Content Policy

Last updated October 19, 2026

Spellgs is operated by Arcanum LLC, and it's only useful if players can trust it. These rules cover everything people send us: "I played here" reports, store photos, store submissions and updates, claims, and store responses. In short: be honest, write about your own experience, and leave people's private lives out of it.

Player reports

First-hand only. Report a night you actually attended at that store. No second-hand stories, rumors or "my friend said".
No staff or owner reviews and no paid reviews. If you work for, own or are related to the store (or a competing store), don't report on it. Nobody may pay, reward, discount or pressure anyone for a report, and stores can't pay us to add, remove or reorder reports. This follows the FTC's rules on fake and incentivized reviews.
Describe the game night, not people. Talk about pods, brackets, proxies, how welcoming it felt and whether it suits beginners.
Don't name or describe private individuals (other players, staff by name, kids). Say "staff were helpful", not a name.
No harassment, threats, hate speech or slurs, and nothing that attacks people for who they are.
No personal information: no phone numbers, emails, addresses, social handles, license plates or photos of people. This includes doxxing.
No defamation. Don't state as fact that a person or store committed a crime or did something seriously wrong unless it's true and you witnessed it. If you have a safety concern, contact the store, the organizer or the authorities, not a review.
No links, ads, promotions or spam, and one report per store per visit.
Negative reports are welcome if they're honest and follow these rules.

Store photos

Photos are uploaded only by the store, through its private claim link.
They must be yours: you took them, or you have permission from the person who did. No stock photos, other sites' photos, Google Maps or review-site photos, or images with someone else's watermark.
They must be of the store: storefront, play area, tables, shelves, events.
No identifiable people without their consent, and never identifiable children. Crop, blur or take the shot when the space is empty.
No offensive content, and no text overlays that are really ads.

Store submissions, updates and claims

Be accurate. For policy tags (proxies, brackets, beginner-friendly) and event times, include a public source link or be the store itself.
Only claim a store you work for or represent.
Don't submit fake stores or deliberately wrong details about a competitor.
Store responses to reports should be factual and courteous, and follow the same rules (no personal info about the reporter, no threats).

What moderation does

Everything is held for review. Nothing anyone sends appears on Spellgs until a person approves it.
Automatic checks hold anything with likely problems for a closer look: profanity or slurs, email addresses, phone numbers, links or handles, ALL-CAPS rants, and signs of spam such as repeat reports from the same source. These checks never publish anything on their own.
We approve or reject reports as written. We never edit a player's words, and we don't hide honest negative reports.
Approved photos are resized and stripped of hidden metadata such as GPS location before they go up.
We may remove anything later if it turns out to break these rules, and we may block people who repeatedly do.

Reporting a problem

Every published player report has a "Report this" link. Pick a reason (fake, staff or paid, harassment, personal info, hate, false claims, spam, wrong store). A moderator checks it against these rules. Flags don't hide anything automatically, and we limit how often they can be sent to stop abuse. You can also report a problem through our contact form.

Store owners: respond or request removal

Respond publicly: use the store response form with your store's email address (or the address on your claim), the report, and your reply. We show it under the report, as written, if it follows these rules.
Request removal or a review: tell us which report and which rule you think it breaks. If it plainly breaks a rule (personal info, harassment, not first-hand, staff/paid, false claims of wrongdoing), we take it down. Disagreeing with an honest opinion isn't, by itself, a reason to remove it.
Photos and listing details: owners can have any photo of their store removed, and can correct listing details, at any time.
We reply within a few business days.

Appeals

If we removed your report, photo or submission, rejected it, or kept up something you asked us to remove, you can appeal within 30 days. Use the appeal form with the link or details and why you think we got it wrong. We'll take a fresh look and tell you the outcome, usually within a week. Copyright complaints follow the process in our Terms.

See also how player reports work, our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.