Rules of Conduct

Hoplon Infotainment SA, its affiliates, and Heavy Metal Machines (“Hoplon”) stand for a non-toxic and peaceful environment. In order to assure that everyone is able to enjoy the game, these Rules of Conduct govern the behavior of users within the game and among all of its official social platforms.

By downloading the game, you accept and agree to abide by this set of Rules of Conduct. In case you have already installed the game, we will consider that the Rules of Conduct hereby listed have been accepted at the moment the user starts a match.
In addition to these Rules of Conduct, you should always keep in mind the right of other users to properly enjoy the game.

These Rules of Conduct is not an exhaustive list of prohibited behavior. Hoplon reserves the right to correct and supplement it at any time in order to maintain the integrity of our user’s experiences.

These changes will be communicated to players through the forum, social media and/or game site.

Hoplon reserves the right to block and/or cancel your game account if you disregard any of these rules, being able to apply punishments, temporary or definitive, in regards to the game, as well as social media channels, including Facebook, forums, Discord, Instagram, Steam content, and other related mediums. You may consult the [Punishment Chart] below to see how each infringement of these Rules of Conduct will be handled. Infringements that have not been reported by a player or have not been seen by Hoplon staff may go unpunished. We strongly encourage you to report any offense that you witness.

These Rules of Conduct act in conjunction with the Heavy Metal Machines Software Terms of Use.

1 – BADGERING OR HARASSING A USER

1.1 – You may not attempt to defraud, badger, harass, persecute, threaten, cause harm, and/or draw unwanted attention to another user, including, but not limited to, defaming another user or group of users.

1.2 – You may not publish, post, spread, or transmit any actual personal information about other users (name, address, phone, photo, account name, etc.) and any other data that may harm the privacy of other users in Heavy Metal Machines, forums, websites, pages and social media groups.

1.3 – You may not engage in rude behavior towards other users, including but not limited to annoying, harassing, or using inappropriate or aggressive language when interacting with users in Heavy Metal Machines, and in any of the official social media channels.

1.3.1 – Negative comments and excessive and aggressive demands on performance in casual or competitive play can also be considered harassment, depending on its context. The case will be evaluated by the Hoplon Community team and is subject to punishment.

 

2 – OFFENSIVE / INAPPROPRIATE AND FOUL LANGUAGE / DISCRIMINATION / RACISM

Hoplon does not tolerate any toxic behavior whatsoever. This being said, Hoplon reserves the right to differentiate between cursing to oneself and cursing at someone else, each coming with different severity of punishments. Whilst we do not support any use of such language, and we will strictly repress it, we understand that a user might use foul language to ventilate frustration. The differentiation of cursing and cursing to offend lies in our sole and absolute discretion and will be handled on a case to case basis. Hoplon reserves the right to decide which content is considered to be inappropriate, no matter in which form it was expressed.

2.1 – The player is not allowed to use any form of offensive or abusive language in order to attack anyone with defamatory, obscene, illegal, racial, hateful, ethnically offensive, sexually explicit, and/or harmful content.

2.2 – The player is not allowed to be a member of, or to organize, any kind of group in Heavy Metal Machines that is based on or has racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethnic, homophobic, or any philosophy that preaches any kind of revolting or hateful behavior.

2.3 – The player is not permitted to make any distinction, exclusion, restriction or use of language or terms that are intended to humiliate, insult or otherwise disseminate hatred towards other players or groups of players, including but not limited to, discrimination based on ethnic, political, religious, economic, social, cultural, national, gender and sexual orientation topics, among others.

2.3.1 – Justifications based on the personal relationship between the parties and the intimacy between those involved will not be accepted: as the environment is public and other players may feel discriminated by the behavior mentioned. Any discriminatory comments will be handled accordingly.

3 – DISRESPECT TOWARDS THE STAFF

3.1 – You will not be able to insult, offend, humiliate, use ironic, sarcastic or playful comments when communicating with a member of Hoplon staff during the performance of their duties, as well as to make use of any image content belonging to that person, sharing the profile, or in private groups.

3.1.1 – Constructive criticism and feedback about the game and its aspects is permitted, provided that it does not involve ironic, joking comments and offenses to Hoplon employees, implying or stating bad intent. We consider all Hoplitas to be worthy and respectful workers, and therefore will not be tolerated malicious or disrespectful comments about their commitment and professional ethics.

3.2 – You may not hinder or impede the work of Hoplon staff.

3.3 – Any and all offenses against Hoplon companies and employees shall be considered as infringements of these Rules of Conduct. Attention: Our team does not request data (such as: login, password, etc.) nor items to players in the game or social networks.

4 – BAD CONDUCT

4.1 – You may not engage in in-game practices that compromise its performance for other users or impair its playability in any way.

4.2 – You will not be able to send consecutive messages repeatedly (such as flooding, spam, etc.) in any channel or game chat. This includes writing messages in UPPERCASE over an extended period of time. Hoplon reserves the right to decide where this applies.

4.3 – Each player can only have one Heavy Metal Machines account. It is also forbidden to use secondary accounts (smurfs), alternative accounts (identified or not) and duplicate accounts (with the same information as the original). Extra accounts will be permanently removed without any reimbursements. We will consider the first ever registered account as the official primary account, and judge each infringement on a case to case basis.

4.4 – You cannot pretend to be any other user, even if it is your friend or family member.

4.5 – You may not share any false information with Hoplon, with or without the intention to harm other players or for your own benefit. This includes any kind of communication with the company Hoplon and its employees within the game, forum, Facebook, blog, ticket, or among other official communication media.

5 – UNSPORTING CONDUCT

Unsporting Conduct is, by definition, any action that attempts to impair or disrupt the gaming experience of other players, just as they can benefit other players by facilitating their in-game victory. Under no circumstances will it be allowed to practice Unsporting Conduct. This applies to every game mode and tournament related to Hoplon. Unsporting Conduct includes, but is not limited to:

5.1 – Losing on purpose: This action means that you allow yourself to be intentionally defeated by an opponent in order to give advantage or disadvantage to any party.

5.2 – Negative attitude: This action means when a player tries to discourage or influence other players, insisting on asking to surrender and/or threatening to abandon the game.

5.3 – Gameplay threats: You cannot make threats of any kind to users in order to maliciously change the gameplay to your liking.

6 – INAPPROPRIATE ACCOUNT NAME

6.1 – You cannot name your account with words that are obscene, offensive, or relating to drug use or racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethnic, homophobic, or disseminate any philosophy that preaches any type of revolting or hateful behavior. If the nickname is considered to be some kind of interpretation relative to the above-mentioned irregularities, it may be changed, and if this is not possible, the account may be suspended and/or blocked.

6.2 – You may not use special characters, spaces or symbols in order to hide an offense or to make identification more difficult.

6.3 – You may not create a name which may be confused with identifications created or used by Hoplon, this includes but is not limited to: identifications beginning with Hoplon, Heavy Metal Machines, HMM, [CM], [GM], [GE], Tester, Coordinator, Support, Bot, etc.

7 – INAPPROPRIATE TEAM NAMES

7.1 – You may not join or organize any kind of Heavy Metal Machines group that is based on a racist, relating to drug use, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethical, homophobic, or disseminating some kind of revolting or hateful behavior or that promotes any kind of discrimination, or any kind of rude or obscene behavior.

7.2 – You cannot have a team name that makes it difficult to identify the team.

7.3 – You may not create or lead a team whose name may be confused with identifications created or used by Hoplon, this includes but is not limited to: identifications beginning with Hoplon, Heavy Metal Machines, HMM, [CM], [GM], [GE], Tester, Coordinator, Support, Bot, etc.

8 – REPRESENTATION

8.1 – The player is not allowed to pose as an employee of Hoplon, or support representative for users of Heavy Metal Machines.

8.2 – The player is not allowed to call himself a friend or relative of Hoplon Employees to provoke other users or to benefit from such status.

8.3 – The player is not allowed to impersonate another player in any way for any reason.

9 – IRREGULAR ACTIVITY

9.1 – You cannot modify any part of the Heavy Metal Machines client or its servers in order to alter the operation of game items or the game in general.

9.2 – You cannot use irregular programs such as trainers, hacks, level editors, etcetera, to alter any pilot or game account.

9.3 – You cannot associate with other users who use irregular programs in order to benefit directly or indirectly. Punishment may be applied to all users involved without distinction.

9.4 – You cannot use irregular practices to gain any advantage in the game, events or promotions connected to the game, such as but not limited to the use of special equipment and/or software that might interfere, spy, hack or exploit the game.

9.5 – You cannot use or benefit from, directly or indirectly, any type of bug to exploit the system in Heavy Metal Machines.

9.6 – You cannot interfere with, hack or decrypt any transmission to or from the Heavy Metal Machines servers.

9.7 – You cannot obtain items or amounts of in-game currency in any irregular way. Hoplon reserves the right to take back any irregular acquisition or enrichment, no matter its origin.

 

10 – UNAUTHORIZED ANNOUNCEMENTS

10.1 – You cannot do any marketing, commercial promotion, commercial announcements or solicitations within the game or in any of the official social media channels. This rule also applies to character names, Teams, or Lobbies that make any mention of this type of content.

10.2 – You cannot buy, sell, trade, share, and/or transfer access of any Heavy Metal Machines account or announce any intent of doing so, in exchange for real money, items, products, in-game currency, games, or any aid, in any channel, chat room or game room.

10.3 – No discussion or disclosure of links, websites, forums, or groups, dealing with or using client modifications, hacks, trainers, editors or any other third-party programs, as well as unofficial servers or general illicit programs, will be allowed. Discussions regarding the items cited above and their defense are expressly prohibited.

10.4 – You may not disclose the existence of a procedure for misuse of the system to anyone outside Hoplon in order to benefit from it. We encourage you to report all bugs and such procedures immediately through the available system.

10.5 – You may not advertise or market any kind of illegal or non-official software, service or activity.

10.6 – You may not create, use, provide, disclose, or distribute any utility, emulator, or software tool relating to Heavy Metal Machines without written permission from Hoplon.

11 – FURTHER RULES

11.1 – You may not share your account information with others. By downloading the game, you are fully responsible for all in-game actions carried out through it.

11.2 – You may not use the game as a means to violate any local, state, national, international or regulatory law.

11.3 – You must follow the instructions of authorized personnel while in the game environment.
Attention: Our team does not request personal information such as: login, password, etc.

11.4 – If the holder/legal representative of the rights of a given product name, image, icon, symbol, logo, or trademark makes claim to Hoplon about the name of any team or character using the name or brand belonging to such holder/representative, the user will be subject to suspension, and/or blocking of the account.

11.5 – If any user or Team uses a known brand name to undermine their “image” and “good name” for any reason, the user will be subject to the suspension, and/or blocking of the account.
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11.6 – For the security of the Heavy Metal Machines accounts, Hoplon reserves the right to block users’ accounts on a preventive basis, to ascertain any and all suspicion of irregularity, for a term not exceeding 30 days.

11.7 – In case the action violates more than one rule, the most severe one shall prevail.

11.8 – All reports must include context as well as proof of the offense.

11.9 – The punishments will be applied per report. If a report contains several offenses over a period of time, Hoplon will take the most severe and apply the punishment accordingly as one occurrence.

11.10 – If three occurrences in the same category have been reached within a period of 30 days, every following infringement will have the most severe punishment applied within its category. If the player did not commit any infringement during a period of 60 days, the occurrence count will be reset.

11.11 – The player is not allowed to buy or advertise, regardless of the form of payment, any type of service from other players in order to improve the numbers of the player’s account (Eliminations, Victories, Levels, Rank, etc.). Any user will be subject to the suspension, and/or blocking of the account.

11.12 – Topics such as Religion, Sports and Politics are very sensitive. This being said, we do not forbid discussion around the subject. However, if they are used to insult or offend anyone, these Rules of Conduct shall apply.

11.13 – Players have the right to file a ticket if they disagree or want to contest a decision made by Hoplon. If such a contest or objection is made in a public environment, Hoplon reserves the right to stay silent.

11.14 – Hoplon handles infringements that have been committed on other media channels in accordance with the available tools on each platform. (E.g. ban = mute for Discord). Hoplon reserves the right to decide how to best translate the Punishment Chart accordingly.

11.15 – Hoplon reserves the right to extend a punishment to other platforms no matter if an infringement has been committed in-game or in any other media channel.

 

Punishment Chart below