About these terms
Hearthsea is an online board game at hearthsea.com, run by a small independent team based in Amman, Jordan (“Hearthsea”, “we”, “us”). By creating an account or playing, you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Hearthsea.
Our privacy policy explains what we do with your data, and it’s part of this agreement. Nothing in these terms takes away rights that consumer law in your country gives you and that can’t be signed away.
Your account
- You must be at least 13 to make an account. If you’re under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms for you.
- An account is for one person. Don’t share it, sell it or let someone else play on it.
- Give us a real email address that you can receive mail at, and keep it up to date. We use it for password resets and important notices.
- Keep your password to yourself. You’re responsible for what happens on your account, so if you think someone else has got in, change your password and email us.
- Your username is shown to other players. Don’t pick one that impersonates someone, or that is offensive or hateful; we may change or remove it if you do.
Free play and paid plans
A free account lets you play Classic against computer rivals on the free maps, play pass-and-play on one device, and earn every trophy and level, with no time limit. The paid options are listed on the pricing page:
- Hearthsea Pass costs $5 a month or $50 a year. It adds online play with friends and matchmaking, all the Classic maps and settings, every standard character, and stats synced to your account.
- Seafarers is an add-on of $5 a month on top of the Pass, and needs an active Pass. It unlocks the Seafarers maps.
- Premium skins and characters are one-time purchases of $1–4 each. They’re cosmetic, never change how the game plays, and you keep them whether or not you have the Pass.
Prices are in US dollars and include any tax we’re required to charge, unless the checkout says otherwise. Your bank may add its own currency conversion fees. Payments are processed by Stripe, and you also agree to the terms Stripe shows at checkout. If we change a subscription price, we’ll tell you at least 30 days before it applies to your next renewal, so you can cancel first.
The free trial
New subscribers can try Hearthsea Pass free for 7 days, once per account. You need to add a card to start the trial. If you don’t cancel before the 7 days are up, the trial turns into a paid Pass and your card is charged for the plan you chose, which then renews as described below. If you cancel during the trial, you won’t be charged, and the Pass features stop when the trial ends.
Renewal and cancelling
Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each month or year, and your card is charged the current price for the next period until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your account in the game. Cancelling stops the next renewal; you keep access until the end of the period you’ve already paid for, and then your account goes back to free. Your trophies, levels, stats and any skins you bought stay with you.
If a renewal payment fails, Stripe may retry it. If it still fails, the paid features stop until the payment goes through.
Refunds
If something you bought isn’t what you expected, email hello@hearthsea.com within 14 days of the charge. We’ll refund a purchase you haven’t really used, such as a renewal you forgot to cancel and haven’t played on since, or a skin you haven’t equipped. We also refund in full when we charged you by mistake, or when a paid feature didn’t work and we couldn’t fix it.
Outside those cases, payments for a period that has started aren’t refunded, but cancelling always stops the next charge. Any refund that the law where you live requires, we’ll honour. Refunds go back to the card you paid with.
Please write to us before disputing a charge with your bank; it’s usually faster. Disputing a charge you authorised may lead us to pause the account while it’s resolved.
Virtual items
Skins, characters, trophies, levels and anything else in the game are a licence for you to use them in Hearthsea, not property you own. They have no cash value, can’t be exchanged for money, and can’t be sold or transferred to another account. If we ever have to retire an item you paid for, we’ll offer a replacement of equal value or a refund.
Playing fair
Online games only work if everyone at the table is playing them straight. When you use Hearthsea, don’t:
- use bots, scripts, modified clients or any other tool that plays for you or gives you information the game doesn’t show you;
- arrange games with other players to farm wins, levels or trophies;
- exploit a bug to get an advantage, items or progress. If you find one, tell us instead;
- harass, threaten or abuse other players, including with emotes, usernames or by deliberately stalling a game;
- try to break into accounts, the server or the database, overload the service, or get around rate limits, bans or paid features;
- use Hearthsea for anything illegal.
Suspension and bans
If you break these terms, we may warn you, remove items or progress gained unfairly, or suspend or ban your account. We decide based on what happened and how serious it was, and we’ll usually tell you why. Serious cases, such as cheating in online games, threats or attacks on the service, can lead to an immediate ban.
If we ban you for breaking these terms, we don’t refund what you’ve paid, unless the law requires it. If you think we got it wrong, email us and a person will look at it again. You can stop using Hearthsea and ask us to delete your account at any time.
Who owns what
The Hearthsea game, its code, art, music, sound, text and name belong to Hearthsea. We give you a personal, non-exclusive licence to play it for your own enjoyment. You may not copy, sell, resell access to, or reverse engineer the game, except where the law allows it regardless of what we say here.
Hearthsea is an original game and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Catan GmbH. CATAN is a trademark of Catan GmbH.
Availability and warranty
We work to keep Hearthsea running and your progress safe, but we can’t promise the game will always be available, free of bugs, or that no data will ever be lost. We may need to take it down for maintenance, and we may change, add or remove features, maps or modes over time. If we remove something central to a paid plan, we’ll tell you and offer a pro-rated refund for the time you’ve paid for and can’t use.
Apart from that, and from any guarantee the law gives you that can’t be excluded, Hearthsea is provided “as is”, without other warranties.
If we ever shut Hearthsea down for good, we’ll give at least 30 days’ notice and refund the unused part of any subscription.
Limitation of liability
Hearthsea is a game, and our liability is limited accordingly. We aren’t liable for indirect or consequential losses, such as lost profits, or for losses we couldn’t reasonably have foreseen. Our total liability to you for any claim about Hearthsea is limited to the greater of what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or US$50.
None of this limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn’t allow us to limit.
Changes to these terms
We may update these terms as the game changes. We’ll change the effective date at the top, and for changes that matter (for example, to prices, renewals or your rights) we’ll tell you by email or in the game at least 30 days before they take effect. If you keep playing after that, the new terms apply. If you don’t agree, you can cancel and stop using Hearthsea.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the courts of Amman have jurisdiction over any dispute. If you’re a consumer living in another country, you keep the protections of that country’s mandatory consumer law and can bring a claim in your local courts where that law allows.
Most problems are easier to sort out by email, so please contact us first.
Contact
Email hello@hearthsea.com for anything about these terms, your account, payments or refunds.
If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce a term straight away, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.