@Roz Not sure there’s a new story. I mean, yeah, I was banned from a game a few years ago for it.
Once upon a time, if you posted about the fuckery on a MU to WORA, and the staffers on that game responded by treating you shabbily or banning you, the forum readership would heap scorn and derision upon said staffer and game. This was really about the only way WORA could hurt a game. Any other complaint tended to cause new players to show up. Which is reasonable – No game is perfect, but if somebody’s bitching about its flaws, this proves that it’s good enough that at least one person is invested. Enough, even, to have an emotion.
The last five years or so, it seems to be pretty much a given that somebody will take your ‘peeve’ and insist that it’s a targeted personal insult and get hostile with you on the game. This will happen if you complain about something that happened ten years ago or something very general. Somebody put it something like, “My peeve is a one-size hospital johnny and you’re taking it like it’s a bespoke suit just for you.”
The “vote with your feet” line is a far cry from new, but shaming players for complaining became cool.
The last year or so of MSB included some real gems – It’s wrong to suggest that GMs who do things are better than those who do not, it might hurt their feelings. Why should anybody bother making and running a MU if it’s inevitable that someone will complain about it? Heck, the whole “Are friends bad?” catch-phrase appeared, as far as I know, as a straw-man response to the suggestion that GMs shouldn’t spend all their time making game for insular cliques who don’t spread the fun.
Games with stated rules “Do not post about the game, it makes the game look bad,” pass without much comment, even when they’re not ‘Blood of Dragons.’