Permaban

Permaban is a moderation game set on a declining internet forum in 2007. The player takes the role of an unpaid moderator working through a queue of posts, deciding whether to ban, warn, censor, investigate, scan a link, lock a thread, IP ban or nuke, or to leave a post alone. Every ban, warning or IP ban must be accompanied by a citation of the correct rule, and each tool carries its own cost. Moderating too strictly drives away regular users, while moderating too loosely allows raids, scams and flame wars to take over the board. Campaign shifts have no timer, and the queue waits until a decision is made.

Between shifts, banned users return to appeal, with the original post serving as the only evidence. A break room lets other moderators ask for favours and remember how the player responds, and the admins periodically rewrite the rulebook. Other systems include tracking ban evaders and sockpuppets, an unreliable spam filter, contradictory moderation policies, and the risk of losing the job after a poor shift. The forum is presented inside a simulated 2007 desktop that boots from a POST beep into a usable environment containing a browser, a media player with a playlist, a paint program, a file explorer and a calculator. Most of these are optional but conceal additional content, including three playable games, one of which becomes the focus of a particular night’s work.

The game contains over 700 handwritten forum posts, 28 achievements, multiple board themes based on classic forums, recurring users and moderator storylines, retro desktop sounds and an Endless mode with escalating difficulty and breaks every twenty posts or six minutes. Campaign progress auto-saves between shifts. A single campaign runs roughly 40 to 80 minutes, with Endless mode providing further play. The developer notes that the game is text-heavy and written entirely in 2007-era forum English, including slang and typos, and that posts contain harassment, threats and cruelty as part of the subject matter.