Free-Ish Speech

[JohnCarver]

Greetings Salemites,
It is with a heavy heart that I feel we must have this talk during a weekend that I had hoped would have more focus on what we felt were some very positive strides in the world of Salem.

Many of you have noticed, and have been upset that there is now an optional ability to Censor curse words here on the forums. I feel that TotalyMeow has done a commendable job on trying to find the perfect balance of allowing drama while simultaneously putting a stop to over-the-top racism and harassment. I'm sure many of you will constantly press the issue and push the limits. I also expect many of you will use this as an opportunity to fight the oppression that is our regulation on your speech. I respect you in advance for standing firm in your beliefs but make a general plea to understand our position. We are here to house what we hope to be a growing, fun, and unique niche community. We are providing a venue of entertainment for you all and as such open ourselves up to various liabilities if we simply stand back and watch things that we believe, and know ourselves to be wrong. While we readily admit the line between a good troll and a harmful act can sometimes be a fine one, we MUST for the health of the game make at least some effort to hold this title to reasonable business principles and industry standards when it comes to these things.

With that being understood, please keep in mind we are providing you a game where death allows you to essentially DELETE another players character. A game where you may steal the clothing off another man's back. A game where, through your own efforts, completely obliterate weeks and sometimes months of another players work. I want, and NEED to believe that this can and should be enough for you. You do not need to drop racial slurs every chance you get. You do not need to spam the town chat and chat logs to the point where all else is unrecognizable. You do not need to run hacks/bots/or malicious software on other players computers. The tools to cause grief are already built into the game via PermaDeath, Larceny and Crimes. Your new and creative ways to cause damage to other players through the previously mentioned examples are quite simply not welcome.

With this all being said, we plan on also adding optional language filters and ignore features to the game client prior to our launch. We also now have the ability to deliver In-Game bans to player accounts and reserve the right to do so in the event we find players violating the new EULA they agreed to. We have already implemented several instances of in-game punishment and felt it was unfair to not at least make you aware of it.

Orcling
Claeyt
Brego

Are all recognizable members of this community who have punished in-game for unacceptable actions. There are also some alt-accounts or names you most likely wouldn't recognize who have been affected. In the future, we are not going to run around and parade in-game discipline and/or account bans as it is something we do not take lightly. We also will assure you that in the cases of such instances we will keep plenty of documentation which will be reviewed by multiple members of our team to ensure that things do not get out of hand. Feel free to bombard me with your dislike for the new policy in this thread, however, acknowledge that whatever you do will have little effect as this is in fact, new policy. This thread will not be the place to discuss the terms of another players ban as we consider that to be unprofessional. Direct discussions on specific bans will be handled by PM only.

To make it clear, current discipline has been handed out for the following detected activities (in no particular order).

DDOS Attacks
Attempted Blackmail
Overly offensive and repeated use of Racial Slurs.
Town Spamming/Racial Slurs.

If you yourself are worried about your own account. Take special note to NOT engage in the activities mentioned above and you should be fine. In the event we ban players for additional actions we find completely unacceptable I will do my best to add it to the above list.

Thank you in advance to those who understand that we are simply doing what must be done for the good of Salem. As always, I am available via PM to discuss your concern.

[Brona]

really glad to hear about the ignore feature

[darnokpl]

This is going in right direction, first mistake of salem was to go away from paradox forums, you just fixed that

[alprice]

Attempted Blackmail....hmmmmm....sounds familar since I have had a few of those cross my path. I doubt it can be stopped...but a police report sure comes in handy

[alloin]

hooray !!

[Orcling]

[Noble]

really glad to hear about the ignore feature

I know the first person i'll be adding!

It's you

[Chiprel]

So as we can't post screenies with curse words from game anymore what about killing animation? It's clearly the masturabtion anim.
Will spamming 'kill' skill on town square will make people banned too? Can we post picture of doing such indecent thing on forum?

PS. RIP teh scalping thread/ RIP PrettyPinkFlower the treaty ;_;

[JohnCarver]

To my knowledge, screenshots to circumvent a ban is not a 'new thing' on our watch. I don't believe you have ever been allowed to post things in a screenshot that were otherwise not allowed.

[Vigilance]

Attempted Blackmail....hmmmmm....sounds familar since I have had a few of those cross my path. I doubt it can be stopped...but a police report sure comes in handy

I'm sure the police care that someone in another country are abusing you on an internet game.