Villagers & Heroes is probably not the kind of cutesy indie MMORPG you expect to generate a ton of drama, but that was nevertheless the case this week, as a dust-up over in-game moderation last week prompted the developers to rework their community policies – and now, apparent abuse of the policies has provoked Mad Otter Games to put its foot down.
Initially, Mad Otter said that “a night of heated tensions and conflicts” over moderation, the studio decided to change its long-standing policy of banning such discussion from the game. “[W]e decided to try to find a compromise, one which would satisfy players while also still satisfying our desire to keep the game safe and friendly, and devoid of volcanic arguments which disrupt everyone’s enjoyment of the game,” Mad Otter’s Sarah Skibinski wrote on the official forums; specifically, players were told they could debate in a “polite and respectful manner” with “a rational exchange of ideas for the purposes of resolving a conflict.”
Our readers have surely been around long enough to know how that turned out. Skibinksi says that over the weekend, she received dozens of reports and screenshots of what the chat on the conflict server now looks like.
“I am somewhere between sorely disappointed and appalled. What I have seen so far from these screenshots are not examples of players being polite or respectful, or even trying to have conversations of any kind with moderators at all. Not even close. Instead I’m seeing that a number of players are interpreting the new policy to mean that they can publicly ridicule moderators all they want without the slightest provocation whatsoever – insult them, harass and bait them, mock them, be just plain hurtful, and are even outright encouraging others on the server to do the same. This is NOT in the spirit of the compromise we were attempting to make with our new policy.”
Mad Otter has since formalized the new company policy, though it’s not entirely clear what happens to players who (continue to) violate it. The game’s forum thread has since filled up with what looks like more of the same – people accusing the volunteer moderators of abusing their authority, calling them the “bane” of the game, and referring to players “burning cop chariots in the streets” in protest, which has to be the best euphemism we’ve seen all year. Either way, the community is speed-running the whole “moderation on the internet” in record time.
