Terms of Service

1.These terms

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are an agreement between you and Swanky Rat Studios LLC, a South Dakota limited liability company (“Swanky Rat Studios”, “we”, “us”). They cover Parallel Crossing on any device, our game servers, this website at parallelcrossing.com, our official community spaces and our support (together, the “Services”).

By creating an account, downloading or playing the game, or otherwise using the Services, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which explains what we collect and why. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the Services.

Some parts of the Services may come with extra rules, such as those of an event, a test or an app store. Those rules are part of these Terms for that part.

2.Who can play

• You must be at least 13 years old to use the Services. Parallel Crossing isn’t meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly let them have accounts.
• If you’re under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, a parent or legal guardian must read and agree to these Terms for you, and is responsible for how you use the Services. Some countries set a higher age for agreeing to online services on your own; if yours does, you need a parent’s or guardian’s agreement up to that age.
• You may not use the Services if the law where you live forbids it, or if we have closed an account of yours for breaking these Terms, unless we tell you that you may come back.
• If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we close it and delete its personal information, as our Privacy Policy describes.

3.Your account

• You need an account to play. Give your true month and year of birth when the game asks for them. Keep your password secret and don’t use it anywhere else: you’re responsible for everything done with your account.
• Your account is for you alone. Don’t share, sell, lend or give it away, and don’t buy or use someone else’s.
• Choose a username that follows the rules of conduct below. Don’t pretend to be someone else, a well-known person or our staff, and don’t use a name that is hateful, sexual or someone else’s trademark. We may change a username that breaks these rules.
• We don’t ask for your email address, so we may not be able to give you your account back if you lose your password. If you think someone else has used your account, tell us straight away in Support or at support@parallelcrossing.com.

4.A game in development

Parallel Crossing is still being built. Its features, rules, balance, items, prices and look will change, sometimes a lot, and things you have in the game may be changed, rebalanced or removed.

Test and early versions can have bugs, can lose progress, and may be reset (“wiped”) before or at launch. If you join a test, please keep anything we ask you to keep private to yourself.

We don’t promise that the Services will always be available or free of errors, or that the game will launch on any date or platform. We may change or stop the Services, or any part of them, at any time. If we close the game for good, we’ll try to tell players in advance.

5.The real map

• Parallel Crossing is played on a map of the real world, but everything that happens on it happens only in the game. Planting a flag, claiming land, founding a city or ruling a realm gives you no right, title or interest in any real place, and doesn’t mean that anyone who lives in, owns or runs that place has agreed to anything or endorses you or us.
• Real streets, buildings, businesses and landmarks appear because they’re on the map, not because their owners are involved with the game or endorse it.
• The map is made from community-made data and may be incomplete, out of date or wrong. Don’t rely on it to find your way or to judge whether a place is safe.
• You never have to go anywhere to play. If you play while you’re out, watch where you’re going, obey the law, stay off private property unless you’re allowed there, and never play while driving or cycling.
• Never use the game to find, follow, watch or harass real people, or to arrange to meet someone you only know from the game. Your flags show their places on the real map to everyone, so think before you plant one at your home.

6.Rules of conduct

Parallel Crossing is a shared world. When you use the Services, you agree to follow the game’s code of conduct, which you also accept in the game before you first chat:

1. Be kind. No harassment, bullying, hate or threats.
2. Keep it clean: no sexual content, and nothing about self-harm except to ask for help.
3. Never share personal details: real names, addresses, phone numbers, emails or where you live. The game masks them, but don't try.
4. No spam, scams, advertising or selling things for real money.
5. Don't pretend to be staff or another player.
6. Report anything that breaks these rules, and block anyone you don't want to hear from.
7. Moderators remove lines and mute players; repeated or serious harm gets a chat ban. Appeal through Support.

You also agree not to:

• cheat, or use or make bots, scripts, macros, modified game files or other tools that play for you, automate play or give you an unfair advantage;
• exploit bugs or glitches (report them to us instead), or use more than one account to get around the game’s limits or rules;
• buy, sell or trade accounts, items, gold, Echoes, land or services for real money or anything else outside the game, or advertise doing so;
• hack, disrupt, overload, probe or attack our servers or other players’ connections, or get around a mute, a ban or any other limit;
• copy, scrape, reverse-engineer, decompile or modify the game or the Services, except where the law allows it despite this rule;
• post or share anything illegal, or anything that infringes someone else’s rights, including their privacy and their intellectual property;
• harm or exploit minors in any way, or try to get anyone’s personal information;
• give your character, city, realm or anything else a name that breaks these rules.

7.Moderation and enforcement

• We, and the moderators we appoint, may remove anything that breaks these Terms, and may warn a player, mute them, ban them from chat, or suspend or close their account. We may also remove or reset items, gold, Echoes, levels or land gained by breaking the rules or through a bug. We choose the response that fits; serious harm can lead straight to a ban.
• Mayors and rulers moderate their own city’s and realm’s chats, and so do the players they appoint. They are players, not our staff, and we can review and undo what they do.
• When we act against your account or something you wrote, we tell you why in Support, where you can appeal. We may hold back details where sharing them would put someone at risk or help someone break the rules.
• Report players and messages with the game’s report tools. If you believe someone is in danger right now, call your local emergency number first. We may share information with the police or other authorities where the law requires it, or where we believe someone’s safety is at risk.

8.What you create

“Your content” is what you put into the Services: chat lines and messages, names, and anything else you create or send. You keep whatever rights you have in it.

You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable and sublicensable license to host, store, copy, show, adapt (for example to format it or to mask personal details), publish and distribute your content in connection with running, improving and promoting the Services. This license lasts as long as we keep your content, and continues for content other players rely on (such as the name of a city they joined) or that we have already used to promote the game.

You promise that you have the right to give us this license, and that your content follows these Terms.

We don’t check everything before it appears, and we aren’t responsible for what other players say or do. We may review, remove or keep any content, but we don’t have to.

If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them freely, without paying or crediting you.

9.Our game and your license to play

The Services and everything in them (the software, the world, art, models, sounds, music and text, and the Parallel Crossing name and logo) belong to Swanky Rat Studios or to those who license them to us, and are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. Some parts are used under their own open licenses, credited in our legal notices.

As long as you follow these Terms, we give you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable license to install the game on devices you own or control and to use the Services for your own non-commercial entertainment. If you got the game from an app store, that store’s rules apply too. We keep every right we don’t expressly give you.

Screenshots, videos and streams. You’re welcome to take screenshots, record and stream your play, and share them, including on channels that earn money from ads, tips or memberships, as long as you don’t suggest that we endorse you, don’t share anything that breaks these Terms or that we asked testers to keep private, and take something down if we reasonably ask.

10.Gold, items and Echoes

The game has virtual things: gold, items, gear, cosmetics, looks, pets, furniture, land and buildings, and Echoes, its premium currency (together, “virtual items”). Virtual items aren’t property, and you don’t own them: you have a limited license to use them in the game while you follow these Terms.

• Virtual items have no value outside the game. They can’t be exchanged for money or anything else of value, from us or from anyone, and you can only transfer them through the game’s own trading.
• We may change, rebalance or remove virtual items, their prices and how they work, especially while the game is being built, and we aren’t liable to you when we do. Your virtual items end when your account does.
• Players trade with each other only inside the game, for example in Black Markets. We aren’t a party to trades between players and can’t undo a fair trade you regret.

Buying Echoes. Nothing can be bought with real money yet. When it can, you’ll buy through the App Store or Google Play, under that store’s terms and payment rules, at the price shown before you pay. Purchases are final once delivered, and refunds are handled by the store under its policies, except where the law gives you other rights. If you’re under 18, ask a parent or guardian before you buy anything.

If you live in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you agree that delivery of digital content starts as soon as you buy it, and that you lose your right to withdraw from the purchase once it has been delivered.

11.Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect when you use the Services, how we use it, who sees it and the choices you have. Please read it.

12.Other companies’ services

The game is distributed through app stores, and our community gathers partly on Discord. Those services, and any website we link to, are run by other companies under their own terms and privacy policies, and we aren’t responsible for them.

13.Ending your account

You can stop playing at any time. To have your account deleted, ask us as our Privacy Policy describes.

We may suspend or close your account, or stop providing all or part of the Services to you, if you break these Terms, if we must for legal reasons, or if we stop offering the Services.

When your account ends, your license to use the Services and your virtual items end with it. The parts of these Terms that by their nature should last, such as those on your content, virtual items, disclaimers, limits of liability, indemnity and disputes, continue to apply.

14.Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms as the game grows. We’ll post the new version here with a new date and, if a change is significant, tell you in the game or on this website before it takes effect. If you keep using the Services after a change takes effect, you accept the new Terms; if you don’t accept them, stop using the Services, and you can ask us to delete your account.

15.Disclaimers

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Services and virtual items are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and any arising from a course of dealing or usage of trade. We don’t warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, secure or free of errors or harmful components, that progress or virtual items will be kept, or that the map or any other information in the game is accurate.

Some places don’t allow these disclaimers. There, they apply only as far as the law allows, and nothing in these Terms takes away rights you have as a consumer that can’t be waived.

16.Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Swanky Rat Studios and its members, managers, employees and partners won’t be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill, virtual items or progress, arising from or related to these Terms or the Services, even if we were told they were possible. Our total liability for all claims related to the Services or these Terms is limited to the greater of what you paid us for the Services in the 12 months before the claim arose, and US$100.

These limits don’t apply where the law doesn’t allow them, for example to liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

17.Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because of your content, your use of the Services in breach of these Terms, or your breaking the law or someone else’s rights, you agree to defend and indemnify us against it, including reasonable legal costs, as far as the law allows.

18.Disputes and governing law

• Talk to us first. Most problems can be fixed quickly. Before bringing any claim, write to us at support@parallelcrossing.com and give us 30 days to try to resolve it informally.
• These Terms, and any dispute about them or the Services, are governed by the laws of the State of South Dakota and applicable United States federal law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any claim must be brought only in the state or federal courts located in South Dakota, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction. Either of us may still bring a claim that qualifies in small-claims court where you live.
• If you live in the European Union, the United Kingdom or another country whose laws let consumers go to court at home or rely on their own country’s law, nothing in these Terms takes those rights away.
• As far as the law allows, any claim must be brought within one year after it arose, or it is permanently barred.

19.If you got the game from Apple

If you downloaded the game from Apple’s App Store, you and we also agree that:

• These Terms are between you and us, not Apple. We, not Apple, are responsible for the game and its content.
• Your license is to use the game on Apple-branded products that you own or control, as the App Store’s Usage Rules allow, including by other accounts in your Family Sharing group where the game supports it.
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the game.
• If the game fails to meet a warranty that applies to it, you may tell Apple, and Apple will refund the price you paid for the game, if any. To the extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the game.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for any claims about the game, including product liability claims, claims that it fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection, privacy or similar laws.
• If anyone claims that the game, or your having or using it, infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are responsible for investigating, defending, settling and discharging that claim.
• You confirm that you are not in a country subject to a United States Government embargo or designated by it as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not on any United States Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and, once you accept them, may enforce them against you.

20.Copyright complaints

We respect other people’s intellectual property. If you believe something in the Services infringes your copyright, send a notice to support@parallelcrossing.com that includes:

• your physical or electronic signature;
• a description of the copyrighted work you believe is infringed;
• where the material is in the Services, in enough detail for us to find it (for example the player’s name and where it appears);
• your name, postal address, telephone number and email address;
• a statement that you believe in good faith that the use isn’t authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act for them.

If something of yours was removed and you believe that was a mistake, you can send us a counter-notice as the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows. Where appropriate, we close the accounts of players who repeatedly infringe.

21.General

• These Terms, with the Privacy Policy and any extra rules they mention, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Services.
• If any part of these Terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies, and that part is enforced as far as the law allows.
• If we don’t enforce part of these Terms straight away, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.
• You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours, for example if Swanky Rat Studios or the game is sold or merged, and we’ll tell you if that happens.
• We aren’t responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• We may send you notices in the game (for example in Support) or on this website. You can send notices to us at support@parallelcrossing.com.
• If these Terms are translated, the English version is the one that applies.

22.Contact us

Questions about these Terms? We’re happy to help.