@Pandora said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:
Firan staff spied on people IC/OOC and used/abused the info they gleaned on their characters, as well as sharing 'funny' snippets of IC/OOC conversations with others. That's gross imo, crossing the line from watching-to-make-things-better to watching-to-make-things-worse.
That's... not acceptable. I've staffed on various online games, and that's never been acceptable anywhere I've been. It may have happened but I certainly didn't hear about it -- but of course I'm also the kind of person who believe that rules exist for a reason, not to be discarded if I feel like it.
Players have the right to privacy in actions and conversations as long as they are not using that privacy to harass or disrupt a third party. Admins shouldn't be monitoring or reading logs unless there has been a formal complaint and investigation is ongoing.
That said, I've heard this complaint often, and always, the solution offered is the same. If you can't trust your game's admins, take private stuff to Skype, Discord, wherever. Away from the game. Let the admins worry why, in a few years, player activity starts to doze off because people don't feel SAFE in the game.