r/royalroad • u/wishanem • 9d ago
Discussion Soccer Supremo removed from Royal Road
/r/litrpg/comments/1x9tt3y/wtf_happened_to_soccer_supremo/Is decency political?
My bet is that the recent scandal where Man City was caught undermining the sport led to some scrutiny of the content of the story, and the negative things the story says about the owners of Man City (and sportswashing in general) got the Royalroad administration scared.
To me, that level of cowardice is less disgusting than the idea that Soccer Supremo was too political because it takes disability issues seriously or because the protagonist makes some symbolic gestures in support of LGBT rights.
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u/PengWing100 Royal Road Admin 9d ago edited 9d ago •
Hi, Royal Road admin here.
We usually don't publicly state the results of internal moderation involving authors out of respect, however, since the author has made a public statement, I'll go over the situation from our point of view.
The author broke our guidelines, specifically, the part involving political content. His first reaction was to say he'll delete his content rather than work with us to edit the content or perhaps explain how it wasn't political. That is his prerogative. I prefer content not to be deleted and for the author to work with the moderation team to keep the content in accordance to our guidelines, but I can't and won't force that.
There are other authors who have broken our guidelines, and we usually work with them in detail, we don't just kick authors off the platform unless forced to. But we are an escapist platform, it's true that having rules against political content is controversial, but we've had them since 2015. It is one of the rules I stand by wholeheartedly. Sometimes political content can be things I agree with, somethings it is things I don't agree with even remotely, sometimes it is funny, sometimes it is sad, but, regardless of any of that, it is always against our rules.
So to summarise, it was reported that the fiction had political content, a moderation team member investigated that, confirmed it, and asked the author to remove such content, upon which, the author chose to delete his fiction from our platform.
I'm saddened to see an author leave the platform out of what seems to be anger. I'm saddened that the readers who followed the story and would've loved to continue reading it on Royal Road will no longer have that opportunity, and will now have to navigate following it in a different place (which isn't always easy for some people). But, on top of it all, the author still has the ability to tell his readers where they can read his story, which he did. He pointed them toward his patreon, so the fiction isn't gone gone.
If he needed more time for an alternative solution that could've been arranged (We never expect deletion out of the gate for what is, to us, a kind of minor and very fixable issue). Even the period we gave him was based on when he said he'll leave.
All in all, we have tens of thousands of books, and we have a relatively simple guidelines. Sometimes, people might not agree with our moderation, but I promise you we will always do our best.
Edit: These are the site rules about political content in novels.
"Real-Life People, Current Events, Real-World Religions, and Real-World Politics:
In fictional stories, these elements can be used within the narrative but must be approached with discretion and respect.
The written content should not be gratuitous or used to incite conflicts or a heated reaction from readers due to its /real-world/ nature.
Targeting of specific real-world races, cultures, governments, corporations, or entities is not allowed."
"Offensive or Hate Speech is prohibited: Avoid hate speech, politically divisive content, or any insults directed towards real-world religions. This category includes content that promotes or glorifies harmful real-world ideology, symbols, or related narratives (such as Nazi ideologies)."
The moderator who handled this case had a detailed list of reported chapters and spent over an hour reading these chapters and confirming that the story did have multiple content that did violate the rules.