Moderation and Platform Rules

HubMatch is a large, competitive community, and keeping it healthy depends on moderation. The platform uses a decentralized organizer model rather than a global moderation team - tournament organizers and league runners are the primary authority inside their own events, with platform-level staff reserved for cross-event issues and serious violations. There is no separate moderator dashboard or judge panel: organizers and judges act through the tournament-organizer pages they already use (seeding, edit tournament, dispute resolution) and coordinate with players via Discord channels. This guide explains who holds what authority and how the moderation pieces fit together.

Decentralized Organizer Authority

If you run a tournament on HubMatch, you own the rules inside that tournament. You set the ruleset on registration, enforce it during play, and have final authority on disputed matches. You can DQ teams, apply penalties from the violation system, and make tie-breaking calls when tiebreaker rules are ambiguous. Your authority stops at the boundary of your event - you cannot ban players from the whole platform or from someone else's tournament.

The same applies to league runners for leagues they operate. A league organizer can penalize teams for no-shows, enforce the league rules, and close roster windows according to their schedule.

Judges and Co-Organizers

Large tournaments usually cannot be run by a single person. Organizers can appoint judges or co-organizers who share moderation authority for a specific event. A judge can review match disputes and issue violation decisions in the organizer's name. Judge appointments are logged - they do not give moderator privileges outside the event they were appointed for.

If you participate in a tournament with multiple judges, any one of them can make calls. Decisions are final once logged. If two judges disagree, the head organizer breaks the tie.

Platform-Level Moderation

Some situations exceed a single organizer's authority: cross-tournament harassment, account security issues, alt account evasion, systemic cheating that spans multiple events, legal matters (DMCA, safety issues). These go to the HubMatch platform staff via the #support channel on the HubMatch Discord.

Platform staff can do things organizers cannot: lock accounts, force password resets, remove content that violates the Terms of Service, and issue platform-wide bans. They will not usually override an organizer's in-event decision unless the decision itself violates platform rules.

10-Mans Moderation

The 10-Mans pickup queue has its own moderation layer because it runs continuously rather than as a discrete event. Misconduct in queue lobbies is handled through the violation system like any other event, and your violation history is visible on your profile, which you can open from the user menu. If you think a decision is incorrect, the HubMatch Discord #support channel reviews 10-Mans appeals.

Dispute Resolution

When teams disagree on a result - one team claims 3-0, the other claims 2-1, nobody can find the lobby recording - the standard path is the result verification system: submit your score with screenshots, let the opposing team confirm, and if it stays disputed longer than the resolution window, the organizer or judge reviews both submissions and rules.

Fabricating evidence (edited screenshots, fake clip timestamps) is among the fastest paths to a serious violation. See the Rules Violations help article. The platform assumes good faith by default; the presumption flips hard the first time you try to cheat the evidence system.

How to Be a Good Organizer

If you organize events, the quickest ways to earn a reputation as a fair operator are: publish a clear ruleset before registration opens, respond to reports within a reasonable window, explain decisions briefly when you rule against a team, and do not use organizer authority to settle personal grudges. Organizers who do this well attract the best teams; organizers who do not lose events over time to better-run circuits.