Hi everyone! We’ve been reading a lot of the feedback and questions about the recent changes to content discovery and content policies. We’ve gone ahead and made a few changes and fixes, and wanted to also take the time to write a lengthier part of the post to clarify things and explain how we’re thinking about the identity of Craft.

Changes

• Previously For You would not show your own projects or worlds, we have updated it so you will now see your own content on your For You page.
• Fixed a bug where re-review could not downgrade a content rating
• We’ve clarified some of the language in the content policy around images, gore, and sex based game mechanics and updated auto review to adhere to the policies better
• We’ve moved autoreview output to a ‘Discoverability’ tab in your project settings
• In the Discoverability tab, you'll now see an explanation for why your world received the rating it did.
• Triggered a re-review for all worlds marked explicit/prohibited, some worlds should see their ratings updated.

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Clarifications

First off, we just want to say that creating a content policy is extremely hard, and creating one that makes everyone happy is near impossible. What may be allowed and acceptable is subjective with not many clear cut boundaries, and what may be culturally or morally acceptable can differ between person to person, depending on their different views, perspectives, and cultural influences. What’s acceptable also moves and evolves over time, such as what was okay to be on public television 30 years ago is very different than what’s allowed today.

We have to weigh these difficult topics and perspectives, while also ensuring and finding a balance between creative expression and content safety. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but please understand we’re making these policies and decisions in order to foster a healthy platform and a growing community of diverse perspectives.

Do content ratings affect gameplay?

No, content ratings only affect content discovery. Content ratings are not shown to the game master and do not have any affect on prompts in-game. The content rating is there so that players can find and filter out certain types of content from their feeds, and be advised of the type of content they may encounter while playing in a world, even if they may not engage in it.

Auto moderation in private worlds or games

As the content policies state, private projects and games are private. When you send a turn to Orbit or the game master, your message is run through an automatic moderation API that will reject CSAM related content. Besides this automated step, your private projects and games are unmoderated and will not be read by anyone else except for the case where you specifically ask us to debug something and provide us with a request id.

I want to know exactly if my content would be rated as explicit or if it is prohibited. Can you give me some examples so I know exactly where the line is?

As mentioned in the beginning, this is difficult to address because there is no one clear true line that fits all types of content. The line is more of a subjective grey area and one that ultimately rests on artistic and creative intent.

What we can try to make clear is the type and purpose of content that we don’t want on Craft. We don’t think explicit necessarily means completely unrated and unrestricted. We’ve seen what happens when that’s the case on other platforms, where they’ve taken that approach, and when you visit those platforms all you see are scenarios and chat bots that are clearly only made with the purpose of being sex bots.

That isn’t to say that sexually explicit content is not allowed, but that it cannot be the entire purpose of the published content. A few examples to illustrate this point,

• Bookstores will display and sell romance novels whose stories contain explicit sexual content like 50 Shades of Grey or Heated Rivalry, because the explicit content is an element of the larger narrative and content being published. However, they don’t display and sell adult magazines like Hustler where the explicit content is the only thing that exists and is just there for sexual gratification.
• Likewise, HBO has many shows that contain explicit content like Game of Thrones where it’s a deep fantasy epic that also contains very explicit sexual scenes within brothels because it’s part of the larger narrative and is also a reality of the world we live in. This may be the best example due to it’s fantasy world context. Publishing a world like Game of Thrones that has sexual elements and mechanics such as brothels and prostitutes in Craft is okay, as long as it’s not the entirety of the game, and it follows the rest of the guidelines laid out in the content policies. Such a game would be explicit but not prohibited. Publishing a world that is only a brothel or harem sex simulator clearly designed to just role play sexual fantasies and kinks, is not allowed. It would be explicit and prohibited.

Here are some tests that you can use to determine if your game would be prohibited.

1. Does my content contain any of the prohibited categories such as CSAM? If yes, prohibited.
2. Does my content purposefully glorify illegal acts such as sexual violence? If yes, prohibited.
3. Is the sole purpose of my content sexual gratification? If yes, prohibited.
4. If I removed the sexual parts of this content, would there still be a coherent and purposeful game? If no, prohibited.

That being said, the easiest way to find out where the content rating of your world lies, is to publish it. Your account will not be automatically penalized if your content is deemed prohibited by the automatic review. If your content has been prohibited, the auto review will now tell you why, and you will be able to remove the content in question and republish the world.

The auto review will also tell you why a world was deemed to be mature or explicit, and to clarify it’s okay for your world to be explicit. Those justifications are there so you as a creator can understand what content is triggering that rating, and if you did want to target a broader content rating like mature or general, then you know what needs to be changed, but you do not have to.

Are sexual mechanics allowed in games?

Like mentioned above, sexual mechanics are allowed in games as long as:

1. The primary purpose of the game is not to be a sex game
2. The sexual mechanics do not glorify obscene illegal behaviour, e.g earning points for SA.

Games with sexual mechanics will always be marked as explicit games.

Explicit Content Visibility

We heard some concerns from creators of explicit games that their content has lost visibility. While we understand the concern, we’d argue that the changes in the way we organize content in the platform is actually beneficial for creators and players interested in explicit content.

In these cases, it is true that explicit content will be surfaced to less users overall. However, keep in mind that users who are not looking for explicit content, do not want to see it, and surfacing the content to them would not be good for the creator or for the player.

Previously, explicit content would be completely unpublishable, or mixed in with other content and hidden away. This causes two problems:

1. It is harder for people looking for explicit content to find it.
2. People who do not want to see explicit content may accidentally stumble upon it.

With this last update, explicit content is now hidden by default so people who do not want to see it will not accidentally run into it, and the people who are looking for it have a dedicated space to browse explicit content. While these changes may reduce the total number of users explicit content is surfaced to, we think it will increase the visibility for users who are looking for this content and overall be better for both creators and players

Is Craft being more or less permissive of content on the platform?

With the new content policy, we are now more permissive of explicit content on the platform, where previously it was a grey area leaning towards only mature non-explicit content being publishable.

Why is it that other platforms show explicit content by default? If they can do it, why can’t you?

We heard feedback from some users that other platforms do not have the policies we have put in place, and show explicit content by default. For one, every platform is different and has the final say in the type of content that they want to publish and distribute to users. Just because one business may decide to sell and distribute certain products, doesn’t mean that every other business has to as well. Different businesses and platforms cater to and sell to different primary audiences.

More importantly, there’s very real practical aspects when explicit sections become truly unrestricted like on other platforms, which can cause issues with payment processors refusing to do business with companies and app stores removing or refusing to publish apps with obscene content. Many of these other platforms have to use hard to integrate alternative payment processors or will never be publishable on the app stores. We’re simply not looking to add these logistical challenges and aren’t in the business of creating and distributing adult content that circumvents these lines and boundaries set by the services we use.

Will my account be banned if the autoreview prohibits my content?

No. We encourage you to use the autoreview system to help guide the content you publish. You can continue to re-review and republish your content until you are able to achieve the content rating you are seeking.

Are Fan Fic / Derivative Works allowed on Craft?

Yes, fan fiction and derivate works are allowed on Craft. However, we respect copyright holders intellectual property under DMCA. If you publish a work on Craft that a valid copyright holder deems in violation, we will honor their takedown request.