that, because I had no idea who or what they were talking about. I had to take to Google to find out that 'Chris' just happens to be the name of GGG's boss man. While this definitely raises concerns over GGG's overzealous moderation of the game, it wasn't what 'grinded my gears'. The worst thing came after, as I explained to them multiple times that it wasn't geared toward any GGG staffs, as I don't even know the name of a single person that works there, they completely dismiss my explanation and insist that I must apologize for my actions and promise never to do it again, only in doing say that they may, and I quote again, "consider reduce this to a warning". Yes, you read that right, not only did GGG decide to lock my account for a completely arbitrary reason that they came up with themselves, refuse to apologize for it, and insist on coercing a free player into admitting they're wrong. These GGG staff members are far too deep in their fan clubs that they think every single player worship them as gods. Too bad for them, a level 24 character with a bunch of leveling gears is hardly something worth rolling over for. So now, instead of a player, they gain an evangelist with a dedicated mission to spread the words about their god complex on as many platforms as possible. Good job, GGG.