Community Guidelines

Last updated: 18 September 2026

These are the rules of the house. They explain, in plain language, what is allowed on KLANS and what gets your content removed or your account closed.

They are part of our Terms of Service, not a suggestion. Where the Terms are the legal version, this page is the version you should actually read.

We enforce these rules strictly. We would rather have a smaller community that works than a bigger one that doesn't.

How enforcement works

Every rule below is marked with the level we normally act at. Moderators can go one level up or down where the situation clearly calls for it — context matters, and we would rather get it right than be mechanical about it.

Three active warnings become a soft suspension. Three soft suspensions become a permanent ban.

Some things skip the ladder entirely and go straight to Level 4 or 5. Those are marked below. They are not accidents you can stumble into — they are things you would have to decide to do.

1. Keep it about games

KLANS is a gaming platform. Not a general feed, not a lifestyle network, not somewhere to build a personal brand unrelated to games.

Fine

Clips, screenshots, builds, setups, rage after a bad ranked session, clan drama that is actually about gaming, your new GPU, your desk, a convention you attended, a game-adjacent meme, "does anyone still play this."

Not fine

Holiday photos, birthday albums, the camping trip, your food, unrelated life updates, motivational content, crypto, dropshipping, "check out my new business."

The grey zone: your stream schedule, your YouTube channel, your Discord. Allowed in the right place and in reasonable quantity — see the self-promotion rule below. Not allowed as a firehose.

2. No politics, no religion

This is the rule people argue with most, so here is exactly where the line sits.

Allowed

• Discussing the actual content of a game, including games with political, historical, religious or wartime themes. Disco Elysium, Wolfenstein, This War of Mine, Civilization, Assassin's Creed — all fair game.
• Your nationality. Country flags in your profile, clan tag or team name are fine. Regional clans are fine. "EU vs NA" is fine.
• Ordinary human greetings. "Merry Christmas", "Eid Mubarak", "happy holidays" — nobody is getting banned for being polite.
• Criticising a publisher's business decisions, pricing, or handling of a game.

Not allowed

• Debating, arguing or posting about real-world politics or religion, in posts, comments, clan walls, event descriptions, LFP posts or profiles.
• Party symbols, ideological symbols, movement logos, slogans, or extremist iconography — anywhere, including avatars, banners, usernames and clan tags.
• Campaigning, recruiting, fundraising or organising for a political or religious cause, including charity drives tied to a conflict or a political movement.
• Preaching, proselytising, or religious recruitment.
• Using a game's themes as a wrapper for a real-world argument. If the game is the excuse and the argument is the point, it's the argument we're reading.

Why so strict? Not because your opinions are wrong. Because these threads reliably burn down the community around them, and we have neither the moderation capacity nor the desire to referee them. There are a million places online to have that conversation. This isn't one.

3. No leaks, no piracy

Not allowed

• Unreleased builds, leaked footage, datamined content not meant to be public, review-embargo breaks.
• Pirated or cracked games, key generators, cracks, cheat-enabled builds, ROMs of games still commercially sold.
• Links to sites hosting any of the above, including "just search for X, first result", DM-me-for-link, and encoded or obfuscated links.
• Stolen or resold keys, region-abuse key reselling, stolen accounts.

Allowed

Officially released trailers, published patch notes, public beta content you were legitimately given access to and are permitted to show, and preservation discussion of genuinely abandoned software — discussion, not distribution.

4. No doxxing, no harassment, no pile-ons

Not allowed

• Publishing anyone's private information without consent: real name, address, workplace, school, phone number, personal email, IP address, ID documents, or photos of them that they did not publish themselves.
• Threats of violence, wishing harm, or encouraging anyone to hurt themselves.
• Harassment, stalking, repeated unwanted contact after being told to stop, or evading a block.
• Coordinated pile-ons: organising or joining a group targeting an individual, in comments, DMs, clan chats or across clans.
• Sexual harassment or unsolicited sexual messages.
• Hate directed at people for their ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity. This is not the "no politics" rule — abuse of real people is a different and more serious thing.
• Targeting someone's family, partner or friends to get at them.

Allowed

Rivalry, trash talk about gameplay, calling a play bad, roasting a clan's performance, ordinary online friction between people who can both take it. Rivalries are gaming. Targeting a person is not.

If you are being harassed: block, then report with links. Do not retaliate — retaliation makes our job harder and can catch you in the same net.

5. No sexual content, no nudity

Not allowed

Nudity, sexually explicit content, sexually suggestive posing, "accidental" stream clips that exist for the thumbnail, thirst-trap content framed as gaming content, sexual roleplay, links or redirects to adult platforms and paid adult content, sexual content in avatars, banners, usernames and clan names.

We are aware of every framing that has been tried. "It's from a stream", "it's from the game", "it's art", "it's censored" — the answer is the same.

In-game content: we are not going to ban a screenshot because a character in a mainstream game is dressed the way that game dresses them. We will remove anything that is clearly posted for sexual purpose rather than for the game. Moderators make that call, and they are not going to spend long on it.

6. Tag your spoilers

Use the spoiler tag for major plot points, endings, boss reveals, twists, and character deaths.

Our timings:

• Story and campaign content: spoiler tags required for 30 days after release. After that, use common sense and a clear title.
• Esports and tournament results: tag for 48 hours after the match ends.
• Titles and thumbnails: never put a spoiler in one, at any point. The tag protects the body of the post, not the part everyone sees anyway.

Deliberately spoiling someone — in a reply, a DM, a clan chat, or in a thread where somebody just said they haven't played it yet — is harassment, not carelessness, and it is handled under rule 4.

7. Play fair

Not allowed

• Cheats and exploits: promoting, selling, or linking to cheats, hacks, aimbots, wallhacks, macros where the game forbids them, or boosting and rank-selling services. Level 4.
• Account trading: buying, selling, renting or giving away KLANS accounts or game accounts. Level 4.
• Real-money trading and gambling: skin gambling, case-opening sites, betting sites, referral links to any of them. Level 4.
• Scams and phishing: fake giveaways, "free Nitro", fake support accounts, wallet drainers, malware, anything asking members for credentials or payment. Level 4 and reported.
• Impersonation: posing as KLANS staff, a moderator, a publisher representative, a known creator, or another member. Level 4.
• Manipulation: brigading, review bombing, vote and like manipulation, fake RSVPs, mass false reporting, sockpuppet accounts. Level 3 to 4.
• Ban evasion: creating a new account after a suspension or ban. The new account is closed and the original ban becomes permanent. Level 4.
• Exploiting platform bugs instead of reporting them. Level 3 to 4.

8. Self-promotion

Streamers and creators are welcome here. Feeds full of nothing but "LIVE NOW" links are not.

• Keep it roughly one promotional post in five. If the only thing you post is your own links, that's advertising, not participation.
• Put your channels in your profile, where they belong. That's free and permanent.
• No dumping links across game pages, clan pages or event discussions.
• No referral codes, affiliate links, or paid promotion without our written permission.
• No DM advertising. Ever. Unsolicited promotional DMs are spam and go to Level 3.

9. Nothing illegal

No content that is illegal, no drug or weapon sales, no fraud, no malware, no counterfeit goods, no glorification of terrorism or mass violence, no real-world gore or shock content, no content depicting or encouraging self-harm.

10. Your profile, name and clan

Everything above applies to your username, display name, avatar, banner, bio, clan name, clan tag and clan description — usually more strictly, because these are visible everywhere and you cannot scroll past them.

Not allowed: slurs, sexual names, impersonation, political or religious symbols and slogans, links to prohibited content, ban-evasion names ("BannedGuy2"), and names that exist to harass a specific person.

We may rename a clan or force a username change rather than close an account, where that solves the problem.

11. If you run a clan or an event

Leaders and organisers carry extra responsibility.

Clan leaders are responsible for what happens on their clan wall and in clan chat. You do not have to catch everything, but you do have to act when you see it or when it is reported to you. A clan that becomes a shelter for rule-breaking gets moderated as a unit, and that includes closing the clan.

Event organisers:

• Describe the event accurately: time, platform, requirements, what is expected.
• Never ask participants for sensitive personal data at signup — no health information, religion, politics, sexual orientation, ID documents, home addresses. Ask for gamertags, roles, availability, and skill level.
• Do not use signup questions to collect emails for a mailing list.
• Voice and Discord links must go to the actual event, not to an unrelated server you want to grow.
• Anything that happens away from KLANS, in person or on another platform, is your responsibility and the participants', not ours.

12. What we do not moderate

To be fair about the limits:

• Bad opinions about games. Say a beloved game is overrated. Defend a hated one. That's a forum.
• Trash talk and rivalry that stays about gameplay.
• Your skill level. Nobody is getting removed for being bad at a game, and mocking someone for it lands under rule 4 anyway.
• Ordinary disagreement, including with moderators, expressed civilly.
• Language. Post in whatever language you like. Our moderators work in English and German, so if you report something in another language, a short translation helps us act faster.
• Swearing, within reason. Aimed at a person, it becomes rule 4.

13. Reporting

Use the report button on the post, comment, profile, clan or event, or write to contact@klans.net with a direct link.

Good reports include: the link, which rule you think it breaks, and anything we would not see ourselves (context from a DM, an earlier thread, a pattern).

• We confirm receipt of emailed reports and tell you what we decided.
• Reports are confidential. We do not tell the reported member who reported them.
• False and mass reporting is itself a violation. Reporting someone because you lost to them wastes the time we would rather spend on real problems, and lands at Level 2 to 3.

14. Appeals

We get things wrong. Automated systems get things wrong more often.

Write to contact@klans.net within 6 months of the decision, with the account or content and why you think it was wrong.

• A human reviews it — and for anything an automated system flagged, a different human than the one who confirmed it.
• We aim to answer within 14 days.
• If we were wrong, we reverse it and restore what we can.
• Arguing in public threads, in DMs to moderators, or through an alt account is not an appeal and does not help your case.

One exception, stated plainly: appeals concerning content that sexualises minors do not get a review path.

15. Changes

We update these Guidelines as the community grows and as people find new ways to test them. Material changes are announced on the Platform. The "Last updated" date above is always current.

Questions about a rule before you post something? Ask us at contact@klans.net. Asking first is always cheaper than appealing afterwards.