Summary
The main points, in plain words. Please read the whole thing, since the full terms below still apply.
- These terms cover the Ethibyte website, your account, the Ethibyte Launcher, and our games and online services.
- You must be 13 or older to have an account, and it is yours to keep safe.
- Buying a game gives you a license to play it, not ownership of the game.
- Be kind. No harassment, hate, spam, or cheating.
- Cosmetic mods are fine. Ripping, sharing, or selling our work is not.
- Nothing from our products or services may be used to train AI or machine learning models.
- Videos, streams, screenshots, and fan art of our games are welcome.
- Breaking these terms can cost you online play, or your account.
The agreement
These Terms of Service are an agreement between you and Ethibyte LLC, the studio behind Ethibyte. They cover the Ethibyte™ website, your Ethibyte account, the Ethibyte Launcher, and the games and online services we publish, including Shapes of War™. Together, these are “our services.”
By creating an account, using the Ethibyte Launcher, buying a game, or playing a build, you agree to these terms and to the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use our services.
You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If you are under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms for you.
Your account
One account holds your games, your friends, and your progress. You are responsible for keeping it secure and for what happens under it.
- Give accurate details and keep your email address current. It is the address we use for receipts and security notices.
- Accounts are personal. Do not share, sell, or transfer one.
- You can delete your account at any time from your account page. What deleting removes is set out in the Privacy Policy, and purchases cannot be restored afterward.
Usernames
Your username is public: other players see it in lobbies, friend lists, and match results.
- A username may not impersonate Ethibyte, its staff, or another player, and may not be offensive.
- We may change a username that breaks these terms.
- You can change your username once a day. The old one becomes available to other players straight away.
Your license and purchases
Buying a game, or claiming a free one, gives your account a license to play it, not ownership of the game. That license is personal, non-commercial and non-transferable, and it ends only if you take a refund or break these terms. It lets you install and use the Ethibyte Launcher and the games your account owns, on devices you control. Everything not granted here stays with Ethibyte LLC.
- Prices are shown in USD and tax is added at checkout.
- Payment is processed by Stripe. Card details are never stored on Ethibyte servers.
- A copy can be gifted to an email address. Once the recipient claims it, the license is theirs.
- Refunds are available within 14 days of purchase, as long as the game has not been downloaded. A refunded game is removed from your library.
- We may change prices for future purchases. Anything already bought stays bought.
- Cosmetics and other in-game items have no money value. They cannot be sold, traded, or exchanged for money.
Alpha and beta builds
A game can be playable before it is finished, as an alpha or a beta. An alpha may be free to play and free to join, and a game can become a paid purchase at beta. Claiming a free alpha gives a license to its alpha builds; the paid game requires its own purchase. Players may receive exclusive cosmetics for playing during an alpha or a beta.
Pre-release builds are unfinished. Features can change or disappear, progress can be reset between builds, and an alpha can close when its beta opens. Bug reports are welcome through the feedback form in each game or through the Contact Page.
Ethibyte Launcher
The Ethibyte Launcher installs the games your account owns and keeps them up to date. By using it, you agree that it may download and install updates to itself and to your games automatically, unless you turn game updates off in its settings.
Playing safely
Our games contain flashing lights and fast motion. If you or anyone in your family has had seizures or epilepsy, talk to a doctor before playing, and stop at once if you feel dizzy, have altered vision, or twitch.
Take care when talking to people in our games. It is hard to know whether what someone says is true, or whether they are who they say they are, so think twice before sharing anything about yourself. Other players are responsible for what they say and do, not us, and you may come across content you find offensive.
Acceptable use
Play fair and keep the community somewhere people want to be. In particular, do not:
- Harass, threaten, or abuse other players, or use hate speech or discriminatory language
- Impersonate Ethibyte, its staff, or anyone else
- Post content unsuitable for all ages, in usernames, chat, or anywhere players see it
- Spam, flood chat, or advertise other games, servers, or services
- Share another person's personal information
- Resell, redistribute, or repackage builds, share pirated copies, or bypass access controls on unreleased builds
- Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or data mine the Ethibyte Launcher or the games
- Circumvent their encryption or other technical protections
- Extract, copy, or scrape their code, art, models, music, sound, or other assets, or use any of it to train AI or machine learning models
- Cheat, exploit bugs for advantage, or use mods or tools that give an advantage or automate play
- Interfere with our servers or the website, or try to reach parts of them you have no access to
These rules apply whether something is done by hand or with automated or AI tools, except where the law expressly allows it.
Mods
Cosmetic changes to a game on your own device, such as recolors or interface tweaks, are tolerated at your own risk: they are unsupported and may break with any update. A mod may not:
- Circumvent encryption or extract files
- Give an advantage in online play, or change what other players see or experience
- Be distributed as a modified copy of a game or the Ethibyte Launcher
- Redistribute our code, art, models, music, sound, or other assets, including assets extracted from a build
Suspensions and ending this agreement
We may suspend an account that breaks these terms, cheats, or puts other players at risk. A suspension removes online play for its length, which can be permanent. You can still sign in, use your library, and play offline. We email you the reason and the date online play returns. Deleting an account does not end a suspension: it carries over to a new account made with the same email address.
You can stop using our services and delete your account at any time. We may close an account that seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms. When this agreement ends, your license ends with it and you must uninstall our games and the Ethibyte Launcher. The sections on our content, liability, and governing law, and anything either of us still owes the other, continue to apply.
Our content, and yours
The Ethibyte Launcher, the games, the shapes and their designs, the art, the music, the site, and the Ethibyte™ and Shapes of War™ names and logos belong to Ethibyte LLC. Both marks are pending trademarks. You may not use them to suggest a partnership or endorsement that does not exist.
Videos, streams, screenshots, and fan art of our games are welcome, including monetized ones. Anything you send us, such as a bug report, feedback, or a message, stays yours, and you let us use it to run and improve our services.
Ideas and suggestions you send us are given freely: we may use them in any way, and we owe nothing for them.
Availability and liability
Our services are provided “as is” and “as available.” We work to keep them running, but we cannot promise they will always be available, uninterrupted, or free of faults. Online play may pause for maintenance, and we may change or end a service, a game, or a build, with notice where we can give it. If we end the online services for a game, you keep offline play of the build you have installed. To the extent the law allows, we disclaim every warranty not stated in these terms, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
To the extent the law allows, Ethibyte LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss, and our total liability to you is limited to the greater of US$100 or what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.
If someone brings a claim against Ethibyte LLC because you broke these terms or the law while using our services, you agree to cover the costs that claim causes us, including reasonable legal fees.
Changes to these terms
We may update these terms as the games and the studio change. For significant changes, we email you at least 30 days before they take effect; other changes take effect when they are posted here. If you keep using our services after a change takes effect, you accept the updated terms. If you do not agree, you can stop using them and delete your account. The current version always lives on this page with its date.
Governing law and general terms
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, and any dispute about them is heard in the state or federal courts of Travis County, Texas. Nothing in these terms removes rights you have under the consumer law of the place you live.
These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and Ethibyte LLC about our services. If a part of them cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. If we are slow to enforce a part, we have not given it up. Where these terms say “including,” they mean including but not limited to. We may transfer this agreement to a company that takes over our services, but you may not transfer it without our written consent.
Our services may link to others we do not run, such as Discord and YouTube, and their own terms apply there. You may not use our services where United States sanctions forbid it, or if you are a person those sanctions name.
Send legal notices to Ethibyte LLC, 5900 Balcones Drive STE 100, Austin, Texas 78731, United States. For anything else, use the Contact Page.
