The deal, in plain words.

1. Who we are, and agreeing to this

Shared Species is run by SharedSpecies, a business based in Ohio, United States (called "we" or "us" here), at sharedspecies.com and play.sharedspecies.com. By creating an account, buying a species, or using the site, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the site.

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms for you and must approve any purchase.

2. What you buy

A purchase creates one species in a shared, simulated world. You choose its name and its look, and you release it into a valley. From then on the simulation runs it: it eats, breeds, changes, spreads, and it can die out. Buying several at once makes a house: related species with one name and one look, each living its own life.

You are buying the creation of that species and a page that follows it. You are not buying land, a share of the site, an investment, or a promise that the species survives. Nothing here has cash value and nothing can be traded or sold back to us.

There are one million places in the world and no more. Once a place is taken it stays taken while the species and its descendants live there.

3. Prices and payment

The price is shown on the buy page before you pay. Right now the first species in an order costs $2 and each additional species in the same order costs $1, in US dollars. Prices can change; a change never affects a purchase you already made.

Payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. Stripe's own terms and privacy policy apply to the payment itself.

All sales are final. A species is created and released the moment you finish, so there is nothing to return. If you ask us for a refund and we grant it, or if you dispute the charge with your bank, we may remove the species, and its whole line of descendants, from the world and sell its place again, and the account may lose the ability to buy again.

Your consent at checkout. When you click Pay, you expressly ask us to create and release the species right away, before any cancellation period would end, and you acknowledge that you lose any right to withdraw from or cancel the purchase once the species is created. The buy page says this above the Pay button; the receipt Stripe emails you after paying is your record of it, so give the checkout an address you keep.

4. Your account

An account is a username and a password. We do not ask for an email address today, so we cannot reset a lost password. Write it down. If you sign in with a third-party account later (for example Google), that provider's terms also apply to the sign-in.

One person, one account. Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us if you think someone else is using it.

5. Names, looks, and what you post

You choose the names of your species and houses. Names must not be hateful, sexual, harassing, deceptive, or someone else's trademark or personal name used to impersonate them. We filter obvious slurs and we can rename or remove anything that breaks this rule, without a refund.

You keep whatever rights you have in a name you make up. You give us a worldwide, royalty-free license to show it, along with the species, on the map, on its page, in the feed, in share images, and in material about the game. Everything a player sees in the world is public.

6. Fair play

Do not use bots, scripts, or automation against the site. Do not test stolen cards. Do not try to break, overload, or reverse the service, or read data you are not shown. Do not harass other players. We can suspend or close an account that does any of this, and remove its species, without a refund.

7. The world can change

This is a living simulation and an early product. We tune the rules, the balance, the look, and the pacing. We fix bugs, some of which change outcomes. We may take the site down for maintenance or moves.

Resets. During the alpha, before we take real payments, we reset the world once and say so on the site first: species made in the alpha are not carried over and were not paid for. After that we do not reset a world you paid into. If we ever have to rebuild it, for example after data loss, we recreate every paid species from our records, with its name and look, in a new place.

We do not promise that the site, the world, or any species runs for any particular length of time. If we ever close the game, we will give notice on the site, but no purchase is refunded because the game ended.

8. No warranty, limited liability

The site is provided as is, with no warranty of any kind, to the extent the law allows. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, or for lost data or lost species. Our total liability to you for anything related to the site is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the matter arose. Some places do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you.

9. Ending things

You can stop using the site at any time and can ask us to delete your account (see the Privacy Policy). We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Sections 2, 3, 5, 8, and 10 survive the end of an account.

10. Law, changes, and contact

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Ohio and of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Disputes go to the state or federal courts in Ohio, unless your local law gives you the right to something else.

We may update these terms. The date and version at the top change when we do, and material changes are announced on the site. Using the site after a change means you accept it.

Questions: support@sharedspecies.com.