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Mortal Online 2

Announcement | New Community Guidelines & Stance on Harassment

August 1, 2022

Greetings Mortals,

At Star Vault we want to foster a healthy, friendly and civil community that provides a welcoming and productive space for everyone to discuss, play and enjoy our game.

New Community Guidelines

Part of this change to support a healthier community comes as the introduction of our new community guidelines which we encourage everyone to become familiar with:

https://www.mortalonline2.com/community-guidelines/

Mortal Online II is by design a competitive game, and as such we understand that hostile relationships within the game can be formed and competitive banter may be exchanged. However, there are times when this banter can be a little more aggressive than is acceptable, excessive, and no longer appropriate.

Along with our new community guidelines, the announcement below describes our stronger stance on the harassment of both our players and Star Vault employees.

Taking a Stand Against Abuse of Star Vault Employees and our Players

At Star Vault we have always tried to ensure that our players feel safe and that bad behavior is punished when appropriate, however we understand that at times some players may have not felt this effort, and so we are striving to be better and make changes to reflect that. As our company has grown and become more optimized to deal with these issues, we are more strongly fighting targeted harassment, abuse and threats that go beyond competitive banter. This includes within our moderated communities, and in some extreme cases, outside of them.

The gaming industry has had some recent standout events regarding the abuse of both employees of game companies and their players. Bungie have recently filed a law-suit against a player for harassment and threats against Destiny 2 staff members, and EVE Online is also taking a stand against toxicity and abuse of their players in an effort to make their game a better place.

Star Vault is no stranger to abuse of its employees, in the past many of our employees have been threatened, had personal accounts and information doxxed, had their names slandered and unfortunately much more. The mental health of our employees is very important to us as a company, both because we want to offer a safe environment for them to work in, and because we strive for Project Polish and our future roadmap content to be of the best quality Star Vault has ever released.

Recently some of our staff members were part of multiple targeted harassment campaigns, and we have taken action and permanently banned these accounts as a way to show we do not tolerate this behavior. We have a few other accounts we are investigating for the same kind of campaigns, some of the actions of these people were but are not limited to; spreading personal photos of friends and family members of SV staff, spreading private and public personal accounts of SV employees, attempts to spread IP information of SV staff, advocating for the death of employees of SV, consistent harassment, abuse and slander of both players and employees. This kind of behaviour will not be tolerated.

We are always willing to take constructive feedback and criticism as it gives us insight to a player’s thoughts and opinions of the game, however at times this feedback can be very passionate which can unfortunately take a more aggressive turn. We understand that many such criticisms come from a place of truth and desire for the game to succeed, so we try to read between the lines for the underlying message. However, when lines are crossed and these comments simply turn into uncivil, aggressive slander, harassment, insults and abuse, that’s where we need to draw the line as it creates a hostile unproductive environment that many people do not want to engage in, including not just staff but the majority of our community.

Players who promote racist, sexist, homphobic or otherwise hateful ideologies that do not align with our EULATOSCommunication Policy or Community Guidelines do not belong within our game or our community. Our game is a game for all people to enjoy, and we will not allow this kind of harassment towards any member of our community. Nothing that happens within our game should ever justify harassment or abuse of our players within the game world or outside of it.

If you are being harassed in a way that you find excessive, please report it to us so we can assess the situation and take action where appropriate. Should you feel that any harassment has gone to the point where you feel threatened outside of the game, please contact your local authorities and file a report. Legally, we can hand information and evidence to those authorities should they request it from us.

To give an example closer to home as to the consequences of a toxic environment, many of our developers used to have a healthy presence within our Discord server and often interacted with the players. Due to the issues at launch, some players took it upon themselves to berate and abuse the staff very aggressively, and so the staff quite understandably left the Discord. 

At Star Vault we want to communicate with the community regularly, which is why the CEO and Game Designer streams almost every Thursday hosting Q&As to give insight on the game and its future, and why we also have an active Community Manager who puts in major effort to be available as often as possible every day.

This method of interacting with our developers more directly in the Discord disappeared because of targeted harassment from a few people that unfortunately went largely unchecked. In the future we hope to recreate a healthier space where our staff would be more willing to interact publicly with the community and give their insights on the great game they’re working on.

Our goal is to make Mortal Online II a welcoming place for those who want to experience our unique sandbox MMORPG, and we hope this harder stance and approach towards toxicity and these issues helps us move closer toward that goal.  

See you in Nave,

Star Vault

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