A plea to PixelTail

General Questions
1

I want to make something very clear from the getgo:

I love Tower Unite. I care about it as much as most other players. I’ve played this game for years - first through my brother’s Steam library around 2017-18, then soon on my own account since 2019 after winning the game in a Reddit game giveaway. I still remember watching the Yogscast’s old GMod Tower videos and seeing what PixelTail was building. And since then, I’ve met so many amazing people, played almost every new update for the game, and explored countless brilliantly designed condos and experiences made by the community.

So why am I writing this?

This isn’t a rant to bash the game itself - there are already plenty of reviews that cover the rough edges and issues with the game right now. Instead, this is about something much more deeper and more honest to my heart: how the developers have, in some aspects, neglected the core of any social game like Tower Unite - its community, its culture, and the players that make it thrive.

I want to be clear:
This post is not about stirring up harassment - not towards other players, not towards the developers, and towards anyone who voices real valid concerns. I want a mature, healthy conversation about the future of this game, because I don’t hate PixelTail or their current devs - I have long since respected their work and they continue to create awesome experiences. But good intentions alone can’t fix what’s broken. This post is mainly just about the way that the team has moderated the community, and how they could go about fixing some core issues I’ve spotted.

The real crux of the issue

This will be a long in-depth discussion, but I’ve included a TL;DR at the end - though I strongly encourage you to read it all and form your own thoughts.

Tower Unite isn’t just a $19.99 sandbox game on Steam - it’s a social space. Its greatest strength is the players: the condo builders, the artists, the event hosts, the explorers. These people are what make Tower Unite special. It’s incredible what the community is able to create with their imagination and the almighty Canvas Cube.

But through dozens of updates, a 1.0 release and now VR support hopefully on the horizon, there’s one thing PixelTail still has not properly supported, if not indirectly: the very community that built this game’s identity.

We’ve all seen it:
Harassment. Doxxing (often starting in TU, then spilling out). Repeat offenders who return on alt accounts. Bigotry and hate speech.
Yes, we do report these incidents, we share and gather evidence of these happening in game or relating to the game itself, we use the report forms that are provided and send emails to the team. And far too often, no action is taken, or if it does, it takes weeks for a response back, possibly when the damage has already taken place and the victims are on their own with the pieces alone.

It shouldn’t take harassment campaigns, doxxing, or hate speech for basic moderation, safety and more clearer rules to exist. And yet it does.

Yes, this isn’t mutually exclusive and/or unique to Tower Unite, It happens in every big online game. But other games face external pressures - lost funding, publisher contracts, media fallout - that force them to respond. TU doesn’t have that scale. It does have a small, if not steadily fast growing, tight-knit community of players that should be easier to protect - yet it’s not.

And of course some of the reviews for Tower Unite on Steam which say:
- “kneejerk moderation team”
- “Bad moderators”
- “you’re better off just playing another game”
- “what’s the point of a social game where being social is the worst part?”

These reviews aren’t just random complaints - they point to a much more deeper truth to it all:
When they feel unsafe and ignored in a social game, they leave.
They refund the game, uninstall it, stop hosting events, stop building condos. They stop doing the very things that make Tower Unite special.

That’s what worries me the most. I want to keep playing this game, I want to finish my condos, host social spaces for players to discover, even bring friends over into the game’s ecosystem. But I can’t pretend it’ll magically fix itself if I just look away from the game’s issues and hope.

Yes, PixelTail is a small team - but that can’t be the fallback excuse forever.

If you want a big, healthy community, you need to back the community up with real, consistent care - not just new condo items and hotfixes.
Players who continue to contribute and participate deserve basic safety. They deserve that mutual trust when they raise serious concerns, that they’re heard and seen and that something happens. If moderation is slow, inconsistent and/or hidden away from public view, bad actors will believe they are able to push your limits with no real consequences - while good players start burning out while trying to protect each other.

So here’s what would help - concrete steps, not just complaints.

A better, much more visible moderation team.

PixelTail devs shouldn’t carry all of the moderation themselves - and players should not feel like there’s no one available to reach. Show roles clearly in the Discord. Make sure people know who they can contact directly. If needed, bring on trusted community mods. There are also a multitude of better ways of privately reporting Discord users, as opposed to using just emails. Things like ModMail, Tickets (with and without threads), etc. are far more reliable for users to use than just an form. Visibility and accessibility matter.

Stronger, clearer rules

The rules should be clear, always updated and enforced consistency. Make it obvious to what gets you banned from the community, what needs the most evidence for reports, and what won’t be brushed aside. Don’t just give certain members verbal warnings, act on them and make it clear it won’t be allowed ever. It needs a full clarification.

Better reporting tools

Reporting players and items should be simple and reliable - not a guessing game. Not everyone is there to report video, so screenshots, chat logs, or timestamps must be enough in many cases. And when it is something that we’re reporting that is serious, show us you’re listening and responding - don’t leave players waiting for a response back in the dark.

Genuine community support

Engage with the community you run. Support their events, share what they create, show up more. Players should feel seen, not side-lined. If you need a good example of community engagement, Brickadia, an upcoming sandbox building game, proves it’s doable with a small team, through a variety of sources, like social media, in their Discord and even in-game. I know some developers will say they’ve been to a few community events in the game, but Brickadia in comparison actually do go as far as to promote player’s creations, and they tap into current social media trends and actively show off their work through #dev-media on their own Discord community.

Transparency when certain things go wrong

When serious issues arise within the community and/or game, communicate. Let players know what’s happening and what you intend to take to fix it - don’t make us shout for weeks to get a vague reply, and don’t respond because we pressured you to, tell us honestly why it’s taken this long to get back to us and allow us to feel like our concerns were strongly reviewed.

The TL;DR (or conclusion):

I love Tower Unite - but ignoring the community’s safety and voice will hurt this game’s growth and future success in the long term. I don’t want drama or harassment - I want this game to be the safe, welcoming hub it could be.

Please, PixelTail: listen, act, and show us that you care about this game and its community as much as we do.

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2

I’m very confused by this post.

We have overhauled our moderation countless times during this project, from feedback from our community.

We have a direct way to report players both in-game and out of game. We don’t have emails anymore, as we have a report form right here that is easier to use than emails:

Which takes you to: https://moderation.towerunite.com/report.php

This same form is used in-game.

You can anonymously report players and we take action. I’m looking at the logs and there was 19 reported users today, and all 19 reports were handled within a short time period and action was taken.

We have support tickets on our Discord as well, but we urge players to use the report form, as it directly ties to our moderation backend that also has all the information and logs we need for moderation are there.

We also added a two-way block system, which lets you can block a player and they cannot see or hear you as well (or undo that block until you want to).

We have clear rules. We’re always cleaning them up and improving them as well. I just clarified the condo rules yesterday in anticipation for community condos which are around the corner.

Community events are a different matter and would be an entire separate discussion from moderation, but we have a Discord and we added a community hub section for players to setup their own community events.

I’m always trying to promote various workshop creations, either by voting them up, sharing them with other developers, helping with bugs and issues. My full time job is developing the game, though, but I know @wheezwer is actively informing others. We’re actively working on adding a staff-picks section in the condo hub to promote creators further.

We are very transparent, we’re active on the Discord every day. There’s people who message us for help on support tickets daily and we actively help out.

I’m mentioning all of this because we’ve been actively handling moderation in timely manner for a lot of the issues that people have.

We’re always open to improving the systems, but to say nothing is being done is not the case.

Looking at our moderation backend, we’ve handled all 120 reports made since June 11th within less than 2-4 hours per report.

I’m looking at our emails right now as well, I haven’t seen any email reports sent to us for over two months now and all the rest have been either handled or discussed.

If you have someone you haven’t reported yet that are repeat offenders, then please make a report using our report form here: https://moderation.towerunite.com/report.php

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Thanks for responding, I was not really expecting a response on the same day as posting but I’m glad that you did at least take the time to respond, and I appreciate the fact you’ve provided real data and that the suggestions that I have do already exist. It is reassuring, at least a little, that there is still active moderation taking place.

I don’t want this to be seen as me criticising everything you’re doing or have done because you are right that you are taking action behind the scenes to ban individuals who break rules and as you’ve said, 120 reports since June 11 were taken 2-4 hours after report.

I think though where my concerns - and potentially others from the player base - still stands however is that the real problem isn’t the fact that you are processing reports, but by the fact whether or not the community actually feels safe and listened to when these incidents happen.

For instance, as of writing, there seems to still be some incidents of nuisances in the Discord server, a lot of which are seeking attention or causing a scene.

In a big, public Discord, this is to be expected - but normally there is a visible moderator presence to deal with situations like that quickly. Right now, it feels like that responsibility lies to the PixelTail devs, when that shouldn’t be your job on top of leading development for the game.

Even just having a couple more visible community moderators - or trusted forms of community points of contact that players are able to message to - would help a lot. The systems exist, but they’re not clear or are very invisible to most players, leaving them to believe that they’re being thrown into the void unless there is more of a bigger fuss surrounding it. Basically, my main criticism is that there’s no way to know who’s online or who’s not because the Tower Unite Discord is massive. 16.8K members that you’d need to scroll around just to find the exact person you’re looking for. In my original post, I request that the Discord has some form of hierarchy to inform users of who’s online (“Display role members separately from online members.”) as most public Discord servers have this in place.

Another thing I do want to highlight, and one I’ve seen while reading your response, is the communication side of all this, which ties back to my original Transparency point I made in my original post.
I’m worried that, although the systems I have suggested are in place, either because of or before my post (like preferring to use the Tower Unite Moderation form over email), this shift was not clearly communicated to everyone who might have used this in the past or present. Some individuals have said that they had sent email reports days ago and never heard anything back - but if said email channel is now closed, they would not have been informed of that. If that info is buried or unclear, people will naturally believe they are being ignored when in reality the system that they’ve been using and accustomed to has been changed behind the scenes.

This lack of clear communication can make it feel even more like our concerns aren’t being listened to even when action is being made and taken. If the report form is now the only form of reporting members or incidents, that really should have been made clear to everyone - through announcements on Discord, the forum and/or places that people are more frequent in, so that they are not falsely led to believe that one channel is open when it is clearly not.

From your response, my main takeaway now is that although some things have changed for the better - as I’ve said either before my post or while this conversation has unfolded - these changes have been poorly communicated to the players who rely on these. That’s where the real gap still feels abysmally frustrating.

I thank you for your time and response, and I’m glad that you are willing to engage in this conversation, it means a lot.

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We had to take away the Discord role tag showing at the top, as a lot of people used it to harass or got confused by what it was. Messaging on DMs on Discord is not a great way to report players from experience, anyways. We have the @moderators tag that many people use for emergencies or bad situations. In Discord we have a info page that links to all the ways to report players. We’re also very active on Discord, I just dealt with some issues just an hour ago and that lead to some timeouts.

We’ve mentioned quite often that reporting in-game is the primary way to report players. We’ve had the rules pages and in-game guides all update to mention that, our Discord, our forums, and Steam discussions all say to report players through the in-game and link to the report page.

Also, depending on the email and the the length of it, it will take longer to reply to than in-game reports. We encourage people who use the email report to keep things clear and concise. The last email we got was a huge message from what I remember talking with wheezwer about it, and we already took some action / discussed it but haven’t replied to it yet.

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Thanks for the second reply in this thread, I’m glad we’re having a 1-to-1 about this and what you’re doing.

While I understand why role tags were removed and why DMs are not preferred as a way of communication (I totally get it from a dev point of view - working on the game while some reports of the community happen is a massive bother), we have to know where exactly to go, and what roles to ping, and how to prove it. This needs to be signposted in places where it’s important. I notice this is a massive omission in the current #info-rules, it does say to not @ developers but does not clarify that you can @ moderators for any concerns you have. Not everyone reads the forums or info pages to see this information.

It’s not about whether you do act regarding the length of emails or not - it’s the fact whether or not individuals feel safe knowing they are getting a fair and clear response from reporting. And right now, many who are using these do not and aren’t well informed of these.

I presume that the solution isn’t to restore the hierarchy of devs, but a good idea right now is to hoist any active “Tower Unite Moderators” who may be active and online right now. Another thing is to make reporting more clear and direct, by adding the report forms in places where it is more easier to use (i.e: pinned messages in either #public, #tower-unite and #condo-hub that directs people to the form/rules, put it in the channel topic/description of the channels, etc.) and not by just hiding it in the rules or a sub-menu in game. These tools should be easier to find and should not require longer processes to find.

The burden is on players to know all of this - and that’s the gap I’m trying to understand and clarify.

6

Been a bit since I posted in this thread, but I’ve observed something that happened in the community since.

Something I’ve noticed in the Discord since my post:

I know some people in the Discord have shared that there is history where certain people like to mess with them in particular to mess with them just to get a reaction. I don’t think that kind of situation is unique just to these particular people - it shows me why clear, fair and consistent moderation really matters, so people feel safe to talk about condos without it turning into drama or off-topic arguments.

Another observation I’ve noticed is that even when people are following the rules, discussing their condos, sure, some action is taken (like GIF spam being ill-advised, that’s a good form of moderation and keeps the channel less messy) but even when they talk about a condo that relates to one of their interests, they are constantly dogpiled and passively jabbed and told to stop talking about said “interest” even though they can’t talk about their condo otherwise without it. Even when it’s just “Hey, are you coming to my condo” questions, that DO relate to condos.

If talking about an interest is an issue, a moderator should step in and tell them to tone down discussion of said interest, to keep it to the condo itself, but no moderator was brought in until the situation got rather heated, and if anything was taken, it was silent (the person was revoked embed privileges for a short period of time and was not communicated this in the chat) until it got much worse. Much of the community members were, for lack of a better term, “back-seat moderating”.

My thoughts:

Transparency is important and from my thread, some of the issues I’ve acknowledged in the community’s problems were merely just glanced at. Mac did step in to try and mediate the situation but not enough was done. I’m still disappointed and more still needs to be done.

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I’m currently on break, it’s the weekend and the 4th of July was a public holiday. These things need to be discussed with other team members during work time.

I’ve updated the Discord channels to make player reports more clear and updated the rules with better headers and easier buttons to the report form.

I also did step in and ease the issues that were actively happening.

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I do appreciate that you stepped in during a holiday and made quick changes to the Discord rules and channels - that genuinely shouldn’t go unnoticed. I’m also aware that some of the changes I’m suggesting are much bigger asks, and I wasn’t expecting you or the whole team to tackle them fully while on break.

But this really proves my point: if moderation depends on you personally jumping in during your break, that’s just not sustainable, in fact, that’s more pressure on you to work while you’re still on break when you primarily should be able to disconnect. A clear system, trusted visible community mods, and consistent follow-through shouldn’t rely on the fact whether or not you are personally available during a holiday, especially on the 4th of July. Community mods could absolutely offer to help moderate while the dev team is away.

That is really just the core of my feedback - to make it easier for you and safer for the community as well.

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I feel like community mods would be a disaster lol

If people think they got unfairly banned now? I can’t imagine how bad it would be with that.

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You’re not wrong, I do tend to agree that giving that power to literally anyone in the community would result in a lot of unfair and quite frankly, messy bans.

But it’s another one of the reasons why my point isn’t “just add mods” - it’s about having clear rules and visible trusted individuals in the community.

I understand why some think the system right now is unfair or inconsistent - as I’ve discussed in this thread moderation is hidden away and patchy in parts. But having trusted individuals in charge of the community with fairer oversight would at least reduce burnout by the dev team to try and keep things clearer for most community members.

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I wouldn’t mind helping out with moderation in this game, I’ve been part of this community for 5 years and I still have a lot to offer.

I’ve been administrating a Team Fortress 2 server for 5 long years in the past. And not gonna lie, I’ve been the unique member of the staff team that has been keeping bad actors outta said server.

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idk I don’t really think the playerbase is large enough for it to be necessary. There’s only ~500 people on at a time and most of those people are in condos (self moderated) or sitting essentially AFK in the casino.

As far as I know, anything outside of the game isn’t their problem for the most part. So that really leaves just the plaza and gameworlds which- yeah people should be banned for bad behavior, but it’s really easy to just block people.

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I totally understand that the “block” feature can work towards bad actors but I can’t help but see this as a bandaid to an overall leakage problem in a pipe.

I don’t think the comment of “it’s just a ~500 player game” is valid for a game to not have stronger moderation. All communities, regardless of size must have a good moderation system so this feels incredibly dismissive.

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I think the moderation is fine, I’ve literally never even had to block anybody. I think I’ve muted people like 3 times. I just am not having the experience you’re describing so it seems like that’s the disconnect.

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Adding on to this, a decent moderation system typically has either mods willing to be on-call when necessary, or at least one capable of being active at a time. I imagine pretty much all of the other devs are not considering public holidays “work time” as Mac said, leaving no available trusted members to resolve moderation issues within a timely manner. This, compounded with the countless complaints I’ve heard in the last couple years about TU’s poor moderation, I hardly think the responses Mac has given in this thread are appropriate.

@macdguy, I appreciate that you have stepped in and taken action on issues that were actively happening this last week, as well as updating the Discord channels and forum threads detailing player reports and rules. However, relying on your developers to moderate rather than just trusting well-known members to even be a “helper” is a little absurd, considering every other community-run game such as this one operates this way.

Ignoring players and then requesting them to use a two-way block system instead of actually dealing with an issue that we have consistently brought up both in the forums and in the Discord—which you and your devs have acknowledged—is not okay.

This game needs more moderation or even just helpers in-game and on Discord with reduced permissions. The complaints about this are not going to stop until the people who actually care about this game finally leave or the issue is resolved one way or another.

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Community mods?

Lmao.

My response: Don’t.

I could name at least one individual who would use that kind of power to effectively enact a purge.

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That is not the case.

There are people who are resolving moderation issues in-game within a timely manner even during public holidays. There’s reports that are getting resolved consistently.

What I was stating before was that the discussion of the contents of this thread would require our moderators to discuss it together during work time, as this is our break. That does not mean we don’t have people moderating during this time.

Anyways, I am going to take a break on this subject for the time being and we will discuss internally Monday.

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So don’t add them to the team? It’s really not that hard to screen members applying to be helpers. If thousands of other communities can do it, how is this one much different?

Sorry to say, Mac, but you picking out one thing I had to say out of the whole reply is in part of what I meant by you guys ignoring players when we wish to speak to you on a prominent issue.
I am glad to hear that there is someone taking care of reports while the rest of you are away, but that was not the main point of my reply.

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Screening helps, but does not 100% eliminate bad actors from causing damage

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I know bad actors happen but there definitely needs to be some sort of moderation team that is not only compromised of developers. It’s not good for the community or the development. Even with .5-1K players it’s a lot to keep watch on.

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