This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/F9_solution on 2024-04-25 21:06:04.

note: all of these are sourced from Fekah’s Twitter and YouTube channel as well as Dofus official forums where applicable. Please also forgive that I am also not a native French speaker, but I have tried to represent all parties as accurately as possible.

What is Dofus/Dofus Touch?

Dofus is a tactical MMORPG on PC that launched in 2004 created by French game developer Ankama. It gained international traction with, in total, an estimated 40 million players over its lifetime. The servers that existed in the 2004 launch have been merged over time and as such the accounts, equipment, and resources from then, for the most part, still exist in the current servers unless they were wiped for inactivity - there are some very old accounts.

Dofus Touch is Ankama’s mobile version of Dofus for tablets and phones. It is important to note Dofus PC and Touch are completely different games. There is no crossplay between platforms, the content of Dofus Touch is not as extensive, the game is completely free to play, and even the mechanics of classes are different between the two.

Both games still have very active player bases as of today with several respectably populated servers of French players and communities of English speaking, Spanish speaking, and Portuguese speaking players as well.

The bot problem, macros, and emulators on Touch

Dofus and Dofus Touch have a notorious, decades-old problem with botting. In every server in early game areas especially, hundreds of bots run around collecting resources and farming mobs, causing a very saturated economy for low-level resources. The bots are also heavily associated with Real World Trading (selling in game currency for real money), highly prohibited in almost every online MMO including Dofus.

Ankama has tried to compensate by implementing anti-cheat and anti-bot measures, as well as enforcing very strict rules on gameplay to promote fairness. For Dofus Touch they extended the policy to state that using mobile device emulators apps like Bluestacks to play Dofus Touch on PC is a bannable offense, citing that it provides an advantage over the regular mobile user, specifically in the ability to easily play multiple characters at once. Interestingly, they have seemingly contradictory policies and explicitly stated that using multiple mobile devices is allowed, and even mirroring them to your PC is permitted - you just cannot use an emulator app. For the new servers, they released a forum post saying they are taking an extreme, zero-warning stance on emulators, saying all cases will be permanently banned without question.

In the PC client, where multiclienting is also allowed, Ankama has a rigid stance towards macros, or commands that allow the execution of more than one step at once. A prominent case is the use of AutoHotkey (AHK), a well-known open-source app that is used in Dofus, for example, to move several characters simultaneously with one click, rather than tediously clicking for every character on each window individually. Ankama has stated that their policy is “one keypress = one gameplay action,” and that using AHK macros to exceed this is a bannable offense.

Who is Fekah?

Fekah is one of the most well-known Dofus content creators who streams both PC and Touch. He is a Twitch partner and also has one of the largest Dofus YouTube channels, known for his server race rushes and challenges where he gets characters to max level as quickly as possible.

Incredibly importantly, he also has a deal with Ankama as a content creator partner, which will be critical in understanding the later part of his story. In exchange for game promotion, they allow him to be one of the only extremely rare exceptions to the emulator rule: he is allowed to play on Bluestacks so he can stream his gameplay on PC and generate content.

The main show: Fekah’s Dofus Touch permanent ban

Ankama released new servers for Dofus Touch in early April 2024 for the first time since the game’s release. Fekah streamed his world first race to 200 on a fresh character on one of the French servers, Tiliwan, garnering hundreds of viewers on Twitch and engagement on his YouTube channel daily highlights. He also ranked at the top of the PVP ladder in the new servers.

A little over a week into the launch, Fekah’s Dofus Touch account was inexplicably and swiftly banned by Ankama just before his character was about to reach level 200 (max level). Initially a 24 hour ban, Ankama revised it shortly after without explanation to a permanent ban. The reason Ankama cited: using an emulator to gain an advantage by using shortcuts.

After initial confusion and a relatively respectful but still heated response, Fekah announced his ban on Twitter and released a few videos discussing this event. He stated he played legitimately and his entire Twitch stream history is proof of innocence, with Ankama officials even watching and participating in his chat. He posed the relatively fair question of “you have been aware of this for days, watched me play, and yet you chose to ban me now without explanation, when I am level 199 and 60% towards level 200?” to which an Ankama representative essentially replied they didn’t wait for that on purpose, he plays fast, and the ban just so happened to be at this point in his character leveling.

His experience with Ankama support was more of the same: an extremely convoluted back-and-forth mess and mixed bag. Ankama claimed first he was allowed only to use Bluestacks while streaming and not allowed to use it outside of that, to which Fekah replied he understood he was authorized to use it offline to record his gameplay for YouTube as well. In response, Ankama shifted the angle and additionally claimed Fekah used shortcuts on Bluestacks to play quicker, with an official Ankama rep saying it is suspicious he progresses 10x faster than the average player.

Fekah defended himself saying they specifically authorized his use of the app and that he didn’t violate any policy on macros. He also took serious issue with the zero warning, instant permanent ban. He escalated through several levels of Ankama representatives, each of whom doubled down on the judgment. Interestingly, Fekah was able to even garner support on Twitter from Anthony Roux aka Tot, one of the executives and co-founders of Ankama. Tot himself said he personally defends Fekah, and asked for leniency from his own internal teams on this judgment. But in an astonishing revelation, Tot declared that the Dofus Touch admins are the ones who have the final say, and there isn’t anything more he can do.

New beginnings

Fekah, with great distress and sadness, eventually gave up his effort to get unbanned. He has since created a new character and account on Dofus Touch and is on the precipice of reaching 200, though due to the ban he has been surpassed in the world first race by other players. Further adding to the fire was the ban of his girlfriend Saki, who also was racing to 200, also for “playing suspiciously quickly.”She was shortly unbanned.

This controversy has divided the playerbase, some of whom claim Fekah’s allowed authorization to use an emulator is unfair, some of whom claim Ankama’s scorched earth stance on emulation needs to be revised, and some of whom are leaving the game altogether. Others are calling for Ankama’s efforts to be focused on the still-rampant bot problem rather than this zero-emulation enforcement which seems harmless. Some players on Discord and Twitter take this to be the deciding precedent case - if they won’t let up for even Fekah, a streamer friendly to both the community and Ankama, and had authorization, there is no chance they will change their policy for anyone. It is also a window into Ankama’s internal affairs, showing almost draconian rigidity concerning ban appeals, but even disagreement within the organization depending on who you ask. Players raised the argument that Ankama is in no position to be banning otherwise legitimate players who play on emulators, and that Ankama is self-sabotaging their game with an already dwindling server population.