I am currently seeing TESCO brand adverts on the map on calpheon as well as various places within this game environment on EU Season Server 3.

New monetization strategy on Pearl's part OR User gamepolicy violation ?

posted by Teegra (familyname) NA/EU-Server 

Its simply the guild emblem of the guild who won the Siege for Calpheon. As the guild emblem is displayed on Flags and similar when a region is won, this is a sideeffect. 

There is little restriction on what a guild emblem may be, aside from the obvious "No NSFW or forbidden content", so if the guild chose the TESCO sign as their emblem, I dont believe it is currently against the rules.

Hi Minarya,

is it a guildemblem, only ?

No, it is a guild emblem using as a advert and promoting a brand ! The restrictions in a case like this are very clear and the guild emblem is against the rules.

You can read this in the Pearl Abyss Operational Policy: 5. Table of Restriction Criteria - Sharing, distributing, promoting and advertising  inappropriate content 2. An act of sharing, distributing, promoting and advertising anything that is not relating to the game but is for profit-making purposes.

Your view opens the door for a lot of marketing-content of many brand-companies with their desire to dominate the space of perception. Just imagine: First is TESCO in Calpheon ... and then ... Next is VW in Velia, Pfizer in Heidel, Amazon in Mediah and so on.  To differentiate for gamers between game- and advertising content would be very difficult, perhaps nearly impossible.   

posted by Teegra (familyname) - NA/EU-Server

OP don't whale enough so PA had to take sponsorship to keep providing him services.

Don't waste time quoting Operational Policy or Terms of Service.
Go read the cheating/bans part and you'll see it's just a wall of text. it's not applied at all. using 3rd party software or using game mechanics the non intended way to take advantage... "we will look into" :D
Tbh, it's a great idea to make money out of the game. Selling accounts, grinding for items or $, or even smh for guildfunds are common! yes, rmt is a common thing.
but i guess it's not bannable offenses :D

There's a difference between using the chat feature of the game as a means of advertisement and someone operating a guild with the brand name. People do it usually for the memes, it's not really a big deal. Most people don't care, I think it might be a minority in the EU who have issues with brands / branding because if you go to an EU website you'll often see "paid promotions in this video" or something which I find really weird. Like, why would anyone care? But that's just what the laws are over there.

PA however is not endorsing any of these brands and presumably as long as the company doesn't complain, it won't be looked into since it's a non-issue for practically everyone. People love have loyalty to their brands after all. I also doubt any company would complain, it's free advertisement to them :P

In the end, yes it is just a guild emblem. 

I have highlighted the sections where (at least in my opinion), the image is not exactly against ToS. 

Inapprorpiate content is usually restricted content going into NSFW / illegal topics. Which a brand image does not fall under. Though of course it is open to interpretation.

For the second part, you'd have to prove that someone in the guild leadership profits from the image in any way. Usually people use guild emblems either for their guild branding or to meme, as said above. The "profit-making" qualifier is thus unlikely to apply here too.

Of course, if you find offense in something, please go ahead and send a ticket to report such things: https://support.pearlabyss.com/Support/Qna/Index/PC

The GMs will be able to decide whether or not the guild emblem is against ToS much better than you or I.