The Small Print

Terms & conditions

Draft terms of use

DRAFT — NOT IN FORCE · LAST TOUCHED JUL 2026

1. Who we are

[Legal review: operating entity] — the legal name and form of the operator (sole trader, company, jurisdiction of registration) go here. Until then: Splinter Scion is an independent game in development, and "we" means its maker.

2. What these terms cover

This website and — when they exist — the forum, the game client, game servers, and game accounts. Using them means accepting these terms. [Legal review: acceptance mechanism and notice requirements]

3. Eligibility

[Legal review: minimum age and parental-consent rules per jurisdiction] — no age is stated here because inventing one would be worse than admitting the decision is not made.

4. Your account

• There are no accounts yet (see Accounts & sign-in). When they exist: one person per account, keep your password to yourself, and what happens under your sign-in is yours to answer for.
• Accounts may not be sold, bought, shared, or traded. [Legal review: transfer/inheritance edge cases]

5. Conduct

The Fire Code is part of these terms. Cheating, exploiting, harassment, and real-money trading of accounts, currency, or items are grounds for suspension or removal. [Legal review: enforcement, appeal, and refund-on-termination consequences]

6. Purchases and virtual things

• Nothing is for sale today. When something is, one design law is already public: nothing sold will ever win a fight — paid content is status and support, never advantage. That is a statement of design intent, not a contractual warranty. [Legal review: how to state this without creating one]
• Virtual items and currency have no real-world value, are licensed rather than owned, and may change with the game. [Legal review: virtual-goods, refund and consumer-rights terms per jurisdiction]

7. Your content

Nothing on this site takes posts today. When posting exists (the forum, and later in-game), words and images you post stay yours; you give us the licence needed to display and operate them within the service. [Legal review: exact licence scope, moderation and takedown terms]

8. The game is in development

Everything may change: features, characters, worlds, wipes of test data. The service is provided as-is while it grows, and test access is a courtesy, not a promise of continuity. [Legal review: warranty disclaimers and liability caps — wording is jurisdiction-critical]

9. Ending things

You can stop using the service at any time. We can suspend or close accounts that break these terms. [Legal review: notice, data return/deletion, and survival clauses]

10. Changes to these terms

These terms will change before launch — this draft exists so the honest shape is public early. Material changes will be announced, not slipped in. [Legal review: change-notification requirements]

11. Governing law

[Legal review: governing law and venue — deliberately not chosen in this draft]

Privacy

Draft privacy note

DRAFT — NOT IN FORCE · LAST TOUCHED JUL 2026

What this site collects: nothing

This is the rare privacy section that is easy to write. The site you are reading makes no network calls beyond serving its own pages: no analytics, no trackers, no cookies, no fonts fetched from elsewhere, no pixels, no forms. Nothing you do here is transmitted anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to go. Everything it remembers, it remembers inside your own browser — the list is below.

What this site will collect later, as features arrive

• An email address, if you offer one — for the occasional letter, with a working unsubscribe. [Legal review: lawful basis, provider, retention]
• Account data, when accounts exist — sign-in credentials, characters, game state. [Legal review: full data inventory, retention and deletion policy]
• Whatever moderation needs — forum posts and reports, held long enough to act on them. [Legal review: retention windows]

What will stay true

• No selling of personal data. Not at launch, not later, not "anonymised".
• Collection stays minimal: if a feature doesn't need a piece of data, it isn't asked for.
• You will be able to ask what is held about you, and to have it deleted. [Legal review: GDPR/UK-GDPR and equivalent rights procedures, controller identity, supervisory authority]

What this site keeps

In your browser, and only there

The site stores two small things in your browser's local storage so the pages can remember you between visits. They never leave your machine:

• ss_visits — how many times you've opened the site. The lamps use it.
• ss_banner — the banner you marked on the Peoples page.

Clearing this site's data in your browser removes both, and costs you nothing but a marked banner. Nothing else is kept, because nothing else is asked.