Terms of Service

This is placeholder text. It describes how Bastard Games works today and is not the final agreement. Anything marked [TBD by counsel] is a legal term we have not written yet. Developers also accept the Developer Distribution Agreement when they sign up.

1. Who we are

Bastard Games (bastard.io) is a web store for games made with AI. The operating entity, its address and its governing law are [TBD by counsel].

2. Your account

• You sign in through our identity provider, Clerk, and give us your email address and your date of birth.
• You must be 13 or older. If the date of birth you give says you are under 13, we refuse the account and set a cookie in that browser so it cannot simply retry with a different date.
• People aged 13 to 17 can get and play games that are not marked mature. Mature games need an account whose date of birth says 18 or older, or, for a signed-out visitor, a click confirming they are 18 or older.
• Developers must be 18 or older.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us if you think someone else is using it.

3. Buying and owning games

• Bastard Games is the merchant of record for every sale. Payments are taken by Stripe, which also calculates sales tax, VAT or GST where we are required to charge it. We never see or store your full card number.
• Prices are in US dollars and are set by the developer before tax. In the US we show the price "+ tax". In the EU, the rest of the EEA, the UK and Australia we show an estimate of the price including VAT or GST, when we can make one. The final tax is calculated at checkout from your billing details and shown before you pay.
• A purchase is a licence to download and play the game for your own use. It is not a transfer of ownership of the game or its copyright. [TBD by counsel: licence wording]
• Bought and claimed games stay in your library, and you can download them again at any time while the game is listed and your account is open.
• Refunds and withdrawal rights are on the Refunds page.
• Web games play in your browser on a separate domain, bastardbox.xyz, inside a sandbox that is cut off from your Bastard session. A game marked online may load from and connect to other sites. A game that isn't marked online can load files only from its own build: the browser stops it from fetching from, sending forms to or embedding other sites. A game that needs cross-origin isolation to run (for example one that uses threads) opens in its own browser tab on that domain instead of inside the game's page.

Reviews

• You can review a game once you have it in your library (bought or claimed) and have downloaded or played it: one review per game, thumbs up or down, with up to 2,000 characters of text. Developers can't review their own games.
• Reviews are shown without your name, under "Reviews are from people who have the game." A review is hidden while its author no longer has the game, for example after a refund, a withdrawal or a chargeback.
• You can edit or delete your own review at any time.
• Reviews follow the Content Policy. We can remove a review that breaks it; we email its author the reason, and they can't post another review of that game. To dispute a removal, see Contacts.

4. Developers, fees and remixes

• A developer pays a $10 listing fee for each new game, to the card on file. Updates to a game are free.
• Bastard Games keeps 10% of the pre-tax price of each sale. The rest goes to the developer, paid in US dollars through Stripe Connect after a 16-day hold that lets refunds and chargebacks settle first.
• To sell paid games a developer finishes Stripe payout onboarding in a supported country. Developers in the US are paid by default. Developers in other supported countries are paid once we have switched on non-US payouts and a tax form is on file. [TBD by counsel]
• A developer can mark a game remixable. Someone who sells a remix of it gives 25% of what the remix earns from each sale to the developer of the game they remixed. The Remix License has the terms.
• We keep the files of each game's live release and of the 2 newest earlier releases for each platform. Older releases' files are deleted; their records stay. Files that may be evidence (named in a notice or an enforcement action, or quarantined by a rescan) are kept. See the Privacy Policy.
• Our scan detects common game engines and libraries in your builds. For open-source ones we show their license notices on the game's notices page and warn you when a build doesn't include its notices file. These warnings never block a release.
• The Developer Distribution Agreement has the rest. [TBD by counsel: reconcile with that agreement]

5. Games made with AI

Every game says it was made with AI and how. Developers, not Bastard Games, create and are responsible for their games. We scan builds for malware and check signatures before a game goes live, but we cannot promise any game is free of defects, and we do not review games for quality.

6. Rules and moderation

The Content Policy and the Acceptable Use Policy apply to everything on Bastard Games.

• We can remove a release or a game, restrict an account or terminate it. When we do, we send the affected developer a statement of reasons that says what we did, the facts and the legal or contractual ground, and how to appeal. See the Content Policy.
• Anyone can report copyright, trademark, intimate-image and other illegal content through the forms linked in the footer. We publish the outcome of every takedown in the takedown log.
• Copyright is handled under the DMCA policy and the repeat infringer policy.

7. Where we do not operate

We do not serve some countries and regions because of US sanctions law: today Cuba, Iran and North Korea, and these regions of Ukraine: Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Luhansk. See Sanctions.

8. Ending your account

You can stop using Bastard Games at any time. On your account page you can download your data and delete your account yourself. A developer account with games, payout or tax records, or open notices is closed with us instead. We can end your access for breaking these terms or the policies they point to. How long we keep your data afterwards is in the Privacy Policy.

9. Changes to these terms

We change these terms by posting a new version here. The version number is at the top of the page. How we tell you about material changes is [TBD by counsel].

10. Legal terms

Disclaimer of warranties, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law, venue and dispute resolution are [TBD by counsel]. Nothing here limits rights you have by law that cannot be waived, such as consumer rights in the EU, UK and Australia.

11. Contact

See Contacts.