One of the things that the gaming space benefitted from during the initial ‘internet age’ of gaming is that players could go into the coding of the titles at times, especially on PC, and be able to “mess with things” to create new content. Entire new games were made due to this, and it became known as the “modding community.” That community has been spotlighted heavily over the years, and various content creators have gained fandoms because of their mods and uploads that people can check out and use. However, in the case of WWE 2K24, they didn’t “appreciate” what one famous content creator did for them.
That content creator is “Status,” known within the WWE gaming space for finding or creating models that weren’t “meant to be in the game” and then uploading them for players to use. He also found ways to “trick the system” into allowing certain kinds of matches that weren’t “allowed” otherwise, such as intergender matches.
For WWE 2K24, he had already uploaded dozens of wrestlers into the title for gamers to play as, including the “many versions” of female wrestlers throughout their careers. And yet, as he revealed on Twitter, he’s been perma-banned from online play, and there was no warning as to why:
According to the message he saw from the game:
“We were recently alerted that this account has been associated with inappropriate content. This is a violation of our End User License Agreement which every player accepts prior to accessing WWE 2K24 online features.”
VGC reached out to the dev team about the ban and got this follow-up for the banning:
“The player in question has received an indefinite ban due to violations of terms. Mods which negatively impact the game experience for other players violate our terms. Our primary concern is a positive WWE 2K24 experience for all players.”
When VGC reached out to Status about the ban, he reiterated that there wasn’t any warning, just a permanent ban:
“There was no warning shot. It just happened. Usually there’s a process of 3 strikes, a 24-hour ban, then two weeks, then a permanent ban. I didn’t even get an email stating the reason for the ban.”
Status feels he was “targeted” by the dev team and WWE because his mods aren’t that much different from others. He also refused to upload models of ex-WWE members who are under legal scrutiny.
The mod and fan community have rallied around Status, and it’ll be interesting to see what comes of this.
