Your safety

We take your safety seriously. Although you can’t suffer physical harm on our platform, we believe that virtual reality can create real psychological and emotional experiences. We aim to make these experiences as positive and life-affirming as possible and mitigate against any potential harm.

Measures that protect your safety

1. We provide hosts with tools to mute, remove, ban, and control the permissions of other users in that Session or Event. For more information, see Host controls.

2. We’ve implemented a personal boundary system that prevents users from being able to invade each other’s personal space. For more information, see Personal boundaries.

3. In public spaces that don’t have a host moderator, we mute LITE users.

Dealing with a disruptive, offensive, or harassing user

If you are the victim of, or witness to, disruptive, offensive, or harassing behavior, we recommend that you go through the following steps. You may not need to go through all the steps. Please use your own judgement based on the circumstance.

We will take action only if a person’s behavior is in breach of our terms and conditions. For example, use of offensive or threatening language or lewd gestures. There may be no further action if, for example, there was an argument based on personal opinions or use of adult language not directed in a hateful manner.

Assess your safety

If you feel overwhelmed in the situation, remove your headset, minimize the desktop application, or put down your mobile device. Turn down the volume on your device if appropriate. Reassure yourself that you have control over your exposure to the situation. You can leave the Session that you were in or close the application. However, it will be difficult for us to investigate the incident if you don’t complete additional steps.

Don’t respond to them

In most cases, negative behavior online is an attempt to gain attention. Ignore them if you able to. Move away from them if appropriate.

Submit a bug report

Include a brief description about what happened and the name of the user. A bug report includes additional information that will help us to investigate the incident. For instructions on how to submit a bug report, see Reporting a bug.

Notify a host

If there is a host present in the Session and they witnessed the person’s actions, they may already have taken steps to remove them. If not, you can report the person’s action to the host. To determine if there are any hosts in your Session, open your menu or tablet, and then select People . Hosts have the a crown next to their name, as shown in the following image:

Identification of a host on the People page

A host also has a crown displayed in their name tag:

Crown icon in a user’s name tag to identify them as a host

Document the user’s actions

You can use the ENGAGE camera to document the user’s activity. For more instructions, see Taking a picture with the ENGAGE camera. If you are familiar with any recording tools on your device, you can also use those.

Contact support

If you have any information in addition to what you supplied in the bug report, such as images or videos captured in step 5, please go to https://support.engagevr.io/ and contact support.

Personal boundaries

A host can choose to enable or disable personal boundaries in a Session. When enabled, if two users enter close proximity, their avatars become invisible to each another. Users with VR headsets and hand controllers can still shake hands with outstretched arms but will become invisible to each other if they move closer.

An avatar within handshake distance (left) and within personal boundary (right)