Rule Changes to Address Misleading Trades +Spam Guide Update

[Simon]

>>>Q&A Regarding Recent Rule Changes<<<


Key Points:

Clarity over Terms: The terms "MA," "Non," and "Old Rare" are not outright banned from your vocabulary, but they are no longer allowed to be used as official units in trading guides. Guides must now use unique names for their values to prevent scammers from using vague language to trick people. When referencing a trade guide, users should use the unique terms from that guide.

Personal Values are Safe: You are still allowed to value your pets how you like. You will not be punished for disagreeing with a guide, provided you aren't pretending to follow a guide while intentionally inflating its numbers to deceive someone.

Protection for Inexperienced Traders: We are taking a firmer stance on "Ninja Trading." Targeting inexperienced players, particularly around our rereleases, by trading low-value pets for pets that will likely grow into high-value outcomes without transparency is now a punishable offense.

Transition Period: No rules will be enforced regarding these terminology changes until April 8th, 2026. This gives guide owners and traders a full month to adjust.

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We have a few rule updates to announce today.

Trading drives the Chicken Smoothie community, but it can also be a point of contention among players. We have been reviewing ongoing concerns about “ninja trading,” misleading value language, and confusion around user‑made value guides. As part of this review, the trading rules around guide terminology and value units are being updated to improve clarity and fairness for all players.

A quick review of some terms:

• Scamming is when someone deliberately provides false or misleading information about what they are offering. For example, if someone claims a pet will grow into a specific rarity when that cannot be known or verified, or uses guide terms or value systems without clearly stating that they reflect a personal system. This is against the rules and is reportable.
  
• Ninja trading is when someone offers pets of a lower rarity, usually in bulk, in exchange for a pet that is likely to grow into a higher rarity outcome, without pointing out that difference and relying on the trading partner’s lack of knowledge.

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What is changing?

To reduce confusion and prevent players from unintentionally or intentionally playing off vague, widely used units, value guides will no longer be allowed to use “MA”, “Non”, and "Old Rare" (or very close variants) as their primary units of measurement. These terms have become too broadly adopted and are interpreted differently by different users, which makes it difficult to tell when values are being presented accurately versus misleadingly.
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Instead, each guide will be required to use unique units of measurement that are clearly defined within that guide only. This is intended to preserve player freedom to create and use guides, while making it easier to understand when someone is referencing a specific guide’s values versus their own personal system.

Additionally, in an effort to protect inexperienced users, we will be looking out for players who seem to be targeting inexperienced members to exploit their lack of knowledge. Anyone found trying to take advantage of them, particularly around our rereleases, may be subject to punishment.

New Rules:

Added to the "Do not scam or take advantage of other players" section:

• Anyone found trying to take advantage of inexperienced players to exploit their lack of knowledge, particularly around our rereleases, may be subject to punishment.

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Guide Terminology and Value Units

Effective after a short transition period, the following will apply to all user‑made value guides and to trade communications that reference them:
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• Guides may not use “MA”, “Non”, and "Old Rare" (or substantially similar abbreviations) as their base units of value.
  
• Each guide must define its own unique units of measurement and explain how those units work within the guide.
  
• Generic units that have become site‑wide slang (such as “MA”, “Non”, and "Old Rare" ) may not be presented as neutral or universal standards in new or updated guides.

For existing guides that currently use “MA”, “Non”, and "Old Rare":

• Guide owners will be asked to rename those units to something unique to their guide.
  
• The guide should clearly explain the new units and, if necessary, how they correspond to prior terminology so readers can adjust smoothly.

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Expectations in Trades:

To support honest and transparent trading, the following expectations will apply whenever guide terminology is used in trades (including pet names, trade messages, and trade rule sections):

• When a player uses a guide’s unique units in a trade, it is generally expected that they are following that guide’s values.
  
• Using a guide’s units while significantly deviating from that guide’s values, may be treated as misleading or deceptive trade behavior under the site’s trading rules.

Players are still free to:

• Create their own guides with their own units.
  
• Disagree with any existing guide and value pets differently. However, the key requirement is that terminology must be clear and not used to create confusion or imply adherence to a guide that is not actually being followed.
  
• Use “MA”, “Non”, and "Old Rare" or similar as part of a personal value system, as long as it is not being attributed to a value guide.

Transition period

To make this change as smooth as possible existing guide owners who currently use “MA”, “Non”, and "Old Rare" will be given a transition period to rename their units and update their explanations.

After the transition period, the new expectations will be enforced as part of the standard trading rules. Users / guide owners with questions about how to update guides or how to correctly reference values in trades are encouraged reach out for clarification!


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The Spam Guide has been updated to more accurately reflect what we consider spamming and clarify some confusion points users have had with it. Please read it over again in full but here are some highlighted tweaks:

• "Contests and giveaways that encourage spam - This includes topics that offer adopts/prizes to users who make the most posts, reach a certain number of posts, post many times, or otherwise spam the topic. Users are limited to one entry post every 24 hours. In guessing games that offer prizes you may post again after new clues have been posted."
  
  
• "Posting multiple times in a row in discussion threads - If no one has posted after you and you have something to add, please edit your earlier post rather than double-posting."
  
  
• "Gravedigging personal topics (ex. art shops, auctions, RPs, etc) - Posting on personalized threads that are not your own and have been inactive for a long period of time to bump them up. We do allow the bumping up of generalized topics (ex. fanclubs, discussion topics). Please ask staff if you are unsure if a topic should be bumped up or not."

[Pallastronomy]

I will preface this by saying the harsher enforcements against ninja trading and updates to the spam guide are very much needed, and as much as I’m unhappy with the idea on a personal level, I can see the point behind changing MA and Non. However, I don’t think a term as extremely nonspecific as ‘Old rare’ is something that should be cracked down on, especially since the announcement specifies you’re including similar variants. What else is there to describe older rare pets other than a term that’s even more confusing?

[nickjr]

The day has come!!

I haven't been an active trader for a long time, so I have nothing constructive to say other than agreeing with Pallastronomy that "old rare" is likely too unspecific to really crack down on--unfortunately, it's just ordinary English and can thus be used as just ordinary English. If people have actually been using that to mean rares in a certain range of years (and that's definitely the sense I'm getting, from the way this announcement is grouping them as one of the commonly used "units" that people have been using), then I can certainly see why the decision was made since I imagine people were probably using it in sentences like "it's worth 9 old rares", but in practice I'm not sure how easy it will be to enforce this. Is the ban specifically just on it being used as a guide unit? In that case, it's probably easily enforceable enough

edited a bazillion times because I keep thinking "okay that's all--WAIT NO I HAVE MORE" lol last edited 5 minutes after posting, before anyone posted after me

[Simon]

The fact that is unspecific is actually the problem we are trying to address with this.

We are specifically referring to "old rare" being used on a trading guide as a value of measure, which many people have found confusing because some pets can be considered worth an "old rare" on some trading guides when they are not necessarily old or have the rare rarity label. We aren't banning the use of the term old rare for describing old rare pets in general, but we would like trading guides to use unique language so it is very clear when people are referencing a particular guide in their trades. It wouldn't be fair to only allow one guide to retain the use of "old rare" as a unit of measure, so that's why we are banning it along with MA and Non as a trade guide unit/descriptor. Hopefully that makes sense.

[nickjr]

Nice, that sounds practical to me. Thanks for the clarification!

[Pallastronomy]

The fact that is unspecific is actually the problem we are trying to address with this.

We are specifically referring to "old rare" being used on a trading guide as a value of measure, which many people have found confusing because some pets can be considered worth an "old rare" on some trading guides when they are not necessarily old or have the rare rarity label. We aren't banning the use of the term old rare for describing old rare pets in general, but we would like trading guides to use unique language so it is very clear when people are referencing a particular guide in their trades. It wouldn't be fair to only allow one guide to retain the use of "old rare" as a unit of measure, so that's why we are banning it along with MA and Non as a trade guide unit/descriptor. Hopefully that makes sense.

Ah, that does make a lot more sense! Thank you!

[Xiao_Jian]

A fantastic set of changes, thank you! I am very excited to see things like MA/NON finally head in the same direction as the old Rare's List. 10/10!

[ellebee]

I was a little unsure of this upon my first read, but honestly, I quite like this! They're such random terms made based off super old CS Lore, and even explaining why those terms exist already confuse new users. I'm glad there's going to be some rules in place to make it easier for users of all levels of experience. Fingers crossed that this change causes some improvement in the trading scene!

[Pawesome]

thank you thank you thank you thank you 🙏

[TANKMEN]

i'm sorry, but i really don't understand this. the reason that players scam other players is because pets have agreed on values by the community - this dog is worth 10 MA, etc. so they target newbies and unknowing players to get it for their gain. however, if a new player is able to get access to this same value system everyone is using early, they can avoid scams - you can see this clearly with the Trade Value Script, which has helped many many new players avoid ninja scams and players misleading them on values.

by obscuring this further and forcing every guide to use its own value system, you are making this even more confusing for new players. if they ask how much a pet is worth, theyre going to be given multiple different valueing systems, which may not match what the scammer is telling them. the scammer could then just say "no no, my value is the same as their value! trust me!" with no way to corroborate that.

i greatly support CS's efforts to prevent ninja trading and scamming, but i don't think this is it. rather than making this obvious scamming (esp on dec 18th) outright bannnable, or introducing local valueing systems on the site itself, you are making it more difficult for players to agree on trades and understand the value of pets. MA/Non didnt come from nothing, and you guys know that, it has existed as long as the site has. if the admins are insistent on killing MA/Non, then you NEED to introduce an in-house way to value pets above the OMGSR line, because currently there is not one. if you introduced this, or gave us explicit numbers for pets - something the admins have refused to do for over a decade (understandably!) - we would have no need for these systems.

please stop putting the burden of cataloging the games 15,000+ pets on the players and punishing them when that value system isnt to the admin's preference. at this point it really isn't fair, and its just frustrating. i dont know, maybe ill feel different about this in some months, but right now this announcement is just upsetting, especially without asking the playerbase if we even want this.