Terms of Service

City Rivals is a free online property-trading board game. You can play all of it without paying anything. The only thing money buys is coins, and the only thing coins buy is how the game looks.

1. Who we are

City Rivals ("City Rivals", "we", "us") is an independently operated online game published at www.cityrivals.org. You can reach a human at Cityrivals@cityrivals.org.

Payments are not taken by us. Our order process is conducted by an authorised online reseller acting as our Merchant of Record. That reseller — not City Rivals — is the seller of record for your purchase: it takes the payment, calculates and remits any sales tax or VAT, issues the receipt, and is the name that appears on your statement. Its own buyer terms govern the sale itself, alongside this document.

Our current Merchant of Record is Paddle.com. If we change providers we will update this page, and the change will apply only to purchases made afterwards. Your receipt always names the reseller that actually handled your payment, so if the name here and the name on your receipt differ, the receipt is the one that governs that purchase.

2. Accepting these terms

By playing City Rivals, creating an account or buying coins, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the game.

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If you are under 18, you may only buy coins with the permission of a parent or guardian who is responsible for the payment method used.

3. Your account

You can play offline pass-and-play without an account. To play online, to appear on the ladder or to own anything, you need one.

There are two ways to make one, and both end up at the same kind of account:

• An email address and a password. The address is what you sign in with. It is never shown to other players and never appears on the ladder.
• A sign-in provider — Google or Discord. We receive an account identifier and, where you allow it, your email address. We never receive your password for that service, and we cannot post, read or act as you there.

If you sign in with a provider using an address that already has an account here, and that provider confirms the address belongs to you, the two are treated as the same account rather than as two. If the provider cannot confirm it, you get a separate account — deliberately, because merging on an unconfirmed address is how accounts get stolen.

You also choose a display name. That is what other players see. It is not unique, it is not what you sign in with, and you can change it whenever you like.

We cannot send email yet, so there is no "reset my password" link. Instead, when you create an account with a password you are shown a recovery code exactly once:

• It is the only way to reset a forgotten password. We cannot show it to you again, because we keep only a hash of it.
• If you lose both your password and your recovery code, and no sign-in provider is attached to the account, it — including any coins and items on it — cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. Attaching Google or Discord to your account is the simplest way to never be in that position.

You are responsible for keeping your password and recovery code secret, and for everything done through your account. Tell us promptly if you believe someone else is using it.

One person may hold more than one account, but not in order to do any of the things listed in the next section.

4. Fair play and conduct

The game has a chat box, a ladder and a trading system, and all three depend on people behaving. When using City Rivals you agree not to:

• harass, threaten, defame or abuse other players, or post content in chat or in a display name that is hateful, sexual, or illegal;
• impersonate another player, or pretend to be staff;
• cheat — including modifying the client, automating play, exploiting a bug rather than reporting it, or interfering with a match in progress;
• manipulate the ladder, for example by arranging losses, playing yourself across two accounts, or farming rating from accounts you control;
• sell, buy or trade accounts, coins or items for real money outside the game;
• attempt to gain access to another account, to our servers, or to any part of the service you are not meant to reach, or place unreasonable load on it.

Chat messages are sent to the other people in your room and are not private. Do not put anything in them you would not want another player to read.

5. Coins and cosmetic items

Coins are not money. They are a virtual in-game balance with no monetary value. They cannot be withdrawn, exchanged for cash, transferred to another player or to another account, or used anywhere outside City Rivals. You can also earn coins by playing, without paying.

Coins buy items from the store: dice skins, roll animations, pawn auras, win animations and the No Ads perk. When you buy an item you receive a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use it inside City Rivals for as long as your account exists and the game is running. You do not own the item itself.

No purchase changes how the game plays. Cosmetic items are exactly that. They are not part of the rules engine, they are not visible to the game's logic, and a match plays out identically whether every player at the table has bought everything or nothing.

6. Buying coins

Coins are sold in packs. The price you pay is the price shown at checkout, in your local currency where our reseller supports one, inclusive of any tax it is required to charge:

Purchases are one-off. There is no subscription, nothing recurring, and nothing that renews or bills you again later.

The price, the number of coins and the account being credited are all determined by our server when the checkout opens — never by your browser. Coins are added to your account after our reseller confirms the payment, which is usually within a few seconds. If a payment succeeds and your balance has not moved within an hour, email us and we will fix it.

We may change the price or contents of a pack at any time, but never for a purchase already made.

7. Refunds

Refunds are covered by our Refund Policy, which forms part of these terms. In short: contact us within 14 days and we will refund a coin purchase you have not spent.

8. Advertising

The app shows our own promotions only, for things inside City Rivals itself. We do not currently carry third-party advertising, and no third-party advertising script is loaded into the page.

The No Ads perk, bought with coins, hides them. It is a one-off purchase and does not expire. If we introduce third-party advertising in future, the perk will switch that off too — not merely hide it — and we will update our Privacy Notice before it goes live.

9. Changes to the game

City Rivals is developed continuously. We may add, change or remove features, rules, boards, store items and prices, and we may take the service down for maintenance. We will try not to break anything you have bought, but we cannot promise that a particular item, board or mode will exist forever. If we permanently withdraw an item you paid coins for, we will credit those coins back to your account.

We do not guarantee that the game will be available without interruption or free of faults.

10. Ownership

City Rivals, its name, its artwork, its board designs, its code and everything else in it belong to us, except where third-party components are used under their own licences. These terms give you permission to play the game; they do not transfer any ownership to you.

City Rivals is an original game. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any other property-trading board game or its publisher.

11. Suspension and closure

You may stop playing at any time, and you may ask us to delete your account — see the Privacy Policy for how.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks section 4, that is used fraudulently, or that is the subject of a payment chargeback. Where we reasonably can, we will tell you why and give you a way to reply. Coins and items on a closed account are lost and are not refunded, except where a refund is required by law or by our Refund Policy.

12. Disclaimers

City Rivals is provided "as is". To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties about it — in particular that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure against every attack, or that any defect will be corrected.

Nothing here removes rights you have as a consumer that cannot be removed by agreement.

13. Liability

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost coins, items, rating or progress, or for anything arising out of another player's conduct.

Where we are liable, our total liability to you is limited to the amount you actually paid us for coins in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

We do not exclude or limit liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top always says when. If a change materially affects your rights, we will make it visible in the game before it takes effect. Continuing to play after a change means you accept the updated terms; if you do not, stop using the service and ask us to close your account.

15. Contact

Questions about these terms, an account, or a purchase: Cityrivals@cityrivals.org. We aim to reply within five working days.

For a question about a payment, a receipt or a tax invoice, you can also contact our reseller directly — your receipt email names it and links to its buyer portal. Quote the order reference on that receipt.