Kurva Gaming

Kurva Gaming is an online community that hosts SCP: Secret Laboratory servers and is the current maintainer for the US East official server. In 2019, the community's servers held 20% of all concurrent players for the game.

Kurva Gaming

General Information
Established	2018
Owner	CTCookiie
Registered Members	6,186 (as of December 9, 2022)
Joining Process	Participation
Website	Website
Social Media
Discord	Discord server
Patreon	Patreon

Structure

Rules

The entirety of the rules that members must follow is contained on a single Google Doc which covers Discord, SCP: Secret Laboratory, and actions that are prohibited globally. Some rules are very specific in nature, indicating a preference to explicitly prohibit repeated situations, but outside of these instances the rules fall well within norms. The escalation of staff response for most offenses is a single warning, followed by a 24 hour ban, then a 3-day ban, then a week ban, and then a permanent ban.

Governance

The community makes use of a non-linear rank structure where each service has a hierarchy of staff, with the head of each hierarchy reporting to the community's owner. The top of the hierarchy is referred to as the head of the service, and they presumably make all decisions relating to it's operation. Immediately below the head are supervisors who oversee groups of base staff members. Each service has multiple groups with the staff members in each group directly reporting to their assigned supervisor.

Staff members also have ranks in the order of trial moderator, moderator, senior moderator, administrator, then senior administrator. These ranks appear to represent levels of access to a service and do not represent authority (e.g it is possible for a senior administrator to report to a senior administrator). Because of this, it is possible for the same staff member to have a different rank for each service.

Separately from the hierarchies are 3 named positions: chief technical officer, community manager, and director of communications. These all appear to be positions that are lateral to the head of a service, and so all presumably directly report to the owner.

Also separate from the hierarchy altogether are various committees that perform specific functions. The committees are player relations, staff processing, interviewing, training, and ban appeals. The player relations committee has 5 sub-committees which are events, rules, outreach, development, and media. Each committee has a similar hierarchal structure to services, but the supervisor position is instead called a vice head. Each sub-committee has a single position (aside from general membership) called lead.

Finances

The primary method of income is Patreon, encompassing 11 tiers from $1 to $100. The total number of patrons and received income is made public, being 38 patrons donating $254 per month as of December 11, 2022. All funds are directly manipulated by the owner. How funds are used, aside from paying for hosted services, is not documented.

History

2019

On May 20, Kurva announces that the servers are offline, citing issues with PayPal and obtaining funds. The servers returned 3 days later.

On June 1, previous community owner Alby makes an announcement on the official Discord server with a server-wide ping which is an advertisement for IcedHost.

On August 3, a bot attack was launched against SCP: Secret Laboratory which interrupted a community event scheduled for the same day. A workaround was attempted by using a direct connection IP address which was unsuccessful The event would later go on due to a reprieve in the attack.

2020

On January 14, Alby makes an announcement calling attention to Wendy Williams who allegedly made fun of a physical disability that Alby has. With a server-wide ping to 2,000 people, Alby asks members to "investigate" an attached tweet and that they were "outraged by the fact that someone could do this". Alby would later clarify that they do not endorse attacking the subject.

On March 8, staff member Cherry announces with a server-wide ping that community servers are down due to insufficient funds, that a temporary server had been established, and asks members to consider pledging on Patreon. 4 hours later, Alby would clarify that the servers were actually down to to their inability to go to their bank and pull the funds necessary to pay the server bill.

On March 26, Kurva announces that their 2nd and 3rd SCP: Secret Laboratory servers were being turned off to make space for the Rust server which had accumulated 119 concurrent players.

On May 16, Cherry announces that the Patreon is raising $203 monthly and thanks the community for putting Kurva in a financially stable position.

On May 19, Kurva calls for artists to create a new logo for the community. Compensation promised was a $20 STEAM Gift Card. The result of the call, taking place on May 27, is the now current logo.

On May 28, Kurva announces the hosting of an SCP: Secret Laboratory tournament. It would later be cancelled due to a key organizer being unable to attend.

On June 6, Alby announces that there was a situation where there were numerous "bans, mutes, and general fuckery" on June 4 and apologizes for the behavior. They state that all future major events in the community will be ran and monitored by them.

On July 19, Kurva announces that a staff member's account had been hacked and to not join server invite links they may send.

On August 24, Kurva announces the termination of a high profile staff member due to their failure to maintain confidentiality and the abuse of elevated privileges. The same individual would later make a ping in the official announcements on September 18, and make a server-wide ping on October 16.

2021-Present

On October 13, CTCookiie makes an announcement that Alby has stepped down as the owner and that they are taking over the position.

On September 27, 2022, Kurva announces that a rouge staff member performed a myriad of unjustified bans and that the issue was resolved.