Flight Rising Discussion

Hello everyone! We have some updates to our [b][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/201441323]Rules & Policies[/url][/b] to announce today, as well as some clarifications regarding moderation, account penalties, and misinformation. Buckle in, this is a long read. Due to its size, we've formatted this update to be read in sections, so you can take a break if you need to. There’s a lot of information to digest in this update that directly addresses multiple player concerns. We do not recommend skimming this. Context is critically important and we’ve tried to provide you with that where and whenever we can. [b][u]Table of Contents[/u][/b] [list][*][b]Rules & Policies Updates[/b] [*][b][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/frd/3317140#post_56236378]Safe-Guarding & Human Rights Causes[/url][/b] [*][b][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/frd/3317140#post_56236448]Moderation & Misinformation[/url][/b][/list] [br] ----- [br] [b][u][size=5]Rules & Policies Updates[/size][/u][/b] Today we’re going to be touching on issues surrounding religious images, AI images/writing, cross-site trading, and certain types of profile or forum signature disclaimers. [b][u][size=4][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005005646-Religion-Politics]Religious Images & Iconography[/url][/u][/size][/b] Players are permitted to share their personal religious identity, affiliation, or choice in their Clan biography, forum signature, or when introducing themselves. [b]Do not report players to Support as violating our Terms of Use or Rules & Policies for simply sharing this information.[/b] Religious imagery is already not allowed for skins and accents as we do not want real-world religious imagery, iconography, etc on our site or directly tied to our brand/IP. As of the time of this post, we are expanding “no religious imagery” to be applied site-wide. When we say religious imagery, we specifically mean [b]images and icons internationally recognized as or registered symbols of organized religions.[/b] [b]This also includes[/b] images depicting desecration, deconstruction, or political speech towards organized religions. [i]Themes[/i] that have been adopted into sci-fi or fantasy media (such as alchemy, wizardry, celestial, or abyssal themes, feathered wings, halos, horns, etc) do not fall under this definition at this time. [b][indent][s]Example:[/s][/b] [list][*][s]Feathered wings and halos =[b] OKAY[/b][/s] [*][s]Named angels or saints = [b]NOT OKAY[/s][/b][/list] [b][I][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/frd/3317140/1#post_56243330](Please see this post below for more information regarding this edit!)[/url][/I][/b][/indent] [b]What you can expect[/b] We would appreciate it if players with these images in their Clan or dragon biographies, forum signatures, art, etc would take initiative at this time and remove them from our site. We will not act right away on reports that are submitted today. We’d like to give our players with this content time to remove it themselves, on their own terms. [b]The first time Support removes the images, your account will not be actioned under our Rules & Policies.[/b] You will receive a private message notifying you of the removal and education of our policies. Continued posting of these images after Support confirms that the private educational message was received by you will lead to account penalties/actions. [b][u][size=4][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/23166022959643-AI-Images-Writing-Videos]AI Images, Writing, & Videos[/url][/u][/b] [b]Images, writing, and videos created by prompting generative artificial intelligence programs are not allowed on [i]Flight Rising[/i]. We do not consider the images, writing, and videos made through prompting AI programs to be art.[/b] These models [b]did not acquire consent from the artists[/b] whose work they were trained on. We cannot support AI image generators that are trained on stolen work. Artwork (images, writing, and videos) posted to our site should be work of your own creation or art you’ve commissioned from a real person and artist. If you have AI images or are using AI to generate creative writing, images, or videos as a service, please stop posting them to our site and begin removing the images or writing right away. [b]What You Can Expect[/b] Players will be given time and a chance to remove these images from our site of their own accord. The first time Support has to remove AI imagery will most likely only lead to a notification and an educational message; subsequent removals or attempts to sell AI images or writing on our site will lead to escalating account penalties as described in our Account Penalties Explained article. [b][u][size=4][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045766772-Trading-FR-Trades-Cross-Site-Trades]Cross-Site Trading[/url][/u][/b] Effective immediately, all cross-site trades must include each trading partner’s username on the other website and what the trade is for in either the private message or Crossroads message text. The first reason is that some players try to cover their Terms of Use violating trades by claiming they’re a cross-site trade. The second reason is the concerning rise in behavior where an individual will register an account on our site for the purpose of cross-site trading. They then make gem purchases and once the trades are concluded, they then issue chargebacks, often claiming credit card fraud. When this happens, we contact the other site and let them know that a trade between our games was potentially fraudulent. If the chargebacks are successful, we will confirm with the other game that the trades were fraudulent and that we will be reversing the trade on our end. We also notify the other game because credit card fraud is a crime and individuals who choose to defraud small businesses are not the type of person we want in our communities. While we have the receipts that show it was in fact the registered individual and account holder making these purchases, these investigations pull Support off tickets for extended periods of time and, depending on the total number of gems involved, can also [b]lead to all of their trading partners temporarily losing access[/b] to their accounts while we investigate. We also want to encourage players to take care when engaging in cross-site trades with individuals who aren’t already active members of both communities. There’s a possibility that their choice to engage in fraudulent activity could lead to your trade being reversed or even temporarily losing access to your account during an investigation. [b]What You Can Expect[/b] As of today’s date, cross-site trades without information about the other pet site, your account name on that site, and details about the trade will be considered suspect should either account come under investigation for any reason. [b][u][size=4][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004336543-Overview-Supplemental]Do not broadcast, advertise, or otherwise highlight or call attention to your age.[/url][/size][/u][/b] [br] [indent][b]OKAY:[/b] Mentioning in a discussion you’re in school, when you were last in school, events you remember experiencing, etc. [b]NOT OKAY:[/b] [list][*]“Hi! My name is [name] and I’m 13 years old/a minor!” [*]“PLEASE REMEMBER I AM A MINOR” [*]“DNI. I AM A MINOR.” [/list][/indent] We understand the impulse to post disclaimers and context about your interactions with others and to communicate that certain topics would be inappropriate to share or discuss with you in advance. The reason why we do not want our minor players to widely advertise their age group is for safe-guarding purposes. When you post disclaimers like the examples above, you are also broadcasting your age to people with malicious intent. This is compounded by an observed tendency of individuals to overshare about their living situations, their personal relationships, and their medical history on our site in general. This is a case [b]where the risks vastly outweigh the benefits[/b] to your experience online and we have found it necessary to formalize this issue in our Rules & Policies. [b]Remember that the following applies to your time on our site:[/b] [list][*]You are not obligated to interact with anyone. [*]You can block any player you don’t want to interact with at any time. [*]Topics inappropriate for adults to discuss with minors are already prohibited on our website. [/list] If an adult player is reaching out to a minor player about something inappropriate or is offering to be a private shoulder, ear, or confidante in private messages based on information previously disclosed or shared, [b]please report them to us through [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/site/contact-us]Contact Us[/url] right away. Do not respond or exchange offsite contact information.[/b] [b]What You Can Expect[/b] Players will be given time and a chance to remove these age disclaimers from our site of their own accord. The first time Support has to remove an age disclaimer will most likely only lead to a notification and an educational message; subsequent removals or attempts to post age disclaimers on our site will lead to escalating account penalties as described in our [b][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005925726-Account-Penalties-Explained]Account Penalties Explained[/url][/b] article.

[b][u][size=5]Safe-Guarding & Human Rights Causes[/size][/u][/b] Over the last few years, [i]Flight Rising[/i] has tried to sustain some space for players to share limited content about humanitarian or human rights causes they feel passionate about as an exception to our [b][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005005646-Religion-Politics]Religion & Politics policy.[/url][/b] We don’t feel comfortable entirely removing these topics from our site. Exceptions are handled on a case-by-case basis, often privately. As long as the content posted by the player [b]doesn’t contain inflammatory or revolutionary rhetoric or slogans and doesn’t contain links to fundraisers or other calls-to-action[/b], we typically leave the content up. Any threads on these topics are locked, not removed, as noted at the bottom of our [b][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005005646-Religion-Politics]Religion & Politics policy.[/url][/b] [quote][i]We do not consider human rights movements to be matters of religion or politics; however, as we’ve noted above, we are simply not equipped to moderate these topics. Threads or discussions about them will be moderated (most likely locked) but the player will not be penalized; the [b]exception[/b] to this is if a player repeatedly posts about them after moderation has occurred, they have already been asked to stop, and the player does not stop.[/i][/quote] [i]Flight Rising[/i] is a 2D dragon breeding virtual pet game that hosts a robust game community. We are also aware of the fact [b][url=https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-11/ran_cn_conclusion_paper_videogames_15-17092020_en.pdf]that game communities are often targeted for recruitment[/url][/b] (PDF warning!) and radicalization. While this phenomenon is infrequent, our Support team has had to remove accounts that were behaving in ways consistent with recruitment and radicalization over the years. Larger companies are able to dedicate entire Trust & Safety teams to this kind of community safe-guarding, and it is our belief that [b]every online platform should be accounting for this.[/b] Our existing rules and policies are part of our continuous safe-guarding efforts, as well as any additional steps we take to mitigate potential problems in advance, like the compromise mentioned above and described below. We also have to balance all of the above with the fact that [b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures#Russian_Federation_active_measures,_1991_to_present]there are ongoing active measures[/url][/b] across the internet on many events, conflicts, and suffering around the world. And this is all on top of the fact there’s a real possibility that racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, professional trolls/disinformation agents, etc could find a backdoor entrance to our community through the existing exception. [b][u][size=4]Inflammatory Rhetoric & Political Slogans[/size][/u][/b] We do not have the luxury of a large team or resources to dedicate towards vetting all usages of any given slogan or campaign for current events or human rights issues and the intent of the individual posting them. We are a small team of US-based game developers who are in no way qualified or equipped to moderate these topics on our corner of the internet. [b]Some examples of rhetoric or slogans we will remove are listed below. This list includes but is not limited to:[/b] [list][*][b]ACAB/1312[/b] [list][*]The ‘B’ can be used to mean name-calling or profanity. [*]Many of our players are younger, may have law enforcement in their families, and may not be in a position to have this be a topic of discussion in their lives.[/list] [*][b]“Blue Lives Matter/All Lives Matter”[/b] [list][*]These were created to diminish a specific human rights campaign. [*]“Blue lives” refers to a profession, which is entered into voluntarily.[/list] [*][b]MAGA or “Make America Great Again”[/b] [list][*]This is a political slogan.[/list] [*][b]“From the River to the Sea”[/b] [list][*]This is a political slogan. [*]This slogan [b][url=https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23972967/river-to-sea-palestine-israel-hamas]has many different meanings to many groups of people[/url][/b] that requires vetting and moderation of intent.[/list] [*][b]“Better Together”[/b] [list][*]This is a political slogan.[/list] [*][b]“Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead”[/b] [list][*]This is a political slogan.[/list][/list] [b]Some examples of human rights or humanitarian causes we leave up in player/dragon biographies or forum signatures are listed below. This list includes but is not limited to: [/b] [list][*][b]BLM or “Black Lives Matter”[/b] [list][*]Because this phrase means “Black lives matter, [b]too[/b].”[/list] [*][b]“Land Back”[/b] [*][b]“Free Palestine”[/b] [*][b]“Trans Rights Are Human Rights”[/b][/list] [b][u][size=4]Going Forward[/size][/u][/b] [b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_safety]Our moderation policies and decisions are driven by safe-guarding.[/url] They are not a personal commentary, company statement, or editorial on any given cause, current event, or situation.[/b] We have remained consistent in our removal of [b][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005856123-Personal-Fundraising-Sites]fundraising links[/url][/b] and calls to action related to current events that link offsite under the following policy, and will continue to do so. [br] [quote][i]Flight Rising[/i] cannot guarantee or verify the identity or legitimacy of any given personal fundraiser. [b]This means that in order to protect our community[/b] from those who would engage in scams for 'real world' currency, [b]crowd-funding and similar personal fundraising sites are not allowed.[/b][/quote] and [br] [quote]This policy also [b]includes but is not limited to posting “calls to action” for campaigns or the purpose of proselytizing for a religion[/b] in forum threads, clan profiles, dragon biographies, forum signatures, etc. [/quote] We would like to continue making limited space for these human rights causes. We understand that it's important to part of our community that they feel they can use the spaces where they feel heard and have a voice, but we can only do that with [b]boundaries[/b] in place. [b]We are a video game company and we are a video game website.[/b] We can’t and we won’t accommodate discussions, fundraisers, and inflammatory rhetoric or slogans related to a variety of non-video game topics or causes on our website. When we moderate content posted by players on our website, we are not placing a value judgment on a specific issue, topic or a call to action. [b]To reiterate:[/b] Moderation should not be misconstrued as a company statement of our beliefs on a specific issue. [b]This is our notification to you that we are safe-guarding our community when we remove content like unverified fundraisers, charities, or rhetoric and slogans that may serve as a flashpoint or lead to targeted harassment of you, the community, our employees, or our website.[/b] [b]What you can expect We reserve the right to uniformly enforce our rules, policies, and terms. We reserve the right to remove content from our website as we see fit for safety and security reasons. [/b] [list][*]Calls-to-action posted in the forums or topics focused on humanitarian or human rights issues will be locked under our Religion & Politics policy, specifically the section regarding Human Rights at the end of the article. [*]Links to fundraisers and links to charity organizations will be removed as we are not able to vet every fundraiser or charity. [*]Inflammatory rhetoric, slogans, and/or language will be removed.[/list] The first time any of the above content is locked or removed, there will either be a post in the thread explaining the lock or a notification message that details the content removed with an explanation and a request not to post the content again on our site will be sent to the player via our private message system. Subsequent locks or removals will lead to escalating account penalties as laid out in our Account Penalties Explained article. We understand that the above information may concern some of you that we are indifferent to suffering. We are not. Civilians and children—people—should not be made to suffer for the greed and cruelty of authoritarians, bigots, and terrorists. [b]Our focus is on what we can directly impact, and what we can control is our own website.[/b] And here, our priority is safe-guarding our community. It’s our day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year responsibility. Moderation is performed with this priority in mind. We can only continue to allow the above exception so long as it does not create an undue moderation burden on our team. This includes but isn’t limited to the deliberate spread of misinformation panicking our community, defamatory or libelous claims being posted and shared about us or our policies and our values both on and off our website, etc. Speaking of moderation…

Moderation & Misinformation

Over the past few years we’ve observed an increasing number of tickets, threads, and questions that appear to be based on off-site discussions and misinformation. This misinformation can lead to anxiety, panic, or otherwise mislead players.

When we say ‘misinformation’ we don’t mean players who’ve recently had their accounts closed and are publicly downplaying the reasons for the closure. We understand that losing your account for Terms of Use violations can be both upsetting and embarrassing; it’s normal to want to save face—even if it does have the unintended effect of alarming other players who don’t, won’t, and can’t have the full picture.

What we mean when we say ‘misinformation’ are false claims, false attributions, or manipulating screenshots in image editing software like Photoshop as “proof”. Whether or not the person posting them to our site or social media channels (that we’re active in!) is doing so maliciously or because they sincerely believe what they’ve heard, the end goal of misinformation is panic in our community and fomenting distrust between community and staff.

Of late, misinformation has ranged from claims that we don’t allow appeals, to claims we close accounts for having too many IPs, for moving, for gifting to family, or that confessing your multiple accounts allows you to keep your main account (it doesn’t).



Privacy & Minimization

Let’s first address the minimization that can occur when an active or high profile account is closed. We do not discuss account actions, penalties, details of any account with third parties, including publicly on social media—even if the player is posting a version of events that don’t quite reflect the activity data revealed in our logs.

This means the community at large is only going to hear one side of the story and for that reason, we would encourage you to take them with the metaphorical grain of salt. Over the years, we’ve been open about the fact we can’t and won’t respond to these versions of events. This is effectively public knowledge that some have chosen to take advantage of over the years.

There’s one caveat to this policy: If the player takes the extra step of editing an image or screenshot (their closure message or Support response, etc) to claim we said something that we didn’t say. Because that requires effort, intent, and an active choice to mislead. Altering an image to support your false claim runs dangerously close to crossing the line into disinformation, defamation, and/or libel.

With minimization addressed, let’s look at some of the misinformation that’s been brought to our attention.

Misinformation: No Appeals Allowed

This is something we see frequently claimed on social media and in tickets: That we don’t allow players to appeal.

We were confused for a bit by this claim, because while the feedback seemed sincere it’s also completely wrong. We suspect that this is based on a misunderstanding about what an appeal actually is, and we’re going to clear that up today.

An appeal is when a player submits a ticket to us stating that they believe the penalty is wrong, provide any context they believe is relevant, and that they would like the logs reviewed once more. In other words, when you submit your ticket about your account penalty (anywhere from an Account Warning to an account closure), you have initiated the appeal process.



The case is then reviewed. The player activity logs are reviewed by a second and sometimes third team member, the case is discussed, and finally a determination is made.

An appeal is not a guarantee that the penalty will be lifted or your account reinstated. In other words, appealing your account penalty does not guarantee that the penalty will be reversed.

There are very few circumstances where an appeal will not be considered. These are cases where the individual themselves is banned from returning to the site or they’ve committed an especially egregious violation of our Terms of Use or Rules & Policies: Real life threats, illegal activities, or the promotion, glorification, or referencing of real world fascism.


Misinformation: You can’t share devices or an IP address

Nope. Not true. We know folks will share devices and IP addresses. Younger players and college students access the site from their school’s network.

Posting a disclaimer about shared IPs or devices isn’t needed. Investigations focus on the player activity data.

We’ve had cases where we’ve closed all but one account on an IP because it turns out two roommates were playing and only one was cheating. We’ve also had cases where the player put quite a bit of effort into maintaining VPNs, disclaimers on their Clan Profile, having conversations between their alt accounts in private messages, etc.

In other words, your friends, family, and roommates can play, share an IP, share a device. You can gift and you can trade. What matters is that everyone is playing the game for themselves.



Misinformation: Too many IP addresses will get you banned.

Not true. In a mobile era, in the VPN era, this particular lie is more than a little silly. Many players regularly access the site from their home network, their mobile data, their school network, and their work or a friend’s network throughout the day.


Misinformation: Moving will get you banned.

Also not true, also quite silly, and also intended to stoke outrage and panic.


Misinformation: Buying gems places you above the rules.

No one is above the rules. Gem purchases play no part in the application of penalties and appeal reviews.


Misinformation: Confess your multi-account and you can keep your main account.

We definitely appreciate it when people come forward on their own about violating our Terms of Use, but there’s no negotiation. There’s no keeping your main account and everything that’s been funneled to it, regardless of when the violation happened. Even if the act of funneling happened years ago, the act of cheating still sets your account up for success with an advantage over rule-abiding players.

A “clean start” means a truly clean start: without everything gained from cheating.


What determines an account closure or if an appeal is successful or not?

Data. Support looks at the history of how your account has interacted on our site across private messages, Crossroads, the Auction House, our forums, your choices in dragon, familiar, and tab names, etc since the date of your account’s registration.

If we determine the data is consistent with the information in your appeal upon review, your appeal is likely to be successful. However, if your appeal is inconsistent with the data in our logs, your appeal is likely to fail.

For example, Support has processed investigations where on appeal it’s quite clear there are multiple household members individually playing our game. This means that yes, the players’ appeals proved that multiple individuals in one household were playing our game, gifting, and trading legitimately with each other. So why then was their appeal denied and the closures upheld? Our logs also clearly showed that each household member had their own set of side accounts for the purpose of unfairly enriching their main (aka primary) account.

We’ve also had countless appeals submitted with blatant falsehoods in them, with altered screenshots, and with long and winding stories that change after each reply from Support. Some even threaten self-harm. Don’t do that. Support is looking right at the player activity data, at the information the player entered onto our website themselves.


Why is this an issue that requires an official post?

Misinformation, regardless of whether or not it’s due to a misunderstanding or maliciousness, results in players being misled. It leads to players feeling anxious about their account for no real reason and fosters a perceived adversarial relationship, where players don’t feel like they can trust us. And we understand—how could you trust us if we’re allegedly going around banning people for logging in on three different IPs in a day and never giving anyone the chance to appeal their penalty?

It also leads to posts in the forums that further spread misinformation and panic. It leads to shocked and then angry players learning in the Helpdesk that they aren’t going to keep their primary account. It leads to players assuming that because we didn’t restore access to their account that they didn’t get their chance to appeal. This is often followed by repeated and sometimes obsessive follow-ups on their original ticket, new ticket submissions, or post to social media; all in an attempt to harass or wear down our employees, manipulate the community, or stir the community up to pressure us into restoring their account despite what the records show. Sometimes the repeated appeal issue even reaches a point where we have no choice but to suspend that individual’s access to our Helpdesk so that Support can actually process other tickets.

The only thing misinformation has accomplished is pulling Support, myself, and other team members from other tickets and tasks in order to investigate behavior, claims, and repeated appeals. While it’s not the cause of all delays, misinformation of late has led to tickets and appeals ranging from obsessive to outright abusive. It’s contributed to Support burnout. What misinformation has not and will not lead to is a softening of our rules on multiple accounts and behavior.

What you can expect and what you can do

Depending on how it’s framed, misinformation posted to our site may receive an official response or it may be moderated. If we come across misinformation on social media platforms we’re present and active on, we may address it on that platform.

Okay, that’s slightly inaccurate—I’ll likely be the one addressing it on my staff persona account. So don’t be surprised if you get a reblog or response from me with a correction if you’re posting misinformation.

And while we don’t currently utilize the available software suites available to businesses that scan social media for brand mentions, you should know that misinformation posted to our established tags on social media is seen by our team and considered fair game for clarifications.

We’ll also be updating our Support articles in the near future, Account Penalties Explained and Can I Have More Than One Account? For the former, we’ll be adding clarifications as to what an appeal is. For the latter, we will be updating this article with additional scenarios pulled from actual instances of multiple account/cheating behavior.

And none of this is to say that we think we’re perfect and we don't make mistakes. We’re human. We make mistakes. All we’re encouraging from our community is some skepticism when a claim is made on social media. Generally speaking online–meaning not specific to Flight Rising!–if someone or a post seems too outrageous and lacks verifiable evidence to support the claims made, that’s when you want to exercise skepticism and wait for more information. To quote Jonathan Swift’s The Examiner: Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.

You’re always welcome to submit a ticket with a question or bring misinformation to our attention through Contact Us—especially if the individual posting the misinformation is taking extra steps to prevent us from seeing and responding to their incorrect claims about us, our policies, or our site. We’d much rather clarify misinformation than let it fester.

We hope the information in this post, thread, helps clarify confusion from misinformation and our moderation policies. Thank you for reading through, we appreciate you.

Good morning everyone! We have a couple clarifications to add to this thread based on your feedback and questions sent to us through Contact Us. We want to be clear that the goal of these Rules & Policy updates is primarily to [b]empower Support to make these edits[/b] when appropriate to safeguard the members of our community. With that said, on to the clarifications! ----- [quote name="Aequorin" date="2024-02-22 07:53:19" ] [b][u][size=4][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005005646-Religion-Politics]Religious Images & Iconography[/url][/u][/size][/b] Players are permitted to share their personal religious identity, affiliation, or choice in their Clan biography, forum signature, or when introducing themselves. [b]Do not report players to Support as violating our Terms of Use or Rules & Policies for simply sharing this information.[/b] Religious imagery is already not allowed for skins and accents as we do not want real-world religious imagery, iconography, etc on our site or directly tied to our brand/IP. As of the time of this post, we are expanding “no religious imagery” to be applied site-wide. When we say religious imagery, we specifically mean [b]images and icons internationally recognized as or registered symbols of organized religions.[/b] [b]This also includes[/b] images depicting desecration, deconstruction, or political speech towards organized religions. [i]Themes[/i] that have been adopted into sci-fi or fantasy media (such as alchemy, wizardry, celestial, or abyssal themes, etc) do not fall under this definition at this time. [b][indent]Example:[/b] [list][*]Feathered wings and halos =[b] OKAY[/b] [*]Named angels or saints = [b]NOT OKAY[/b][/list][/indent][/quote] There's been some confusion regarding the example at the end of this policy update. The purpose of the bulleted example was to differentiate between [b]themes in art and media[/b] and outright religious imagery. We are removing this example as it has led players to believe we also made an unannounced update to our [b][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004996723-Dragon-Usernames]Dragon and Username[/url][/b] policy. That is not the case. [b]A reference for players going forward:[/b] This update is [b]only[/b] about religious images and icons. If the religious image or icon isn't allowed in a skin or accent, it shouldn't be posted on our site. [quote name="Aequorin" date="2024-02-22 07:53:19" ] [b][u][size=4][url=https://flightrising.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004336543-Overview-Supplemental]Do not broadcast, advertise, or otherwise highlight or call attention to your age.[/url][/size][/u][/b] [br] [indent][b]OKAY:[/b] Mentioning in a discussion you’re in school, when you were last in school, events you remember experiencing, etc. [b]NOT OKAY:[/b] [list][*]“Hi! My name is [name] and I’m 13 years old/a minor!” [*]“PLEASE REMEMBER I AM A MINOR” [*]“DNI. I AM A MINOR.” [/list][/indent] We understand the impulse to post disclaimers and context about your interactions with others and to communicate that certain topics would be inappropriate to share or discuss with you in advance. The reason why we do not want our minor players to widely advertise their age group is for safe-guarding purposes. When you post disclaimers like the examples above, you are also broadcasting your age to people with malicious intent. This is compounded by an observed tendency of individuals to overshare about their living situations, their personal relationships, and their medical history on our site in general. This is a case [b]where the risks vastly outweigh the benefits[/b] to your experience online and we have found it necessary to formalize this issue in our Rules & Policies. [/quote] Generally speaking, it's not the best idea to share exact ages and dates of birth online. This update is [b]focused primarily on safe-guarding minors[/b] and ensuring Support is empowered to make necessary edits. Even then, we're not going to penalize players for mentioning they're (for example) in school. Sharing that you're in school in an organic conversation is significantly different from posting in bold letters that you're (for example) 13 years old on your static Clan Profile page or forum signature. For our adult players who've reached out to us with questions, there are no issues with stating you're an adult. The one caveat here is if the [I]lack[/I] of a note that you're an adult should somehow become confirmation that an individual is a minor. And we just want to remind everyone, no one is required to publicly share their age/date of birth on our site or online in general. As we noted here: [quote name="Aequorin" date="2024-02-22 07:53:19" ] Topics inappropriate for adults to discuss with minors are already prohibited on our website.[/quote] ----- We hope this information helps. As always, players are welcome to share their feedback or submit questions to us about rules and policies through [b][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/site/contact-us]Contact Us.[/url][/b]

As promised, we've updated our Account Penalties Explained article to clarify further what appeals are and what you can expect when appealing an account or forum penalty.

We've also updated our Support article Can I have more than one account? This update clarifies further that multiple account use is considered cheating and why, provides examples of multiple account use that we regularly see during investigations, as well as information on what players who've used multiple accounts in the past can do if they want to play Flight Rising without worry.