CD PROJEKT RED Discussion Board Rules

Hello! We’re CD PROJEKT RED, creators of video games like The Witcher, GWENT: The Witcher Card Game, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and Cyberpunk 2077. We love making games and we want you, our community, to enjoy them. We want to hear from you and in order to stay in touch, we run a number of official discussion boards dedicated to our games. In particular:

- Official CD PROJEKT RED Forums
- Official Discord servers of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher
- Official Steam Community Hubs of our games (The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, etc.)

We invite you to participate in discussions on any or all of the discussion boards we run, but we kindly ask you to follow a set of rules to keep discussions civil and make sure that our official discussion boards remain respectful and enjoyable for everybody. If you have any questions, you can reach us at ban.appeals@cdprojektred.com.

By logging in and using discussion boards run by CD PROJEKT RED (CDPR), you are agreeing to the terms listed below, CD PROJEKT RED User Agreement, as well as any rules of the platform hosting our discussion boards (for example Discord's Terms of Service if you use our official Discord servers). Neither CD PROJEKT RED nor the platform owner is liable for users' content.

Rule 1: Be respectful

When perusing our discussion boards, you will often find people passionately expressing their opinions, which may differ from yours. Regardless of these differences, please, be respectful towards each other when posting on the boards, in private messages, or when using a reporting system. In particular:

- Do not attack or insult others! Always treat others with kindness and respect. Do not retaliate! If you feel attacked, ask moderators for help.
- Do not threaten anybody! Threats of violence, harassment and abuse are not allowed, even as a joke.
- Do not discriminate! Hate speech, racist remarks, sexist speech, and other conduct disrespecting individuals or social groups will not be tolerated.
- Do not use abusive language. Do not swear and post profanities, especially directed towards other users.
- Do not ridicule or otherwise spoil the fun of other users.

Rule 2: Stay on topic

Our discussion boards are set up to discuss, first and foremost, our games. When posting, please, avoid unrelated topics. In particular:

- Do not derail threads! Let others discuss the topic at hand. If you wish to talk about something else - find a suitable place rather than hijacking the discussion.
- Do not discuss religion, politics or other topics that are prone to huge arguments! Unless, of course, it's strictly about the fictional worlds depicted in CDPR products.
- Do not abuse off-topic sections. Some of our boards feature sections where you can discuss topics of interest to our community, but not directly related to our games. Our staff and moderators have a final say on what can be discussed there.

Rule 3: Do not make a mess

Please, do not spam our discussion boards. Aside from posting literal spam, this also includes disregarding the way a board is organized. In particular:

- Do not post spam! Soliciting, begging, auctioning, raffling, referrals, as well as any commercial offers or advertisements are not allowed.
- Do not spam our users! Do not bother other users with meaningless mentions and do not send out private messages with spam to them.
- Do not re-post locked/deleted content! If moderators locked or removed something, they did it because it violated these rules.
- Do not publicly debate or dispute moderation! If you have comments/complaints about our rules or how they are enforced, reach out to moderators via private message, ticket system, or to ban.appeals@cdprojektred.com.
- Hide sensitive game content! Make sure to clearly label sensitive game content (aka NSFW content) as spoilers.
- Do not post clickbaits. This includes using ambiguous headlines, camouflaging links as something else, etc.
- Do not publish posts that are unintelligible or lacking meaningful content. It is not okay to bump threads, unless you have something important to add.
- Make sure to post in the correct section if the given discussion board is organized into ones. This also means you should not post in languages other than the one used in the specific section. Do not argue if a moderator moves your posts to the correct section.

Rule 4: Do not post illicit content

Any conduct violating our User Agreement or prohibited under applicable law is also prohibited on our discussion boards. In particular:

- Do not share leaks! Posting and/or discussing unpublished content from CDPR's or third party’s products, or other information/content obtained from leaks or data-mining without CDPR's or relevant third party’s permission is not allowed.
- Do not violate copyrights! Contributing to, promoting, admission, bragging about, or declaring intent to violate copyrights will not be tolerated. It is not allowed to post and discuss piracy, cracks, key emulators, console emulators, cheats, hacks, game exploits or copyrighted materials such as magazine scans. Piracy will not be tolerated!
- Do not violate other people's privacy! Sharing private correspondence without the author's consent, as well as personally identifiable information (i.e. names, addresses, emails, phone numbers etc.) is not allowed.
- Do not attempt or contribute to stealing people's data or hacking their devices! In particular, do not post links to phishing sites, do not share infected files, and do not encourage people to run malicious scripts.
- Do not post offensive or illegal content! This includes, but is not limited to content that is pornographic, sexist, racist, discriminating/slandering persons or social groups, or promoting real-life consumption of alcohol, narcotic drugs, or other intoxicants.
- Do not post unfiltered NSFW in-game content! Depending on the platform, screenshots and other forms of captured in-game content depicting graphic or sexual scenes are either entirely not allowed (in case of platforms that are not 18+) or need to be hidden from view using tools such as spoiler tags.

Rule 5: Do not abuse the platform

Our discussion boards may only be used for their intended purposes. Any actions aimed to disrupt their correct operation are prohibited. In particular:

- Do not impersonate moderators or CDPR employees! Imitating staff profiles or posing as one will not be tolerated.
- Do not circumvent imposed penalties! Registering or using other user accounts while a ban is active will result in a ban extension.
- Do not bypass any filters! Such as ones restricting the ability to post in specific sections, or systems automatically hiding/removing vulgar expressions.
- Do not abuse the reporting system! The reporting system may only be used to flag content violating these rules. It is not allowed to use it for any other purposes such as arguing moderation, or wrongfully accusing another user.
- Do not spam notifications! Pestering other users, moderators, or CDPR staff with repeated or pointless mentions is not allowed.
- Do not artificially manipulate voting/rating systems.
- Do not use multiple user accounts at the same time.

In order to maintain our discussion boards and other services as a safe and pleasant environment for our community, we do our best to remove any content that is harmful, infringes laws, or violates our User Agreement (infringing content).

You can contribute to this goal by reporting any infringing content you happen to see by:

- using reporting tools available in the respective platforms.

- emailing ban.appeals@cdprojektred.com, or

- using this form (anonymous reports only - see below for details).

Our moderators and administrators may take their own initiative to review content generated by users of our discussion boards or services and apply moderation measures accordingly.

Our staff can take moderation measures as a result of content being reported by a user of our discussion boards or services or any other person.

We also employ automated solutions to identify and flag potentially infringing content, which is then passed to human review.

Finally, we may receive an official order issued by a relevant authority to act against any illegal content on our discussion boards or services, or to provide specific information regarding a particular incident or a user. If so, we will provide the authorities with the necessary information as required by law.

If you see a violation of any of these rules on our discussion boards or services, please, use the relevant platform’s reporting system to alert our moderators and administrators. You can find details about each platform's reporting system within shortened versions of these rules posted on each board. Please, do not try to enforce rules on your own.

If you want to report content that is infringing your copyright, please, follow the instructions you will find in the “Our IP Rights to the Games and/or Services” section of our User Agreement.
To report any other content on our discussion boards that you find infringing, you need to:

- Explain the reason why you think the specific content is illegal or infringing our User Agreement;

- Indicate the exact location of that content by providing us with the URL or URLs, and, where necessary, additional information that will help us understand which piece of content you are referring to;

- Provide your name and email address . You do not need to provide your name and email only when you are reporting the infringing content that relates to:
a. offences concerning sexual abuse,
b. offences concerning sexual exploitation,
c. offences concerning child pornography,
d. solicitation of children for sexual purposes,
e. any incitement, aiding and abetting, and attempt of any of the above.

- Provide a statement confirming your good-faith belief that the information and allegations contained in your report are accurate and complete.

Please, note that we will not process reports that do not meet these requirements.

If you provide us with your contact details in your report, we will let you know once your report has reached us.

Our staff will review your report, assess the reported content and, if necessary, take the infringing content down. We may also apply other moderation measures described below, if we find them necessary to ensure safety of our services.
We will inform you on the decision we made regarding the flagged content. We will also let you know how you can request a secondary review of your report in case you disagree with the outcome of your report. You will have 6 months following delivery of our decision to ask us for such a review.

You are also entitled to submit a complaint regarding your report to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body. See our User Agreement for more details.

Please, make sure that you are reporting actual infringing content before you make a report. If you frequently file reports that are obviously unfounded, we may issue you a warning. After that, if you continue to file such unfounded reports, we are allowed to temporarily suspend the processing of your reports. When deciding on such measure we consider the following circumstances:

- the number of obviously unfounded reports submitted within a given time frame

- the relative proportion of such unfounded reports in relation to the total number of notices submitted within a given time frame

- the gravity of your unfounded reports, including their content, and of their consequences

- where it is possible to identify it, your intentions.

Violations of these rules may be met with:

- the editing of posts in part(where possible)
- deletion of the entire post / infringing content
- a written warning added to the post (where possible) or next to it
- a permanent, formal warning issued to the user’s account
- temporary access restriction (kick or temporary ban)
- permanent access restriction (ban)

According to the list below:
- minor violation (e.g thread bumping, spamming) – written warning, removal of violating content
- recurring minor violations after receiving a written warning or a major violation (e.g. promoting piracy) – temporary ban from the discussion boards or services (up to a month) and removal of the violating content, permanent ban (in case of particularly severe violations, e.g. threatening others)
- recurring violation after receiving a temporary ban – permanent ban from our discussion boards or services or a permanent CDPR Account ban and removal of the violating content
- violation of the law (e.g. threats of violence, harassment, illicit use of intellectual property) – temporary (up to 1 year) or permanent ban from our discussion boards or services or a permanent CDPR Account ban, notification of the relevant authorities and removal of the violating content.

Generally, we will notify you if the content you had posted has been removed and provide you with a statement of reason for our decision. The same will happen if your account is banned or if we impose other measures listed above.
We may also cooperate with respective law enforcement agencies, in particular if we believe there is a risk of physical harm or threat to anyone’s safety.

We may impose increasingly stricter measures in case of repeated violations of these rules.

Moderating actions will not be debated publicly or with users who are not directly involved in an incident. If you feel your content has been mistakenly judged as infringing, you can contact our moderators to have your case revisited. You will have 6 months following delivery of our decision to ask us for such a review. You will find the details on how to do that in the moderation decision regarding your content.

You are also entitled to submit a complaint regarding our moderating action to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body. See our User Agreement for more details.

Otherwise, if you have a question or comment about a particular action taken against you, please, contact moderators using the means described within the shortened versions of these rules posted on each board, or through emails to ban.appeals@cdprojektred.com. Official correspondence with a single member of the staff is equivalent to contacting all members of the team.

Specific discussion boards may have additional rules or restrictions applied. These will always be posted in a visible place, next to the shortened version of these rules.

All of the above rules apply to the entirety of discussion boards, including public posts, signatures, publicly visible parts of user profile and private conversations. If it is brought to our attention that your profile (username, description, avatar etc.) violates these rules, your access may be restricted until it is corrected. Similarly, if it is reported to us that rules are violated within private conversations, we may enforce them the same as if it happened publicly.

In cases not outlined above, you are expected to abide by/accept moderators' and administrators' decisions. In disputed matters, final decisions are made by moderators and administrators, who shall base their decisions on the general principles of conduct for Internet communities, and on the assumption that users act in good faith.

Any questions or complaints about these rules, moderators or administrators (other than reports of infringing content or disputes referred above) must be channeled through CD PROJEKT RED's Community Team through emails to ban.appeals@cdprojektred.com. All other forms of communication will be deemed invalid.