OpenGame
Terms
We host your game. You keep it. Either of us can end that.
The short version
- Your game stays yours. Uploading it gives us permission to host it, nothing more.
- You can take it down whenever you like.
- We can take it down too, if it breaks the rules or puts players at risk.
- There are rules about what you may upload. They are short and they are real.
- You must be 18 or over.
1. Who this is between
These terms are between you and Vesper Tech, Inc., a Delaware corporation doing business as OpenGame (“OpenGame”, “we”). Using the site means you accept them. If you do not, do not use it.
2. What OpenGame does
We run a game jam and a place to play what comes out of it. Creators upload browser games; we check them, review them, and serve them to players from an isolated domain. We are the host and the venue. We are not the author of anything you play here, and we do not commission, buy or own the games on the site.
3. Your account
- One account per person. Extra accounts to get around a limit are grounds for removal.
- Give us a real email address; it is how we reach you about your own entry.
- You are responsible for what happens under your account.
- Handles are first come, first served, with some held back for routes and brands. We may reclaim a handle that impersonates someone or squats a name, and we will tell you if we do.
- A handle you release is never reissued to anyone else, so old links do not end up pointing at a stranger.
4. Your game is yours
What we need is permission to actually run the thing. By uploading, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to:
- Store your files, and serve them to players.
- Run your game in our validation sandbox and capture screenshots, a short clip and performance measurements from it.
- Show your game's title, description, art, screenshots and clip in the gallery, on share cards, and when we talk about the jam.
- Make purely technical copies, meaning caching, compression, format conversion and backups, because that is what serving files means.
That licence lasts while your game is on OpenGame, and it does not let us modify your game, sell it, or license it on to anyone else. Promotional material we already published, such as a jam recap, a results post or an already-sent email, may keep the screenshot and title in it after you leave; we are not going to unpublish history.
5. Taking your game down
You can withdraw a game at any time, for any reason, from your own page. When you do, we stop serving it and instruct browsers to drop what they cached of it. Two honest caveats:
- Someone who is mid-play keeps playing until they close the tab. We cannot reach into a running page.
- If you entered a jam and it has been judged, the record that you entered and how you placed stays. The game comes down; the result is history.
6. What you may not upload
By submitting a game you confirm it does not:
- Use anything you do not own or have a licence to: art, audio, code, fonts, models, trade marks.
- Contain malware, miners, or anything that attacks the player's machine, our infrastructure, or another game.
- Try to escape the sandbox, break out of its frame, or reach any origin except the OpenGame ones named in the rules.
- Collect personal information from players, or ask them for passwords or payment details.
- Contain sexual content, content sexualising minors, gratuitous real-world gore, or material promoting hatred or violence against a group.
- Harass, dox or impersonate anyone, including us.
- Mislead people about what it is. A game that presents itself as a login page, a browser dialog, or a payment screen is out.
- Break the law where you are or where we are.
The same applies to anything else you put on the site: your profile, your descriptions, your artwork, and anything you send to another user.
7. We review, and we can unpublish
Every game is reviewed by a person before it goes live, and being published is not permanent. We may unpublish a game, suspend an account, or refuse a submission when we believe it breaks these terms, endangers players, exposes us to a legal claim, or is the subject of a credible complaint. Where a game is actively harmful we will act first and explain afterwards.
Every one of those decisions is logged with who made it and why. If you think we got it wrong, reply to the email we send and a person will look again. We do not promise an outcome; we do promise you get a human.
Being reviewed is not an endorsement, and it is not a guarantee that a game is safe, original, or lawful. It is a person playing it and applying judgement.
8. Copyright complaints
If something on OpenGame infringes your copyright, tell us and we will act. Send to [LEGAL: registered DMCA agent name and address], or team@opengame.io in the meantime, including:
- Your signature, physical or electronic.
- What work you say was infringed.
- The link to the game or page you want removed.
- How we can reach you.
- A statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised.
- A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.
We remove infringing material, tell the creator what was removed and who asked, and pass on any counter-notice they send. Accounts that repeatedly infringe are removed. Filing a false notice has consequences for the person filing it.
For anything that is not copyright, such as a trade mark, a privacy complaint, illegal content or a game impersonating someone, write to the same address and describe it.
9. Playing games here
Games are made by other people. We check them and we sandbox them, but we did not write them and we do not vouch for them. Play them the way you would treat any program written by a stranger: do not type a password into one, and do not give one personal information.
Multiplayer games connect you to other players directly, which discloses your IP address to them. That is explained in the privacy policy, and it is worth reading before you join a lobby with strangers.
Scores inside a game are reported by that game, running on someone else's computer. They are a social feature and they are forgeable. They never decide anything that matters.
10. The jam
If you enter, the jam rules apply and form part of these terms. The version of the rules on screen when you submitted is recorded with your entry. Judges' decisions are final. Cash prizes are paid by OpenGame, and sponsor prizes are provided and delivered by the sponsors offering them. Who can enter, the countries and sanctions lists the jam is closed to, and how prizes are taxed and paid are all set out in the official rules.
11. Keep your own copy
We back things up, but OpenGame is not a backup service and you should not treat it as one. Keep your source. Keep your build. If we lose a file, that is on us; if it is the only copy in existence, that is a bad position for both of us.
12. Feedback
If you send us an idea for the platform, we can use it without owing you anything. This does not apply to your game, which is covered by section 4.
13. No warranty
OpenGame is provided as is. We do not promise the site will be uninterrupted, that a validation check will be right every time, or that a game will run on your particular machine. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
14. Liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, lost data, or anything a third-party game does to you. [LEGAL: liability cap and carve-outs. A free service with no payments has an unusual shape here]
Nothing in these terms limits liability for death, personal injury caused by negligence, or fraud, and nothing limits rights you have as a consumer that cannot be limited.
15. If something you upload causes a claim
You agree to cover us for claims that arise from what you uploaded, someone asserting you used their art, for instance. [LEGAL: indemnity scope and whether it survives account deletion]
16. Age
You must be 18 or over to hold an account or enter the jam, and have reached the age of majority where you live if that is older.
17. Ending it
You can delete your account at any time. See the privacy policy for what happens to your data. We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Sections 4 (for material already published), 8, 13, 14, 15 and 19 survive.
18. Changes
We will update these terms as the product changes and post the date below. If a change materially affects creators, we will say so rather than editing without telling you. Your entry is stamped with the version you agreed to, so a later edit does not retroactively change the deal you entered under.
19. Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute about them or about OpenGame will be decided only by the state or federal courts located in Delaware, and you and we agree to their jurisdiction. To the extent the law allows, claims are brought individually and not as part of a class or collective action. None of this takes away a protection the law where you live gives you and does not let you give up.