As you know, over the past years many innovations, measures, and changes to the game have not always met with unanimous approval within the community. Often not even when decisions were made on the basis of majorities in votes. Time and again we have been accused of not actually playing the game ourselves and having no idea what the community really wants. That’s why we believe it’s time to put the further development of the game into the hands of fellow players – into YOUR hands – because as we always say: It’s YOUR game. We now want to implement this to its logical conclusion. Therefore, we are establishing a Player Council on our game’s 16th birthday.

All interested players can apply for the Player Council until June 6th. After that, an election will take place. The five candidates with the most votes will form the Player Council and immediately assume responsibility. Ludetis reserves only a veto right for itself. We intend to use this only in cases where obviously business-damaging decisions are made or when decisions contradict current voting results. The second and final limitation is that only limited development time is available, because the actual coding must of course continue to be done by Ludetis (the Player Council has no access to source code). There will be informal consultations for this – i.e., Ludetis will provide an effort estimate on request, and then the Council can decide whether or when a change will be implemented. Of course, the Player Council and its teams will receive no advantages in the game – no compensation, no insight into internal data or server protocols, and no access to admin tools that can be used, for example, to assign packs or items after critical errors.

How the Player Council reaches its decisions is entirely up to it. The same applies to communication. This can take place in the internal forum or in any external chat groups to which we have no access. Ludetis will not interfere (but of course will provide the best possible information on request regarding technical feasibility or other parameters). We assume that the Player Council will not look to its own advantage but will keep the future of the game as a whole in mind. Logically, it would otherwise be voted out again in the next election. To ensure this possibility, there is initially a probationary period of three months. Generally, however, the Player Council will be elected for 12 months (always in May/June, so immediately after the KiO birthday and before the KiO World Cup). In case of serious misconduct, Ludetis (or the Player Council itself) can call for new elections or – if things don’t work out in the long run – dissolve the Player Council again. In that case, however, Ludetis would not resume further development; instead, there would be none at all.

By now transferring full responsibility for further development to YOU, we certainly do not want to wash our hands of innocence if something goes wrong. Rather, we believe that you, as a long-standing community, deserve this responsibility and are capable of assuming it – and that you will do it better than we did.

Anyone who would like to stand as a candidate should simply send an informal email to the known support address. Please include your exact team name, your first name or a nickname (surname is unnecessary) and come up with a catchy sentence to advertise yourself. This information will then be published shortly on the Player Council page (https://kick-it-out.de/spielerrat/).

Fair Play Note: Of course, players who do not speak German are also permitted to vote and be elected. How the Council deals with this is their matter. There are translation apps or one can discuss directly in English – everyone should be able to do that.

This information is being released in parallel in German and English. The Player Council page on the homepage is initially only in German, however. The page will be kept as up-to-date as possible, so check back often.

It would be nice if the Player Council introduced itself shortly after the election, for example in a self-written text that we would post like this one here, or in the KiO News video at the end of June on Youtube. But this too – like everything else – we leave confidently to YOU.

We wish you, us, and the game that this is the right decision.

(translated by AI)