Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

By creating an account or using Dystopia Engine (“the Service”), you agree to these Terms of Service (“Terms”) and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. These Terms form a binding agreement between you and Tamas Sebok, the operator of Dystopia Engine (“we,” “us”). If you use the Service as a consumer, you have statutory rights that these Terms do not affect — see section 15 (Your rights as a consumer).

2. Who we are

Dystopia Engine is operated by Tamas Sebok, an individual established in Hungary. You can reach us at support@dystopia-engine.com.

Purchases of credits and subscriptions are sold through our payment provider, Paddle, acting as merchant of record — see section 11 (Fees, payments, and credits).

3. Description of the Service

Dystopia Engine is an AI-powered interactive world-building platform. Users create fictional worlds with rule sets, populate them with characters, and play through AI-generated stories narrated by Anthropic's Claude language model. The Service is under active development, and features may be added, changed, or removed over time. Where a change would materially reduce functionality you have paid for, your rights as a consumer are unaffected (see section 15).

4. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you are below the age of digital consent in your country (16 in Hungary and parts of the EU/EEA), you may use the Service only with the consent and involvement of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use, including any purchases.

By using the Service you represent that you meet these requirements. If you are using the Service on behalf of an organisation, you represent that you are authorised to bind that organisation to these Terms.

5. Accounts

You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You must promptly notify us at support@dystopia-engine.com if you suspect unauthorised access.

We reserve the right to suspend accounts that violate these Terms, at our reasonable discretion and, in serious cases, without prior notice. Grounds for suspension include, but are not limited to, violations of section 6 (Acceptable use), abuse of the AI generation system, or any activity that harms other users or the integrity of the Service. Where we suspend or restrict your account we will, where lawful and practicable, tell you the reason and how you can respond.

Accounts that have had no activity for more than one year may be automatically suspended. You will have a 30-day period after suspension to contact us and request reactivation before permanent deletion is carried out.

A suspended account loses access to all Service features for the duration of the suspension. Any credits or quota allowances associated with a suspended account are frozen and cannot be used until the suspension is lifted. If the account is subsequently deleted, any remaining credit balance is forfeited (see section 11).

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Generate or share content that is illegal, harassing, defamatory, or that violates the rights of others
• Generate or share content that sexualises minors, incites violence, or that is otherwise prohibited by applicable law
• Infringe the intellectual property, privacy, or other rights of any person
• Attempt to extract, reproduce, or reverse-engineer the underlying AI models or system prompts
• Automate requests in a way that circumvents rate limits or quota enforcement, or otherwise interferes with the integrity or security of the Service
• Resell or redistribute access to the Service without written permission
• Use the Service for any purpose that violates Anthropic's Usage Policy, which governs the Claude API underlying AI features

7. Reporting illegal or infringing content

The Service lets users publish public stories and release worlds for others to play. If you believe that content available through the Service is illegal or infringes your rights (including copyright or other intellectual-property rights), notify us at support@dystopia-engine.com with: a description and the location (e.g. URL) of the content; the reason you consider it unlawful or infringing; your contact details; and, for intellectual-property claims, a statement that you are the rights-holder or are authorised to act on their behalf.

We will review properly substantiated notices and may remove content, disable access to it, or suspend the responsible account. We may forward your notice (including your identity) to the affected user, and we will inform you of our decision and the reasons for it where required. Knowingly submitting a materially false notice may expose you to liability.

8. Content and intellectual property

The Service uses Anthropic's Claude API to generate narrative content. You acknowledge that:

• AI-generated content may be inaccurate, inconsistent, or unexpected
• We make no representations about the accuracy, quality, or appropriateness of AI output
• Content generated in response to your inputs may be influenced by those inputs; you are responsible for the prompts and world rules you provide

Content you author (world rules, character backgrounds, manual edits) remains your intellectual property. By submitting content to the Service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt, and process that content as needed to operate and provide the Service to you.

If you make a story public, release a world for others to play, or otherwise share content, you additionally grant us and other users a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to display and distribute that content within the Service and to create derivative interactions from it (such as continuing stories). This licence is necessary for the shared features to function and continues for as long as the content remains public. Content you have made public or released may remain available, with your attribution removed, after you delete your account, as described in our Privacy Policy; the licence in this paragraph survives in respect of such content. We may remove or restrict access to any content that we reasonably believe violates these Terms or the law.

To the extent we hold any rights in the AI-generated text produced for you, we assign those rights to you, subject to others' rights in shared content and to Anthropic's terms. We make no warranty that AI output is original or free of third-party rights.

9. Support

10. Service availability

We aim to keep the Service available but make no uptime guarantee. The Service may be interrupted for maintenance, due to third-party service outages (Anthropic, Supabase, Render, Vercel, Clerk, Paddle), or for reasons beyond our control. To the extent permitted by law, and without affecting your rights as a consumer, we are not liable for loss or damage arising from downtime or unavailability.

11. Fees, payments, and credits

The Service offers a free tier subject to per-account usage quotas, alongside optional paid options: one-time credit packs and recurring subscription plans. Prices are those displayed at checkout, including any applicable taxes shown there. We reserve the right to modify quotas, introduce or retire plans, or change pricing at any time. A change in price affecting an existing paid subscription will be communicated with reasonable advance notice before it takes effect, and you may cancel before the new price applies.

Purchases of credits and subscriptions are made through our payment provider, Paddle. Paddle acts as the merchant of recordand is the seller for these transactions; your purchase is therefore also governed by Paddle's buyer terms, and Paddle issues your receipt or invoice and handles applicable taxes. We do not receive or store your full payment-card details.

Credits are a platform currency used to access AI features. Credits have no cash value, are not redeemable for money, and may not be transferred or sold outside the Service — except that you may donate credits to the author of a public story through the in-app donation feature. Credits granted as part of a subscription are allocated per billing period, do not roll over, and any unused subscription credits are forfeited when the subscription is cancelled, lapses, or is paused.

Subscription plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period until cancelled. You may cancel at any time from Account Settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, after which your plan reverts to the free tier.

Subject to your right of withdrawal (section 12), your other statutory consumer rights (section 15), and Paddle's buyer terms, payments are non-refundable once the corresponding credits or subscription period have been made available to you. Upon account deletion — whether initiated by you or by us following suspension — any remaining credit balance is permanently forfeited with no right to compensation or reimbursement.

12. Right of withdrawal (consumers in the EU/EEA)

If you are a consumer resident in the EU/EEA, you generally have the right to withdraw from a purchase within 14 days without giving a reason.

Because credits and subscription access are digital content and services that are supplied immediately, at checkout you will be asked to expressly request that supply begin at once and to acknowledge the effect on your withdrawal right:

• For one-time credit packs (digital content), you lose the right of withdrawal once the credits have been added to your account with your prior express consent.
• For subscriptions (a digital service), if you ask us to begin during the 14-day period you may still withdraw within that period, but you must pay a proportionate amount for the service already provided up to the point of withdrawal.

To exercise the right where it applies, contact us at support@dystopia-engine.com or use Paddle's buyer support. Because Paddle is the merchant of record, refunds for withdrawn purchases are processed through Paddle. These rights are without prejudice to any further rights you may have under the consumer law of your country of residence (in Hungary, Government Decree 45/2014. (II. 26.)).

13. Disclaimer of warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR FREE OF HARMFUL COMPONENTS. If you are a consumer, this section does not affect the statutory guarantees you are entitled to, including that digital content and services conform to the contract (see section 15).

14. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability where it would be unlawful to do so — including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or intentional misconduct, or for any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable consumer law.

Subject to the paragraph above, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL DYSTOPIA ENGINE OR ITS OPERATOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES — INCLUDING LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF PROFITS, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION — ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR €10 (TEN EUROS), WHICHEVER IS GREATER.

15. Your rights as a consumer

If you use the Service as a consumer — that is, for purposes outside your trade, business, craft, or profession — you benefit from mandatory protections under the law of your country of residence and under EU law, including statutory guarantees that digital content and services conform to the contract (Directive (EU) 2019/770). Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes those rights. Where any provision of these Terms conflicts with mandatory consumer law applicable to you, that law prevails and the remainder of these Terms continues to apply.

16. Termination and deletion

You may delete your account at any time from Account Settings. Deletion is irreversible: all your worlds, characters, stories, and remaining credits are permanently removed. Some anonymised or orphaned records may be retained as described in our Privacy Policy. We may also retain transaction and tax records where we are legally required to do so; where Paddle is the merchant of record, Paddle retains the invoice records for your purchases.

We may suspend your account for violations of these Terms. A suspended account enters a 30-day removal window; if the suspension is not lifted within that period the account and associated data will be deleted. Automatic suspension for inactivity (see section 5) follows the same 30-day window.

Upon deletion your right to use the Service ceases immediately. Provisions that by their nature survive termination (including content licences for public content, liability, disclaimers, and governing law) will continue to apply.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may revise these Terms. For changes that materially affect your rights or obligations — in particular if you hold a paid subscription — we will give reasonable advance notice (for example by email or in-app) before they take effect, and you may reject them by cancelling your subscription and/or closing your account before the effective date. Continued use of the Service after the changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. Minor changes and changes required by law may take effect immediately. Changes will also be noted in the changelog.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Hungary, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. If you are a consumer, this choice of law does not deprive you of the mandatory protections of the law of your country of habitual residence, and you may bring proceedings in, and may only be sued in, the courts of that country. For all other users, the courts of Hungary have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Service. Where required by law, information about alternative dispute resolution for consumers is available from us on request.

19. General

• Severability. If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full effect.
• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign or transfer them (for example, as part of a transfer of the Service) provided this does not reduce your rights as a consumer.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Language. These Terms may be made available in other languages for convenience. The English version is the authoritative, legally binding version; in the event of any conflict or inconsistency, the English version prevails, except to the extent that the mandatory consumer law applicable to you requires otherwise.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms: support@dystopia-engine.com