Community rules

The City and friend visits

The City is a shared town that anyone logged in can ride to with Porter. It is a public place: you will meet players you do not know, and everyone there can read the chat. We keep City chat for 30 days so the developers can look into reports and problems.

A friend visit is smaller. The host says yes to every visitor and can send anyone home.

• You can always ask to visit your friends, and they can always ask to visit you.
• Visiting someone who is not your friend needs two settings turned on: theirs (Visit requests from set to everyone) and yours (Let me ask to visit players who aren't my friends). Both are off to start with.
• Chat on a friend visit only reaches your friends in it. If someone in the visit is not your friend, they do not see your chat and you do not see theirs. The first time a line of yours does not reach everyone in a visit, the game tells you.

These rules apply in both places, and to names, chat, reactions and friend requests.

What is not allowed

• Harassment or bullying. Picking on someone, following them around after they ask you to stop, or getting others to gang up on them.
• Hate. Attacking anyone for their race, religion, nationality, disability, gender, sexuality or anything else about who they are.
• Sexual content. Sexual words, names or messages of any kind.
• Sharing personal information. Yours or anyone else's: real names, ages, schools, addresses, phone numbers, social accounts, photos or passwords.
• Threats or encouraging self-harm. Threatening anyone, or telling anyone to hurt themselves.
• Links and contact details in chat. Web addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, social or messaging usernames, or asking someone to add you on another app. This is true in every room, The City and friend visits. The game refuses most of these lines, but not every one, and trying to get around it breaks this rule too.
• Spam and scams. Flooding the chat, or tricking players out of items or accounts.
• Cheating or exploits that ruin it for others. Using bugs or tools to break the game for the players around you.
• Pretending to be someone else. Pretending to be another player, a developer or a moderator.
• Inappropriate names. A display name that breaks any rule on this page.

Anything illegal is not allowed either, even if it is not on this list.

How to stay safe

• Never share personal information: your real name, age, school, where you live, phone number, social accounts or passwords. Nobody here needs them.
• Never move to another app, game or website to talk with someone you met here, even if they seem friendly. Keep it in the game.
• If anyone makes you feel uncomfortable, leave and tell a trusted adult, like a parent, guardian or teacher. Then report them.

Tap or click a name in the chat to mute, block or report. In The City you can also report a player from the list of players in the Multiplayer panel. You can report a player from your friends list too, and from the list of players on a friend visit.

• Mute hides their chat for you, on this device only. They are not told.
• Block stops chat and friend and visit requests between you, both ways, and removes them from your friends. They are not told.
• Report tells the developers in private. If you are in a room with them, it sends their last few chat lines too. They are not told who reported them.

Who can reach you. Three settings in the Settings panel (when you are logged in) decide this, and all three start on the safe side:

• Let players find me by name is off. Other players can't find you by searching your name unless you turn it on.
• Visit requests from is set to friends. Only your friends can ask to visit your town unless you choose everyone.
• Let me ask to visit players who aren't my friends is off. You can only ask to visit your friends unless you turn it on.

Friend requests. Anyone you give your friend code to can send you a friend request, and so can anyone who finds you by searching your name, if you turned on Let players find me by name. Otherwise a player can only use Add friend on you if you were both in the same part of The City, or the same friend visit, in the last 24 hours. You never have to say yes, and when you accept, the game reminds you to only add people you know or have played with.

New accounts

A new account can chat in The City after it is 1 hour old. Until then you can still go there, walk around and react. Chat on friend visits works straight away.

This slows down anyone who makes a new account to get around a ban in The City chat. It does not change friend requests or friend visits.

What happens if you break the rules

We usually start small and go further if it happens again. Most of the time, if we act on your account, you will see what we did, which rule it was for, and when it ends.

Warning

A message telling you which rule you broke. Nothing else changes.

Removed from The City

You are sent home and can't come back for 1 hour.

Chat mute

You can't send chat messages, in The City or on friend visits. Everything else still works. For 1 hour, 24 hours, 7 days or for good, or for 30 minutes when it is automatic after several reports.

Multiplayer ban

The City only, or all multiplayer (The City, visiting friends and having visitors, and also sending or accepting friend requests and posting on the feedback board). For a set time or for good.

Account suspension

You can't log in, for a set time or for good.

Name reset

Your display name is changed to Neighbor and a number, like Neighbor 4821. You can pick a new name that follows these rules after 7 days.

For serious harm we can skip steps and go straight to a ban or suspension. Anything that puts a child in danger is reported to the police and the authorities whose job it is to protect children.

What happens after a report

• A developer reads it, along with what the player said.
• If you report someone from a friend visit with just the two of you in it, the developer can also read what you both said there in the last 7 days. They have to write down why first, and every read is logged.
• The player you reported is not told who reported them.
• We will not tell you exactly what we did, to keep things fair for everyone. If they keep bothering you, block them and report again.
• Please only report real problems. Reporting someone just to get them in trouble breaks the rules too.

If you think we got it wrong

Appeal it in the game. When you are warned, muted or banned, the notice at the top of the game has an Appeal this decision link. If your account is suspended, log in anyway: the message that tells you so has an Appeal this decision button, and the page it opens also lets you download the town saved to your account: a suspension never takes your town away. When you are logged in, the appeal page lists every decision you can appeal.

• You have 30 days from the decision to appeal it. A decision that is still in force after that, like a long ban, can be appealed for as long as it lasts.
• Tell us what happened and why you think we got it wrong. You can appeal each decision once, so put everything in that one message.
• A moderator reads every appeal and answers it, usually within a week. You see the answer where you appealed: in the notice, or when you log in.
• We can keep the decision, lift it, or change it.
• A name reset is appealed through the warning that came with it. If we overturn it, your old name comes back, as long as you have not picked a new one since.

You can also ask in our Discord. Tell us your display name, what happened and roughly when. Ask in a public channel and a moderator will take it to a private message, so you never have to post account details in public.

What we keep

We keep what is said in The City for 30 days, so we can check what really happened when someone is reported. The developers can read it, and every time they do it is logged.

When a friend visit has just two players in it, we keep its chat for 7 days, then delete it. Nobody reads it unless there is a report about that visit, or a flagged line from it (below) that a moderator opens a case from. Chat on bigger friend visits is not kept, except the lines that come with a report.

Some phrases are flagged for a moderator to look at, in The City and on friend visits: things like asking someone's age, whether they are alone, where they live, for a picture, to keep a secret, or to move to another app. The line still goes through, and the player who said it is not told. A moderator reads the flag and decides. A flag on its own never gets anyone in trouble.

When a player is reported, we keep the report and the evidence that came with it. When we act on an account, we keep a record of what we did and why, so the next decision is fair. If several players report someone within a few minutes, the game mutes that player's chat for 30 minutes until a moderator looks.

See the privacy policy for how long we keep them, and for everything else we store.