False bannings galore.

I have no idea who you are talking about (re: Maple radio leader), nor do I know his story to comment on it. Sorry. =/

Don't get me wrong, I do respect you, in fact you're the only GM I have come to respect. But this was an incident and a common one in the hacker community. Whether you're aware of it or not, it's unfortunately reality, which is why the company get's so much whiplash when it comes to things like this.

Our policy is that people who abuse exploits are given permanent bans. Tyler was well aware of this, as would be anyone who is as familiar with the game as he is.

We do unban some people, but those are based on specific circumstances, and are performed on a case-by-case basis. In this case, following our policy, Tyler was not eligible for any leniency.

I'm admittedly floored that people are asking us to give Tyler leniency just because he's popular in the community. That's never going to be our policy. That would be favoritism and extremely unfair. Is that really what you guys want?

You asked for our opinion, our opinion is that the exploit is not enough to warrant a ban for this specific individual because of his dedication towards the game. Not because we all are like "woah he's a cool cat bro". We would be up in arms and ridiculing him if he performed duplication and made money off his endeavor, he did not. From the information you told us, he toyed around with a harmless exploit.

A better example is a family guy episode demonstrated. Joe swanson who's a cop who saw the law as black and white chased a thief home. The thief stole food for his family because of the economy or whatever irrelevant circumstances. He let him go even though he broke the law, because in the bigger picture, he didn't hurt anyone and stole so little that he himself could pay the owner out of pocket.

You call it favoritism, I call it recognition for his contributions. Whether your question is looking for an answer or is just rhetorical, I don't know, but the waiver the community believes he's entitled to is not based on his reputation but his contributions.