Fair play: voids, strikes, AFK and disputes

A ranked ladder is only worth climbing if the results are real and nobody can game the rules. Patch Clash on Vespene leans on one principle throughout: decide from evidence, not from inference. The replay decides results, a button press decides presence, and anything ambiguous goes to a human rather than a guess.

The replay is the referee#

There is no typed score entry on ranked. Every result comes from a replay, and every replay is checked (see Hosting, playing and reporting the result for how to upload one).

Refused outright (the upload is rejected and the match stays open):

• The replay does not contain the match's players.
• It is a plain SC2 game, not Patch Clash.
• The game lasted under 60 seconds.
• It started more than a few minutes before the match was ready (an old game).
• That exact game was already used for another result.

Held for review (the result waits for a moderator; the screen shows the reason in plain words):

Reason shown	What it means
The map doesn't match the one drafted for this game	Someone hosted a different map, often the ladder version of a PCE map
A player's race in the replay isn't the one they queued with	Played off-race
The game was played long after this match opened	More than twelve hours after the players readied
The replay names a different mod than this ladder's	Another extension mod
Only one of the two accounts was recognised	One player's character is not tied to their Vespene account
The two players' replays describe different games	Both players uploaded, and the copies disagree

A held game does not bench you: you can keep queueing. No rating moves until a moderator rules. For some reasons (not a race mismatch or an unrecognised account), the second player's copy of the same game naming the same winner can release the hold on its own.

Voids#

A voided match never happened as far as ratings are concerned: no rating change, no XP. Here is every way one happens:

Void	When	Penalty
Accept timeout	Someone did not answer the match-found window (35 seconds, 60 at most)	A strike for a one-sided miss by a connected player; none if both missed
AFK challenge	The challenged player did not answer within two minutes	A strike only if they were not connected; otherwise a no-fault "standoff"
Missed ban clocks	In the rare fallback draft, every ban was taken by the clock and the player was not connected	A strike
SC2 collision	The Companion saw you start another SC2 game while your match was still in the draft	None
Opponent never showed	In the fallback draft, the draft was never touched and one side never arrived	None
Draft timeout	The draft stalled for five minutes	None
No result	Three hours after the match was made with no result	None
Moderator	A ruling voided it	None

Whoever was present goes back into the queue automatically with their wait time kept after a void caused before the game (a missed accept, an AFK void, a collision, a no-show), as long as they were active on the site in the last minute. A no-show costs you seconds, not your place. The three-hour no-result void, a moderator's void and a two-sided accept miss requeue nobody.

Strikes and lockouts#

A strike locks you out of the queue:

Strike	Lockout
1st	1 minute
2nd	3 minutes
3rd	9 minutes
4th	27 minutes
and so on	tripling, capped at 24 hours

Completing a match (win, loss or draw) clears your strikes. A strike only ever comes from a match you were paired into. For the match-found window it takes a connected browser that ignored the prompt (a closed laptop never saw it); for an AFK challenge or missed ban clocks it is the opposite, and only a player who was not there is struck. Pressing FIND MATCH while locked out tells you how many minutes are left.

The site also keeps a lifetime count of dodges, visible on a player's chat name card. Ladder admins can suspend an account from the queue entirely.

The AFK challenge#

For an opponent who never arrives in SC2, the match screen offers Opponent AFK? from a minute after the match is found. It starts a two-minute clock on your opponent, who sees an alert (on the ranked screen it plays a sound even when match sounds are muted) and answers with I am here, READY.

• If they answer, the clock is cleared and you carry on.
• If they do not answer and were not connected, the match voids, they take a strike, and you go back into the queue with your wait kept.
• If they do not answer but were connected, it voids as a standoff with no penalty for anyone.

Why it closes once the game starts#

The AFK clock exists for a no-show. It used to be available for the whole match, which let a player in a losing position start it against an opponent in fullscreen SC2, who can never see the site's alert. So the clock closes when:

• either player presses GAME STARTED, or the Companion reports the game started (a running clock is cleared, with no void and no strike), or
• ten minutes have passed since the match went live, when the game is presumed to be under way.

A new challenge is refused in the last two minutes before that point, so no clock is ever started that would have to be cancelled. A clock that expires after the game counts as under way does nothing. GAME STARTED can only be undone by the player who pressed it, one undo per match, and a Companion stamp cannot be undone at all.

A draw cannot be offered while an AFK clock is running, and neither can a call-off.

If you have both agreed not to play (a patch, a crash before the game), do not fake a no-show with the clock: one of you asks to call off the match and the other agrees, and nobody takes a penalty. See Hosting, playing and reporting the result.

Contesting a result and reporting a player#

Your HISTORY tab lists every match you played, with two buttons (see Leaderboard, player cards and match history):

• Result is wrong: for a completed match, within 72 hours. Use it when the recorded winner is wrong.
• Report player: for a completed or voided match, within 14 days. Use it for conduct: griefing, abuse, a suspicious account.

Both need a short note. Filing never moves a rating. Only a moderator's ruling does, and a ruling is applied properly: ratings, win-loss records and Clash XP are reversed and re-applied as if the game had gone the ruled way.

Who rules#

• Ladder moderators are granted per ladder by the site admins. Site moderators and admins can moderate every ladder.
• Moderators see the REVIEW tab (held games: confirm the reported result, award the other player, or void) and a whole ladder view in HISTORY with Award, Record a draw, Void game and Dismiss for reports.
• A moderator never rules on a match they played. The site refuses it; only an admin can.
• Every ruling is recorded with who made it.

Privacy by design#

A few rules exist to stop information leaking in ways that could be exploited:

• Queue announcements name nobody. The chat line shows only how many are in queue and a league crest for each; the Discord post shows a rounded rating range. Pairings and results do name players, because by then the game is a two-sided fact.
• Ban stats cannot give away your opponent's bans. The ban rate on the draft board only counts finished matches and refreshes every few minutes. The ladder-wide veto figures in the Ladder stats door are published in batches and rounded so no single match ever shows. See Ladder stats, map pool and balance notes.
• Chat never shows a real name or an e-mail prefix. See Ladder chat and the Discord bot.

Related#

• Hosting, playing and reporting the result for reporting.
• Match found and the map draft for the accept window.
• Ladder chat and the Discord bot for chat moderation.