Code24

Thought I was going to take a break from DU memes, but when I saw this pic I knew what I had to do.

We extend a warm welcome to @Goldnhardt, the newest member of the Heimera Trade Xchange.
 
A hallmark of our Universe is the infiniteness of possibilities it offers. 
A trademark of humanity is its keen desire to explore. 
Will you dream? Will you be brave? 
Dare to be. 
 
 
[OPEN]
 
 
 

This is great! Thanks for all you've done for the community Yamamushi and good luck.

Dear Community Members,
 
We have some very exciting news to share. Many of you who have been here for a long time probably already know Yamamushi. As one of the co-founders of the official community Discord and an early Kickstarter backer, Yamamushi has been around as a very active and well known community member for almost 4 years now. 
 
We are excited to have him joining the team. With him coming on board, a few important things are going to change and we wanted to be transparent about this with you all.  We have always valued neutrality for our employees and we try to avoid any conflict of interests. Like all other employees he is bound to some important communication restrictions. Yamamushi must discontinue being a community figure while he is employed with Novaquark. This means stepping down as a moderator on Discord and our public forums, while retaining some limited administrative rights (precisely to maintain the DU Bot). He is also bound by an internal NDA contract and won’t be able to share everything as a Novaquark employee. For those who are friends with him, we ask you to avoid attempting to get behind-the-scene information from him, regarding the game or the company. 
 
He won’t be able to communicate or play anymore as Yamamushi, but his love for the community is strong and he will continue to follow the community from the Dev side. He will also not be permitted to be a part of a player-run organization. We know this can be hard to face for such an integral part of our community and this has been a hard decision that may feel frustrating (at least it is for us and for him) but a necessary step to avoid any suspicion of favorizing any group of players in the community.
 
We would also like to take this opportunity to explain what are our internal rules when a member of our community becomes a Novaquark employee:
 
His/her personal accounts are suspended for the time he/she is a Novaquark employee.
  He/she is given an anonymous player account so he/she could still continue to play the game, however, some specific rules apply to such an account:
  a. The Novaquark employee behind should not reveal his/her real identity and/or he’s part of the company. 
  b. He/she shouldn’t join a player-run organization with this account either, for neutrality reasons.
  He/she is given a NQ account, mostly to test things, and occasionally to communicate with the community in-game (if such opportunity arises). Nothing done on this account (coming usually with more powers/rights than a player account) will be transferred on any personal account.
  Thank you for taking the time to read this, please join us in welcoming Yamamushi to the team here!
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.

Hi everyone!
 
With the Alpha 3 deployment around the corner and the RDMS implementation, we had to make significant changes in the background by connecting organizations data available on the Community Portal to the organizations data that will be available in-game. As it is a "Work in Progress", the Community Portal will switch in "Read Only" mode for the time being, to limit the probability of technical issues.
 
During this transitional period, All management actions for the organizations will be done in-game.
You will also note that the number of legates per organizations isn't displayed anymore.
We are aware the situation isn't ideal, but it's a temporary and necessary step.
 
Update: Wednesday, January 22th, 16:15 UTC
 
What's the current situation?
To be clear:
- Posting/Editing News have been deactivated on the Community Portal.
- It will still be possible to post/edit News on the Community Portal through the in-game User Interface (assuming you have the proper rights to do such thing).
- Posting/Editing News will remain in a minimal state for the time being (only simple text. HTML code for formating options and image insertion will came back later).
- Posting/Editing News directly through the Community Portal should come back at a later stage.
- The "Join Organization / Accept application" feature remains active.
- The applications pending before the maintenance today should still be there after.
- Features such promoting or demoting a member will now exclusively in-game (as the process may now involve other game mechanics).
- Displaying the number of legates on the Organization Ranking page has been deactivated (as an intermediary step of the coming changes in the future).
 
What's coming in the future?
(please keep in mind that the features described below are work in progress and might change before their release)
 
Organization Ranking by the number of Active Members.
As the Community Portal will evolve, we plan to display the number "Active Members" and the number "Honorary Members" for each organization in the future.
The Organization Ranking will be done by the number of Active Members in decreasing order.
 
What will be "Active Members" and "Honorary Members"?
"Honorary Members" accounts will be accounts that have joined an organization on the Community Portal but haven't access to the game.
"Active Members" accounts will be accounts that have joined an organization on the Community Portal and have access to the game.
Accounts joining an organization directly in-game will be automatically validated as "Active Members" in an organization.
Only "Active Members" will be eligible to legate status, as most organization management actions will be only possible in-game.
 
Why planning this?
This is planned for two reasons:
1) To give a better visibility for newcomers regarding the activity potential of each organization (which can impact the decision of joining one organization or another).
2) To discourage unfair practices such as creating ghost accounts and making them join an org to inflate artificially its size (and get undeserved visibility).
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Pegasus MC 400 V2 by Tango_Lima
 

 

 

 

Donkey v1.0-T135 by Reioss
 

Third place
Dart by Staples
 

 

First place
The Goblin Shark by OneThousandStars
 

 

Second place
Mistrale V1 by Gasplitcht
 

 

 

Rapier MKII by Wilhelm
 

 

Heavy Cargo K99 by Knoober
 

 

 

Ravenger by R4G4R
 

 

MM19 Ensiferum by Sheffrator
 

 

 

Dear Community Members,
 
As some of the Novaquark recent moderation and sanction actions haven’t been clearly understood by some, here are some explanations and clarifications. We are aware that members from “Dark Star Imperium” (DSI) and “New Genesis” think that the decisions taken by Novaquark have been unfair and/or feel like a punishment. It’s not a punishment and we limited the inconvenience to the minimum possible by just resetting the member list of the Organization. This has been done to remove all ghost accounts and make the involved Organizations restart on a healthier basis.
 
We also made sure that at least one person in each of the involved Organizations can re-invite real members in the Organization:
- CN_Firestorm for “Dark Star Imperium”
- Chipfromearth/SpaceKitty for “New Genesis” (until the end of TMA’s ban)
 
You are more than welcome to contact them to join theses Orgs again if you wish to do so.
Keeping in mind that besides the cleaning of ghost accounts, nothing else has been removed. All community work/content related to these Organizations have been left untouched. We are also going to send an email to all ex-members to inform about the member list reset and offer them to join their former organization again.
 
Regarding the ban of the leaders of these Organizations:

We understand that seeing your leader banned might be frustrating. However, we want to make it clear that being at the head of a big Org does not give a free pass on toxic behavior and/or bad practices that could damage the Community as a whole. Being passionate, being young, creating quality content is no free pass for such things either. That’s why all the permanent bans decided recently are final. We are not giving such heavy sanctions with a light heart or on a whim. In more than four years, the number of community members who have been banned permanently from the community can still be counted on the fingers of one hand. We think it speaks volume... Some recent rumors say that the bans may be reversed or canceled. There is no ground to such rumor. It’s just disinformation. The fact that a banned member will “not tolerate that” has no weight either. It’s the Novaquark team’s call and the Novaquark team alone.
 
Now, we want to give a fair warning to anyone wanting to challenge Novaquark’s decisions openly, directly or indirectly. If a community member has been permanently banned from the Community, he’s excluded from the game, which means he shouldn’t be in any Organization anymore. Reinviting or keeping a community member banned permanently could have serious consequences (such as Organization disbanding but not limited to that, as this could trigger other sanctions for those actively supporting banned members).

Now to address some specific questions/rumors:

We exceptionally give some details to the Community to show that we are not banning randomly or without a serious reason. We do it only because some banned members try to take advantage of the confidentiality policy to enforce their own narrative and play the victim, and attempt to misinform other players. Don’t expect the Novaquark team to give anymore information on this case or the possible future ones.
 
“Banning Sakej99 was a mistake. He’s a different person from FullSend/Lime”.
The Novaquark team is aware that Sakej99 and FullSend/Lime are different persons. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the permanent ban affects FullSend/Lime will also affect accounts he may have access to (by account sharing, which is forbidden in our EULA). This is one of the main reasons why we are so serious about forbidding account sharing. If someone sanctioned got access to your account, the sanction can be extended to the said account even if you haven’t done anything wrong.
 
“FullSend/Lime has been unfairly banned, with no prior warning.”
First, for the infraction this community member has committed, there will never be a warning as it was obviously utterly wrong: if a false report is sent to the Customer Support in an attempt to make another community member banned, the one getting the ban is the one who sent the false report. And in this case, indeed, there is no prior warning.

Second, FullSend/Lime is probably the person in the community who would deserve multiple permanent bans (if it was possible), due to previous infractions in addition to the most recent one. Playing the card “no prior warning” is just complete dishonesty and denial of assuming the consequences of his actions during the past couple of years. Here is a short list of the infractions he has done in the past:
- Asking members of one of his former organization to give login and password of their accounts to him.
- Using accounts of other players.
- Creating ghost accounts.
- Using a loophole in the organization management system on the Community Portal in an attempt to sabotage/destroy an organization by using the account of another player.
- Participating in a doxxing attempt.
- Always denying the facts or trying to minimize them, to the point of reaching self-absolving, to avoid dealing with the consequences (a practice reiterated with his last infraction).
Due to the history of this community member, there was no reason for “prior warning” with his last infraction. He has been warned too many times already. Mistakes are not erased just because it happened “long ago”.
 
By default, Organisations where FullSend was the founder have their ownership transmitted to the oldest member with the ability to create an organization, which gave the following results:
- CN_Firestorm becomes the new owner of “Dual Insider”.
- Gravetender becomes the new owner of “Project Azimuth”.
If you are a member of one of these organisations and you want to discuss these changes, please contact the new owner of the Organization.
 
(About DSI) “There has been a total wipe of the parties to kill the conflict”     
Wrong. If that was the case, we would have dismantled “DSI” directly and ban both DSI leaders, which would have included CN_Firestorm. You can assume that if it’s not the case, this is precisely because there is a difference between CN_Firestorm and Primarch. This sanction wasn’t against DSI. The sanction was against Primarch.
 
Some of the banned members may say “They will be back”.
It’s up to them. However, if we catch them, they will be banned without further notice.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark team.
 

Dear community members,
 
A few weeks ago, we took a stance regarding “out of the game”/IRL-related practices to discredit, threaten or shame publicly another Community Member (even if the involved person is guilty of several infractions) that could be an opponent in-game.
 
As the DSI (Dark Star Imperium) / TSU (Trinary Star Union)  / UEE (United Earth Empire) case blew out of proportion during January, we investigated.
 
We are really serious about differentiating real life from the game itself. Unfortunately some didn’t take our stance seriously. We gave them a chance to come clean in a private discussion and restart on an healthier basis. They didn’t take the opportunity for what it was: a last chance.
As they preferred “playing dumb” with Novaquark staff, we can’t have any trust that they won’t continue. Therefore we have decided to ban permanently those Community Members for various reasons (all not being banned for the same reason(s)):
Not being honest towards Novaquark staff. Making and encouraging ghost accounts. Abusive recruitment practices. Practising real life harassment and/or threatening another player. Making false report to Novaquark’s Customer Support in an attempt to make ban someone they dislike. Spreading real life information without the involved person’s consent, aka Doxxing.  
(strong reminder: even if a person gives you real life information about him/her, it’s not okay to share these information with ANYONE else without his/her consent. You can’t predict how the other person(s) will use this information and if he/she/they won’t share it again. If some trouble occurs following this sharing, you can be held legally responsible).
 
This might seem an extreme sanction but this shows how serious we are when we say we are not going to let toxic attitude and practices spread in the Community. Our goal to build a healthy and friendly community isn’t just a figure of speech. Anyone caught to spread or encourage any toxic behavior will be removed from the Community as it will be considered as damaging the Community and negating Novaquark staff efforts (without saying that it’s time consuming and a waste of our resources).
 
Saying it’s a long time grudge coming from before the arrival in the Dual Universe community is absolutely not a valid excuse. If someone has a personal grudge with another community member, he/she should either:
Leave it at the doorstep and/or settle it in private and peacefully with no one else involved. Contact directly (and only) Novaquark staff if the issue persists.
The moment someone uses the Dual Universe community as a tool for IRL revenge, he/she is not welcome anymore. We’re all here to have fun. It should always stay that way.
 
Therefore, the following Community Members have been permanently banned from the Community:
Lime / Fullsend / mmtheboss / Sakej99 [DSI] Primarch Zelevas / TharisUEE Melkor_Morgoth
  In addition the DSI Organization member list has been reset, and the Novaquark Team has appointed CN_Firestorm as the new owner of the Organization, should he accept to take a fresh start on a healthy basis.
 
We also give a warning to all those who were indirectly involved (with the evidence we found) but not actively participating in the recent community troubles. Next time, there won’t be any new warning. If you become involved against your will in some shady real life activities, you have only two healthy options:
Leaving the group doing such activity immediately. Report it to Novaquark staff.  
If you stay in such group without leaving or reporting it and the group is caught, you take the risk to get the same sanction as those actively involved.
This investigation has taken (or more precisely wasted) a lot of time from Novaquark staff. We really don’t like to intervene in players affairs. However, if there is a chance that such affairs damage the Community by toxic behavior, you can expect Novaquark staff to step in. We hope we won’t have to take the same measures again.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Dear community members,
 
It has come to our attention that abusive recruitment practices, as well as practices to artificially inflate organization sizes, have been recently used more and more in some organizations.

After having conducted an investigation regarding New Genesis, and discovered the following infractions:
- Recruitment attempts that are harassment by private message through automated bots on Discord.
- Ghost Accounts to inflate the size of the organization artificially.
 
It has been decided to reset the member list of the organization to its sole leader, TheMasterArchitect.
Furthermore, as New Genesis has been already twice at the center of troubles regarding recruitment ethics in the past, involving at least once (if not more) its leader, a temporary ban has been applied to him.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Someone stop me...