Terms of service

1. Who runs this

Dethroned ("the service", dethroned.io) is operated by Amber Stack LLC, a limited liability company registered in New Mexico, United States.

Registered address: 1209 Mountain Road Pl NE, Ste R, Albuquerque, NM 87110, United States.

We are a small team and we do not publish names, phone numbers or an office address. Everything reaches us by email and we answer by email: [email protected] for these terms, [email protected] for anything about your account or a payment. That is the whole contact surface, deliberately.

By using the service you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

2. Age

The service is for people aged 18 or over. We may ask for proof of age and we will close any account we believe belongs to a minor.

3. What you are buying

You are buying a placement: your faction's name, emblem and message displayed on a country or territory on our map, for the current season, while your faction holds the top position there.

You are not buying land, sovereignty, a share of the company, a token, or any right over the real place shown on the map. Nothing on this service is a claim about who any territory belongs to in the real world.

The placement cannot be sold, exchanged for money, or moved to another place on the map.

4. Money only moves one way

Every payment is final. Amounts you pay are credited to your faction on that specific place and stay there, whether your faction ends the season on top or not.

There are no refunds, no withdrawals, no balance you can cash out, and no payouts of any kind. Leaving a faction, a faction dissolving, or losing the top position does not return money to you.

Where the law gives you a right to cancel a digital purchase within a cooling-off period, we ask for your express consent to begin performance immediately and your acknowledgement that this ends that right. You give that consent at checkout, and it is recorded with the version of the text you accepted.

This is the single most important thing on this page, so it has a page of its own: see "Payments are final".

5. Prices and how they move

Taking the top position costs an exact amount that we quote at that moment: it depends on the current leader's season total, a fixed increment, and a war tax that rises with how often the place has changed hands in the last 24 hours.

Backing your faction without taking the top position accepts any amount from €2, and carries no war tax.

Prices also fall on their own: an untouched place loses value slowly, and a season reset returns places to a starting price. €2 is the smallest amount we will charge for anything, so if a fall leaves the calculated difference below that, you are charged €2.

A quote is valid only for the moment it is issued. If the price has changed at all by the time your payment is captured — up or down, including a place that has become free to claim — the purchase is cancelled and the authorisation is released. We never charge a different amount than the one you were shown.

Prices include applicable taxes where we are required to charge them.

6. Seasons

What you buy is the current season, which runs to the end of the calendar year (UTC). It is not permanent placement.

When a season closes, the results of that season are sealed and published as a permanent record. Season totals return to zero; historical totals are kept as a record and give no advantage in the new season.

The map itself is only partly reset. A place that ended the season with an owner stays open and starts again from a low base price. A place that nobody held closes, and has to be opened again. We do not close a place that a faction was still holding.

7. Names, emblems and messages

Everything you publish through the service — faction name, emblem, message, links — must be lawful and must not be hateful, violent, sexual, deceptive, or an impersonation of a real person, company, public body or state.

We review this material and may refuse, hide, replace or anonymise it at any time. While something is under review or has been rejected, we publish an anonymous version instead.

Refusing or removing your content does not entitle you to a refund. Your contribution still counts in full towards your faction's total and your faction keeps the place it holds; what changes is that it is shown anonymously until you submit something we can publish, which costs nothing.

8. Fair play

Do not use automated tools to place purchases, do not use payment methods that are not yours, and do not attempt to manipulate the ranking through chargebacks, stolen cards or coordinated fraud.

We may suspend an account, cancel pending purchases and remove a faction from the map for any of the above. Amounts already credited are not returned.

9. Availability

We do our best to keep the service running and correct, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may change the rules of play for future seasons; we will announce changes before a season starts.

If we shut the service down, the current season ends early and no money is returned, in line with "Money only moves one way" above.

10. Liability

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you is limited to the amount you paid us in the current season.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for death, personal injury or fraud.

11. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of New Mexico, United States. Where you are a consumer, you keep the protections of the law of your country of residence and may bring proceedings there.

Before going to court, write to [email protected]. Most of what looks like a dispute is a misunderstanding about how money works here, and we would rather explain it than argue it.