It was April 5, 2016.
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LOL . . . then we must have reallllllly thought about it for a while before adding verbiage to the IFPAPA rules.
I still disagree that this is an instance where this was a “loss” of multiball – this isn’t some malfunction (flippers dying, etc) that causes the loss of all but one of the balls on the table.
But if you and the IFPAPA powers that be are going to stick with this interpretation, I suggest you clarify this in the rules.
Getting my popcorn ready for this ruling on The Shadow at IFPA 15. 
I’ll just point to this thread when making that ruling
Known as the “Cayle pretended he knew an exploit for Iron Man before PAPA, so we specifically wrote a rule that would give us the ability to shut him down rule”.
XD
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Lol. So which supposed exploit did you pretend to know about?
Wait, so (just now) you thought this rule was in place when KME did the HOTK exploit, but knew that there was no ruling on that… so does that mean you don’t think a ruling should have been made in this case? If not, why? If so, how should that have been handled?
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LOL that’s right . . . you’re such a piece of sh*t 
Not at all . . . new games run into the “we don’t know what we don’t know yet” about the code. So the assumption is that the game is behaving as it should.
It’s only after vetting a game and understanding how it works that you can understand when something “isn’t working as it should”.
Hopefully TD’s are aware of these potential issues and know ahead of time to either:
A) Don’t use the game so you don’t have to deal with the ruling of what happens if “the thing” happens
B) Use the game with the understanding that our ruling will be “X” if “the thing” happens
The paragraph that Steinman wrote up lays it out perfectly IMO:
“the tournament director reserves the right to warn the player in question to not abuse the situation further, end the game in progress at the current score, award a score of zero, or ask the player to restart the game. The determination of whether a player is taking advantage of a software or scoring issue and the subsequent penalty, if any, is left up to the discretion of the tournament director and will be based on the particulars of the specific situation.”
Exactly. Ah, the perils of using newer games. In that case of GOT HOTK mode, in the code’s then-current state, HOTK behaved according to the code. It was most certainly an exploit, but it wasn’t like @sk8ball was trying to keep it a secret. IIRC, he even called his shot and told the entire PAPAtv viewing world – all 100 of us at the time? – about the exploit and that he was going to do it, prior to the match with Zach.
I don’t think a player should ever be penalized for knowing more about how a game’s rules work, including how to make your shots more lucrative, unless that specific exploit/bug is announced and documented prior to the game being played that it is disallowed.
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Another reason I think it’s critical on newer games to disclose the software version being used. Rules and scoring can change, sometimes dramatically.
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so now you have to track both ‘earned’ and ‘intent’?? This seems unenforcable across the general public. Nothing to keep a player from saying “I didnt know…” to cover up playing through a beneficial malfunction, etc.
Now hence referred to as ‘The God clause…’
It’s impossible to track intent. The only thing keeping a player from saying “I didn’t know . . .” is their sportsmanship.
Professional golfers call penalties on themselves. There’s a sense of professionalism and sportsmanlike conduct that golfers have that I expect from competitive pinball players, especially at the highest of levels.
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No, that is section 10.
"Final authority for any ruling, including rulings that contradict or vacate anything written in this document or in other IFPA materials, rests with the President of the International Flipper Pinball Association, Josh Sharpe."
I feel like poking the bear a bit.
At Nationals a few years ago, I was playing Elvira in my match. At the time I was somewhat unfamiliar with the game. As we all know now, the ball lock eject out the top is somewhat obscured. When I started multiball, I did not notice that only two balls has fully ejected as I was busy trying to not suck. One of them was caught behind the lock mechanism. I only realized this when I drained a ball and had a cradle and noticed I was still in multiball. At that time, I called over a TD to rule and as I recall, was not penalized.
Should I have DQ’d myself here for taking advantage of a beneficial malfunction? Was it enough to have called the TD? I would have felt very hard-done-by if I had been penalized for something I had absolutely no idea about.
There’s no bear to poke. If you weren’t aware of the situation at hand, at worst I would voided the game and had you replay.
Hopefully you wouldn’t have felt hard-done-by if we voided the game as the “penalty” had you continued to play a 1-ball multiball for 10 minutes not realizing your game was still in “multiball state”. To me that’s simply no harm, no foul, but we’re not going to count that score, go replay that game.
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Nope, not at all. In fact, the missing ball was noticed pretty quickly so there wasn’t much extra scoring going on. But I remember having a little internal freakout that I was about to be DQ’d from Nationals for playing on with a trapped ball, since I think at the time the prevailing opinion was that it amounted to taking advantage of a beneficial malfunction, and that was a no-no.
Curling is the same way, it is entirely self officiated (well technically they changed a few things with measurement, which is stupid. Of and hog line violations). There are rules that are simply agreement between the 2 teams, there are violations like burning a rock you call on yourself. It is the major plot point of men with brooms.