Ricky was banned for exploiting for one hour in an empty server, to the tune of 300k xp. He was banned about 30 hours later, that single hour being the only time he exploited. Allers exploited even less, about 30 minutes. Autoblockers using third party hacks, directly affecting gameplay and other players for orders of magnitude longer, were unbanned within a month. I think there's this misconception that they were eagerly and gleefully taking advantage of the system to bypass the the game's intended direction. It's simply not true and that they did not exploit more than the one time after being shown how, even when there was no hint of punishment, demonstrates that fact in no uncertain terms.
I showed them the exploit, they tried it out for a while, and then they decided the mind-numbing boredom of babysitting bots every round was too much and went to battle. In fact, I had to hassle them over Steam to even get them to join the server when I first told them about it. I assumed a very clear leadership role in this ill-conceived endeavor, which, given my seniority and their youth, can be seen as a mitigating factor for them.
Maybe I'm missing some key bit of information or am too focused on legalistic notions of precedence (i.e. contrast to autoblockers), but I feel like a permaban is not warranted when the final decision is made (hasn't been yet).
disclaimer: I'm friends with both of them and was banned (and unbanned) for QML abuse myself.
