Hazel Raindawn posted on Facebook she has received a reply from the CEO of the game.
“I received another reply from the SEO of Star Stable – good news! They are testing out the idea of a volunteer moderator program!
Hazel Raindawn , sorry for the delay on replying to your message again.
A volunteer program is thankfully not a new idea and has been used in many other titles. It can work well (and has worked very well in two of the other games I have worked on) but it far from perfect and requires work and supporting systems to make it effective. A great deal of harassment and bullying happens in private channels and the action we take is not always publicly visible as we have to maintain the privacy of everyone involved. We do take all claims of this kind very seriously. We are already running a test program of a “volunteer moderator” program on the Swedish server. When we get the systems in place for them to be able to work effectively with the community we will be expanding it to all the servers. Issuing warnings without the ability to immediately follow up is not going to be effective and requires significant investment and development to achieve.I do agree this kind of behaviour is a problem, which is why we are always going to work to try and find ways to improve the way we detect and handle these situations. We already handle thousands of issues and customer mails every week in six different languages. A volunteer program will help in this area which is exactly why we are working on it. At the end of the day we want parents of younger children to understand that nothing we can do will ever be a good substitute for engaging with your children and helping them learn to handle difficult situations that might arise, either in our game or in real life.
We hope to be able to expand our volunteer program in the near future. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Constructive dialogue is a great place for us to start improving this together.
Sincerely,
Colin Colin Hayes Cragg
CEO - Star Stable”
This is exactly what I have been striving for. I know implementing a functional moderator system is a huge task and certainly can’t be completed overnight. I’m surprised we’ve gotten through so quickly. This makes me immensely happy because it means we have game staff that do indeed listen to their players and care about their input (I have played several games where this was not true, needless to say I did not play them for very long). Now that we know that the staff is aware (they probably have been for awhile, but I like to know that they are aware) I want to make the ultimate goal of this to bring awareness to the community as a whole. Because, really, that’s what we are. A community. We play this game together, we interact with each other, and our own behavior sets the mood for the community.
In a perfect world, there would be no need for moderators. While this world is not perfect, we can always keep that poster in mind as we play. I will be keeping the petition open. The game staff are aware of the petition and I think it will help them in the future when they are working on implementing the moderator feature for sure. Continue to report bad behavior you see in the game. And don’t start fights to begin with. Even if someone says something rude to you, add them to your ignore list (second to the ‘friends’ tab) and walk away. Don’t let them ruin your day, and definitely don’t reply to them. That only stoops to their level and now you are not any better than they are.
Let’s make this game a better place. Let’s continue help our fellow players. Let’s strive to be the best riders that we can be.
Peace out, y’all!
