Rules

Two kinds of rule live on this page. The first is what we ask of you, which is short. The second is what you are entitled to ask of us, which is longer, because it is the half that usually goes unwritten.

What we ask

Play the game, not the other players. Betraying an ally is a move. Following somebody between matches to keep doing it is harassment, and the two are not close enough to confuse.

No cheating. The server owns the simulation, so a modified client cannot invent soldiers — what it can do is read what a player should not see and act faster than a person can. Automating play, scripting input, or running several accounts in one match to feed one of them are all bans, and the last one is a ban for every account involved.

Names are public. Pick one that you would be happy to see on a scoreboard in front of strangers, because that is where it goes. Impersonating another player, naming a real person, or using a slur gets the name reset; doing it repeatedly gets the account closed.

Nothing political on an abstract map. The maps in this game carry coastlines, rivers and high ground, and nothing else. No shape drawn on them stands for anybody's country. This is a deliberate product limit and not a squeamishness: real borders belong to real people, and a five-minute game is not a place to relitigate them.

One report is enough. If something needs looking at, report it once and move on. Reports are read by a person.

What we owe you

No pay-to-win. Not now, not later. Nothing purchasable in this game changes a match. Colours, patterns, frames and names — the whole catalogue is cosmetic, and the code that grants an entitlement cannot reach the simulation at all. If a future item would give an advantage in a match, it does not ship.

No paid random items. Nothing is sold as a surprise: no loot boxes, no crates, no keys, no bundles whose contents stay hidden until you have paid. You see the thing, you see the price, you decide. This also means there is no in-game currency you buy in one denomination and spend in another to make the price harder to read.

No rigged matchmaking. Who you are matched with never depends on a guess that you might be about to quit. There is no losers' queue and no arranged win. The whole mechanism, including the one place where new accounts get an easier start and why, is written out on the Fairness page.

Bots are labelled. When a lobby has seats nobody is sitting in, bots take them so the match can begin, and every result screen marks each bot row. No lobby has ever been passed off as all-human.

Advertising has limits. There are no ads during a match, ever. A rewarded video is something you press, never something you must press, and everything it gives is available without it. What is shown to a player whose age is unknown, or who has told us they are under eighteen, is contextual only — no profiling — and the rule and the code behind it are in the Privacy policy.

Your progress is yours. You can export everything the game holds about your account, and you can delete it. Deleting means deleted. The one thing kept is the bookkeeping entry for anything you bought, with your name taken off it, since refunds and tax law both depend on that entry existing.

Enforcement

Actions are taken by a person and can be appealed to a person. A first offence against the conduct rules is usually a warning or a name reset. Cheating and multi-accounting are immediate bans without a warning, because the warning would be a free round.

If you have been actioned and think it was wrong, say so and it will be looked at again. We would rather reverse a wrong ban than defend it.

When these change

These rules will change — a game that runs for years and never revises its rules is a game that stopped reading its own reports. Substantive changes are listed on What's new with their date and in plain words, instead of slipping quietly into a longer document.