Anytime you hear a rumor like this, tell everyone involved in spreading it that Dantom barely have time to engage in such mundane activities as eating, shaving, or blinking, and they certainly don't have time to get involved in silly disputes like that.

No one gets "banished" from BYOND. Some very few individuals get -banned- from it, which makes it impossible for them to log into anything that's not right on their own computer (and even then, they cannot host). It's not an honor system... the program which runs the hub and the forum enforces the ban.

If I had to guess what happened... I'd say that someone with a convincing sounding key like Dantom_Employee_Of_The_Month or the_real_dan_2003 or something told your friend they were banishing him from BYOND and he'd get sued if he came back in. If that's the case... you should know that when Dantom do have time to check out a game online or hang out on their pagers, they never use any keys other than their own: Dan, Tom, and Dantom... and they never get involved in petty squables between a game owner/host and an individual player.

BYOND bans are usually reserved for people who are abusing the BYOND hub system (like spoofing, or hosting scams, or putting patently offensive content in the public part of the hub entry), or abusing individual games to such a widespread extent that it could be considered a system attack. You will never, ever, ever be banned for not giving someone dimes and icons, for not giving someone GM powers on your game, or for how you choose to use your GM/hosting priveliges, or for what rules you choose to enforce within your game, or for whatever.

You have a big name-calling fight with someone on Chatters, you might be banned from Chatters. You call the GM of a game a bunch of three and four letter words, that GM might ban you from that game or his or her pager. You host a game and give everyone who enters names like "Doodie Head" and "Fart Brain", they might leave your game and ban you from their own.

Anyone who threatens you with "banishment" from BYOND for anything like this, though, is just blowing smoke, even if they claim to be Dantom's second cousin's assistant dog walker.