Terms of Service

The service

CueMasters is an online pool game played in the browser: practice tables, online matches against other players, rankings, replays, friends and a shop with optional cues, boosts and a profile picture. Playing is free. A purchase is never needed to play, to win or to climb the rankings.

The game changes over time. We may add, change or remove features, game modes, rooms and items, and we may end the service altogether. Where a change takes something away that you paid for, the section on virtual items says what happens.

Who may play

You must be at least 14 years old to create an account. If you are under the age at which you can agree to these terms by yourself where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to them for you and is responsible for your use of the service, including any purchase.

You may not use the service if we have closed an account of yours for breaking these terms.

Your account

An account is for one person and may not be shared, sold, given away or passed on. You are responsible for everything that happens under it, so keep your password to yourself, use a strong one and turn on two-factor authentication if you can. Tell us at once if you think someone else has access.

Your player name is seen by everyone. It must not be offensive, must not impersonate another person, a company or our staff, and must not advertise anything or contain a link or contact details. We may change a name that breaks these rules and will tell you when we do.

You must give a working email address and keep it current: it is how we confirm your identity, reset your password and tell you about changes to these terms. Without an account you play as a guest tied to your browser, and the guest's progress is lost if that browser forgets the game.

Fair play and conduct

Play the game as it is meant to be played, with the controls the game gives you. The following are not allowed: cheating software, aim helpers or any tool that automates play or reads the game's data; exploiting bugs instead of reporting them; playing several accounts against each other or arranging results to farm points or achievements; buying, selling, swapping or lending accounts; and interfering with the service, other players' connections or our systems in any way.

Treat other players with respect. Harassment, threats, hate speech, sexual content, spam, begging, sharing other people's personal data, and advertising of any kind (links, contacts, products, services, other games) are not allowed in chat, in names, in table names or anywhere else players can see.

If you see someone break these rules, use the report button in the game or write to [email protected].

What you write and upload

You keep the rights to what you write in chat and to the picture you upload. By posting or uploading it you give us a free, worldwide licence to store it, show it to other players and use it to run and moderate the service for as long as it is needed. You confirm that you have the right to use what you upload and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights, is not unlawful and is not offensive. We may remove any content that breaks these terms without telling you first.

Match records (the shots of a finished online match) belong to the service and may be shown as replays to anyone, with the players' names as they appeared at the table.

Virtual items

Cues, boosts, the profile picture and any other item are a limited, personal, non-transferable licence to use a feature inside the game for as long as the service runs and your account is in good standing. Items have no money value, cannot be exchanged for money and cannot be moved to another account or sold. You do not own them.

We may change how an item looks or plays, or retire it, to keep the game fair or because the game has changed. Ranking points and ranks are a measure of play, not a possession, and we may correct them when they were gained unfairly.

Purchases

Prices are shown in euros before you pay and include any taxes that apply. Payment is taken by the payment provider you choose; we never see your card or wallet details. The contract for an item is made when the payment provider confirms the payment; the item is then delivered to your account at once and you receive a receipt by email.

A purchase is for the account that is signed in at checkout. Check that it is yours before paying: an item delivered to the wrong account cannot be moved. The shop is for adults and for younger players who have their parent's or guardian's permission to spend money.

Purchases are final

Everything in the shop is digital content delivered to your account at once. At checkout you ask for immediate delivery and confirm that you give up the 14-day right of withdrawal that consumers normally have for contracts made online. Purchases are therefore final: we do not refund an item because you changed your mind, no longer play, or because your account was suspended or closed for breaking these terms.

This does not take away the rights the law gives you as a consumer, for example when a payment was taken by mistake or an item was never delivered. If something went wrong with a purchase, write to [email protected] with your player name and the order number from the receipt.

Advertising in the rooms

The rooms carry sponsor surfaces that show our own announcements and campaigns bought by advertisers. A campaign is a service bought for a fixed number of days: you supply the images, we review them against the rules on the advertising page and, if we approve them, show them on the placement you chose for the days booked. The window begins when we approve the campaign, not when you pay.

You confirm that you have the right to use the images you upload and that they comply with the law and with our rules. We may refuse a campaign before it starts, in which case the payment is returned in full, and we may stop a running campaign that turns out to break the rules or the law, in which case the days not shown are refunded. Views are counted as players entering a room that showed the campaign; we do not promise a number of views, and the service is otherwise provided as described in the section on availability.

Moderation and sanctions

We moderate the game to keep it fair and pleasant. Chat lines and names that carry a link, contact details or an advertisement are refused automatically, and reports from players are reviewed by our staff.

If these terms are broken we may, depending on how serious it is, warn you, remove content, change your name, mute you, suspend the account for a time, reset points and results gained unfairly, remove items gained unfairly, or close the account. Serious or repeated abuse and cheating lead to a permanent ban, which may extend to new accounts of the same person. A closed account's items are lost without refund, except where the law says otherwise.

You may contest a decision by writing to [email protected] within 30 days; a person will look at it and answer.

Availability

We work to keep the service running around the clock but cannot promise that it will always be available or free of errors. Maintenance, updates, outages and problems with your own connection may interrupt a match. An interrupted match may be counted, not counted, or counted as a loss for the player who left, as the game's rules provide; we do not compensate for lost matches, points or play time.

We may suspend the service, or your access to it, for maintenance, for security reasons or when the law requires it.

Intellectual property

The game, the website, their code, graphics, sounds, texts, names and logos belong to us or to our licensors and are protected by copyright and other laws. We give you a personal, non-exclusive, revocable licence to use the service for your own entertainment, under these terms. You may not copy, modify, decompile, sell, rent or host the game or any part of it, remove any notice from it, or use our name or logos without our written permission.

The game is inspired by the classic online pool games of the past. It is our own work and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the publisher of any other game.

Liability

The service is provided as it is and as available, for entertainment. As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect losses, lost data, lost profit or losses caused by events outside our reasonable control, and our total liability for any claim under these terms is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law does not allow us to exclude. Nothing in these terms takes away the rights you have as a consumer under the law of the country where you live.

Changes and ending

We may change these terms when the service, the law or our business changes. Registered players are told about significant changes by email at least 14 days before they apply; the date at the top shows the current version. If you keep using the service after a change applies, you accept it; if you do not agree, delete your account before then.

You can stop using the service at any time and delete your account in your account settings; what we keep afterwards is explained in the privacy policy. We may end the agreement and close your account if you break these terms, if the law requires it, or if we stop providing the service; in the last case we tell registered players at least 30 days in advance.

If part of these terms turns out to be invalid, the rest stays in force. These terms are written in English; translations are provided for convenience, and the English text prevails where they differ.

Law and disputes

If you are a consumer, the law of the country where you live applies to this agreement to the extent its mandatory consumer protection rules require, and you may bring a claim in the courts of that country. Otherwise, and to the extent the law allows, the agreement is governed by the law of the country we operate from.

If something goes wrong, write to [email protected] first; most problems are solved that way. Consumers in the European Union can also turn to the consumer protection authority or the out-of-court dispute body of their country.