All online players have dealt with trolls and toxic players – it’s a part of the culture. Just as big a part of the culture is the constant argument that companies can and should do more than what they are doing. While simple suspensions and bans go pretty far – especially considering the fact that nearly all of us have spent money on those accounts – many fans think there should be more permanent bans. Unfortunately, there are permanent bans; they just aren’t very effective.

Account-wide bans, ID bans, and permanent bans are all the same language suggesting that a player has screwed up so horribly that they will be removed from ever playing the game again. It sounds great in theory. The only problem is that it is not only impossible to permanently ban anyone, but it can result in non-offenders being accidentally caught in the crossfire.

A quick look at any online forums shows players calling for IP bans to stop the problem at its source. This is something many games have played with and done, but it is among the least useful options. It doesn’t take into account that an IP address can be shared collectively, as by a college, and banning that IP address would harm other users. It also doesn’t take into account that someone remotely savvy could simply change their IP address. Their old IP address would then be assigned to someone new, resulting in an unintentional ban.

Although companies don’t talk about it, ID bans are much less threatening than they seem. Essentially, if a developer realizes an account belongs to a banned player – as by billing addresses or something similar – they ban the account on sight. However, for most games, it’s fairly difficult to track a player down unless they leave in obvious trail. The notorious League of Legend, Tyler1, learned this lesson the hard way. After being ID banned, every account he made was subsequently banned the moment he attempted to stream. While effective against a streamer, any player that doesn’t stream their games would be able to simply make a new account.

The truth is, bans are an imperfect system. Whether its Overwatch frustrated with toxicity or LoL frustrated with trolls, banning is a temporary response, but it’s really the only one they have. Still, for us normal folks, it’s best to avoid that whole ‘banned on sight’ thing.