OFFICIAL League Address; Second Tag Issues from S28(X1) and S6(PS4)

This public address will be geared towards the Xbox and PSN LGHL leagues from the NHL to the CHL. This season saw a record breaking amount of site bans, league removals for cheating, and overall shadiness that has come to a fore front. There has been some confusion from the community in regards to how some of the rulings were handled, the timing in which these rulings were handled as well as the overall rules in regards to how these things unfolded.

First and foremost, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to the community members whom are on teams that have had 2nd taggers. Obviously seeing wins and personal stats wiped clear due to an ineligible player is a tough one to swallow especially when you come here to relax and enjoy some competitive hockey. Therefore I am sorry that you've been negatively affected by the selfishness of those players whom chose to cheat. Therefore I believe an explanation as to why things are handled like they are is needed to ensure that you all understand the mind set we have when we make these decisions.

If you reference our Rule Book, Article IV, you'll see a section that describes what an ineligible player is. There are many examples, but the one we are specifically talking about is in regards to players whom use a second tag or recovery an account to play as someone. This site runs of the principal that each team is made up of 17 active roster players. Therefore our expectation is that 17 different players play three games a week. In situations where a player has his or her's account recovered by another player, then obviously the account is ineligible. This is what we saw with the FLA NHL team in the X1 League. But it also is considered an ineligible player in situations where players created a new account to circumvent a league punishment, which is the case that we saw in the PSN League with Hyper, CCM, and Mello.

All of those above situations are deemed as an ineligible player which directly affects the result of the game thereby leading to any wins said player has being overturned to a 1-0 loss.

That opens up a TON of questions and situations that the league would like to give answers to. I am going to try my best to explain to ensure we all are on the same page:

1. Mello; This player was original found to be on the account CCar which was issued a league ban in season two. Three days after the ban, Mello was created. Therefore it was determined the mello account was a second tag created to circumvent a league ban, making said player ineligible this season in the AHL. The questions we received were why did we wait so long? Well unfortunately it was not discovered until this week the player was in fact a second tag. We also received complaints as to why should games be overturned if his other account wasn't active? Well, based on the sign up dates, the CCar account IS his original account, making the Mello account the second tag and ineligible regardless of how active the original tag is. Which leads to the next question; why have other players in the past have their accounts merged? A lot of research goes into merging accounts. Majority of the players we merge together are accounts where a user makes a new account due to a GT change. Other cases are old players whom are returning to LG but forget their old account info. When we look into those issues we are looking to ensure when the player was last on LG, said player was NOT under a league ban that he or she did NOT server. Then we proceed. There has been some discussion in regards to points and such. I believe the team with the second tag should have their points removed. In this case, if mello has four assists in a game he never should have played in why should the goal scores being giving goals? It just skews stats for awards. But if I was in that same game, playing against him and score five times, why should I lose my points? That has been a valid point we are going to look at moving forward. What unfolded from this is if you look at the 11 wins mellos has, that is 66 players he played against, or 11 teams he beat, or 187 players whom were effective by his cheating OUTSIDE of his own team. In my eyes, and my personal opinion, his team had no idea he was a cheater. Therefore those 16 players were negatively affected as well. But in my eyes and mind, the greater evil is what was done to the other 11 teams, and 187 players. My job is to protect our league and community from these issues.
2. Scootz; Vezina-Hype; These two situations have been used as a comparison to the above case with "Mello" but they are very different situations. Scootz was original site ban for issues in S2-3 of the PSN LGHL. During his time away, and while under a site ban, he created a second tag to still use the website and chat box. This account never played a single game in the League. This same season the NHL goalie Vezina, was on a second account in the CHL(I believe) called IHyper as a forward. The Vezina account has been around for seasons and when I confronted him, he explained to me he just wanted to play as a forward at a lower tier. Obviously our site policies don't allow that. In both situations selective games were overturned. And when I say selective, what I mean is none of Scootz, or Vezina's games this season were overturned. The reasoning is because those accounts ARE NOT second tags. Those are the original accounts for those players. Therefore in this situation, only Hyper's games were overturned. Rules state the only ineligible player is the second tag.
3. The FLA and TOR situation(X1); I don't even know where to begin. This was the largest second tag/account recovery I've ever had. It resulted in every game Queek, DanyHeater and Drai x 29 played reverted to a 1-0 lose. After the bust a ton more information has come forward from those players involved. I've spoken to them all except for Vargy. All parties whom have been issued the ban have been respectful and accepted their punishment, except for two guys who still claim they are innocent. There are obviously more details to this that I will likely never know therefore based on the information provided to me, we handled this as best as we could. TOR also had a tight knit group whom were recovering tags. The information we have was limited but what was proven was we had Sty playing on drink a Busch for the games on Tuesday, and I had Grim/Sty on Watman all season. Some of the questions that came out of this was in regards to LG not providing evidence to these players whom were removed, there was some suggestions by an owner to add back the Player's Association so these players get a "fair" appeal. Both arguments are legit, and will be address a bit later on in this post.

Those are the three recent issues of the season has blown the doors off the topic of cheating. Recently @Tris10 and I came to the agreement we were going to look at these issues a bit different, handle them differently, and potentially make changes to our systems to better support the community. Here is some of the changes we've made, and are currently discussing for future season:

1. In the past we always ran a system whereby whatever evidence we were provided would be presented to the player we are removing from the site. With the changes in cyber bullying laws, and online harassment we have come to the determination that this needs to change to protect those whom help us. In the past we have seen some serious harassment after a player has stepped up to help the League. To protect us, and the integrity of our system, as well as the players whom help us, we are moving to a two step verification for site bans. Step one is evidence is provided to me, I review it and determine if a site ban is the appropriate punishment. Once I determine it is, the evidence is provided to Tris to review. Site ban is issued, and if said player wants an appeal it can be sent to Tris directly whom can verify that the player is in fact guilty of all violations. There will NEVER AGAIN be a situations where LG releases evidence in a second tag investigation to the player(s) whom are removed. This season, so fair I am 12-15 bans deep and only two of those players out of that pool haven't yet come clean and accepted responsibility. Doesn't mean I was wrong, just means those two players haven't yet swallowed their pride, and found enough personal integrity to accept responsibility for their actions.
2. We are exploring the possibility of adding a mandatory buy-in upon returning from a league ban. Therefore the punishment isn't just time, its a donation to the site to help use fund systems to continue to prevent these issues.
3. We are looking at the possibility of adding in a 1-2-3 system for league and chat bans. 1 being the normal buyout rate, 2 being double, and 3 being you can't buyout again. This is to punish the repeat offenders to the point where they aren't given anymore chances.
4. Our vetting systems are under review again to ensure we are doing the best we can with the resources we have to not allow these accounts into our Leagues.
5. The rules are being review to look to add possibilities not automatically changing second tag loses to 1-0 games. Why should be remove stats from the team who didn't cheat?
6. We continue to build a safe environment for people to come forward, help us remove these issues from LG. "Drain the Swamp" as some have referenced to it. This is a players League, and its time for the dedicated, honest players of this league to take it back for themselves.

Overall this season has had it's fair share of ups and downs. I believe we have made some progress and will continue to make our League better.

If you have any questions, by all means let me know via PM, or post below. The #1 reason this site continues to lead the industry is because of how strong our community is, and the suggestions you all bring forward.

Thanks for reading and thanks for your continued dedication to LG
-Brodie