This is obviously late in coming, but here are my two cents on bug exploits:
Honestly, I think we need to consider taking a different stance on a bug like this. For one thing, it is
NOT an obvious exploit. I suspect that very few players are long-standing enough or follow the forums closely enough to be expected to be aware of problems like this that are not obvious. After all, logically speaking there is no reason why a player should not assume that if:
1. The game has a button that says, "If you click this button, X will happen,"
2. The game allows him to click on said button
and
3. When he clicks on said button, X happens exactly as the game specified,
he is actually witnessing a bug in action. What reasonable person would leap to that conclusion? The game says nothing to indicate that what happened was not exactly what was supposed to happen. This is not the player's fault in any way. The game says you can do it, allows you to do it, then makes it happen when you tell it that's what you want! Where, in this picture, is a player supposed to get suspicious?
I was the ruler of Hammarsett who merged Shanandoah with Coria. I have been playing this game for going on five years and have been moderately active on the forums since they were brought online, and subscribed to the d-list before that, and I had no idea that it was a bug. The only reason I became aware of it was because I read a forum post shortly thereafter by Anaris where he stated in no uncertain terms that this was wrong behavior and said it was not possible, whereupon I filed the bug report. It has become my opinion that any bug that does not explicitly qualify as an
obvious exploit is not a bug that we can punish players for taking advantage of, especially if it appears for all intents and purposes that the game is working as designed.
Considering dustole's known playing habits (he has long specified that he plays exclusively by phone) I do not think it is unreasonable to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to whether or not he closely followed the forum threads where discussion of this bug took place. Nowhere in the Social Contract does it say that players are required to keep up with the forums. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but what is and is not a bug is not a matter of "law". The closest thing you get to "law" in BM is the IRs and the Social Contract, and not much else. This is not a case where dustole is pleading ignorance of the Social Contract, so that argument is irrelevant.
If you could prove to me that dustole knew that the ability to change the allegiance of Golden Farrow was a bug
before he did it, I would vote to find him guilty. What Indirik said in the SA thread on the forum did not say it was a bug. What he said was:
Also, Kabrinskia only has one city and one duchy. Allison can't secede, nor change allegiance to another realm.
This does not say "That is a bug, you shouldn't do it." It says "You can't do it," which dustole quite correctly pointed it was not true after discovering this fact for himself. The Magistrate thread that Vellos cites was not posted in by dustole, thus you cannot prove that he ever read it or was even aware of it before this. As I stated in my post on the related Q&A thread, I am inclined to set a very high standard of proof for bug exploits.
However, it seems dustole was found guilty on other grounds.
