The Crew
TLOPO Staff
Introduction
Hello, everyone.
Before we start, we would like to thank everyone for their patience as we prepared this post, it has been a very stressful week for us - but we would like to emphasize that things have been in motion even before members of the community came forward publicly, and this post has just taken us a long time to fully compose.
This post is going to act as our full response to all the recent commotion here on the forums and in the community at large. We also recognize that there are a lot of questions and concerns about what has been accused recently, and we would like to try and bring closure to the situation and resolve any concerns players have.
We would like to acknowledge that we were internally aware of this incident before any form of community post went up. Furthermore, by the time any post was made by a community member, we had already addressed the situation internally and had begun actively discussing new ways to help prevent something like this from happening again in the future.
We have been working very hard this past week to come up with a proper and meaningful resolution for the community. There have been discussions in motion about how to properly respond to this situation since the day of the first post, and considering this had already been handled internally weeks ago in accordance with our policy, we had to approach it remaining impartial and try to find some form of proper solution that’s respectful to all parties involved.
We wish to remind players that TLOPO as an organization strives for integrity. We are not an organization run by employees on a payroll. We’re passionate friends who are working together for a common goal. We learn from each other and laugh together every day, but we also hold each other accountable for our mistakes.
We have always been a community project run by the community members, for the community. So many of our staff are long-time dedicated hard-core POTCO players with just as much passion for this game as all of you. When situations like this come up, it is difficult for all of us.
In light of recent questioning of the integrity of TLOPO, we wish to explain various parts of our team structure and how our team functions and responds to incidents like this. We do not normally discuss internal policy and procedure to address every kind of repercussion on our team, but it does exist and has been exercised privately over the years. Similar to bans and mutes with Moderation, we do not talk about disciplinary action against Staff Members publicly - and this is something we will continue to be doing going forward. But with that, let’s move into the bulk of the post.
Administration and Leadership
The Legend of Pirates Online is a department-based team with a representative from each Department who holds a seat in the team’s Management Board. Additionally, each Department Lead maintains their own department’s policy separately from Management.
For example, the Moderation Department has its own unique policy that applies only to moderators; but at the same time, there is also Management-level team policy that applies to every member on the team regardless of which department they’re in.
When a violation of the rules occurs, it is brought up in the specific department as per the level of where the rule violation occurred. It is also customary for Department Leads to notify the team’s Management Board of their administrative actions within their own departments, as well as requesting a full management vote on department-level decisions in an effort to remove bias from any decision making.
Any rule violations are always discussed at length and investigated to the fullest extent by our Leads. Following these discussions, a vote is conducted in that department and a decision is formally made. Upon finalizing a decision, a formal discussion is initiated with the subject of the vote and they are notified of the decision and, if the individual is found to have violated the team’s rules, their repercussions as directed by internal policy.
Repercussions
Privacy is one of the top concerns at our organization. We have taken significant efforts to secure our game and protect the privacy of our players. We are proud that we have been able to protect the game from many exploits like Python injection, a major issue that badly haunted the original game.
Naturally, this same level of care for privacy applies to all aspects of our project, not just what a hacker might be able to try and do with the code we develop.
We ask that you read Stephen’s personal apology linked below. No staff member on our team was aware he was going to make this statement; the same moment the community read it was the same moment that we read it.
Stephen’s personal apology.
We have worked with Stephen for years and know him at a level many other people in this community do not know him at, and we know how this situation is affecting him personally just like the stress of this situation is also affecting the managers of our team personally. At the end of the day, we need to acknowledge that people are people and mistakes happen. This does not condone the mistakes he made, and action was taken against him internally regardless, but we need to acknowledge that at some point we are going to mess up as individuals. It’s easy for us to focus on the mistakes themselves, but what ultimately matters is how you learn from them and grow as a result.
Our willingness over the years to actively change moderation policy to try new methods of discipline that are not as impactful to players, but yet still appropriately disciplined, is one manifestation of this learning. Early on, we were much more strict with bans and inadvertently created a very negative culture against our moderation team. Our warning point system introduced in 2017 with mutes has worked out incredibly well for us.
We built our moderation system on forgiveness so players can change and come back. We learn from our mistakes, and giving players and staff alike the opportunity to redeem themselves and be better people is the intention of our moderation. And this is the exact intention of our internal policy on Staff Member discipline as well.
Hello, everyone.
Before we start, we would like to thank everyone for their patience as we prepared this post, it has been a very stressful week for us - but we would like to emphasize that things have been in motion even before members of the community came forward publicly, and this post has just taken us a long time to fully compose.
This post is going to act as our full response to all the recent commotion here on the forums and in the community at large. We also recognize that there are a lot of questions and concerns about what has been accused recently, and we would like to try and bring closure to the situation and resolve any concerns players have.
We would like to acknowledge that we were internally aware of this incident before any form of community post went up. Furthermore, by the time any post was made by a community member, we had already addressed the situation internally and had begun actively discussing new ways to help prevent something like this from happening again in the future.
We have been working very hard this past week to come up with a proper and meaningful resolution for the community. There have been discussions in motion about how to properly respond to this situation since the day of the first post, and considering this had already been handled internally weeks ago in accordance with our policy, we had to approach it remaining impartial and try to find some form of proper solution that’s respectful to all parties involved.
We wish to remind players that TLOPO as an organization strives for integrity. We are not an organization run by employees on a payroll. We’re passionate friends who are working together for a common goal. We learn from each other and laugh together every day, but we also hold each other accountable for our mistakes.
We have always been a community project run by the community members, for the community. So many of our staff are long-time dedicated hard-core POTCO players with just as much passion for this game as all of you. When situations like this come up, it is difficult for all of us.
In light of recent questioning of the integrity of TLOPO, we wish to explain various parts of our team structure and how our team functions and responds to incidents like this. We do not normally discuss internal policy and procedure to address every kind of repercussion on our team, but it does exist and has been exercised privately over the years. Similar to bans and mutes with Moderation, we do not talk about disciplinary action against Staff Members publicly - and this is something we will continue to be doing going forward. But with that, let’s move into the bulk of the post.
Administration and Leadership
The Legend of Pirates Online is a department-based team with a representative from each Department who holds a seat in the team’s Management Board. Additionally, each Department Lead maintains their own department’s policy separately from Management.
For example, the Moderation Department has its own unique policy that applies only to moderators; but at the same time, there is also Management-level team policy that applies to every member on the team regardless of which department they’re in.
When a violation of the rules occurs, it is brought up in the specific department as per the level of where the rule violation occurred. It is also customary for Department Leads to notify the team’s Management Board of their administrative actions within their own departments, as well as requesting a full management vote on department-level decisions in an effort to remove bias from any decision making.
Any rule violations are always discussed at length and investigated to the fullest extent by our Leads. Following these discussions, a vote is conducted in that department and a decision is formally made. Upon finalizing a decision, a formal discussion is initiated with the subject of the vote and they are notified of the decision and, if the individual is found to have violated the team’s rules, their repercussions as directed by internal policy.
Repercussions
Privacy is one of the top concerns at our organization. We have taken significant efforts to secure our game and protect the privacy of our players. We are proud that we have been able to protect the game from many exploits like Python injection, a major issue that badly haunted the original game.
Naturally, this same level of care for privacy applies to all aspects of our project, not just what a hacker might be able to try and do with the code we develop.
We ask that you read Stephen’s personal apology linked below. No staff member on our team was aware he was going to make this statement; the same moment the community read it was the same moment that we read it.
Stephen’s personal apology.
We have worked with Stephen for years and know him at a level many other people in this community do not know him at, and we know how this situation is affecting him personally just like the stress of this situation is also affecting the managers of our team personally. At the end of the day, we need to acknowledge that people are people and mistakes happen. This does not condone the mistakes he made, and action was taken against him internally regardless, but we need to acknowledge that at some point we are going to mess up as individuals. It’s easy for us to focus on the mistakes themselves, but what ultimately matters is how you learn from them and grow as a result.
Our willingness over the years to actively change moderation policy to try new methods of discipline that are not as impactful to players, but yet still appropriately disciplined, is one manifestation of this learning. Early on, we were much more strict with bans and inadvertently created a very negative culture against our moderation team. Our warning point system introduced in 2017 with mutes has worked out incredibly well for us.
We built our moderation system on forgiveness so players can change and come back. We learn from our mistakes, and giving players and staff alike the opportunity to redeem themselves and be better people is the intention of our moderation. And this is the exact intention of our internal policy on Staff Member discipline as well.