Reporting illegal content

1. Who we are and what this page covers

1. This page is published by Pixel Glitch Studios (“we”, “us”), which operates the Site (islesofcalamity.com and its subdomains) and the Game (Isles of Calamity, the downloadable online game client). We are based in the United States.
2. Not yet determined. Counsel must confirm whether the information we store makes the Service a provider of hosting services within Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (the Digital Services Act, or DSA) and which obligations apply. This draft must not be published until that is resolved.
3. In this document a Notice means a notification of allegedly illegal content submitted under this page. You means the person or entity submitting a Notice, whether or not you hold an Account; where we mean a player who holds an Account, we say so. Account, Character, the Game and the Site carry the same meanings here as in our Terms of Service.
4. Anyone may submit a Notice. This mechanism is not limited to players, to residents of the European Union, or to people affected by the content.

2. What counts as illegal content

1. Illegal content means any information that, in itself or by reference to an activity, does not comply with Union law or the law of any Member State which is in compliance with Union law, whatever the subject matter or nature of that law. That is the definition in Article 3(h) DSA, and it is the one we apply.
2. The test is illegality, not offensiveness and not breach of our rules. Content can be illegal in one Member State and lawful in another; content can breach our Game Rules without being illegal anywhere; and content can be illegal without breaching our Game Rules at all. Each is handled on its own footing.
3. By way of illustration only, and without limiting paragraph 2.1: child sexual abuse material; terrorist content; unlawful threats; content that infringes another person’s intellectual property; unlawful hate speech; content that unlawfully discloses another person’s private information; and the unlawful sale of goods or services.
4. If you are not alleging that something is unlawful, this is the wrong page. Use Report a player or Support instead. Sending it here does not make it more urgent; it makes it slower, because it has to be triaged back out.

3. Where player-supplied content appears

1. This section is descriptive, to help you locate and describe content. It does not limit what you may notify us about.
2. As the Game and the Site stand today, the content our players supply that is published to other people is essentially names: the Account display name and Character names, which appear on the hiscores and on public player profiles at /p/<name>.
3. Players also supply free text to us privately, through the report and support forms. That text is read by our staff and is not published.
4. News articles, guides and polls on the Site are written by us, not by players. Player market activity is recorded as items, quantities and prices, and carries no player-written text.
5. We will keep this section current as the Game changes.

4. How to submit a notice

1. Submit a Notice by email to support@islesofcalamity.com. Notices may be submitted by electronic means only.
2. Please write in English. We are a very small team and English is the only language in which we can reliably read a Notice, assess it and reply within the time the law requires. A Notice in another language will not be rejected for that reason, but it will be slower.
3. There is no web form for Notices. We would rather tell you that than point you at one that does not exist.
4. Do not attach the content itself if the content may be child sexual abuse material. Describe it and tell us where it is. Do not send it to us, and do not redistribute it.

5. What your notice must contain

Article 16(2) DSA requires a Notice to be sufficiently precise and adequately substantiated. Please give us all of the following.

1. Why you say it is illegal. A sufficiently substantiated explanation of your reasons for alleging that the content is illegal content. Where you can, tell us which law you say it breaks and which country’s law that is. “This is offensive” is not an explanation of illegality; “this is unlawful under [law], because [reason]” is.
2. Exactly where it is. A clear indication of the exact electronic location of the content:
   1. on the Site — the exact URL, or URLs;
   2. for a name — the exact Account display name or Character name, spelled as it appears, and where you saw it;
   3. in the Game — the Character name, the world, and the approximate date and time, as closely as you can. Most of the Game has no URL, and Article 16(2)(b) expressly allows other identifying information suited to the type of service. Give us enough that we can find it without guessing.
3. Your name and email address. Required — except where your Notice concerns an offence under Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU (offences concerning child sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children, and child sexual abuse material). For those offences you may notify us anonymously, and we will act on the Notice all the same. That exception is narrow and is set by Article 16(2)(c) DSA; it does not extend to other offences.
4. A good-faith statement. A statement confirming your bona fide belief that the information and allegations in your Notice are accurate and complete.
5. If a Notice is missing something, we may come back to you for it. An incomplete Notice is still a Notice and we do not discard it, but we may be unable to act on it — most often because we cannot identify the content from what we were given.

6. What we do with your notice

1. We confirm receipt. Where your Notice gives us electronic contact details, we send you a confirmation of receipt without undue delay (Article 16(4) DSA). If you notified us anonymously under clause 5.3, there is nowhere to send a confirmation.
2. A person reviews it. We process Notices and decide on them in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective manner (Article 16(6) DSA).
3. We do not use automated means to decide. Every Notice is read and decided by a member of our staff. We do operate automated systems that flag suspected cheating and automated play, but those systems only put a flag in front of a person: no sanction is ever issued automatically — every ban, mute and forced name change is issued by hand by a member of staff and recorded against the individual who issued it. (Separately, our anti-cheat may disconnect a game client that fails its checks. That is a technical protection of the Game, not a decision about content or about you, and it decides nothing under this page.) If any of this changes, we will say so here and in our decision to you, as Article 16(6) requires.
4. How quickly. We act without undue delay. We do not publish a fixed response time, because we would rather commit to nothing than commit to a number we do not measure. Notices alleging a risk to someone’s life or safety are treated as the most urgent thing we have.
5. What we may do. Depending on what we find, we may do nothing; remove or disable access to the content; replace an unlawful Account display name or Character name with a neutral placeholder, which takes the name down at once and lets you choose a lawful replacement; mute an Account; or suspend or terminate an Account, either across the Game or on a single world. Every sanction is recorded with a written reason and either an expiry date or a permanent term, and every sanction can be lifted.
6. We tell you what we decided. Where your Notice gave us contact details, we notify you of our decision in respect of the content, without undue delay, together with information about the redress available to you against that decision (Article 16(5) DSA). See section 9.

7. Where we must involve the authorities

1. Where we become aware of information giving rise to a suspicion that a criminal offence involving a threat to the life or safety of a person has taken place, is taking place, or is likely to take place, we must promptly inform the law enforcement or judicial authorities of the Member State or States concerned, and give them the relevant information we hold. That is Article 18 DSA, and no exemption relieves us of it.
2. We may also report content or conduct to the authorities where another law requires it or where we consider it necessary.
3. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first. We are a small team, we are not staffed around the clock, and we are not an emergency service.

8. If we act against you: our statement of reasons

1. This section is for the player affected by a decision, not the notifier.
2. Where we restrict you on the ground that content you provided is illegal content or is incompatible with our terms — by restricting its visibility or removing it, by suspending or terminating payments, by suspending or terminating the service, or by suspending or terminating your Account — we give you a clear and specific statement of reasons. This applies from the date the restriction is imposed, and applies wherever we hold your contact details (Articles 17(1) and 17(2) DSA).
3. Our statement of reasons will contain, as Article 17(3) DSA requires:
   1. what the decision does — removal, disabling of access, demotion, restriction of visibility, suspension or termination of payments, or another measure — and, where relevant, its territorial scope and its duration;
   2. the facts and circumstances we relied on, including whether we acted on a Notice or on our own investigation, and, where strictly necessary, the identity of the notifier;
   3. where applicable, how automated means were used in the decision, including whether the content was detected or identified by automated means;
   4. where the decision concerns allegedly illegal content, the legal ground we relied on and why we consider the content illegal on that ground;
   5. where the decision is based on our terms, the contractual ground and why we consider the content incompatible with it; and
   6. clear information on the redress available to you (section 9).
4. Separately, and by way of the Game itself: every sanction we issue carries a written reason and either an expiry date or a permanent term. If your Account is banned, the reason and the expiry are shown to you when you try to sign in. While you can still sign in, your sanctions — their type, scope, reason, date and expiry — are included in the data export on your account page. A global ban ends your sessions, so if you are globally banned the sign-in message is where you will see the reason.
5. We do not maintain a player-facing history of past offences beyond that export.

9. How to contest a decision

1. Come back to us. Whether you are a notifier unhappy with our decision on your Notice, or a player we have acted against, write to us via Support choosing the Appeal category, or to support@islesofcalamity.com. Tell us what you say we got wrong. A person reads it. We will reconsider, and we will tell you the outcome.
2. Be clear about what this is and is not. That route is a genuine human reconsideration, but it is not a formal internal complaint-handling system within the meaning of Article 20 DSA, and we do not describe it as one. As section 11 explains, Article 20 does not apply to us. We are telling you what we actually do rather than borrowing the name of something we do not operate.
3. Out-of-court dispute settlement. Article 21 DSA gives users of larger platforms the right to take certain disputes to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body. That Article does not apply to us (section 11), and we are not obliged to engage with such a body. This does not affect any consumer dispute-resolution rights you have under other law.
4. The courts. Nothing on this page removes your right to go to court. If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, you may bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, and you may rely on the mandatory law of that country.
5. Supervisory authorities. You may also complain about us to the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State where you are established or located (Article 53 DSA).

10. Single point of contact

1. Our single point of contact for direct communication with Member State authorities, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services under Article 11 DSA, and for direct communication with users of the Site and the Game under Article 12 DSA, is: support@islesofcalamity.com. We do not publish a postal address yet; until one is established, this electronic contact is the point of contact for authorities and users alike.
2. That contact point is not a bot. Mail sent to it reaches a person: Article 12(1) DSA requires that the means of communication we offer do not rely solely on automated tools, and it does not.
3. The language for communication with that contact point is English (Article 11(3) DSA).
4. For anything that is not a legal notice — account problems, billing, bugs, press — please use Support, which is faster.

11. Our size, and which DSA duties apply to us

1. Not yet verified. Employee count, turnover and ownership links must be verified before relying on a size-based exemption. If counsel confirms that the Service qualifies, Articles 19(1) and 15(2) may affect which duties apply.
2. Subject to that confirmation, we currently do not operate:
   1. an internal complaint-handling system under Article 20;
   2. out-of-court dispute settlement under Article 21;
   3. a trusted flagger scheme under Article 22 — we have no trusted flaggers and give no notice priority on that basis;
   4. the Article 23 measures and safeguards against misuse, as a formal scheme;
   5. the Article 24 transparency reporting for online platforms, including the submission of our statements of reasons to the Commission’s public database under Article 24(5); or
   6. the Articles 25 to 28 duties on interface design, advertising, recommender systems and the protection of minors, as formal DSA duties. Our age requirement and our conduct rules are set out in our Terms of Service and Game Rules and are unaffected by this.
3. If the hosting-service classification applies, the notice-and-action duty in Article 16, the statement-of-reasons duty in Article 17 and the duty to notify the authorities of suspected offences in Article 18 sit in a part of the DSA that applies to providers of hosting services regardless of size. The points of contact in Articles 11 and 12 may also apply. Counsel must confirm the scope.
4. If we qualify as a micro or small enterprise and later cease to qualify, Article 19(2) DSA provides a twelve-month transition for Articles 20 to 28. We will update this page.
5. Article 19(3) DSA lets us apply any of Articles 20 to 28 voluntarily. We have not undertaken to do so, and nothing on this page should be read as such an undertaking.

12. Notices made in bad faith

1. The good-faith statement in clause 5.4 is not a formality. Submitting a Notice you know to be false wastes the time we would otherwise spend on real ones, and it can be used to harass the person you name.
2. If you hold an Account and you use this mechanism in bad faith, that is a breach of our Game Rules and we may act on your Account under our Terms of Service. We do this under our own rules; we do not currently operate an Article 23 DSA suspension scheme.
3. Getting it wrong in good faith is not bad faith. If you honestly believed something was unlawful and it turns out not to be, that is the system working.

13. Governing law, and rights this page cannot take away

1. Our Terms of Service are governed by the laws of the State of California and the federal law of the United States.
2. That choice of law does not displace mandatory law. If counsel confirms that duties under Articles 11, 12, 16, 17 or 18 DSA apply, they apply regardless of the California choice-of-law clause.
3. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the law of the country where you live. Nothing in our Terms — including any exclusion or limitation of our liability — removes or reduces those statutory rights, and to the extent any clause purports to, it does not apply to you.

14. Changes to this page

1. We will update this page as the law and the Game change, and we will change the “last updated” date above when we do. Where a change materially affects how you can notify us or contest a decision, we will say what changed.
2. Questions about this page: support@islesofcalamity.com. Everything else: Support.