Clarification and Reminder on Inappropriate Workshop Content in Tower Unite

Does this also include things set to private or friends only? (Kind of overreaching IMHO if so) Also, what about private/passworded dedicated servers later down the road? Will they have an avenue to perhaps load custom content of their choosing directly instead of the workshop?

Really hope someday there’ll be a way for private communities running community condos could use any content of their choosing. (Maybe forced unlisted from the browser, or at least forced password in these cases if paranoid.)

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Any content that is published publicly is subject to the rules. The only time an item would be subject to removal while “Friends Only” is if the model is reported.

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you can’t place canvases down in the lobby or gameworlds where you can use models in certain gamemodes and in the lobby.

this is a redundant argument

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Ok

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This will be poorly enforced, if at all.

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You may want to clarify what “over-exaggerated” means on point #2 because at first glance it sounds incredibly offensive. Labeling women with bodyshapes that include large breasts and wide hips as “sexually offensive” and “over-sexualized” is not okay. Need some clarification on this one from PixelTail.

Also, underwear and bathing suits are almost identical in design so I fail to see how you’d forbid one of them and not the other - meaning they both must not be allowed anymore… so we can’t have bathing suit outfits on characters now, in a game filled with beaches and swimming pools? We can even decorate our characters in pool floats…

And at what line are you going to draw sexual fetishes at? There’s a fetish for literally everything out there, including tons of innocent things.

Having a gigantic list of vague rules doesn’t really ever help in any games or sites. If anything, it hurts games that are based on customization and expression. I think saying no nudity would be enough.

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Hey y’know what, good stuff. I don’t think there’s gonna be a big thing on banning random models that aren’t inherently sexual, but hopefully y’all have good judgement. TU was never meant for models like that anyways.

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Kirby is on point, I don’t think underwear and bathing suits are necessary to be removed Unless it reveals partial nudity from it, in that case it would just wipe out like 1/4 models in the workshop.

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thank you so much

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plus canvases can be hosted on a different platform (or your own site) whilst the nsfw models are directly on the steam workshop, which ironically considering the amount of sexual content games, you aren’t allowed nsfw workshop content

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Much like Kirby has said, these rules are so incredibly vague that at best the lines between what is and isn’t covered by these rules are blurred and they can’t be enforced particularly well if at all, at worst this ends up being enforceable on a good selection of models in the workshop since the beginning that aren’t even particularly sexual in practice but get sweeped under the bus by these rules anyway.

Rules like the following are ones that are probably the most likely to be tripped up or misused I feel:

Models from a sexual/pornographic source

If a model comes from a sexual source but doesn’t break any other rules, does it really matter? This feels like something to cover all bases that might be overreaching.

Models with hypersexualized features (for example: over-exaggerated chests, hips, “bulges”, etc.)

This is just vague, what counts as an over-exaggerated chest or hips? Stuff like this can very easily lend itself to stylistic choices and not be sexual. This needs refinement to target more specific things a la ‘hyper’ art because as of the moment it covers a lot of bases that aren’t necessarily sexual and may instead just be part of a character or style.

Models that clearly allude to sexual fetishes

See Niz’s post.

All in all: This needs a bit more time in the oven I feel. The impact that this could have on the current workshop playermodels is massive as of current.

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even religion, politics should not be banned completely like you have said unless they are literally disrespecting anyone for absolutely no appropriate reason or context.

Hey,

This response is in regard to several of the above comments. I hope you all understand that inappropriate sexualization is a difficult issue to elaborate on in what was intended to be a concise clarification of our rules, and that is because sexualization is complicated.

To elaborate on “over-exaggeration,” models which are uploaded to our game involve caricaturizations which are intended to represent bodies in a stylized fashion, and the proportions of these can be exaggerated in a way that, combined with other factors such as exposed skin, sexual language in referring to the model in the description, or, for example, modeled genitalia, can make us believe the model is inappropriate for our game.

We are not going to delete every single model that has large breasts or large hips. Again, and as was the intent of the way the examples were worded, models which draw a lot of attention to these features through over-exaggeration, especially if they are combined with other clarifications we’ve listed, are models which can concern us, and lead us to assess the model for inappropriateness as they always have been.

In regard to the comments on bathing suits, I mentioned in the Discord that we are not deleting models wearing bathing suits because that is not inappropriate for our game, but if some models in bathing suits expose skin in a way that we deem offensive or inappropriate, then we will. In regard to comments on fetishes, the clarification states that we will remove models which “clearly allude” to sexual fetishes, as in where it is apparent to us, as reasonable people.

In case this was not clear, we often discuss concerning models with other people on our team before removing them, and we moderate the Workshop when we have the time and as we get reports.

If players see models that they deem inappropriate on their own, and report them, we can take a look. As was stated in the original post, we already have marked several models as inappropriate in the past or have had some brief discussions on Discord with community members about these issues, and those people have time to remove the models on their own.

The clarifications in the original post are guidelines we use when assessing whether or not we find a model to be inappropriate, and they are rules for users to use when uploading models and deciding whether or not they are uploading inappropriate sexual content because there have been issues with that in the past.

As we’ve been saying on Discord frequently, all we can ask is that you all use your best judgement on if you think something is inappropriate and violates these rules when uploading it to the Workshop, and consider whether or not you have uploaded something that is inappropriate in the past if you don’t want to worry about Steam’s temporary ban.

As was also said on the Discord, we aren’t trying to be draconian about this. All we want is for Tower Unite to be a place where users feel comfortable and respected by their fellow players while they enjoy playing games, building, and hanging out.

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To add to what wheezwer said, these are rules/guidelines that we have always used to moderate Workshop in the past.

As was stated in the original post, we are just clarifying and explaining them as the only major change is we no longer mark items as inappropriate and now will remove them from Workshop.

The same goes for “avoiding political, historical elements”. This particular rule is to keep people from uploading overtly offensive items with political or historical context that can lead to hate speech.

We aren’t going to go through and destroy hundreds of Workshop addons that have been uploaded in the past. We are just clarifying the rules that we’ve been using already so that players can report models more and that workshop creators are aware of the type of content they should be allowed to upload.

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Question, does this also go for any workshop condos that are published?
And what are the specified rules regarding non workshop-published condos yet publicly accessible that still contain lewd imagery, like a condo with said imagery that has been made public.

Workshop Condos have always had to follow the same rules. You cannot have any sexual content in your uploaded Workshop Condo, which includes any canvases.

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What about the non workshop-published condos? Like, someone has a lewd condo and they just opened it up to the public in a server.

There’s been plenty of these in the past.

condos aren’t moderated unless they’re uploaded to the workshop

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Gotcha.
I imagine later on, they’ll have something where you need to tag your condo as NSFW before opening it if it has such content.
Even if we have the option to turn on canvas whitelists.

All and all, this seems pretty good.