TOPIC: ⭐ Community Team Meeting Outcome - 19/03/23⭐

These policies highlight the proper way to approach a situation in which a user is suspected of hacking or has been caught hacking one way or another.

General Hacking Policies
These policies apply to all general conduct when dealing with cheaters be it in the instance of automated or non-automated detections of malicious activity.

Appropriate Punishments
a. A punishment may never be given to a user unless there is clear evidence of wrong doing that is in accordance with the policies detailed in this document.
b. Upon detection of hacking or cheating unless it is in accordance with a different policy the user should be punished according to the number of hacking punishments the user has. Punishments given out prior to this change will count towards the offences.
1st Offence: 2 Month Ban
2nd Offence: 6 Month Ban
3rd Offence and Onward: 1 Year Ban
These punishments cannot be appealed
A hacking punishment on any other ZARP game server may be counted
c. Prior to being punished the user should be informed of what will happen if they are detected again.
Exploits and malicious attacks
a. In the instance of a user using some form of hacks or cheats in order to maliciously target the server or exploit they may be banned at the discretion of staff member. These situations are limited to; crashing the server, duplicating items or exploiting server-side features via client modification.
Delayed Approach
a. When it's considered relevant the community team may state that people suspected of using a certain cheat or exploit should be approached at a later time from when they've been caught in order to catch more people without them being aware of the detection or to gather further information about the cheat or exploit.
Non-Automated Detections
These policies apply to situations where detections of users hacking or cheating may be regarded as non-automated or manual at the hand of a staff member.

Unclear evidence
a. In the instance of unclear evidence obtained by a staff member the evidence must first be voted upon by the relevant lead team, any form of evidence can be presented for review. If the evidence is decided to be inconclusive further evidence must be obtained and bought up for a further vote.
b. In the instance of unclear evidence being presented, an impromptu meeting can be called with the sole purpose of dealing with hackers.
An impromptu meeting for voting on unclear evidence may be called when there are more than 3 items to be voted on or when a suspect with unclear evidence has been playing on the server for at least 2 hours. This impromptu meeting must be approved by at least 1 Server Owner or Community Team member, and must be held with at least 1 hour of notice to all Lead Team members of the relevant server.

In order for an impromptu meeting to be held, the following conditions must be met:

At least 5 Lead Team members or 25% of the Lead Team must be present, whichever is higher. Or 50% when there are less than 5 lead team members.
At least 1 Server Owner or Community Team member must be present to host the impromptu meeting.
c. In the instance of a Lead Team member presenting unclear evidence within the Lead Team channel of the official ZARP Discord, a vote may be held through use of the Discord reactions system without the need for a Lead Team meeting or impromptu meeting.
Each member of the Lead Team is allowed to present evidence of a user hacking only within the #lead-team channel of their respective server on the official ZARP Discord.
The whole channel must be pinged (@everyone or @here). Video and/or image evidence is to be provided along with other relevant information such as the user's SteamID and name – Otherwise the vote is not to be initiated or validated.
100% of the Lead Team is required to vote on the evidence, if any member has not cast a vote within 24 hours, the voting item must be delayed until the next Lead Team meeting or Impromptu Meeting.
Members must cast their vote themselves, no one else is allowed to vote for them.
Votes are to be cast upon the evidence via reactions on Discord, using one of the following emojis: Y/N ; ✓/✕ ; ?/?. These votes may be changed up until the last person casts theirs, after which the Server Owner or person who had provided the evidence concludes the vote and announces the results with another ping in the #lead-team channel.
Following the vote, the user should not be punished until 12 hours have passed in order to give sufficient time for an objection to be raised. If an objection is raised, the voting item should be postponed until the next Lead Team meeting or Impromptu Meeting if applicable.
Any member may also request the voting item to be delayed until the next Lead Team meeting or Impromptu Meeting.
Clear evidence
For evidence to be considered as clear it must clearly show visual proof of the user hacking in one of the forms outlined in 2.b. The only forms of evidence considered as clear evidence are screenshots from the anti-cheat system.
The only forms of clear evidence are screenshots of ESP, cheat menus, screen blockers or other on-screen HUD cheat elements.
User confessions
If a user confesses to the usage of cheats the user must be approached by a ZARP Lead Team member on a ZARP server for a confession as to ensure that the confession is legitimate and the user must admit to the usage of cheats or hacks actively on a ZARP server in the current session.
Presenting evidence to the user
a. In the instance of non-automated detections the user should be presented with the evidence such as logs, screenshots or other evidence leading up to their detection. This must be done before the user is punished. Members of the community team are not required to show evidence to the users but evidence should be present so that it may be displayed and validated as clear should it be questioned.
b. Should there be a reason for not providing the evidence to the user such as sensitive information a vote may be held by the lead team to decide on a different approach. This vote must be held prior to any case even if the cases are similar to previous cases where a vote on presenting evidence has taken place.
Automated Detections
These policies apply to situations where detections may be considered automated such as detections made by the anti-cheat systems.

Presenting evidence to the user
a. In the instance of automated detections evidence is not to be presented to the user in order to protect relevant anti-cheat systems from attempted tampering. The user should however informed of the fact that they have been caught cheating and the consequences of continued abuse
Automated punishments by anti-cheat systems
a. In the instance of an anti-cheat system opting to use automated punishments these punishments must fall in line with General Policy 1(Appropriate Punishments).
3. Manual punishments related to automated detections
a. In the instance of a manual punishment being given out to a user in the case of an automated detection the punishment should be in line with the policy General Policy 1(Appropriate Punishments). The user should be clearly informed of the consequences of continued abuse as stated in Automated Detections Policy 1(Presenting evidence to the user).
Addition of new detection methods.
a. Upon the addition of new detections to any automated detection system there should be vote done on if the detections should be added to the system or not as to ensure there are no complications.
False detections
a. Should there be false detections as a result of a detection method; the detection method should be reviewed by relevant developers or staff promptly and disabled or removed if required.
b. Anyone banned due to a false detection should be unbanned from the relevant servers.