Last updated: March 28, 2026. Terms of Service · DMCA

Content and Moderation Guidelines

Shut Up and Play exists for one reason: to build a corner of the internet where people actually talk about why games are worth playing. Keeping that intact requires some ground rules. Here's exactly how we operate.

What this place is for

We're building a community around positivity in gaming. That's it. Not comprehensive coverage, not balanced takes, not a place to process your disappointment. If you love something and want other people to experience it, this is your venue. Everything else has a home somewhere else on the internet — we hear Reddit is lovely.

What gets removed

• Negative posts. If the thrust of your post is why a game is bad, overhyped, or disappointing — it's getting taken down. We're not the place for that and we won't pretend otherwise.
• Full AI-generated content. Using AI to help organize your thoughts, clean up your writing, or punch up a sentence? Totally fine — we do it too. Pasting in a ChatGPT writeup and calling it your recommendation? No. We can tell, it'll be removed, and honestly you're only cheating yourself out of actually contributing something.
• Harassment and abuse. We run basic AI moderation to catch this. Not to police opinions, not to enforce some ideological standard — purely to keep the community from becoming a place where people get treated like garbage.
• Content theft. Don't take someone else's writing, videos, or creative work and post it as your own. Give credit. If you believe your content has been stolen and posted here without consent, refer to our DMCA policy for next steps.
• Shilling. Don't use this platform to promote your own game, your studio, your friend's game, or anything with a financial interest attached. The community will see through it and so will we.

How moderation works

Right now moderation is handled internally by our team. We're intentionally keeping it that way for a while — community moderation at scale tends to create its own problems, and we've all seen how that plays out on other platforms.

When something gets removed or actioned, we'll tell you why. No vague strikes, no mystery bans. If you think we got it wrong, you can appeal and we'll actually look at it.

How these rules will change

They will change. We're not naive enough to think we've thought of everything on day one. As the community grows these guidelines will grow with it, and we genuinely want feedback on what's working and what isn't. If you think something's missing or a rule doesn't make sense, tell us.

The goal has never been an exhaustive rulebook. It's a community worth being part of. We'll keep adjusting until it is.

Questions? Contact us.