Terms of Service

These terms are the agreement between you and the operator of Gembound Arena, an independent developer based in California, United States ("we", "us"). By playing, you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not play.

How we handle your data is described separately in the Privacy Policy, and money is described separately in the Refund Policy. Both form part of this agreement.

1. Your account

• You can play as a guest with no account. An account is what saves your progress, your rank and anything you buy.
• Accounts are for players aged 13 or over. If you are under 13 you may not create one; you can still play as a guest.
• You are responsible for what happens on your account and for keeping your sign-in method secure. Do not share it, sell it, buy one, or let someone else play on it.
• One person, one account. Additional accounts used to evade a suspension, to manipulate matchmaking or to farm rewards may all be closed.

2. Conduct and fair play

While playing, you agree not to:

• choose a gamertag that is obscene, hateful, harassing, impersonates someone else, or is designed to evade a filter;
• cheat — no bots, automation, memory or network tampering, exploiting a bug for advantage instead of reporting it, or any modification of the client;
• play unsportingly — no deliberately losing, no match-fixing or rank boosting, no queue-dodging schemes, no abandoning matches to spite a teammate, no harassing other players;
• attack the service — no scraping, no reverse engineering, no attempt to disrupt matchmaking or the servers, no unauthorised access to another player's account.

Report and block. If another player breaks these rules, use the in-game report and block tools — a report is what puts the behaviour in front of a moderator, and a block stops that player reaching you in the meantime.

What we may do about it. Depending on what happened and whether it has happened before, we may reset a gamertag, remove ill-gotten rewards or rank, restrict access to features, suspend an account temporarily, or ban it permanently. We aim to be proportionate, and we will tell you the reason. A suspension does not entitle you to a refund of anything already bought (see the Refund Policy).

3. Virtual currencies and items

The game has three currencies — Gold (earned by playing), Crystals (bought with money or granted in-game) and Essence (earned from duplicates) — plus heroes, cosmetics and Battle Pass progress bought with them.

• They have no real-world value. You are buying a limited, personal, non-exclusive licence to use them inside Gembound Arena — not property, and not a stake in anything.
• They are non-transferable: they cannot be moved between accounts, gifted, traded or sold, and they may not be exchanged outside the game.
• They are not redeemable for money or for anything outside the game, and they convert only in the direction the game itself offers.
• Balances expire when the account is closed, and unused balances are not refunded on a suspension or a self-deletion.

That is a commitment, not marketing copy: no purchase made with real money resolves into a random outcome. If you spend money, you know exactly what you are getting before you pay.

4. Purchases

• Purchases are open to every account holder. If you are under 18, you may make a real-money purchase only with the permission of your parent or guardian, and they are responsible for purchases made on your account. Everything money buys can also be earned by playing, so nobody has to buy anything.
• All prices are shown in USD and include applicable taxes. Your receipt is issued by Xsolla. The price on the button is the total you pay.
• Checkout is operated by Xsolla, acting as the merchant of record. Xsolla — not us — is the seller on your receipt and on your card statement, and Xsolla's own terms apply to the transaction itself. We never see your card details.
• Crystals are delivered to your account as soon as the payment is confirmed. If they do not arrive, contact us and we will fix it.
• Refunds are governed by the Refund Policy, which forms part of these terms.
• Prices, bundle contents and offers may change. Changes never apply retroactively to a purchase you already made.

5. Availability and changes to the game

Gembound Arena is a live service. We may add, change, rebalance or remove heroes, abilities, cosmetics, modes, prices and features, and we may take the service down for maintenance. Balance changes to a hero you own are part of a competitive game, not a defect. We may also suspend or end the service entirely; if we ever do, we will give as much notice as we reasonably can.

6. Intellectual property

The game, its code, art, characters, audio, name and branding belong to us or our licensors. You get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to play it. You may capture and share screenshots, video and streams of your own play, including monetised video, provided you do not claim the game as your own and do not present your content as official. Everything else — copying, redistributing, reselling, building derivative clients — is not permitted.

Feedback you send us may be used freely and without obligation, which is the only workable way to act on it.

7. Ending the agreement

You may stop at any time, and you may delete your account yourself from the Account panel in the game — permanently and immediately. We may suspend or close an account for a breach of these terms as described in section 2. Sections 3, 6, 8 and 9 survive the end of this agreement.

8. Disclaimers and liability

The game is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of bugs, lost matches or lost rating. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability to you is limited to the amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

Nothing here removes rights you have as a consumer that cannot be removed by agreement — including your statutory rights where a purchase was faulty, never delivered, or unauthorised.

9. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, and disputes are subject to the state and federal courts located in California — without depriving you of the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country you live in.

10. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The effective date at the top tells you which version is current, and material changes will be announced in the game before they take effect. Continuing to play after that is acceptance.

11. Contact

The operator of Gembound Arena (independent developer, California, United States) — [email protected].