Network rules

This is not a profanity filter

Start here, because most rule pages get it backwards: the Union is a gaming network, and it's meant to feel like one.

• Swearing is fine. So are arguments, rage, competitive trash-talk, dark humour, mature conversation and the occasional insult. Nobody gets sanctioned because a word appeared in a message.
• There is no word list and no automatic ban on a phrase. A single message sent in the heat of a fight is not treated the same as someone doing it every day to the same person.
• Context is decided by people, not by pattern-matching. A moderator reads what happened, not a list of flagged terms.

What actually gets you sanctioned

Nearly all of it comes down to the same thing: sustained, targeted behaviour aimed at a person rather than heat in the moment.

• Sustained targeted harassment. Following someone around, carrying on after they've asked you to stop, pile-ons. The test is the pattern and the person — not whether any single message was rude.
• Sustained targeted discriminatory abuse. Going after who somebody actually is — race, religion, disability, gender, sexuality. Not a word in isolation; a person being singled out for what they are.
• Credible threats and intimidation. Threats of real-world harm or exposure that a reasonable person would take seriously, and repeated serious intimidation. "I'll kill you" mid-raid isn't this. Turning up in someone's DMs about their real life is.
• Stalking. Tracking someone across servers, channels or platforms after being told to leave them alone.
• Repeated targeted encouragement of suicide or self-harm. Rage-typing it once in a lost fight is ordinary gaming; aiming it at one person, repeatedly, is not, and it's treated as seriously as it sounds.
• Grooming and exploitation. Pressuring anyone for money, accounts, images or access. Handled as exploitation whatever the ages involved turn out to be.
• Sexual content involving minors. Zero tolerance. Immediate network ban with no warning first, and reported onward where the law requires it. You can appeal like anyone else; it will not succeed.
• Sexual content in public channels. Keep it out of public channels and game chat. Mixed-age community.
• Doxxing. Posting someone's real name, address, workplace, school or photos without their say-so. An in-game grudge is never a reason.
• Impersonation. Passing yourself off as another member, as staff, or as Reptile Industries.
• Spam. Advertising, mass DMs, invite links to other communities, flooding chat.
• Serious illegal conduct. If it's a crime off the network, it's not a rules matter here either.

If you're reading this wondering whether your normal voice-chat behaviour is a problem: it almost certainly isn't. The line is who you're aiming at and whether you stop when asked.

Your DMs are not read

Worth stating plainly, because most platforms are vague about it and the answer here is specific.

• Direct messages are not scanned — not by a filter, not by a moderator browsing, not by anything automated. There is no moderator button that opens your DM history.
• A DM only becomes visible if a participant reports it, and then only the message reported plus the limited context shown alongside it. Not the rest of the conversation.
• Voice is not recorded. There's no archive of voice chat, and moderation doesn't work by listening back. Voice reports rely on the people who were in the room.
• Public and in-game chat is logged operationally, and it's public anyway — treat it as something another member could quote later.
• Moderator access to reported evidence is itself recorded. The people with the tools are audited using them.

The practical consequence: if something happened in a DM or in voice and you want it dealt with, you have to report it. Nobody is going to find it on their own.

Your Union account is your identity here

Everything hangs off it: whitelisting, ranks, stats, standing. That only works if the account means one person.

• Link your game accounts truthfully. The Minecraft name or Steam account on your account page is how each server knows to let you in. Linking an account that isn't yours is impersonation.
• No alt accounts. One person, one Union account, one game account linked to it. Not for a fresh start, not for a second base, not for an extra vote or an extra shop plot. If you're playing here on a second account, that's a rule broken before anything else happens.
• Don't share an account and don't play on someone else's. Consequences follow the account, which means they land on whoever owns it — lending yours out makes you responsible for what's done with it.
• Using an alt to dodge a sanction is worse. Evading with a second account, a new username or a different platform is a fresh offence on top of the original, and the accounts get linked together on the record so the history follows all of them.
• Name changes are fine. Update the link and your ranks, stats and history follow you — they're tied to your account, not to the name. You never need a second account to change what you're called.

Win it or don't

• No cheat clients. X-ray, fly, reach, killaura, combat auto-clickers, ESP. Performance and visual mods are fine; anything that shows you what the game is hiding is not.
• Report exploits, don't farm them. Duplication bugs, claim bypasses, arena escapes, anything that crashes a server. Reporting one puts you in good standing. Using one doesn't, and using one quietly for a fortnight first is worse.
• Don't attack the infrastructure. Crash exploits, flooding the API, or trying to get at other people's accounts is not a rules matter — it's the end of your membership.
• If a mod is borderline, ask first. Asking has never got anyone sanctioned. Assuming has.

The sanction ladder

Sanctions are typed, recorded, and mostly local. Only the last two keep you off the network as a whole — everything above them stays where it was issued.

Sanction	What it does	Scope
Warning	On the record, nothing taken away. Most first offences stop here.	Local
Channel mute	You can't post in one channel for a while.	Local
Mute	No posting in community chat for a set period.	Local
Kick	Disconnected now; you can come back.	Local
Local quarantine	Still here, but limited — read-only, or held out of voice while something is looked into.	Local
Server restriction	Barred from one server. The rest of the network is unaffected.	Local
Temporary restriction	Off every Union server until it expires. Used where a ban would be too much and a mute too little.	Network-wide
Network ban	Off everything, indefinitely. Requires a head moderator — no single moderator can do this alone.	Network-wide

Warnings first, where warnings make sense. Griefing a build, a bad week in chat, an argument that went too far — those get a warning and a conversation. Hate speech, sexual content involving minors, cheating in competitive modes, and attacks on the infrastructure skip the ladder and go straight to the bottom of it.

Every sanction is written to a permanent moderation history with who issued it and why. Servers read a separate live list of who is currently barred, so lifting a sanction takes effect across the network within about a minute — nobody has to remember to undo it in seven places.

Moderation is community-run, on purpose

Reptile Industries runs the hardware. It is deliberately not the thing you have to go through to get a rule enforced.

• Helpers are the first line in game: they read reports and can warn, kick, and mute for up to an hour.
• Moderators handle the rest of the day-to-day: longer mutes, temporary bans and restrictions on a single server, and looking up what happened to a block (who placed or broke it).
• Head moderators add the network-level tools — permanent network bans, linking evasion accounts together, IP-level restrictions, rolling back griefing — and are the ones who decide appeals. Deliberately a smaller group.
• Administrators, head administrators and the owner appoint and remove staff. Nobody can hand out a role as high as their own, or touch someone at or above it.
• Infrastructure operators keep the servers running. That role has no extra moderation power; the two ladders are separate so neither implies the other.
• Roles are appointed and revocable, resolved server-side from your session on every single action. A client saying it's a moderator is ignored.
• Staff are not exempt. Report a moderator the same way you'd report anyone else; it goes to the same queue and a head moderator picks it up.

One queue, wherever it happened

• In the Union app, right-click a message or a member and choose Report. Pick a category, say what happened. That's the whole thing.
• In game, /report <player> <what happened> on the SMP, Skyblock and Mini-Games. A reason is required, and nothing is echoed to chat. On GTNH and the Steam games, use the app — the command isn't available there.
• Only what you were shown gets attached. A report carries the messages already on your screen when you filed it. Nothing goes off and scrapes someone's history to build a case.
• Reports go to one network-wide queue regardless of which server, channel or game they came from, because the people being reported move between them.
• You can see your own reports and what came of them. You don't see the internal notes, and you aren't told which moderator handled it.
• Don't handle it yourself. Retaliating turns one report into two, and the second one has your name on it.
• Don't file reports as a weapon. Deliberately false reports are themselves a sanctionable offence.

Something broken rather than someone? That's a bug report — right-click and choose Report a bug in the app, which sends the details along with it.

A ban is not the same as being written off

• Anything that keeps you off the network can be appealed — temporary restrictions and network bans both. Go to your standing page, which shows what was issued, why, and whether it expires.
• One appeal at a time. Filing again while one is open doesn't speed it up; it's the same person reading either way.
• If a moderator asks you something, the question appears on your standing page with a box to answer it. Your appeal waits for you.
• Appeals are decided by a head moderator, not by whoever issued the sanction. If genuinely nobody else is available, an administrator can decide it — and that override is written to the audit log with the reason.
• After a declined appeal, wait a week before appealing the same sanction again. It keeps the queue fair; use the time to think about what's actually new.
• Say what happened. An appeal that engages with the reason gets somewhere. One that just says the ban was unfair, or that takes it up with the moderator personally, does not.
• Sanctions can be lifted early as well as expiring. A revoked sanction stays on the record as revoked rather than being deleted — the history is the history.

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