Better protecting players from abuse

Hi everyone, peppy here. We are making some minor changes to the terms of service, so let me explain our motivation and reasoning behind them.

osu! to me has always been about freedom of speech and action. I've always strived to continue running the service with the minimum possible level of moderation, intervention and imposition on the players and the team.

In the last week, we have had some players come forward and describe events that happened between themselves and prominent community members (often in voluntary team positions like the Global Moderators or Beatmap Approval Team) which can objectively be defined as "wrong" from a moral standpoint, involving inappropriate exchanges where one party is under the age of 18.

An important detail is that while multiple reports arrived in the last week, some events described occurred up to 9 years ago. The fact we are only learning about this now may be due to our lack of policy on when to report, how to handle reports, and gaps in the description of what is acceptable behaviour in the osu! community.

In the past I have been of the mindset that such cases should be reported to local authorities as it is not our responsibility to enforce social standards on our users, but in light of the recent reports, and after some very thorough discussion, we are changing how we handle these cases with the following reasoning:

• Local authorities may not be willing or able to act depending on the country or situation at hand.
• As we have seen, the same individual may be targeting more than one person in the community. Investigating and acting on reports early may prevent further people from becoming involved and potentially hurt.

The changes we are making are visible in the updated Rules and Terms of Service (diff), but as a summary:

• Members of teams are upheld to the Contributor Code of Conduct, setting an industry standard level of expected behaviour they should hold themselves up to as a trustable member of the community.
• All members of moderation teams (who regularly have to view and act on reports of 18+ content) are required to be at least 18 years old. This will apply to and be verified for all new incoming members. This does not apply to Beatmap Nominators or other teams where moderation is not involved.
• A new page and process has been added for reporting abuse cases. These cases will only be seen by two people and treated in a confidential manner. We will do our best to offer advice and take action where appropriate, in a timely manner. We hope this will make it easier to report abuse when it happens, rather than years later (or potentially never).
• A new rule was added disallowing sexual imagery, flirting and intimacy in public and private discussion channels on osu! systems.

We have already been through multiple feedback passes with team members (and the wider community via github discussions) and hopefully can be unanimously agreed on as a step forward. I hope that these changes can set players (and parents of younger players) at ease that we are here to respond to issues before they may escalate to a point where someone is hurt, mentally or physically.

As a final note, we do respect your freedom. I've received thankful emails from literally hundreds of players (and even some team members) who have met their significant others on osu!, forming lasting relationships. We are NOT aiming to outright stop this with the new rule. It is strictly there to let people know they can and should report cases they are uncomfortable with. If there is mutual consent you do not need to report or worry about the added rule. We are not about to start policing your private conversations (just please, keep it to yourselves).

osu! is a growing community and we will continue to adjust our terms of service and rules to ensure all users can have a good gaming experience.

—peppy