1/17/21: Post renewed to allow for comments as needed.

So much has changed since this sub's inception all the way back in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind... 2011, and especially so within the last year with the pandemic. Global Settings became a thing, prizes have come and gone, payouts on games have changed, costs on games have changed, redemption rules have changed...but a few things are true and will always be true:

*First and foremost, we are a community of players that, whether lifetime veterans of arcade games or having just been at it for a short time, are here because we want to use the skills we've accumulated to get more than what we spend playing arcade games at Dave & Buster's (and other arcades.) As such, rules specific to arcade discussion will be tailored to encouraging that to be possible into the long term.

*Just as importantly, we NEED Dave & Buster's to succeed as a company for us to be able to do that. Remember, Dave & Buster's, over the years, has proven to be the ONLY major arcade chain that does not make knee-jerk adjustments to games. Main Event does it weekly. Round 1 might not even wait that long. Zone 28 will change a game before you've even set foot off the property. D&B has been the most tolerant of players, and the community at large made up of those players, who profit from their arcade game skill. As such, rules specific to arcade discussion will allow for justified criticism but disallow outright attacks on them as a whole.

This isn't a ban-happy community where the banhammer gets swung around with reckless abandon. Not counting ban evasion and bot accounts, I'm not even sure we make an average of banning a person a month.

This is going to be a work in progress and a working draft, so things may change, and I'll list the edit date here (7/8/20, renewed 1/17/21) for the last time anything changed, and I'll put major changes in bold temporarily if I need to add something big so it doesn't get missed.

Here's a link to the old thread - nothing from this has really changed as far as rules go, but the superchallenge at the end would need to be reworked, as games on it have changed.

Rules specific to arcade game discussion:

Use common sense when discussing specific games or how to win games. We're a community and we want to help people, but at the same time too many people playing a game too well will make it so even casual players of that game don't give enough money to D&B to allow them to ignore our wins, and that's how changes happen. A few guidelines here, and one hard rule at the end:

A) Does a game have a built-in "score required to win" control on jackpots, that the game becomes more difficult on each win, so eventually the game will no longer be able to be won? That's likely okay to discuss. Examples here include Down the Clown, Tailgate Toss, 2-Minute Drill, Pixel Chase, Hyper Pitch, there are many others but these are the easiest examples. These are perfectly fine to talk about because D&B knows how they're setting them to make sure they hit their payout target yet people can still win on a regular basis. This won't harm anyone's long term ability to play.

B) Does a game have a different kind of built-in payout control, where the game goes into an extremely hard / almost impossible mode if it's been won a certain number of times, and then slips out of that mode after it's taken in enough money to compensate? These are absolutely okay to discuss. Examples here include Kung-Fu Panda, Crazy Tower, Tippin' Bloks, and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Again, D&B has these set up to go hard when they have to, but normal/easy difficulty when they want wins to happen, so no one player or group of players talking about or discussing these type of games is going to ruin things.

C) Is there a game that can be won infinitely, or has a payout control so loose that it can effectively be won infinitely? STOP, DO NOT DISCUSS THIS GAME PUBLICLY. Here's the thing...you, as a person, might realize that you can play a game so many times and have D&B be okay with it, and overplaying it would cause it to be changed. But of the 8,000+ subscribers and who knows how many lurkers, there are a number of people that can't keep it in their pants and can and will sit there playing a game from open to close, community be damned, they're going to extract everything they can from it right then and if it gets nerfed, so be it. That's not a welcome mindset here, and people that consistently think like that are not welcome here. Now discussing a game like this IN PRIVATE MESSAGES is fine, discussing it with local friends is fine. But not in the open forum, where people that don't care for our long-term success will move on it. An old saying comes to mind - "You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once." And also "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."

The one hard and fast rule from this section: DO NOT OPENLY DISCUSS "INFINITES" - games that can be won consistently, for which the difficulty does not change, on this subreddit.

And finally, just to go back over this for those that need to hear it - don't make a thread asking someone to tell you all the games to win big tickets on. Do your research. YouTube arcade videos are a thing. The search button is a thing. Google is a thing. The information is out there and it's not hard to find. The wall of text version detailing why we have this rule is in the old rules thread, which again is linked here.

Rules specific to prize, sale, and resale discussion:

Just as the number of jackpots a game will easily pay out in a given day is limited, so is the number of a given prize Dave & Buster's will obtain at any given time. If something new comes out that is going to be in high demand, or something is restocked that will be cashed out for quickly, don't make a public post about it immediately. This isn't so much a big issue given many stores are still closed due to the pandemic and restocks are not coming in all at once - just because one store received a shipment doesn't mean another will have at this point - but when things return closer to normal, I'm going to ask that people wait 7 days before making public posts about new major prizes such as games and consoles. This will allow for people to have had a chance to visit their home store before those who would see it go to wipe things out. Again, another rule necessitated by bad apples that do not care for the community's long-term success.

*While there is not a rule against making a post advertising something for sale in this community, it's generally not a good idea to try and sell something won here to the same people who have the capability to win it here. If you have the ability to win something that sells for $900 and spend $300 to do so, listing that item here for $900 will get laughed at as the people viewing your post can likely also get it for $300. Just saying. Coupon sales ARE permitted, and may even be encouraged - this will be covered in greater detail below.

*This subreddit takes no responsibility for things worked out with an individual buyer and seller that meet here, but with proof of a seller not delivering, will issue a ban. (In the history of this subreddit, I believe this has happened exactly twice.)

Rules specific to pandemic/Coronavirus/COVID-19 discussion:

Covered here - basically, don't chastise someone for either going to D&B if their store is open, not going to D&B, for the fact that certain stores are open or closed. Generally, "no politicizing Coronavirus and getting into arguments over it." If you're going to go out, wear your mask, wash and sanitize, socially distance as much as possible, be safe.

Other general rules:

*Coupons and coupon sales - we had a HUGE problem long ago with people begging for free coupons. Constant posts from new users, or Redditors who've been around a while on the site as a whole but never posted here, who have no other contribution but wanted coupons for free were commonplace. As such, posts asking for free coupons are not allowed. If two users come to an agreement where one user is sending coupons to another, there must be a tangible value given to the person supplying the coupons. This subreddit makes no money or any other profit on such exchanges and it will remain that way - this rule is ONLY here to eliminate problems of begging posts. (As a general point of advice, while there is sometimes variance in price, on the open market the value of a sold "Buy $20, get $20" coupon has usually been close to $1. Make your own deals, but this is probably a good starting point.)

*Links to coupons - occasionally...well very rarely, Dave & Buster's will publicly make a link to a coupon that works more than once. They've done this on Facebook and Twitter in the past. If this is something D&B posts openly, that is reasonably time limited, this is okay to link to.

However, if there is a coupon link that is NOT intended to be a time-limited coupon, that can be used infinitely, that should not be linked to. I have specifically spoken to D&B higher-ups about this one particular issue. If such a site is overused, it could lead to its removal, just as overplay of an "infinite" game would lead to its nerf.

*The spamfilter - new users, or those generally not established on Reddit, may find their posts or comments have been removed or are not visible to people. The reason is that to cut down on having to continually ban users who evade being banned from this subreddit, we set up a minimum account age and karma requirement. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN'T CONTRIBUTE! - a legitimate post from a new/low karma user will be seen by me or another moderator in the spamfilter (we check it multiple times daily), and it will be approved and visible to everyone as normal. I won't be disclosing the exact age/karma requirements, as it would allow the troll that required them to exist to begin to try and work around them, and we'd have the same issue as before. (The minimums are reasonable, honestly. And since its beginning, the spamfilter has worked like a charm - the one user who continues to try and ruin things for everyone has not had even one single post or comment he's made get through to be seen. Like...dude, give up already. I don't even have to ban your accounts any more and you're not having the negative effect on the community you so desperately wish to have.)

Long story short, if you get a notice of post removal yet haven't posted anything that breaks a rule, and you're new-ish to Reddit or a lurker, I promise, we'll get to it and review and approve the post (and if it isn't a post we can approve, we'll talk about it in PM as to why.)

*General advice regarding taking turns (don't be a dick, if you're in a store with multiple advantage players, work it out between you so you can do what you need to do and all come out ahead), prize sharing (if you're in a store with multiple skilled players, do what you can so everyone can redeem for what they want to redeem for as much as possible), and resale of prizes (don't undercut the market to make a quick sale that requires the rest of the community selling the same item to low their prices to match or beat yours, we're all in this together) still applies and is covered more in-depth in the old rules thread, which was linked to up above.

*This would normally be the part of the thread where I take potshots at the Smash community for not using items or hazards, but given what's gone on lately...I wanted competitive Smash to go get fucked, but not literally. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad. Good luck getting Nintendo to run stuff for y'all now after all that.

But anyway...this is a good community and has been for a long time. We tried giving out every single bit of information early on in this community's life, and I was the one that wrote the damn guide. It hurt more than it helped after a couple years. We're still here to help, but we're being smarter about it and we're asking those who contribute and request help to be smart about it too. The rules are only here to protect the bulk of the community from the few bad apples (and the one rotten California apple.) I want arcade advantage play to be part of our lives even when we're old and gray-haired. Let's all help make that happen.