Serenity Valley

This June marks 5 years that we’ve been in constant operation, starting with our first tiny Rust server with a handful of friends and little more than a dream of enjoying one last wipe together. Now, we’ve got multiple servers, multiple games, and we’re actively working to grow our community, our games, and our servers to bring the idea that gaming doesn’t have to be a toxic cesspool of humanity’s worst but rather, a place where we can come together, have fun together, and create positive, enjoyable memories of time spent together.

Celebrations during the month of June will come in the form of some great sales, a bunch of fun events, weekly games, and the introduction of our first physical awards. We’ll only be doing a single wipe for the month of June, but we will refresh our subscriber’s perks on the 19th, to make up for the wipe time! As an added perk for all of our subscribers, your tape amounts from your donations and subscriptions will be doubled, all June in Rust! In Conan, your subscription kits will have their cooldown timers reset and halved for the month!

RUST EVENTS:

– The Labyrinth! There will be a multi-level maze that you can explore and get lost in, wandering and enjoying at your convenience. Be careful which doors you open, as some will have explosive surprises behind! During the weekends, the maze layouts will be changed, and special loot will be added for brave explorers to win!

– The Scavenger Hunt! Several clues will be hidden in satchels and other out of the way places around the map. The first clue will be found at the server store, and whoever pieces together the clues and finds the prize first will score a huge cache of valuables!

– Tower Racing! Wednesdays and Saturdays, all month, we’ll be hosting our signature Rust game, where teams of 2-4 can exhibit all of their Rust skills, including gathering, building, and combat, to build the ultimate monument to their might! Each winning tower will be clad in armor and left as a monument for all to bear witness to the prowess of our winners!

– The Carpenter’s Arena! An arena for 3-player teams, featuring 2 players on each team with salvaged hammers and 1 player with a nail gun as they fight through the obstacles in the arena to find their enemies, poke them full of sixteen-penny holes, and maybe, just maybe, show them all who’s boss with the hidden chainsaw! The arena will be open and available all wipe for folks who wish to play the game at their own pace, and we’ll have hosted events with prizes each Saturday and Sunday.

– The Primitive Arena! An arena for solo players to gather primitive weapons from the floor of the arena and slaughter their foes in the ultimate last-player-standing contest of brutality! The arena will be open and available all wipe for folks who wish to play the game at their own pace, and we’ll have hosted events with prizes each Saturday and Sunday.

– The Castle Raid! We’ll be building a large, hard-to-breach raid destination for all who wish to raid, find loot, and take home spoils–or for those who want to wait for others to take the bait, and strike back as counter-raiders! The Castle will be initially stocked with low-grade loot of gear sets and tools, with more and more loot being added through the month, with juicy, juicy weapons, resources, and explosives available toward the end of the month.

SALES:

– The server store will have pills and tape matched in price, allowing all players to enjoy the benefits of duct tape. Additionally, all tape awards will be doubled for our subscribers!

– We’ll be offering a limited number of lifetime subscriptions, allowing players to enjoy the benefits of different tiers of subscriber perks, across every game, every server, for as long as you have your Steam account. Each lifetime account will have a special title and role created on Discord

• Lifetime Master Explorer:  $180 (10/10 Available)
  • Gain $5-level subscription to all current and future games, for life!
• Lifetime Master Settler: $320 (2/3 Available)
  • Gain $10-level subscription to all current and future games, for life!
• Lifetime Master Wastelander: $500 (3/3 Available)
  • Gain $15-level subscription to all current and future games, for life!
• Lifetime Master Clan Leader:  $850 (0/1 Available)
  • Gain $30-level subscription to all current and future games, for life! SOLD OUT!

To purchase any of these once-in-a-lifetime packages, contact Mr. D on Discord or message us on the Serenity Valley Facebook page, and we’ll make all necessary arrangements to get your account set up, your custom title created (if desired), and get you all set, forever.

– We’re revealing our first piece of physical merchandise, the Raider’s Patch. Raider’s Patches will be made with sturdy reclaimed fabric and printed Serenity Valley Gaming logo, attached with safety pins. (If you prefer to actually stitch your patch onto something, there will be plenty of extra space around the edges for stitching!) Raider Patches will be available for purchase for $10 each, with shipping costs only occurring outside the US. Active subscribers enjoy a 10% discount for these purchases as well! Don’t worry! We’ll get pictures for this posted up as soon as possible!

CONTESTS:

– We’ll be hosting a screenshot contest, where users can take their best screenshot of Rust–they don’t have to be from this wipe–and share them on the blog. The best screenshot will be decided on by staff and a handful of community judges. The top 10 submissions will be featured on our blog for all to enjoy, and one lucky winner will receive a free 3-month subscription at the Settler tier to Rust!

– “Tell Us” testimonials: We’ll be giving out free months of subscription perks to either of our games for everyone who tells us about their experience! Write a 1-paragraph review or testimonial about your experience at Serenity Valley Gaming and receive a month of $10 subscriber perks on any of our games!

– “SVG & Me” Essay Contest: Write a short essay explaining why Serenity Valley Gaming is your home for online gaming. Essays need to be 1-3 pages, English, and in .txt or .doc format. Three winners will be chosen, with 2 runners-up receiving 6 months of $10 subscription, and the top winner receiving 1-year of our $15 subscription for any SVG game.

Yesterday afternoon, it came to my attention that a raid was carried out Saturday morning involving one of our admin staff, and members of the Cult of Helo (COH) Clan. In the course of that raid, an absolutely suspect amount of materials were brought to bear against the as-yet unnamed, but self-proclaimed zerg group in K11. This activity involved the delivery of impossible amounts of Timed Explosive Charges, and later involved a member of staff using their powers to dive underground and throw explosives onto foundations invisibly, from underground.  Later in the raid, admin commands were utilized to directly destroy portions of the base. Players who engaged in the raid legitimately were given some of the explosives, and as things began to become more suspect, they instead banked the explosives so they could report the event.  I’d like to commend those who reported this to me, their integrity in not taking advantage of the situation, and their surrender of the ill-gotten materials.

I spent the better part of the day yesterday thoroughly investigating all of the server logs, tracking every piece of loot, every explosion, trying to make sure I had a very full picture of the situation. In the spirit of transparency, I want to explain everything that has happened, how this entire situation came to a head, and how we’re going to apply the lessons learned from this event to make sure we do better in the future. I’m avoiding using individual names wherever possible, in accordance with my policy of avoiding a culture of “name and shame” wherever possible. By the end of this report, I hope that you’ll see that I’m making every effort both to ensure that this cannot happen again, and that those involved are held accountable for their actions.

On or around May 3^rd, a large group joined the server and began clearly, unequivocally declaring themselves as “running” the server, being the “new alphas,” and so on.  Several players expressed dismay at this, and when they did start raiding people on the 2^nd day of the wipe, there were several complaints about this group. This almost immediately triggered conversations between myself and the server staff pertaining to this group, monitoring their activities, and preparing plans for how to deal with them if they proved to be toxic or hostile to the good form of the server. We’ve been discussing the problems they posed, and as they became increasingly toxic, we began making preparations to act against them. Throughout this time and over the last several weeks, a staff member has been taking a more active role in administrative work, having primarily been working in a technical role previously.

Last week, some players asked me if I would be upset with them for foundation wiping the zerg group, mostly as courtesy to prevent chasing people off of the server if I was trying to foster their support, etc. So, later the same day when the staff member approached me to ask what I thought about that group being foundation wiped, I believed this to be a reference to the earlier conversation, rather than sanctioning the group being wiped out. This is where I believe my main error occurred; I responded that I thought it was just fine, and I thought the rest of whatever was about to shake out would be interesting. I didn’t consider that my response would or could be considered as tacit consent for what played out.

Later in the week, a large sum of C4 was given to another group by members of COH. Yesterday, this member of COH logged on, taking more C4, and then began raiding the base in K11. Members from 2 other groups arrived to counter, only to find that COH was present and raiding.  Another large sum of C4 was dropped off, COH’s raider disappeared, and then things took a turn for the worse. C4 began being thrown up, from underground, at the base’s foundations.  Later, actual parts of the base were destroyed via admin commands. In response to this, the players present stopped raiding, deposited the rest of the explosives in a hidden location, and reported the events, along with video, to me. Because the video contains clan communications that don’t pertain to the raid and specifically names players involved, I’ve chosen not to present it at this time as part of this report. Most of the people involved firsthand in this situation have already seen it, and to keep sharing around the details would only serve to keep the cycle of drama and speculation alive; I much prefer to try and move forward from this and rebuild from the shaken trust. You’re of course, welcome to visit the #rust-main-staff-action-ama channel on Discord, and I will be glad to address any questions.

In the course of this situation, I’ve learned that we need to stop including sulfur, charcoal, or gunpowder in the senior admin kits. Typically, these materials were available on my sleeper and intended for being able to quickly craft replacements of materials I accidentally wasted for someone, while avoiding the awkward questions later in the wipe of why I was summoning ammo or the sort, but because this material was just available on my body, any admin that teleported to my sleep location would have been able to access that material. Going forward, only the materials absolutely needed for store building will be included in the large kits, and when the time comes to include explosives as part of the shop’s stock, it will be spawned separately to improve transparency and player awareness of what’s there. Additionally, we are terminating the policy of letting admin staff play on Main when they aren’t working a shift.  From now on, staff can only play on the Warzone server, which doesn’t have regular admin support like Main does.

Finally, there has been player sentiment that’s sufficiently widespread regarding COH. It was expressed to me during this investigation from multiple people in multiple groups that the feeling is that when someone sees the COH clan tag, it means that someone is going to get banned because COH doesn’t like them, or that some impossible loot is going to show up, suggesting that they are cheating or getting admin help. Rather than risking there being unfair play, the clan is going to be removed from Main, though they will still be permitted to play on the Warzone server, where there aren’t other admins that could possibly be involved in anything untoward. The staff member is being immediately removed and suspended from administrative actions on the server, but will remain on staff in other roles.

Passions run high. Feelings get in front of logic. People make mistakes. One of the things that makes Serenity Valley so special is how much people care about this community and its people, and sometimes when people are trying to do the best for everyone, some of those mistakes get made. Lord knows I’ve made plenty of them, almost always with the best intentions. As they say, however, the road to Hell is paved in good intentions. None of what happened yesterday takes away from the thousands of hours that our staff have spent working rather than playing on the server, our network connections, our technology systems, or the fact that he has gone above and beyond to support the server and keep things running when I was unwell and otherwise unable to.  Regardless of week’s events, this does not take away from the tremendous contributions that this staffer has made to our community, and without him, we just as surely wouldn’t be where we are today, just as certainly as if I was gone, too. This is the reasoning for a suspension rather than an outright removal. I’m going to work hard to regain your trust, to make sure that we stand for fair play and respect. I will, of course, answer any questions that you have honestly, candidly, and will have a text channel available specifically for this purpose. You, our players, deserve better, and we will do better.

“It’s a meme.”

“It’s just a joke.”

“Boys will be boys.”

“She was asking for it.”

“If she didn’t want that to happen, she shouldn’t have dressed like that.”

These are all quotes that have been used to try and deflect accountability from something that someone has said or done. The first two, we hear on Serenity Valley basically every wipe. Almost every time someone says this sort of thing to me, I sort of lose my shit about it, because of how it enables and attempts to normalize these behaviors. Today, we have another profound example of why we take such a hard line to hateful speech in all the myriad forms it can take, whether racism, sexism, religious intolerance, or any of the other forms of hateful, exclusionary language that people adopt in these games as “just a joke.” This morning, a gunman charged into a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, opening fire on the congregation. As of this writing, 8 people have been reported as killed, with dozens of other people injured. As he charged in, it was reported that he was screaming, “All Jews must die.”  I cannot count on just two hands the number of times I’ve seen someone with that quote in their profile, with that sentiment written on signs in-game, or have just said it in voice or text chat. Every time, they follow up with one of those quotes from the top of the page.

Let me be overwhelmingly clear:

If anything you say or do has to be followed by a comment intended to brush off accountability for what you’ve said or done, you should not be saying or doing it.

Just that simple.  If you have to follow something with “It’s a meme,” or “It’s just a joke,” it’s not something you need to be saying anywhere in polite society. To you, sure, maybe you’re just trying to be funny or edgy or whatever fucked up justification you have for what you’re saying. To the people who are regularly victimized by groups that are actively, actually sharing those sentiments, it makes them uncomfortable and undermines their ability to feel safe and welcome while playing video games with us. To those sick fucks who harbor these feelings, every time they see this kind of thing posted and not punished and adamantly smashed as being unwelcome and unacceptable, it pushes just a little bit closer to action. In those minds, in those situations, every time it is allowed to stand as “just a joke,” it reinforces to them that these ideas, these thoughts, and eventually, these behaviors are acceptable.

Hate speech is never, ever acceptable.  Ever. Not here.  Not in real life. Not in your super secret meme groups that are just gateways into the really fucked up hate groups that are flourishing under our current administration.

Whether the mass-shooting this morning, or the nut-bag mailing out bombs in Florida, or the polo-shirt wearing psychopaths carrying tiki torches, these people all started out harboring these ideas in secret until they found people around them that would normalize and make acceptable this behavior. If you talk this kind of filth on the server, you will be banned, I will send every scrap of information we have about you to your local law enforcement’s hate crimes task force, as well as federal authorities, since these messages are being communicated across state lines.  I will persecute you. I will make sure that you are called out, shamed, ridiculed, and if at all possible, charged for helping make shit like this happen. So far, we have supplied information leading to four hate-crime convictions, and two more cases are currently awaiting court dates.

Today, here, now, I call on every single member of Serenity Valley Gaming to take a stand, in our community, in your lives, in your world and stop letting this filth be “just a joke.” When you see or hear hate, call it out. You don’t have to preach, you don’t have to punch Nazis in the face. Just point it out to the people, and let them know that this is not acceptable. We live in this world.  We deserve better. YOU deserve better. Don’t just let people blow these dog whistles around you. The bodies are starting to pile up in real life.