Letters from Sky Player Support: Defending Fair Play and Community Safety

Hello again from the Player Support team! We wanted to first give a big thank you for your actions big and small that keep the community welcoming for people of all ages. We also know you might have questions about the steps we take to keep the environment fair and welcoming, so some of us from the Player Support team are here to talk about that in this post.

Fair Play and Player Protection

We remain dedicated to protecting Sky and the Sky community. Our team stays vigilant whether the issue is unfair play or safety concerns or anything in between, and we take both proactive and responsive measures to mitigate risk, prevent harm, and address in-game hacking and other inappropriate activities that tarnish the sanctity and fun of Sky.

Since our last blog post regarding hacking in Sky, we have made significant progress in our efforts to uphold fair play, but we also accept that work to combat cheating will require our continual and consistent effort. Although this work will never be truly complete, we do want to share some insights into our player protection work to help keep you all informed.

In 2022, we continued expanding our team here at TGC and increased the number of account penalties issued for harassment, hacking, and account sales. This was possible despite the fact that we currently do not issue automated actions—we manually investigate and review every account action we apply.

This led to more account penalties, which also resulted in a fair amount of speculation and concern across the Sky community about how and why we have closed certain accounts, and if the penalties were accurate. We recognize these concerns, so we wanted to provide some more clarity and (we hope) ease minds within the community!

To be clear, we do not issue account penalties based on the number of player reports against a player, nor due to an account being accessed by multiple devices or IP addresses. Instead, player reports initiate a manual review by our Sky Support Player Protection team, and any penalties we issue are based on the first-hand findings of our own internal investigations. If and when our team discovers a violation of the Community Rules, we very much prefer to issue warnings and temporary penalties as our first option.

However, there are certain types of misconduct which must be treated with zero tolerance for the protection of the larger Sky community. In these cases, every account penalty is issued only after careful investigation. If someone appeals a penalty, our Sky Player Support team also thoroughly conducts a review of this, too—manually, of course. We consider and look for potential mistakes in the original investigations, any new information provided, and in the case of less serious misconduct, whether we can safely allow an opportunity for improved behavior.

We hope this is useful information to better understand this part of the community experience. Our commitment remains the same to protecting Sky and the community. The team strives to ensure that our efforts are fair and accurately applied to all players so that Sky can be a safe and fun place for everyone.

Enhancing Community Wellbeing

We look forward to a year full of positive growth and nurturing soul-stirring friendships together in Sky. As the team does our part to protect and foster positive play, we’re also eternally grateful to you all for being partners in this journey by role modeling exemplary behavior following our Code of Conduct, reporting inappropriate activities for us to investigate, and entrusting us with your feedback and perspectives to help improve the game.

Together we continue to co-create this delightful community and we are excited to continue to share more insights into our work and improvements in 2023! We understand how important it is to provide more transparency into this space and will continue to share more with you all, while still giving the utmost care to privacy and security.

Please feel free to reach out to the Player Support Team for concerns you have. We look forward to speaking here again with you all soon. Until then, we’ll see you in the skies!