Player Management Plugin

A Ranked server gets its sanctions from the match plugin, as part of each match. A community server runs no match, so it runs the 5Stack Player Management plugin instead. It enforces your panel's sanctions on the server while people play:

Sanction	On a community server
Ban	Kicked when they join, or as soon as the ban is issued, with the ban's reason
Mute	Voice chat turned off, and turned back on when the mute ends or is removed
Gag	Text chat blocked
Silence	Muted and gagged
Warning	Nothing: a warning is a note on the player's record

A player is told in chat when they are muted or gagged, with the reason and when it ends. The plugin also enforces the server's access list and reports the live roster that the server page, the community stats and the leaderboards are built from.

It ships for both runtimes, from game-server releases sw-v0.0.91 and css-v0.0.437, and it is CS2 only.

No signatures to break

Bans, mutes, gags and the roster use no byte-pattern signatures, so a CS2 update does not break them. The one exception is refusing a player at connect on a restricted SwiftlyS2 server; see Restricted Servers.

Installing it

On a game server node

Nothing to do. Both game server images carry the plugin, and 5Stack loads it on every community server it runs on a node. It gets its credentials from the container's environment, so there is no config file.

Servers created before the plugin shipped

The plugin is switched on when the server's container is built. If an older server shows the plugin as not detected, switch the server off and back on with its Enabled switch to rebuild it.

On an external server

A server you run yourself needs the plugin installed by hand. The panel walks you through it under Settings → Player Management on the server's page (administrators only, since the config contains the server's API password):

1. Download the plugin for the framework your server runs. It is published on the same game-server release as the match plugin, as PlayerManagement-sw-v*.zip for SwiftlyS2 and PlayerManagement-css-v*.zip for CounterStrikeSharp.
2. Extract the zip into the server's game/csgo folder.
3. Save the config the panel shows on the server, at:
   • SwiftlyS2: addons/swiftlys2/configs/plugins/PlayerManagement/config.jsonc
   • CounterStrikeSharp: addons/counterstrikesharp/configs/plugins/PlayerManagement/PlayerManagement.json
4. Restart the server. The plugin shows as active within a minute.

The config holds three values:

SwiftlyS2 config.jsonc

{
  "PlayerManagement": {
    "API_DOMAIN": "https://api.5stack.gg",
    "SERVER_ID": "<your-server-id>",
    "SERVER_API_PASSWORD": "<your-server-api-password>",
  },
}

CounterStrikeSharp PlayerManagement.json

{
  "Version": 1,
  "API_DOMAIN": "https://api.5stack.gg",
  "SERVER_ID": "<your-server-id>",
  "SERVER_API_PASSWORD": "<your-server-api-password>"
}

Environment variables with the same names take precedence over the file.

Update your panel first

The plugin talks to the API at /sanctions/server. Panels installed before the plugin shipped do not route that path to the API; run ./update.sh on the panel.

Checking that it works

Settings → Player Management shows Player Management plugin active with the plugin's version, runtime and last check-in, or Player Management plugin not detected. The plugin counts as detected while it has checked in within the last 3 minutes. The Players tab shows the same state as an amber icon beside refresh, and the roster falls back to RCON while the plugin is missing.

Two RCON commands help from the server side:

Command	What it does
player_management_refresh	Syncs with the panel now. Replies PlayerManagement: syncing N player(s), or names the settings that are missing
player_management_status	Prints the plugin's version and runtime, its last sync or error, the access list it holds and each player's sanctions

The panel sends player_management_refresh itself whenever you sanction a player or change the server's access list, so neither waits for the next sync.

How it syncs

The plugin syncs with the panel every 30 seconds, and about 1.5 seconds after someone joins or leaves. Each sync:

• asks for the active sanctions of everyone on the server,
• reports the roster (who is connected, their kills, and who left),
• reports whether the server is on Steam relay, and its relay address,
• doubles as the heartbeat the panel shows as the plugin's last check-in.

Sanctions are cached on the server. If the panel cannot be reached, the plugin keeps enforcing the last answer it had. A player who rejoins is not enforced on until the panel answers about them (or the request fails), so a ban lifted while they were away is not applied from the stale copy.

The plugin runs its sync on its own timer rather than the game's, so it keeps working while an empty server hibernates.

Without the plugin

Kicking still works on a community server without the plugin, over RCON, and banning a player who is on the server kicks them once. Nothing stops them rejoining, though: bans, mutes and gags are recorded but not enforced, and nothing is recorded for the stats. When a sanction is saved but not enforced live, the panel's message says why: the plugin is not installed, or is installed but not configured.