Shadow Walkers — Community Code of Conduct

Last updated: 12 April 2026 Publisher: Dwarven Stronghold Limited

Shadow Walkers is a dark fantasy MMORPG about language, memory and the shadows between order and chaos. To keep it a place worth returning to, we expect everyone — players, content creators, staff and volunteers — to behave with basic decency. This Code of Conduct sets out the rules that apply to in-game chat, user-generated names, the Thari Music Tool, forum posts and any other community space we run.

This document supplements Section 7 (Acceptable use) of the Terms of Service. Where the two conflict, the Terms of Service prevail.

1. The short version

Don't be cruel. Don't be a bigot. Don't cheat. Don't try to hurt the service. If in doubt, ask yourself whether what you're about to do would make the world a slightly worse place for the next player who logs in.

2. Behaviour that is always prohibited

The following behaviour will result in moderation action, up to and including a permanent ban. Repeated or severe cases are also reported to law enforcement where we are legally required to do so.

2.1 Harassment and abuse

• Targeted harassment, stalking, or sustained hostility against another player, a staff member, or any third party.
• Threats of violence, physical harm, sexual violence, self-harm, or property damage, whether "joking" or not.
• Sharing another person's private information (doxxing), including real name, address, workplace, phone number, personal photographs, or anything else they have not consented to publish.
• Inciting others to harass a specific target, including coordinated attacks from guilds or Discord servers.

2.2 Hate speech and discrimination

• Content that dehumanises, demeans, or incites hatred against a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, disability, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or serious medical condition.
• Symbols, slogans or imagery primarily associated with hate movements, including Nazi and neo-Nazi symbology, except in clearly academic, educational or in-character anti-villain contexts agreed with us in advance.
• Slurs. If a word is a slur in your region, don't type it in our chat.

2.3 Child safety

• Any sexual content involving minors, or content that sexualises minors, is strictly prohibited. We will ban and report to the UK National Crime Agency (CEOP), Internet Watch Foundation, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States as appropriate, without prior warning to the account holder.
• Grooming behaviour, including attempting to contact minors off-platform or soliciting personal information from minors.

2.4 Illegal activity

• Facilitating, promoting or conducting fraud, scams, theft, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, weapon trafficking, or the sale of regulated goods.
• Real-money trading (RMT) of in-game items, currency or accounts is prohibited because it creates incentives for fraud and scams, and because it distorts the game economy. We ban both sellers and buyers.
• Coordinating attacks on other platforms from within Shadow Walkers.

2.5 Disruptive gameplay

• Cheating, including use of any third-party tool that automates gameplay, reads or writes game memory, or communicates with the server in a way not produced by the official Client.
• Exploiting bugs for personal gain, for damage to the economy, or to grief others. If you find a bug, report it to [email protected] or via the in-game bug report form.
• Griefing: deliberately, persistently, and maliciously interfering with another player's ability to enjoy the game — for example, by camping new characters in spawn areas, blocking quest NPCs, or intentionally failing party content to troll the group.
• Chat spam and advertising unrelated to Shadow Walkers.

2.6 Impersonation

• Pretending to be a Dwarven Stronghold employee, a volunteer moderator, a named NPC, or any real person in a way that could cause confusion or harm.
• Creating character names or guild names that impersonate staff or well-known community members.

2.7 Circumvention

• Creating a new account to evade a ban, mute, or other sanction.
• Sharing accounts with banned users.
• Helping others to break any rule in this Code.

3. Rules for user-generated content

3.1 Names (characters, guilds, towns, Thari Music Tool compositions)

• No names containing slurs, sexual content, drug references, hate symbols, real-world political figures, or staff impersonation.
• No names designed to bypass filters (letter substitution, reversed text, unicode homoglyphs).
• No names copyrighted or trade-marked by other properties (e.g. character names from popular franchises) where this would infringe third-party rights.
• We reserve the right to rename any account that breaks these rules.

3.2 Chat

• Keep it roughly appropriate for a "teen" audience rating in public channels (world chat, trade chat, faction chat).
• Profanity in moderation is fine; relentless profanity aimed at another player is harassment.
• Whispers and private channels have lighter moderation but the same hard rules (no threats, no slurs, no CSAM, no doxxing).

3.3 Thari Music Tool

• Compositions are user-generated content under Section 6 of the Terms of Service.
• Do not create compositions whose melody or lyric context promotes hatred, sexual content involving minors, or any other prohibited content listed in section 2.
• We may remove compositions that breach these rules without prior notice. You may appeal.

4. Content rating and context

Shadow Walkers is intended for players aged 13 and up (16+ in jurisdictions that require it for data-protection reasons). The world contains themes of mortality, memory loss, philosophical despair and political ambiguity. That's on purpose. Dark themes are allowed, hate is not. We draw the line at who a piece of content is aimed at:

• A villain saying cruel things, in character, in the context of a player's roleplay scene — usually fine.
• Using "in-character" as a cover to harass a real person or a real group — not fine.
• Lore about mass violence by a fictional faction — fine.
• Praise of real-world genocide — not fine.

Moderators use context and intent, not keyword lists, to judge hard cases.

5. Moderation process

5.1 How we take action

1. Automated detection. Obvious violations (CSAM, known spam patterns, leaked passwords in chat) are removed automatically.
2. Player reports. In-game right-click-report on a player, chat message, composition or name. Reports are queued for human review.
3. Human review. Community-operations staff review queued reports, decide on action, and record the decision against the account.
4. Proportionality. Minor first offences are usually met with a warning or short mute. Severe or repeated violations lead to escalating sanctions.

5.2 Sanctions we can apply

• Warning — a formal notice recorded on the account.
• Content removal — the offending chat line, composition or name is hidden or replaced.
• Chat mute — temporary removal of the ability to send messages, usually 1 hour to 30 days.
• Trade restriction — temporary block on player-to-player trade.
• Character suspension — temporary lock on one character.
• Account suspension — temporary lock on the whole account.
• Permanent ban — account is terminated and future accounts from the same person may be refused.

5.3 Appeals

You can appeal any sanction by writing to [email protected] within 30 days of the action, from the email on the account. Your appeal will be reviewed by a different moderator than the one who imposed the sanction. We aim to reply within 5 business days.

5.4 Transparency

We publish a short moderation-transparency report on shadow-walkers.com/transparency every six months. It contains aggregate statistics only (number of reports, categories, actions taken). We do not name players, report reasons, or publish evidence.

6. Staff and moderators

• Staff and volunteer moderators are held to the same rules as players plus an additional internal conduct policy.
• Moderators may not use their tools to see private data they do not need for the task at hand. Internal audit logs every moderation action.
• If you believe a moderator has abused their position, contact [email protected] directly.

7. Law enforcement and legal requests

Where we are legally required to do so, we cooperate with law enforcement agencies. We require a valid legal basis (court order, statutory request, or a preservation request under national law). Emergency requests alleging imminent threat to life are handled on a 24/7 basis via [email protected] with the subject "EMERGENCY".

We publish the number of law-enforcement requests we receive in the transparency report.

8. Changes to this Code

We may update this Code to reflect new threats, new community needs, and changes in law. Material changes are announced at least 14 days in advance in an in-game notification and on shadow-walkers.com. Minor edits take effect immediately.

9. Contact

• Report a player or content: in-game right-click → Report, or [email protected].
• Appeal a sanction: [email protected].
• Staff conduct concerns: [email protected].