Let’s say you’re curious as to how, exactly, developer FlowPlay determines whether an online offense is grave enough to warrant a ban from their virtual world. Or, let’s just say you’re young and reckless and don’t always follow the rules which can, then, result in very, very, very bad consequences.
To satisfy your potentially self-harming curiousity, here is exactly how FlowPlay deals with those who break the rules. How they’re warned and what the various stages of punishment are, the works.
The complete guidelines have been publicly shared by FlowPlay, and focus on several things you can do that can result in a ban. Below is not a complete list of rules, but are the rules we find most important and suggest you follow.
Impersonating – Any player demonstrating ‘game abuse’ in the form of impersonating any person or entity, whether actual or fictitious, including, without limitation, an ourWorld official, employee or representative…
( i ) First Offense: With proper verification, user chat is silenced for 24 hours.
(ii) Second Offense: With proper verification, user chat is silenced for 72 hours.
(iii) Third Offense: With proper verification, user chat is silenced indefinitely.
Stealing Screen Names – Any player demonstrating ‘game abuse’ in the form of collecting or harvesting screen names, collecting or storing personal data about other users, or solicit or attempt to discover a user’s password, screen name, or other registration information without the user’s express knowledge and consent.
( i ) First Offense: With proper verification, user is banned indefinitely.
Phishing Sites – Any player demonstrating ‘game abuse’ in the form of organizing cooperative groups to engage in or run raffles, lotteries, contests, sweepstakes, or chain letters or other pyramid schemes, in order to steal or control the marketplace.
Example: Someone makes a lottery website giving you free gems, but in order to enter, you must give them your username and password.
( i ) First Offense: With proper verification, user(s) are banned indefinitely.
Hacking – Any player demonstrating ‘game abuse’ in the form of modifying software with viruses, worms, or any other computer code or portions of code, programs, or files designed to interfere with, interrupt, destroy, or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications or other equipment or to cause a security breach of such software, hardware, or other equipment.
( i ) First Offense: With proper verification, user is banned indefinitely.
Offensive Behavior – Any player demonstrating ‘game abuse’ in the form of any content, language or materials that are fraudulent, unlawful, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar, offensive, profane, sexually explicit, indecent, threatening, abusive, violent, illegal, rude, harassing, or otherwise improper, or that violates any applicable domestic or international law, or government regulation (including, without limitation, those of any state, foreign country, securities exchange, the S.E.C., and the F.C.C.)
( i ) First Offense: With proper verification, user chat is silenced for 24 hours.
( ii ) Second Offense: With proper verification, user chat is silenced for 72 hours.
( iii ) Third Offense: With proper verification, user chat is silenced indefinitely.
Offensive Username – Any player demonstrating an offensive in-game gamer tag, to be decided as universally unacceptable to other players.
( i ) First Offense: With proper verification, user is silenced 24 hours.
( ii ) Second Offense: With proper verification, user is silenced 72 hours.
( iii ) Third Offense: With proper verification, user is silenced indefinitely.
So there you go. All the stuff that can get you suspended, banned or even permanently banned, laid out nice and easy. It’s a lot of words to basically say “play nice or else we won’t let you play at all”, but that’s not legal enough for official documentation.
ourWorld Code of Conduct Page (User Agreement) [ourWorld]
ourWorld Basics: Account Security (How to keep your account safe) [ourGemCodes]
