General Guidelines

These guidelines must be followed by ALL members of our staff teams.

Proper Conduct
  • Provide good first impressions to new members and do not mislead them about our products.
  • Be an example to the community; they should want to behave like you do.
  • Show respect to everyone, even if they aren’t showing you the same respect.
  • Don’t descend to the same level as a rulebreaker by arguing with them.
  • Follow the server rules MORE STRICTLY than they should be enforced.
  • Obtain permission from an Administrator before sharing unreleased content.
  • Never abuse your staff rank to gain an advantage over other players.
  • No insider trading.
Teamwork
  • Work with other staff members as a team.
  • Ask for help when you need it, and volunteer to help someone else if they need it.
  • Don’t undermine each other’s work.
  • Collaborate on a project wherever it’s convenient.
  • Avoid disputes, but if one comes up, contact an Administrator about it.
Activity
  • Don’t do the bare minimum.
  • Respond to pings relevant to your staff role in a timely manner.
  • Attend staff meetings whenever you can.
  • Participate in discussions so that you have a say in important matters.
  • Let us know when you will be inactive so that exceptions can be made.
  • If you will be inactive for a long time, you may temporarily leave the staff team; we will work with you to re-add you to the team when you’re back.
  • If there are no entries on your timesheet for 1 consecutive month, you will be removed for inactivity.
Account Security
  • You cannot use a shared account on Discord or on any of our games or game servers.
  • Make sure your passwords are secure and not shared with anyone.
  • Change your passwords if you think your accounts are at risk.
  • Enable Multifactor Authentication wherever you can.  This is required on Steam and on Discord.

Community Team

These guidelines must be followed by ALL members of our community management staff team.

Moderator Tools for Discord

Run commands using the GS Defender bot to hand out punishments and save moderator notes.

  • Notes – /note – Save a private note on a user for staff to view at any time.
  • Warning – /warn – Sends a message to the user, notifying them of their warning.
  • Mute – /mute – Times out a member for the specified time and notifies them of an attached message.
  • Kick – /kick – Removes a member from the server, but they can come back.  Requires the Moderator role or higher.
  • Ban – /ban – Removes a member from the server, and they can’t come back.  ALWAYS specify a ban reason.  Requires the Moderator role or higher.
  • Purge – /purge – Deletes the specified number of past messages in a channel.  Requires the Sr. Mod role or higher.
  • Use #message-logs to retrieve deleted or edited messages.
  • Use the Members tab to view relevant information about members such as join date, invite links, and account flags.
Moderator Tools for Steam

Hover over comments or posts in the Steam Group to perform moderator actions.

  • Delete – Removes a comment.
  • Report – Hides a comment and reports it to steam.
  • Ban – Removes a user from the group, they can’t rejoin.  Also allows you to purge all messages from a user.  Requires the Senior Moderator role or higher (the Officer rank in the Steam Group).
Severity
  • Many scenarios will be rated by their severity and given an example first-time punishment.
  • If you did not give a user any other punishment when they broke a rule, warn them.
  • General disrespect is a low-severity infraction. Give them a 10-minute mute.
  • Discrimination (including slur usage) is far more severe than general disrespect. If it is reasonable to assume the user is coming to the server with the intention of bigotry, any sort of discriminatory language can be met with a long or permanent mute.
  • Inappropriate content is a high-severity infraction in text. Depending on the content of the message, you can make anything from a 1-day mute to a permanent mute.
  • Inappropriate content in images or in-game visuals (i.e Decals in TF2, Builds in Minecraft) is a maximum-severity infraction. A permanent ban on the platform where this took place is called for.
  • Controversial topics are low severity. 10-minute mute.
  • Sensitive topics are low severity. 10-minute mute. If it’s a life-threatening topic, you may want to refer the user to a hotline. We are not obligated to deal with that sort of thing, and depending on where you live, it might even be illegal.
  • Spamming is low severity. 10-minute mute.
  • Advertisement is medium severity. However, advertisement is usually not done with good intent, so it is reasonable to ban someone instantly if they’re shamelessly advertising their server. Permanent ban, unless the user has been on the server for a while.
  • Bad Voice Chat Etiquette is low severity. 5-minute timeout.
  • Breaking TOS / EULA is of high severity. Temporary or permanent ban, depending on the details of the infraction.
  • Ban or mute evasion will result in the alt being banned permanently.
  • Abusing exploits or bugs in our games or game servers will result in a 1-day ban.
  • Hacking or Cheating is high severity, resulting in a 7-day ban.
Intent
  • Bad intent is punishable.
  • If a user appears to have joined any of our services with the sole purpose of breaking rules, ban them.
  • If a user is intentionally breaking the rules because they think they can get away with something once before having a permanent punishment, prove them wrong. Use increased punishment.
  • If a user is causing trouble and not strictly going against the rules, and using this as a shield, call an Administrator or Manager. These highher staff can moderate outside the rules when necessary, and will deal with this user.
Target
  • Retaliating to a rulebreaker in a way that breaks the rules is punishable, but always give them a smaller punishment than you give the instigator.
  • If a rulebreaker seems to be targeting a specific person because of a vulnerability, this can be classified as discrimination and you consider it a high-severity infraction.
History
  • If someone breaks the rules multiple times, consider it higher severity.
  • Regulars or long-time members of the server should be given more leniency.
  • Before banning a regular, discuss with the moderator team.
  • If someone has misbehaved on one platform (i.e. Discord) and got banned, then is misbehaving on the other platform (i.e. Minecraft), consider it higher severity.
Respect
  • Only the rulebreaker, the staff team, and anyone negatively affected by them needs to know when action is taken.
  • Inform the rulebreaker when they have been moderated and why.
  • Let the rulebreaker know how they can appeal permanent bans.  If you banned with GS Defender on Discord, or with any of our in-game tools, they will be notified of this automatically.
Probable Cause
  • If someone reports a rulebreak with no evidence, briefly investigate it, but do not immediately take their word as fact.
  • Vulcan anti-cheat can sometimes be wrong about cheaters, so don’t ban someone the first time they get kicked by the anti-cheat unless you saw them cheat.
  • Solid evidence is required for moderating regulars or long-time members.
Problem Members
  • Users begging for items or free games should be treated as spammers.
  • Users complaining about having been previously muted or banned should be muted and told to join the Discord server and open a ticket if they think the punishment was in error.
Logging
  • Log any punishment that lasts longer than 1 day.
  • Log any punishment where you think the next one should result in a permanent ban. (i.e. if you administered a Final Warning).
  • You do not need to log punishments on members that first joined the service within the last 15 minutes.
  • The log format is available in the pinned messages in #⁠modlogs.
Web Pages
  • If you’re interested in helping with blogging or creating pages on our Website, ask in the #website channel.
  • When creating webpages, save them for review by a Senior Moderator or an Administrator.  Do not publish pages without permission.
Event Hosting
  • When hosting an event, create the event on the Website, on the Steam Group, and on the Discord Server.
  • It can be announced in the Discord server in #upcoming-events.  If you do not have permission to use that channel, a higher member of staff does. 
  • Senior Moderators and above can ping everyone and all roles, so if you need one of them to ping a role, feel free to ask.
  • Make sure that there is interest for your event and that enough people will be interested in attending.  Ideally, very few of our hosted events should end up as a failure.
  • Less is more.  Hosting events too often may get people tired of attending events here.
Social Media Management
  • If you’re interested in helping with social media management, ask in the #social channel.
  • When creating posts, save them for review by a Senior Moderator or an Administrator.  Do not publish posts or videos without permission.
Wiki Management
  • If you’re interested in helping with wiki management, ask in the #wiki channel.
  • You may make your own edits, and approve edits made by other members of the community.  However, when you do so, make sure to let us know so that we can make sure it’s being done properly.
Activity Metrics
  • Members of the Community Management team are expected to be active in our Discord server, and to be active in some of our other communities, such as our steam group or our games or game servers.

Development Team

These guidelines must be followed by ALL members of our game development staff team.

Projects
  • You may help with any of the following projects:
    • Escape from Rockfall: a puzzle platformer game.  This will be our first release and we will be making this game in order to learn the tools available to us.
    • Fragmented: a collectible card game with a versus mode and a campaign.  This will be worked on sometime after Escape from Rockfall.  The versus mode will be a live-service mode and the campaign will be offline singleplayer.
    • Clot: a metroidvania game that features blood magic.  This will be worked on sometime after Escape from Rockfall.
Access
  • Testers will not have full access to our game code for the sake of security.  If you wish to work with the source code, we will grant limited access for a limited time based on your needs.
  • Developers and above will have full access to our game code and will be able to work on it whenever they have time.
Activity Metrics
  • Members of the Game Development team are expected to actively test and develop based on their role, and to help provide ideas for game mechanics and features and to come up with new items.

Creative Team

These guidelines must be followed by ALL members of our creativity staff team.

Projects
  • You may help with any of the following projects:
    • Escape from Rockfall: a puzzle platformer game.  This will be our first release and we will be making this game in order to learn the tools available to us.
    • Fragmented: a collectible card game with a versus mode and a campaign.  This will be worked on sometime after Escape from Rockfall.  The versus mode will be a live-service mode and the campaign will be offline singleplayer.
    • Clot: a metroidvania game that features blood magic.  This will be worked on sometime after Escape from Rockfall.
Artwork Submissions
  • All the art from a specific game should be in the same style or a similar style.
  • Cosmetic items (such as item skins) in a game may deviate in style.
  • Artwork may be submitted to the Artwork folder on the associated project’s google drive folder.
  • ALL SUBMISSIONS must be put in a folder with your username on it (i.e. “Cav Submissions”).  They will be reviewed and then put into main folder’s documents by Administration or Senior Developers for the sake of consistency.
Audio Submissions
  • All the audio from a specific game should be in the same style or a similar style.
  • Audio may be submitted to the Audio folder on the associated project’s google drive folder.
  • ALL SUBMISSIONS must be put in a folder with your username on it (i.e. “Cav Submissions”).  They will be reviewed and then put into main folder’s documents by Administration or Senior Developers for the sake of consistency.
Localization Submissions
  • All the translations for a specific game should match the general feel and tone of the original game; and also should have no potentially inappropriate content that isn’t in the original.
  • When creating localizations, feel free to deviate from the original in its exact meaning in order to make it fit better in your language.
  • Translations may be submitted to the Localization folder on the associated project’s google drive folder.
  • ALL SUBMISSIONS must be put in a folder with your username on it (i.e. “Cav Submissions”).  They will be reviewed and then put into main folder’s documents by Administration or Senior Developers for the sake of consistency.
Writing Submissions
  • General lore for the Remnant should be consistent and not contradictory.  Try not to introduce anything that would contract a fact already established in that universe.
  • Get creative with the characters you make.  Work with other writers to create organic interactions between your characters and their characters.
  • Character lines may be submitted into the Dialogue folders on our projects’ google drive.
  • Notes for the general story (such as a questline) for a project may be submitted in that project’s Story folder on google drive.
  • General lore for The Remnant may be submitted to the Remnant Lore google drive folder in the appropriate document.
  • ALL SUBMISSIONS must be put in a folder with your username on it (i.e. “Cav Submissions”).  They will be reviewed and then put into main folder’s documents by Administration or Senior Developers for the sake of consistency.
Activity Metrics
  • Members of the creative team are expected to create multiple submissions per month so long as there’s something for you to do.  If you’re not sure what to do, you can always just ask.

Timesheet and Benefits

These guidelines must be followed if you want to receive your benefits.

Accessing the Timesheet
  • Timesheet Link
  • The email address you used to apply will be the one that will give you access to the timesheet and to the google drive folders.  It should be one you’d be comfortable with other staff members seeing, so don’t include one that has private information on it such as your full legal name.
  • When you’re given access, find your sheet and fill in your Timezone, Email, and Staff Roles.
  • Keep your Staff Roles updated whenever you join or leave a team or get promoted.
Format
  • Date: Mark the date that the task took place in MM/DD/YYYY format.
  • Start Time / End Time: Mark the time you began your task and ended your task in 24-hour HH:MM format.
  • Total Time: Automatically subtracts your start time from your end time, marking your total time spent in hours and minutes. If your Start Time and End Time are on different days (i.e. you worked over your Midnight), then you will have to adjust this manually.
  • Task: Describe what you did during that time in one or more sentences.
  • Notes: Write down anything else that may be relevant.
Logging
  • When logging a moderator action, include the time from when you first identified the issue to the time it was fully resolved and logged.
  • When logging anything else, simply include the time from when you began to when you finished.
Breaks
  • If you took a break longer than 15 minutes while working with us, break your task into two time logs, and exclude the time spent on break.
Receiving your Benefits
  • You will receive your benefits so long as you accurately log your work done.  We can’t give you benefits if you don’t use the timesheet properly.
  • To receive free access to all our games on Steam, you must be an active member of the team for 1 month or longer.