These terms cover the AE Gaming Discord and every AE WARDOGS server we run.
Play fair. Do not cheat. Do not wreck the game for your own team. Do not be vile to people. If someone winds you up, report it instead of hitting back. We can remove anyone at any time, and we hold our own members to exactly the same line as everyone else.
Using our Discord or our servers means you accept all of it.
By joining the AE Gaming Discord, or by connecting to any AE WARDOGS server, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not join and do not connect.
They apply every time you are in our Discord or on our servers, whether you have read them or not. Not having read them is not a defence.
We update these terms when we need to. The version published on this page is the one that applies. Carrying on using our Discord or our servers after a change means you accept the change.
AE (Absconditus Eminus) runs community servers for WARDOGS, and the AE Gaming Discord.
WARDOGS is made by BULKHEAD and published by Team17. These terms are ours, and they cover your conduct in our spaces: our Discord, and the servers we run.
They do not replace and do not change:
Anything that belongs to the developer stays with the developer. That includes the game itself, how the game behaves, your game account, faults in the game, and any action the developer takes against your account. Where something needs to reach them, we pass it on. Your conduct on our servers is ours to deal with.
This is the one people argue about, so it is written down plainly.
If the game lets you do it, by design, with nothing outside the game helping you, it is a mechanic. We do not punish mechanics.
Firing a grenade launcher from a helicopter is a game mechanic. So is using a vehicle the way it works, carrying a weapon the game hands you, and playing in a way other people did not expect. Losing to something that annoyed you is not the same as being cheated.
We will not act on a report that comes down to:
If you think something should not be in the game, that is a conversation for the developer. It is not grounds for a ban from us.
What is not a mechanic, and what we do act on:
Three things the game allows are still against our rules.
Main bases. Spawn camping is against our rules, even though the game allows it. Any spawn safe zone, and the ground within 300 metres of it, is protected. Firing into that area from outside it, waiting inside it to kill players as they spawn or leave, and mining or blocking the exits all count as spawn camping.
A main base is where a side spawns and buys. The 300 metres are measured from the edge of its safe zone. You may still fight anyone who is more than 300 metres from their safe zone, shell a forward base that players built, and return fire at someone shooting at you from inside that area. The control zone is never a base.
Switching sides. Switching sides to join your teammates is fine. Switching to the side that is winning is against our rules, and so is switching back and forth.
Server weapon rules. A server with NOGL in its name does not allow the grenade launcher. A grenade launcher kill there gets you kicked automatically. It is a kick, not a ban, and you can rejoin straight away. Carrying on after the kick moves up the ladder. On every other server the launcher is allowed, from a helicopter too. The rules each server is running right now are at support.ae-gaming.com.
If you are not sure whether something is allowed, ask before you build a playstyle on it. We would far rather answer a question than hand out a ban.
People bait. They will teamkill you, block you, needle you on voice, and keep at it until you snap, because the snap is the part that gets seen and reported.
The practical advice: do not take the bait. Report it and keep playing. You come out of it clean and they do not.
We climb a ladder. Where you land depends on what you did, whether you did it on purpose, and what you have done before.
| Step | Typically for |
|---|---|
| Warning | First time, minor, or careless. Spam, trash talk, a one off teamkill, minor griefing, baiting |
| Kick | It did not stop after a warning, or it is wrecking the match now |
| 1 hour | Came straight back after a kick and carried on, or refused an instruction mid match |
| 6 hours | Intentional teamkilling, serious griefing, serious toxicity or harassment |
| 24 hours | Any of the above repeated, deliberate exploiting, offences across several sessions |
| 3 days | Repeat again, several serious things in one session, a pattern of intentional teamkilling or griefing |
| 7 days | Repeat again, severe harassment, sustained deliberate disruption, ghosting |
| 30 days | Continued serious misconduct after earlier bans. The last step before permanent |
| Permanent | See the list below |
A third teamkill in a short space of time gets you an automatic warning in game. A fourth gets you kicked. You can rejoin after a kick, and the count starts again. Anything further climbs the ladder above, and deliberate teamkilling goes straight to the 6 hour step.
A full server needs every slot. When a server has 90 or more players on, anyone who does nothing for 20 minutes gets an automatic warning. Doing nothing means no cash earned or spent, no kill, no death and no side change. The warning comes to you privately in game, and by Discord message if your Steam account is linked to our Discord. Nobody else on the server sees it. If nothing changes in the next 5 minutes, you are kicked. It is a kick, not a ban, and you can rejoin straight away.
Repeat it and it becomes a ban. Your 6th AFK warning in 7 days tells you the next one is a ban. The 7th time in 7 days is a 1 hour ban from every AE server, and so is each time after that within the same 7 days. The ban lifts itself.
Seeding is not affected. None of this runs on a server with fewer than 90 players on, so sitting on a server to help seed it is welcome. The first two minutes of every match never count.
Anti-AFK scripts are not allowed, while seeding or at any other time. A script, macro, tool or device that moves or presses keys for you so you look active is handled on the ladder above, starting with a warning.
How bans work here. A ban applies across every AE server, not just the one you were on. It survives server restarts. A timed ban lifts itself when the time is up; you do not need to ask.
We may remove any person from our Discord or any of our servers at any time, at our discretion.
A place on our servers and in our Discord is not bought, owned, or permanently earned. It is extended, and it can be withdrawn.
The [AE] tag. On our servers the [AE] tag is awarded through EXEMPLAR. You can claim it, and we approve it. It can be withdrawn at any time, and anyone wearing it without the award is removed automatically. It is a removal, not a ban: take the tag off and you can play.
We enforce the same rules on everybody.
Your clan, your hours, your reputation, how long you have been around and who you know on our staff change nothing about the outcome. Our own members are held to the same standard and checked by the same systems as everyone else. Being one of ours is not a defence, and trading on it makes it worse.
We act on conduct. We do not act against anyone because of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or age, and we do not tolerate anyone who does.
Our staff do not enforce on disputes they are personally involved in. That gets handed to someone who is not.
Our servers and our Discord are monitored.
Conduct and cheat review on our servers is handled through our own system, SHEPHERD.
We do not publish what SHEPHERD looks at, what it measures, how it reaches a conclusion, or what we can and cannot see. We do not discuss it with players, and our staff are not permitted to discuss it either.
Do not read a quiet reply as no response, and do not read a delay as a decision. Records are kept whether or not anything visible happens at the time.
If you are reported, we look. If we act, you will know about it when it happens.
Report it in our Discord. Do not take it into the game chat and do not take it into general channels.
For us to act on a report we need four things:
Without those four we usually cannot place the incident, and we will tell you so. Clips and screenshots help and are welcome.
You may appeal a ban once, through a ticket in our Discord. A second appeal is only considered if genuinely new evidence appears.
To run the servers and enforce these terms we keep: your in game identifier and the names you have used, match and server activity, Discord account details, reports made by and about you, actions taken, and the reason for them.
Chat logs. Text chat on our servers may be logged. Chat logs are kept as part of your record. They are read by our staff, checked by automated tools, and used to handle reports and appeals and to enforce these terms. What you type in chat is treated the same as anything else you do on our servers.
Clips, screenshots and other media captured on our servers and posted in our Discord may be used by AE GAMING to promote AE GAMING, at any time.
Our servers and our Discord are provided as they are.
They may go down, be restarted, be reconfigured, change map rotation or settings, be wiped, or be retired, with or without notice. Nothing here is a guarantee of a slot, of uptime, or of a particular experience, and nothing is owed to you if you cannot play.
Nothing in these terms creates a commercial relationship. Nothing on our servers is sold to you.
We may update these terms. The version and date at the top of this page tell you which version is current, and that is the one that applies. Anything significant will be announced in our Discord.
Open a ticket in our Discord. That is the fastest way to reach somebody, and it keeps a record for you as well as for us.