Lately I’ve seen an uptick in both cheaters and just bad apples in general. Not sure where they’re coming from or why but that’s besides the point.
Some of my friends have come to the conclusion that the game is borderline unplayable in its current state outside of playing in a premade group. And yes that means not even touching Plaza as well.
The reason is the uptick of bad players.
People using models that crash lobbies, including condos.
People using script exploits to give themselves items they shouldn’t own.
People using scripts to cheat scores
People who commit to targetted harassment of an individual or group
People who are repeating offenders of using vile language directed towards individuals or groups
And the worst offender of all; all of the above for some do not get a permanent ban for breaking these rules.
Quite recently there was an individual force crashing plaza servers, with use of third-party scripts. They only received a 24 hour ban supposedly.
Another individual has been harassing trans players for weeks, and I believe they’re still able to play.
The point I’m making is these players don’t learn from temporary bans, it’s very clear they just come back and do it again, or worse. And it’s seriously upsetting when players who were once passionate about the game’s future, no longer care because these people get a free pass to do it again.
And while I’m not questioning that Pixeltail does what they can in regards to moderation, but that there have been questionable decisions in regards to certain bans, mostly directed to length of ban or type of ban; as in voice ban, plaza ban, etc.
The tools that exist ingame aren’t exactly bullet proof to prevent these bad apples from consistently harassing players they see fit. It’s awful.
The game desperately needs some of the following tools in place for players that are stalked, harassed and borderline bullied in this game;
Private Host (Players can only join if they’re invited through Steam).
Discord ‘# Report’ ticket (A means for players to report in greater detail outside of the game, and not have to resort to emailing Pixeltail. Similar in function to # Support)
Hidden flags that check for items players shouldn’t own (Supporter items when no DLC present, Backer items when not a backer, GMT items when not a old GMT player, WIP unobtainable items) and deletes them if detected.
I don’t want anyone nor Pixeltail to say I’m angry at anyone specifically.
And I didn’t want to feel like I needed to make this post, but I really did feel I needed to say something.
I’m more upset that I’m hearing about this more and more, and it doesn’t really feel there’s much I can personally do to help my friends enjoy the game.
There is an eerie “unsafe” feeling when playing the game as of late due to the amount of players that are doxed and harassed inside and out of the game. It feels as if the team is remaining neutral on topics that are concerning to see go unpunished.
I personally hope to see proactive moderation, or at the very least more than what we are currently getting. Temp bans are not it for some of the more serious cases.
The game desperately needs some of the following tools in place for players that are stalked, harassed and borderline bullied in this game;
Discord ‘# Report’ ticket (A means for players to report in greater detail outside of the game, and not have to resort to emailing Pixeltail. Similar in function to # Support)
On December 14th, 2022, I suggested and recommended PixelTail to have some kind of discreet way of reporting on the DIscord in #ticket-1609—especially when there is a level of urgency in a report that makes it extremely time sensitive . The reason being: I was told to publicly report a specific issue that was occurring in the Tower Unite Discord to sole Tower Unite moderator at the time, Socks.
This ticket was then archived by me on January 2nd, 2023 after not receiving a reply since then, and this issue of not being able to privately report those on the Discord alongside having zero way of showing urgency in reports without taking extraneous time to write a detailed email still exists to this day over a year later.
At this point, I want both proactive moderation or at least more than what we’re getting. It’s hard to ignore this problem as an individual who has been doxed four times in the span of my 2 years’ worth of playtime—starting as early as my first week in playing this game and as recent as last week. The fact that most of those incidents are considered unactionable due to their nature of being “outside of Tower Unite” is appalling since each of these people who have ever shared my private information, such as my home address, phone number, etc., are all Tower Unite players.
Furthermore, I’ve dealt with people who have actively crashed my game when running condo events, actively crashed AGC in the plaza, and what seems to be those who have actively crashed the Condo Hub. I genuinely believe this is an attack not just on me personally but to Tower Unite as a whole.
Something needs to be done. I don’t feel safe here anymore.
I don’t claim to know anything about moderation, but this is an issue I can see escalating drastically especially the longer it goes on. Furthermore, I especially do not care for the in-game politics that happen among players.
But the amount of stuff that is allowed to fly under the radar is appalling. In the sparse few times I have played Tower Unite in recent history, I have seen some terrible cases of harassment. And the consequences handed out to those responsible essentially is just a slap on the wrist.
The moderation clause of “we can’t do stuff if people do this or that outside of the game” is problematic when the perpetrators also play this game, and commit acts like doxxing while they’re playing.
The moderation in this game badly needs improvements. If stuff like this continues, I’m not playing.
yesterday winesses kirby trageted it was so bad it killed condohub. so even trageted players and communitys effected everyone on tower unite.
it is new look if want renatation rate of game with need keep this game alive.
this issues will lead to death of the game.
off game harrasment due ingame event need actionble. espericly come to thing of doxing. with littary standard done online communies. safety of players suld be no.1 consern of modratation team of tower unite.
have feeling anti cheat need rework and have proper system for that. suldnt epics easy anti cheat be fairly easy add on top any ue4 game and have effective impact against cheating.
tldr. tu modration need change mindset to protect it player and game safety team need focus on implement system and anti cheats pervent exploting and eperiacly means crash a player.
The game is not safe anymore and if the dev team won’t do anything about I know a lot of people will leave and won’t come back. Its not just hurting the player base it’s hurting the game and will end up the ultimate death of the game as sad as that is
To preface this, I KNOW that the current rule is that “if it happens inside a condo, there’s nothing we can do about it.” and that we as the host are meant to deal with it ourselves, but I personally see that as poor moderation of the game. It happened IN the game, even if it was in a condo hosted by a player.
It has become outright unsafe to ever host a public condo, as a visibly queer and trans person. Same goes for most of my friends. People join in groups of anywhere between 2 to 10 (TEN!!! FOR REAL) to harass people just trying to have a good time and hang out. It’s often impossible to try to meet new people and socialize on Tower anymore, because it’s gotten to the point where maybe, like, 7 out of 10 times you interact with someone, they’re going to do or say some vile shit to you.
If anything happens in a condo, and the player gets banned, what’s to stop them from going to other condos or going to a plaza and saying the exact same kind of shit? Because you KNOW that these kinds of people have nothing better to do than go around doing this, and they absolutely will and do, DAILY with little (if any) repercussion.
Something desperately needs to change. There really can’t be any fence-sitting on this kind of issue.
I have to agree with Doc. I personally have experienced and reported harassment that has gone on where people have spoken about me behind my back and made fun of me for events that occurred outside of tower. I was sexually harassed by another user and made it known in my report that I sent via email to the tower moderator team about it. I realized nothing could be done about it due to it happening outside of tower but the fact that I still join in on this game only to find out that there have been people talking about me and making fun of me for it is not fun. I make an effort to be nice to everyone I can but it just sucks to see people get away with so much in this game it makes it much less fun for players such as myself to go on and play knowing there are people out there who are getting away with such petty and middle school/high school behaviors as well as much more dangerous behaviors such as doxxing.
Our staff is on break until Tuesday as Monday is a public holiday, but I’ll try to address as many concerns as I can here.
We all want Tower to be a safe place. It’s not acceptable in anyway when a user continuously harasses players. That’s one of the reasons we have a zero tolerance ban policy regarding racism, transphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, and any other forms of discrimination.
There’s a few topics here I’d like to directly address.
We’re a small team, we’re doing our best when it comes to moderation and we handle reports all throughout the day, but we don’t have activate moderators other than staff right now.
We average around 6-10 reports a day, which is down from previous times where it could be an average of 40 reports a day. Lots of reports of voice without evidence which unfortunately have to get thrown out, but remain on record. However, sometimes we’ll issue out a temp ban as a warning to the user.
I have not seen a report about players using player models that crash lobbies in about a year or two. We have a workshop model report form here if you know of a model that causes issues: Workshop Report Form
Script exploits have in the past occurred, but we’ve been tackling them as quickly as possible and many of the exploits that have been used are no longer possible. This of course is an ongoing process, and will always be addressed as quickly as possible. For obvious reasons we address these issues silently. If there’s more information you here in this area, please feel free to email bans@pixeltail.com
Cheating scores is a difficult problem to completely resolve, as cheating can come in many forms, but most cheaters will get VAC banned. We actively remove and manage leaderboard entries quite often. We get about 3-4 reports weekly and the users who cheat get permanently banned from leaderboards and their scores wiped. Reporting a cheated leaderboard score should be done using the in-game report tool or email.
Targeted harassment is handled from player reports and email, and we issue out bans as best as we can. Sometimes we’ll get reports of harassment and there’s no evidence or chat logs to go off of. We have a mod email for more complex issues which factor in. We have a policy where repeat offenders get issued longer or permanent bans, so please send in a report if you need to. Contrary to what people have stated here, we may take action of events “outside of Tower”, should there be sufficient evidence, but we highly suggest reporting them on those platforms themselves. The reason we have discussed about events outside of Tower not always being actionable is because they could be manipulated by tools, where as our own chat logs cannot.
We don’t feel comfortable opening up our Discord to report tickets right now, but that could change in the future if we can figure out a way that works best for both us and players. We have a mod email setup for when users need to add context or explain a situation better.
We do have systems behind the scenes that check players for certain exclusive items, such as the Supporter pack. There’s more work being done on these systems as we speak.
This is several years ago and this has never been our policy. Socks has not been a moderator for several years now.
We don’t want you to publicly report issues. We request that you use our email and the in-game report system. We don’t want users using the support ticket for reports.
Was this reported? I’ve not seen any reports of this nature. Do you know what causes the crash, who is doing it, etc. If you can, email us.
Was this reported? There’s nothing on it in our email or the in-game report tool.
We’ve updated our policy on this about a year ago. Users who harass in condos can get banned, but we need evidence as Condo chat is not logged. We’ve issued out bans already for conduct in Condos.
We acted on this issue immediately behind the scenes. We are still investigating. However, we found no third party script or command that can crash Plaza servers and chat messages cannot take down the AGC. It’s more likely that it’s a bug in the game code and we’re actively finding it. A short ban like that was issued as a preempted measure & warning so we can investigate the situation fully.
I know I haven’t addressed every concern here, but I’m actively trying to.
In general, what helps us the most to tackle these issues is:
Using in-game report tools. These get logged immediately and let us investigate the situation as quick as possible.
Taking screenshots of bad behavior in Condos.
Taking screenshots of text hats (currently they are not logged).
Recording voice for evidence of rule breaking behavior.
Reporting outside of Tower harassment to the proper platforms.
Also,
Please do not communicate with a user you’ve reported, if they’ve been reported already, then let us handle the situation. In many cases, reporting then blocking the user is advised
It is totally fine to bump an email asking for more assistance or an update on the situation. Oftentimes we take action and don’t always reply to the email, which is something we’re working on
Ensure you give us all the evidence you can, we need evidence so when we issue out bans we have evidence to back up the claim. Also double check the attachment or link is functional.
Don’t assume short bans aren’t serious infractions. A short ban is still a ban & confirmation that the behavior needs to stop. Bans are on permanent record and will vastly influence future moderation action. A short ban is generally a warning, the next ban is longer or permanent.
I’ve also noticed that many reports recently have been using Discord image links - please do not use those as they expire now.
I value all of this feedback greatly and will discuss this more with the team. We’ll continue to improve on our rules and look into better ways to handle moderation to make Tower a safer place each day.
I think it would be a good idea to explicitly state this in more places. Maybe in a #ban-report-guide discord channel, or a board near the chat rules in the Plaza.
The report website accessed via the in-game Report button contradicts some of this as well (behavior in condos is listed under “WE DO NOT MODERATE: SO DO NOT REPORT”). It also does not say anywhere that you must record voice chat for reports, or that certain rule violations need screenshots for evidence. It seems very outdated in general (still mentions vote kick, which was removed like 3-4 years ago).
edit: Actually it does mention recording voice chat, although it can be easily missed if you’re just skimming through. If there were was a “YOU MUST RECORD VIDEO EVIDENCE FOR THESE RULE VIOLATIONS” section that’d be a lot harder to miss, and hopefully would help reduce the amount of voice chat reports without evidence.
Everything mentioned in my post has been the status quo for a long time now. This isn’t reactionary, but if there’s feedback I listen. We don’t talk about moderation actions publicly.
Blockquote We all want Tower to be a safe place. It’s not acceptable in anyway when a user continuously harasses players. That’s one of the reasons we have a zero tolerance ban policy regarding racism, transphobia, homophobia, anti-semitism, and any other forms of discrimination.
I think this is the most important part. I think for some players (myself include), it can be difficult for us to see the “zero tolerance” part because we run into known problem causers as if they were never punished or did not take their ban/warning seriously. Whether this is related to the ease of evading a ban or because temporary bans are not long enough, I’m not sure.
On my end, I just want to express that I am rooting for ya’ll to take action, be harsh when it comes to the guidelines, and don’t hesitate to give bad eggs a boot just because they support the game. We as a community can do what we can to keep things positive, but it’s up to ya’ll to decide what flies and what doesn’t.
Thanks for the input from your side, I feel better having this topic be addressed, I just hope that it continues to be addressed after this thread dies down. Thanks Mac.
I’m going to counter this statement with two things.
The point of me bringing this up was to say that the “Discord Report Ticket” suggestion was made before. You can view this ticket yourself here, Mac. I can’t really agree that 1 year, 1 month, and 26 days is “several years” exactly.
The reason why it was suggested is because what we have currently clearly isn’t working enough to where all these people are coming from left and right to speak about their poor experience. For those who can’t read the ticket, you can find the active logs of this ticket both here and here.
Crashing AGC? Abso-freaking-lutely. In fact, I ended up taking some flack for making the report because there was a level of urgency that can never be conveyed outside of just one singular in-game report that gets solved with both patience and a prayer that it’ll get addressed sooner.
As for crashing the Condo Hub and my own condo, it’s a bit more complicated because I can’t see the crash logs of the Condo Hub. I do have an idea of what caused this issue, and I’d be more than happy to share it if it wasn’t for the fact that I nearly have to write an essay to explain a report like this.
Stuff like this makes in-game moderation feel more like an after-thought for Tower Unite rather than viewing it as an important part of the product. It’s a social game after all, and the lack of awareness on this matter seems to speak more than anything else on the matter.
Part of this is contradictory. On one hand, it’s very easy to report a condo that contains hate speech or anything of that matter. On the other hand, your own Game rules state and I quote:
The problem with this is that condos containing illicit materials have been reported before and have been unbanned in some cases simply because an investigation wasn’t properly done. If an investigation wasn’t done properly and an appeal went through because of that, then it’s a very different issue altogether.
If it’s not reactionary, then why are people who were reported in January only now getting muted? It seems like there are a lot of easy oversights that keep repeatedly happening, and that is posing a greater problem to the already existing concerns that we have with the current systems. It means that we need something to change, be it the system or something even greater.
This excuse can only get you so far. If you’re a small team but don’t have any active moderators other than your current staff, what’s stopping you from expanding your team? Finances? Trust? Perhaps a combination of the two?
A better question: how much do you believe it costs to hire people who are experienced in that field?
My biggest concern was one of those that weren’t addressed yet, and it brings me no comfort sleeping at night knowing that people can get away with doxing other Tower Unite players so as long as they specifically do it off the platform. As for the concept of “reporting them on their respected platform”, you can’t report someone for something that wasn’t sent directly to you nor in a place where you specifically can see it.
This suggestion and statement is moot and overall helps nobody as I feel like my concerns of safety and privacy are being deflected when this is the place that these people are specifically trying to get me off of.
I’ve used these systems enough times and have reported enough people to say that this is a very inconsistent system. The number of times I’ve reported those for ban evasion or even just general harassment and didn’t get addressed properly or got inconsistently addressed is surreal.
For example, I reported someone for actively harassing someone and for transphobia, something on the zero-tolerance ban policy, and only one of the person’s three accounts got banned.
Another example, I reported someone for ban evading their temporary mute as well as a condo ban using the in-game report system. Only one of their accounts was banned for muted ban evasion and it lasts exactly as long as the main account.
Now I don’t know what could have possibly gone wrong on either one of those accounts, but it most certainly shows to me that these systems are flawed and inconsistent on a good day.
Look, I’m not here to flack on everything that is being done on the moderation side overall because there are some good things that have been done, but this is a problem to me and my statement on not feeling safe still applies. I’m asking for these answers:
What is going to change to help prevent bad actors like these from festering in the Tower Unite community? When will this happen?
This means no blanket statements of “We’re working on it”. This is just as good as saying “We’ll get there eventually,” and only justifies my feeling of moderation being a mere after thought. We need to know what is going to happen and when this is going to happen. Henceforth, we’ll hold you accountable for this.
Do you plan on expanding your team to help create active moderators? If so, when and how?
If there continues to be no active moderators for Tower Unite, then infractions—like it or not—are being created reactively by definition since I’d argue that it’s rare to see an active moderator on Tower Unite in any capacity. If you truly want to own the claim that this game is proactively moderated, you would need active moderators in-game.
How will you address the elephant in the room that is those who are specifically dancing around your rules in order to harm others on Tower Unite?
Be it with an adjustment to the Game Rules or something even greater, what are you going to do to help prevent this. Right now, nothing has been said on it as of me posting this. To me, I still believe nothing is going to change unless somebody says or does something.
How are you going to address the inconsistencies with your current system?
In my humble opinion, this system sucks. It is not only flawed in the sense that you can remove context depending on how much or how little you clip, but limited in the sense of who can actually use it. Not everyone can actively record their screen and some Operating Systems don’t even have programs that can support any kind of feature as such. Even if you can report it to the proper venues, that guarantees no certainty that it’ll be addressed properly, consistently, and timely. How are you going to fix this problem?
You don’t have to answer all of these questions right away, but I can say at least for myself that I would like to know when can we hear answers to all of these questions? Be it in a bigger post of some kind or just in this thread, something needs to be said and it needs to be said soon. If you aren’t going to answer these today, it’d be better to just give a rough estimate on a time when you can create a more coherent and constructive response than what you can do right now.
I just want answers, and I just want to get a better idea of when I can feel safer playing Tower Unite.
EDIT 1: With the way that “holidays” and “breaks” are treated, it feels like moderation is treated more like a 9-to-5 office job more than an actual passionate community that’s proud to be managed.