Terms

Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of Play by Mail ("the Service"), accessible at playbymail.games. The Service is operated by Alien Spaces (ABN 13 996 366 428); see the Imprint for operator details.

By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any game-specific rules you opt into.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to use the Service. The Service is intended for adults playing story-driven games. If you are under 16 you may not create an account.

3. Your account

  • Authentication is passwordless: you provide an email address and sign in via a short-lived verification link. Your email address is your account identifier. Keep access to it secure.
  • You are responsible for all activity carried out under your account.
  • You may only hold one active account per person, unless explicitly authorised by us.
  • You may close your account at any time from your account settings. Closing your account triggers the data-erasure flow described in the Privacy Policy.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • use the Service to harass, threaten, defame, or abuse any other user;
  • submit content that is illegal, infringes third-party rights, or is plainly designed to shock or distress;
  • attempt to circumvent authentication, rate-limits, game integrity controls, or other security measures;
  • scrape, bulk-export, or resell data beyond the scope of your own account's data-export functionality;
  • use the Service to operate an automated agent against another user's account or game;
  • impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation with any organisation.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these rules. Where that affects content you submitted, a Statement of Reasons (DSA Art. 17, where applicable) will be provided by email.

5. Game content and roles

The Service operates several game types (adventure, mecha, and others as they ship). Depending on your subscription you may act as a player, manager, or designer. Each role carries the obligations described in the game-specific rules, which are linked from your game dashboard.

Players

You submit turn sheets and in-game actions. Your turn sheet content and character choices are the data you contribute to a shared game state with co-players. Once submitted, we may not be able to withdraw individual orders from a turn without affecting other players' resolved outcomes.

Managers

You administer one or more game instances on behalf of their owners. You may access player-identifiable data strictly to operate the game. All such access is audited. You agree to handle that data confidentially and in accordance with the Privacy Policy.

Designers

You author games, scenarios, and rulesets. This section sets out your rights over that work in full.

You own your content. All writing, artwork, game rules, scenarios, locations, creatures, items, and any other creative content you submit to the Service remains your copyright and intellectual property at all times. No assignment of rights to us occurs. We make no claim to ownership of your creative work.

Limited licence to operate the Service. By submitting content to the Service you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence, limited strictly to what is necessary to store, process, and deliver your game to the subscribers who have joined that game. This licence does not extend to any other use.

Promotional use requires your explicit consent. We will only feature your game in promotional materials — including marketing, advertising, social media, screenshots, or newsletters — if you have given us explicit, per-game consent through the platform. That consent is entirely optional and you may withdraw it at any time from your game settings. We will not use your game for promotional purposes if you have not given consent.

No AI training or data mining. Your content will not be used to train AI or machine-learning models, to perform data mining, or to create derivative works outside the scope of the limited operational licence above.

Removal. If you delete your game from the platform, our operational licence to use that content terminates immediately, subject only to the minimum wind-down time needed to vacate active game instances. After that period we will not retain or use your content.

Beta-period data disclaimer. The Service is currently in a public beta phase. While we take every reasonable care to preserve your content across system upgrades and database migrations — including maintaining regular backups — we cannot provide an absolute guarantee against data loss during this development period. We strongly recommend you retain your own copies of original creative content. Once the beta phase concludes, these Terms will be updated to include formal data-retention and backup commitments.

6. Leaving a game

You may leave any game you are subscribed to at any time using the "leave this game" action on that game's page. What happens to the empty seat depends on the game type:

  • Solo or narrative games may end the instance on vacancy.
  • Multi-player persistent games may advertise the vacant seat for replacement or fold the instance if the game is sufficiently far along.

The applicable behaviour for each game type is published in that game type's Rules page. Leaving a game is not the same as deleting your account; see the Privacy Policy for the erasure flow.

7. Subscriptions, payment, and refunds

At the time of publication of these Terms, paid subscriptions are not yet offered. When they are introduced, the pricing, billing cycles, and the list of included features will be displayed at signup and in your account settings, and payment will be handled by a third-party payment processor disclosed in the Sub-processors document.

The following consumer-protection terms apply regardless of jurisdiction, and each applies to the buyer group it names:

Australian buyers — Australian Consumer Law

Our goods and services come with statutory guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)) that cannot be excluded. These include guarantees that services will be provided with due care and skill, will be fit for their stated purpose, and will be provided within a reasonable time. Where we fail to meet a statutory guarantee, you are entitled to a remedy under the Act — generally, a refund, credit, or having the service re-performed, depending on the nature and severity of the failure. Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law.

EU and UK buyers — consumer-withdrawal right

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, European Economic Area, or the United Kingdom, you have a 14-day right of withdrawal after purchase under the Consumer Rights Directive (EU) and the Consumer Contracts Regulations (UK). Certain carve-outs in consumer law may limit the withdrawal right for digital services whose performance has already begun with your express prior consent — we will state clearly at checkout when that applies. We will honour any statutory withdrawal right that applies to your transaction, and you do not waive any mandatory consumer-law protection that applies in your country of residence (Rome I Art. 6).

Discretionary refunds

Refund requests outside any statutory right above are considered on a case-by-case basis. Contact support@playbymail.games.

8. Availability

The Service is provided on a best-effort basis. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability. Planned maintenance is announced in advance when feasible.

9. Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law we exclude liability for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for statutory consumer guarantees that cannot be excluded (including those under the Australian Consumer Law), or for any other liability that cannot be excluded under the law applicable to your transaction.

10. Modifications

We may update these Terms. Material changes trigger a re-consent flow on your next login; the Privacy Policy describes how consent is recorded. Historical versions remain available at their document IDs through the document store.

11. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Victoria, Australia, and you and Alien Spaces submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Victoria.

This governing-law clause does not deprive a consumer of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which they are habitually resident (for EU consumers, under Rome I Regulation Article 6; for UK consumers, under the retained Rome I rules; for consumers in other jurisdictions, under local equivalents). In short: you always keep your home-country consumer rights.

12. Contact

  • General support: support@playbymail.games
  • Legal / privacy: privacy@playbymail.games
  • DSA notice-and-action reports: submit to privacy@playbymail.games. We respond to notices directly; as a small-scale operator, a formal Single Point of Contact under DSA Art. 11 is not maintained separately.