I reviewed the beacons with @Leahlemoncakes and we agreed they were placed with the sole purpose of griefing another player and that action should be taken.
(As the beacons were completely empty, containing no blocks, no prestige and even over water - they were removed and the plots returned to the player.)
Beacons that are placed to grief another player will be removed.
So that basically includes zoned beacons that for example keep water surface safe and so on
For example i built a bridge and i want to keep the river open and free of builds.
Chances are that that beacon will get reported and deleted for the same reasons. (just sayin) 
. Did understand its not just one dev that decides.
But as it comes down to it claimed zones have to be build in other wise they hava chance to be removed.
This is the key, what conditions have you taken into account to decide this? The specific reason for this case.
It is good that you do not want to make rigid rules and prefer to study case by case, I see it perfect. But saying that they caused pain to another person, without specifying the reason why this happens, tells us nothing.
It does not give us information about what you consider the developers to afflict another player and what not.
According to the OP, it seems that the rules of conduct in this case do not seem to be breached, unless we do not have all the information in the case, which is what I suppose happens, but it is something we need to know, for a matter of transparency.
Until then, to say that it causes pain to another person without specifying why, it is similar to the police stopping me because I have supposedly skipped some law, but it does not tell me what law I have skipped. Without knowing the reason, there can be no defense, and without possible defense, the resolution of the conflict still seems very arbitrary.
before the prestige of others could be absorbed without warning to anyone, so there were many trolls, until they solved it with the reservations, but when setting the option to activate-deactivate, automatically all beacons have the option of reserves, deactivated That’s why they can still absorb you, but if they absorb me and I don’t want it to happen, they talk to the developers to erase the beacon that takes less time, if no agreement has been reached previously by either party, I think the developers are doing a great job with this, in lamblis for example, it has been noticed as they have dropped in prestige, since it was not theirs and the owner claimed it, I understand that the one who put plots to absorb him, ends up losing his plots, is The most logical, to avoid all this, one tip is that you build alone, separated from everyone and do not surround anyone, play and let play and you will not have problems
Im sorry but this is messed up, the player should have been contacted and allowed to remedy the situation from their end whatever the issue is, so basically now if your plots aggravate a large enough guild and they all work together to report your beacon to bad? But when large guilds do it to a small group of players or solo players its fair game gotta love that double standard.
With the aggravating fact that real money is being paid for a subscription that should protect those plots, but you still get up one day and your beacon is gone.
So, what does this subscription service really offer if you can remove plots or beacons without a defense option?
I really do not plan to renew the subscription if this is not clarified in a transparent way.
Guys stop panicking about losing your builds.
This seems like a similar situation the one posted a few months ago about a hole in the middle of a town.
I’m not here to argue with anyone.
What I suggest is that all of us check our beacons and review if we are actually going to use them and also see if the place is still empty and we are not on the way for some one who is actually building there.
I do have lots of pre ploted areas that I’ve not visited in months and I probably won’t use anymore and thinking about it I may have a freakin hole in the middle of a lake at Maryx which I should remove asap.
This. I can only take responsibility for me. I won’t cancel my gleam club to prove a point. I can, however, do as @Cuetzpalomitl suggests and take a personal inventory of my many vacant plotted areas that I had lofty plans but never acted upon. If I see that any of these are impeding a fellow Oortian, I will gladly give up the territory to the local settlers. If I were to find that any of these had been removed by a developer (which they have not) then I would honestly understand. I might not be happy about it for a few days and I’d PM James, but I would not lose sleep over it.
I do agree that this system, the way this has happened, is not sustainable. There must be a protocol moving forward and it must be clearly outlined. I am glad we are having this conversation. There needs to be a standard operating procedure for grievances and an acceptable level of awareness for all parties.
I encourage a maturity on this subject from the developers and the community alike. I was one of the ones screaming early on that footfall and a pvp system lends to this sort of play-style and the devs actually marketed this aggressive plotting. So you can’t have it both ways, you can’t police a system and show any level of favoritism when many patrons have spent their hard-earned dollars investing into your game strategy.
Do we really need footfall? Do we need to have reporting over land? Is this truly a free plot ownership game? Which parties are actually harmed? Is financial harm or theoretical harm worse?
This dialogue we are all having here is not bad. It is good.
This conversation keeps focusing on “will empty beacons be removed without warning?”
But see @Saalt’s post of our private thread where, even when pushed repeatedly by multiple big players, I declined to remove empty beacons by absent players. Not building in a beacon isn’t a crime.
The issue here is about griefing.
The beacon was removed because it was placed to grief another player - there was no other purpose to the beacon. (I don’t doubt the OP will rebute this but it’s our job to review these claims and be as fair and as consistent as possible.)
I agree, that needs to be improved.
Do you have any evidence that this is what happened in this case?
“I’m innocent, I swear!”, isn’t that what most people in prison say?
I think we’re missing a lot of information here actually…
But we are not allowed to name and shame for good reason so I also would not find it ok if the devs now publicly tell us what the OP has done wrong to warrant this action.
I think we just need to relax, James said that he AND Leah looked at the plots and their conclusion was that they were plotted to grief. We should trust that this is indeed the case since I highly doubt the devs would do something like this when they feel it’s not violating the rules…
It is none of our business what this player may or may not have done wrong . That is between the Devs and the two parties involved . That being said I truly believe that no players beacons/assets should be removed with out prior contact . We should all have emails attached to our accounts there is no good reason why they can’t send a copy of said report ticket to each player involved BEFORE action is taken .
There is a lot of talk about ‘warnings’ or communicating before plots are removed.
If the situation has the Dev’s taking action then they have supported information. Likely information they can’t share. If they see in chat logs you saying “I will put my plots where I want, I will ruin your city and burn it to the ground! I will grief you to the day I die you (swears and racial slurs)” <- then you are griefing and your plots can be removed.
We all play a lot of games. When we have CLEARLY violated the TOS how many of those other games gingerly reach out to you for your side of the story?
none that I play. You just get chat banned/banned/30day banned and a message pops up when you log in.
If James took action it is because he saw that via their methods the person was griefing. If you are not griefing, this doesn’t affect you.
I personally don’t expect to be reached out to when I break the rules to ask ‘my side’ of why I broke the rules. I would expect the situation would be fixed.
It is clear at this point that there was supporting evidence, the devs talked to eachother about it and with the impacted party.
So far all we have from the person who had their beacons removed is: “You took my beacons no reason”
that doesn’t add up. Perhaps the person bringing this up in the public eye is upset they lost their beacons and not seeing the situation clearly. Or doesn’t remember when they said in chat their 'beacons will grief this person hahaha" and so think they shouldn’t be punished 
< Shouldn’t of got caught > and < Did nothing wrong > are very different.
Just my 2c.
I don’t agree with this policy. The fault is on the player who didn’t plot holes in his plotted area. I wrote about that some time ago here:
And my opinion is still the same, developers shouldn’t do this kind of thing, if they want something enforced it should be coded into game rules, programatically not allowing those plots to be occupied by another player would be the correct solution.
As I said I don’t care what player says in chat, it should be regulated independently of player’s inventory including plots.
The only case where I would encourage is when player is surrounded with another beacon. Though, I’m on the edge as seeing that as part of the game too.
For me owning part of land in this game is kinda sacred and no matter what you do should not result in your chosen land being removed. If player does something bannable then just ban/delete account altogether.
I forgot to plot some holes once. Someone plotted it for me to gain FF. I had to wait it out. As always.
My house on besevrona had an empty beacon plot right in the middle. Most likely a mine marker. I reported everyday for months. I waited for it to expire 6 months later.
The list goes on and on. I will be honest… I dont feel like I can get help when needed. So I just stopped asking.
First you ask me to distrust the alleged criminal who has not even had the right to defend himself, and then you ask me to trust the judge in the case when they do not even explain what they have considered as grief.
I think here’s the problem, it should be the other way around: the accusing party proving that the alleged culprit is guilty, the defendant having the right to defense and the judge telling the reason for their decisions clearly and transparently. To say that it has caused grief without explaining the reasons does not explain anything, it is not transparent. And much less if it has not been previously notified.
For me it is important, it is about my rights as a consumer. I am paying for a subscription service in this game to be sure that I will keep my beacons even if I forget about them and I have not built for a long time, if that service does not protect me from having the beacons removed without notice and without an opportunity for replication or defense, then that security that I thought I had when paying for the service is gone, it is not real, and I do not see the reason to continue paying for that service or encourage this type of business practices with my money, it is my only power as a consumer.
It is already difficult to solve the error, at least in my opinion, of not having previously notified and left a defense to one of the parties. If that had happened, I would not have cared about the reasons and would not ask to explain it as I do now. The reason for not explaining the case by the anti-bulling rules of naming, I do not think they apply because it has been the OP that has brought it to the forums, not the developers. Developers should give explanations now if they don’t want to see their credibility for the floors, at least it’s my opinion.
I want to apologize to everyone for the aggressiveness of my response above.
The person that reported darkartz’ plots is an habitual harasser of the Boundless community, and I incorrectly let it get under my skin.
Again, I apologize for my response.
-General Shogun
Since you pointed me explicit above, i got your appologize 
At Aqua embassy we have a player that have around 400 plots laid down like spaghetti.
Prevented town to grow properly early on… now the olace its just dust in the wind.
I talked about this with you @james way back, but i still think its at least at the Grey area how that spaghetti roll is made…
Im not mad… anymore… there was a time when i was cause i was more into for this game.