Terms of service

1. Who can play

You must be at least 13 years old. If you are under 18, you need a parent or guardian’s permission to play and to buy anything, and they agree to these terms for you.

2. Your account

• You can play as a guest. A guest’s progress belongs to that browser: if you clear its data or lose the device before you sign in, the progress can’t be recovered.
• Signing in with Google keeps your progress with your account. Keep that sign-in secure; you are responsible for what happens on your account.
• One person per account. Don’t sell, share or transfer accounts.

3. Crowns and other virtual items

• Crowns (♛) are bought with real money. You can spend them on hearts, chat borders, rename cards and the membership pass. Hearts, shards, credits and the other in-game currencies are earned by playing; you can also exchange crowns for hearts.
• Recruiting with hearts gives random results. The chance of each rarity is shown on the recruit screen before you recruit.
• The membership pass lasts 30 days from purchase and does not renew on its own. Buying it again adds another 30 days.
• Crowns and every other virtual item are a personal, limited licence to use inside Zugkai. They have no cash value, can’t be exchanged for money, and can’t be sold, traded or transferred to another account.
• We may rebalance the game, and change what things cost or do, for items you haven’t bought yet. We won’t take away crowns you have bought and haven’t spent, except as described in parts 5 and 7.

4. Payments

Our payment provider, Stripe, handles payments. Prices are set in US dollars, and the checkout may show and charge the amount in your own currency. Any tax due is shown at checkout. For some countries, the checkout may say that the sale is made by Stripe or one of its affiliates as a reseller; in that case its terms of sale apply too. Crowns are added to your account as soon as the payment clears.

5. Refunds

Our services come with guarantees that can’t be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these terms takes away your rights under that law or under other consumer laws that apply to you.

• If you were charged and the crowns didn’t arrive, or you were charged twice, write to us and we’ll add the crowns or refund you.
• If you change your mind, ask within 14 days of the purchase. If none of the crowns from that purchase have been spent, we’ll refund it in full.
• Otherwise, crowns that have been spent are not refundable, except where the law says they must be.
• If a payment is reversed or charged back, we may remove the crowns it bought, or items bought with them.

To ask for a refund, email support@zugkai.com from the address you sign in with, and include the date and amount of the purchase.

6. Chat and conduct

Chat, display names, profile cards and status lines are public. Don’t use them to:

• harass, threaten or bully anyone, or post hateful or sexual content;
• share anyone’s personal information, including your own;
• spam, advertise, or post scams or links to harmful sites;
• pretend to be someone else, including us.

And don’t cheat: no bots, scripts, chess engines in puzzles, exploiting bugs, or interfering with the service or other players. You keep ownership of what you write, and you let us show it in the game.

7. What we can do about it

If you break these terms, we may delete messages, reset a display name, undo progress or rewards gained by cheating or exploiting a bug, mute you in chat, or suspend or close your account. For serious or repeated breaches we may close an account without a refund, where the law allows.

8. Our content

The game, its art, characters, story, music and code belong to us or the people who license them to us. You may play and share screenshots and clips of your own play. Please don’t copy, sell or reuse the game’s content outside it without asking.

9. The service

• We work to keep Zugkai running, but it may sometimes be down, slow, or lose recent progress because of a bug. We will fix what we can.
• Zugkai is a game with a focus timer in it. It is not medical, health or productivity advice.
• If we ever shut Zugkai down, we will give at least 30 days’ notice in the game and stop selling crowns when we announce it.

10. Liability

To the extent the law allows, we provide Zugkai “as is”, and we are not liable for indirect losses, lost profits or lost data. Where our liability can be limited but not excluded, it is limited to re-supplying the service or refunding what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. None of this limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law or other consumer laws that can’t be excluded.

11. Ending this agreement

You can stop playing at any time and ask us to delete your account (see the privacy policy). Parts 3, 8 and 10 continue after the agreement ends.

12. Changes and law

We may update these terms. We’ll change the date at the top, and for important changes we’ll tell you in the game before they take effect. If you keep playing after that, the new terms apply. These terms are governed by the laws of Australia, but you keep any protection given to you by the consumer laws of the country where you live.