Terms of Service

1. About these Terms

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are an agreement between you and IntelliVentures LLC FZ, registered at Meydan Grandstand, 6th floor, Meydan Road, Nad Al Sheba, Dubai, U.A.E. (“we”, “us”, “our”), which owns and operates Hype Rivals. They apply to Hype Rivals wherever you play it: the web game, the Telegram Mini App and our apps for iPhone, iPad and Android (“our apps”). They also apply to this website, hyperivals.app. Together, these are the “Service”.

In Telegram, Hype Rivals is published by Rich App, our exclusive publisher on Telegram. The game opens from Rich App’s Telegram bot, and Telegram Stars payments and the game’s Telegram messages go through that bot.

By opening, signing in to, playing or buying anything in the Service, you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service. When the game asks your age, confirming your answer also confirms that you accept these Terms and the Privacy Policy, and we record which versions you accepted.

Some parts of the Service have their own rules, shown in the game: for example the details of an offer, an event, a season or a tournament. Those rules form part of these Terms.

2. Who may play

Your age. After the first tutorial, whether you finish it or skip it, the game asks your age once. Your answer decides which social features you can use; battles are the same for everyone. It controls only these things: House chat is only for players 18 or over; a player under 18 starts with their online status hidden from housemates and can choose to show it; a player under 13 cannot create or rename a House (see section 11 and section 12); in our Android app, only a player 18 or over is asked whether to let Google Play Games keep a code for their account without a Play Games profile (see our Privacy Policy); and a player under 18 is shown no personal offers and is not offered the Level-Up Kit or the Encore Ladder (see our Privacy Policy). Until you answer, you are treated as under 18. In our apps, the age range that Apple or Google shares with the app fills in the question for you to confirm, and can also keep these features closed, as our Privacy Policy explains. Give your real age. If your answer was wrong, contact us and we can correct it.

If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Service only with the permission of a parent or legal guardian. That person accepts these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use of the Service, including any purchases. Where the law where you live sets extra rules for children using online services, those rules apply, and some features may not be available to you.

Only adults may pay with cryptocurrency or connect a crypto wallet. An adult means 18 or older, or older than that if the age of majority where you live is higher.

You may not use the Service where the law prohibits it, if sanctions prohibit you from using it, or if we have terminated your account before.

3. Your account

• Guest accounts. The first time you open Hype Rivals on the web or in our apps, we create a guest account so you can play at once. A guest account lives on the device or browser where it was created, and on any other device where one of our apps brings it back (see below). If you clear that data, delete the app, sign out, or lose the device, the account can be lost for good and we may not be able to restore it. To keep your progress safe, link your account in the game to Google, Apple or Telegram, where that option is offered.
• Bringing an account back in our apps. When you reinstall one of our apps, or open it on a new device, it can bring back the account you last played, through Google Play Games or Google’s Block Store on Android, or Game Center or iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad, as our Privacy Policy explains. It cannot always do so, so linking your account is still the safe way to keep it. If more than one account could be yours, you choose; after you sign out of an account, the app asks you before bringing it back; after you sign out of all devices, the app does not bring it back until you have signed in again; and a deleted account never comes back. Anyone who uses the same Google account, Play Games profile, Game Center account or Apple ID as you, or a phone set up from yours, may be able to open your account this way, so keep them secure. A guest account brought back this way is one account on every device that has it: signing out of it, or continuing as a new guest, on any of them ends it on all of them, and the game tells you so before you confirm.
• Signed-in accounts follow the Google, Apple or Telegram account you used to sign in. On the web and in our apps you can sign in with any of the three, where it is offered. Keep that account secure: anyone who can sign in with it can play as you.
• Accounts in Telegram. When you play in Telegram, you sign in with your Telegram account through the bot of Rich App, our publisher there, and your Hype Rivals account in Telegram is also your Rich App account. When you sign in with Telegram on the web or in our apps, you use Hype Rivals’ own Telegram sign-in, and it opens the same account you play with in Telegram.
• Fair use of accounts. Do not use extra accounts to gain an advantage, farm rewards, abuse invite rewards or get around a suspension. Do not buy, sell, rent, share or transfer accounts.

4. The game

Hype Rivals is played online and needs an internet connection. Matches run on our servers, and our servers decide the result.

Hype Rivals is a live game. At any time, we may add, change, rebalance or remove cards, arenas, modes, offers, events, seasons, rewards and other features, including ones you have unlocked or paid for. We do this to improve the game, to fix problems or to meet legal or platform requirements. Where we reasonably can, we tell you in the game about a change that significantly affects something you bought.

Seasons, events and tournaments follow the rules shown in the game, including Trophy resets at the end of a season. Rewards you have not claimed expire 7 days after a season ends. Tournament rewards expire 30 days after the tournament ends.

We work to keep the Service running well, but we do not promise that it will always be available, uninterrupted or free of errors, or that your progress can never be lost.

5. Virtual currency and items

Coins, Gems, Wild Cards, cards, card levels, chests, avatars, passes and every other item in Hype Rivals (“virtual items”) give you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive and non-transferable licence to use them inside the Service. You do not own them.

• Virtual items have no cash value. They are not money, credit, a deposit, a security, a crypto asset or property.
• You cannot transfer virtual items to another player, another account or anywhere outside the game, with two exceptions inside a House (see section 11): you can give copies of a card that a housemate has asked for, and buying a Diamond Pass sends a small, fixed gift to your housemates. Apart from those, there is no trading, no gifting between players and no marketplace, and nothing may be given or received in exchange for money or anything else of value.
• Virtual items cannot be exchanged for money or anything else of real-world value, by us or by anyone else.
• Coins, Gems and Wild Cards do not expire while your account exists. Unclaimed rewards expire as described in section 4.
• We may correct a balance that was given in error, or that resulted from a bug, an exploit or fraud.
• If a card donation or a House gift came from payment fraud or collusion, we may take back what is still held from the accounts that took part. Players who were not involved keep what they received.
• When your account ends, because you delete it or because we terminate it under these Terms, the virtual items on it end too, without compensation unless the law requires it.

Nothing in Hype Rivals is an investment. We make no promise about the future value, availability or usefulness of any virtual item.

Google Play Games rewards

In our Android app, Google Play Games can give you a reward for Hype Rivals, such as an avatar, an emote or a Spotlight Chest, for example for completing one of its Quests. These rewards are free. Google grants them under its own terms, and Google alone decides who is offered a reward and when; we do not control that. Before you claim a reward, the game shows which of your accounts will receive it, and you can switch to another account first; the reward goes only to the account you claim it with. A reward you do not claim within the time Google Play allows can lapse. Like every other virtual item, a reward has no cash value and cannot be transferred, sold or exchanged for anything.

6. Purchases

Some virtual items and offers can be bought with real money. Every offer shows what it contains and its price before you buy. Prices are set in US dollars. Your store or payment method may show you a local price or an equivalent amount, for example in Telegram Stars, before you confirm, and that is what you pay. Taxes may apply.

How you can pay

• In our apps, you pay only through Apple’s App Store or Google Play, under their terms. A Diamond Pass is sold for one season at a time and never renews by itself.
• On the web and in Telegram, depending on where you play and on your account, you can pay with Telegram Stars, through the bot of our Telegram publisher; by card, through Stripe; in cryptocurrency (TON, or USDT on the TON network) from a wallet you connect with TON Connect; through a NOWPayments cryptocurrency invoice; or, if your account is also a Rich App account, with its Rich App balance, shown as Rich Bank. The payment provider’s own terms also apply.

Delivery

What you bought is added to your account once the payment is confirmed. If you were charged and did not receive it, contact [email protected] with the details. We will check the payment and fix it.

Cryptocurrency payments

Send exactly the amount shown, on the network shown, before the time shown. Blockchain payments cannot be reversed, and network fees are yours to pay. A TON payment that arrives up to 24 hours late is still processed automatically. For anything later, contact support. We are not responsible for losses caused by sending the wrong amount, sending to the wrong address or network, or a problem with your wallet.

Refunds

• Purchases are final once delivered, except where the law, or the rules of the store or payment method you used, require a refund.
• In our apps, Apple or Google handles refund requests under its own policy. We cannot issue those refunds ourselves. When Apple or Google refunds a purchase, it tells us, and what the purchase gave you may be removed.
• On the web and in Telegram, if a payment cannot be delivered, for example because it was a duplicate, we refund card and Telegram Stars payments automatically. For cryptocurrency and account-balance payments, contact support and we will arrange a refund or a credit.
• If you live in the EU or the UK: when you buy digital content that is delivered straight away, you agree to its immediate delivery and accept that you lose your right to withdraw from the purchase once delivery has started.

Reversed payments

If a payment is refunded or charged back, we may remove what it gave you. If you have already used it, your account may be unable to make purchases until the matter is resolved.

A minor needs the permission of a parent or guardian before buying anything.

7. Nothing random is for sale, and no gambling

Hype Rivals is not gambling. There is no wagering, no cash prizes, and nothing you win can be exchanged for money.

• Nothing random is for sale. Every paid offer, the Diamond Pass included, shows exactly what it contains before you buy it, and that is what you receive. The gift a Diamond Pass sends to your housemates is fixed too.
• Chests contain cards, and sometimes an avatar, chosen at random from those available at your arena. You only earn chests by playing, for example from wins, daily rewards, goals, the free Season Road and the Weekly Boss; they are never sold.
• Google Play Games rewards, the Spotlight Chest included, are free (see section 5). Each reaches the game through a Google Play product that is never offered for sale, and if one is ever paid for, nothing is given for it and Google Play refunds the payment.
• Tournaments and the House race have no entry fee and pay in-game rewards only.
• Invite rewards are in-game items only.

8. Fair play

Our servers are the authority on what happened in a match. You must not:

• modify the game, its files or its network traffic, or use automation software, scripts, macros, memory editors or injected code to play or to collect rewards;
• exploit a bug or unintended behaviour instead of reporting it to us;
• arrange the result of a match, win or lose on purpose, or work with an opponent to manipulate Trophies, leaderboards or rewards;
• use extra accounts, or work with other players, to farm card donations, House gifts or House rewards, or to push a House up the race;
• disrupt the Service, probe it for weaknesses, or try to overload it or gain unauthorised access to any part of it; or
• buy, sell or advertise accounts, virtual items or match results.

If you do, we may reverse rewards, reset progress, restrict features, or suspend or terminate your account. Where the integrity of the game requires it, we may do this without notice.

9. Community rules

These rules apply to everything other players can see from you: your display name and public tag, House names, House chat messages, and anything else you send through the Service, including emotes, friend requests, challenges and invites. They apply in every House and everywhere else in the game.

What is not allowed

• anything that sexualises a child, or that grooms, pressures or exploits a child;
• threats of violence, or encouraging anyone to hurt themselves or others;
• hate or harassment, including insults, slurs and attacks on anyone for who they are;
• sexual content;
• personal information, yours or anyone else’s, such as a real address, phone number, email address or social media account;
• spam, scams or advertising, including offers to buy, sell or trade accounts, virtual items or anything outside the game;
• pretending to be another person, a moderator or us; and
• anything illegal.

Names, including display names, tags and House names, must also not be misleading. We may change or reset a name that breaks these rules.

How we moderate

• Word filter. Names and chat messages pass through a word filter in all the game’s languages, and it also catches look-alike letters. In chat, links, phone numbers, @handles and wallet addresses are removed automatically.
• Automated check. When it is available, an automated safety check provided by OpenAI reviews every chat message before anyone sees it (our Privacy Policy explains what it receives). A message it flags is not posted, and the game tells you why, so that you can rephrase it. A single message that is not posted is not a penalty.
• People. People on our team review the reports the automated check does not settle, including every report about a child’s safety, self-harm or threats, and every appeal. We aim to review a report within 24 hours and an appeal within 7 days. We report threats to life and child sexual abuse material to the police.

Reports and blocks

You can report a House chat message, a House name or a player. A message you report disappears for you at once, and it is hidden for everyone if the automated check or a moderator confirms the report. You can block a player from their profile: blocking hides the two of you from each other’s friend and invite lists, hides your House chat messages from each other, and stops their House invites reaching you.

Restrictions and appeals

When the automated check confirms a report, a moderator confirms a violation, or many of your messages are refused in a short time, your chat can be restricted, one step at a time: a warning, then 24 hours without chat, then 7 days, then no chat until a person has reviewed it. A confirmed violation involving a child’s safety turns chat off at once. The number of reports alone never restricts anyone. A restricted player sees the reason in the game, with an Appeal button, and a person decides every appeal. We may also change names, remove messages, or suspend or terminate an account, as section 15 describes.

In a House, Elders, Co-leaders and the Leader can remove messages, mute a member’s chat in that House for 24 hours, switch on slow mode and remove members. Those are the House’s own decisions and cannot be appealed to us. If you believe someone is abusing them, report it.

Contact

To raise a safety concern that the game’s own tools cannot reach, especially about a child, email [email protected].

10. Friends and invites

Share your invite link or code only in ways the people receiving it would expect. Do not spam, do not promote it in misleading ways, and do not create or use fake accounts. We may withhold or reverse invite rewards that we believe were obtained through abuse.

When someone joins through your invite, you can see their display name and the progress milestones they reach, including whether they bought a Diamond Pass. Our Privacy Policy explains this.

11. Houses

A House is a team of up to 30 players. Members fight the Weekly Boss, race other Houses, ask for and give cards, share decks and, if they are 18 or over, chat. You can be in one House at a time.

• Joining. Some Houses let anyone who meets their Trophy requirement join at once; others accept requests. The Leader, Co-leaders and Elders accept or decline requests, and an invitation from one of them counts as an acceptance. Joining a House through its link, its code or an invitation never counts as an invite for the invite rewards in section 10.
• Leading. Creating a House costs Coins and needs an account signed in with Google, Apple or Telegram and an age answer of 13 or over. The creator is the Leader. A Leader or Co-leader needs a signed-in account; a guest account can be a Member or an Elder. When a Leader leaves or stops playing for weeks, the game hands leadership to another member who can lead, if there is one.
• Running a House. The Leader, Co-leaders and Elders accept and remove members, change the House’s settings and moderate its chat, within these Terms. A player removed from a House can come back only through a request or an invitation from an Elder or above.
• House names and badges must follow the community rules in section 9. We may change the name of a House, or close it, if its name breaks them.
• The Weekly Boss is a character played by the game, never another player. Boss battles do not change your Trophies.
• Rewards. Stars you win in Boss battles fill your own Boss Chest and can count toward your House’s place in the race. Boss Chests, and the gems a House’s place adds to them, are earned by playing and are never sold. A Boss Chest waits on the House tab for 30 days, and one you have not opened by then is opened for you. Leaving a House, or being removed from one, never takes away rewards you have already earned.
• Card donations. A member can ask the House for copies of a card, and housemates can give them, within daily and weekly limits. Once you hold enough copies of a card for its next upgrade, giving can never take you below that number. Giving earns you no Coins or Gems.
• Diamond Pass House gift. When you buy a Diamond Pass while you are in a House, every other member who joined before your purchase receives a small, fixed gift, at most once per season, and your housemates see your name on it. They keep it even if your purchase is later refunded, unless they took part in fraud.
• Changes. Houses, their limits and rewards, and the race are part of the game and can change like any other part of it (see section 4).

12. House chat

• Who can chat. House chat is only for players aged 18 or over, going by the age you gave the game and, in our apps, the age range that Apple or Google shares. Sending messages also needs an account signed in with Google, Apple or Telegram. Players under 18, and players who have not answered the age question, do not see chat messages at all; they see the rest of their House’s feed and take part in everything else.
• What you can send. Short messages of text and emoji. Links, phone numbers, @handles and wallet addresses are removed automatically, and a filtered word is hidden or stops the message. There are no private messages.
• Who sees your messages. Every member of your House who can read chat. Chat is not private, so do not share anything you would not want your whole House to read.
• House moderation. Elders, Co-leaders and the Leader can remove messages, mute a member’s chat in their House for 24 hours and switch on slow mode.
• Where chat is off. In our apps, chat is not available in some countries, and in some others it is open only to players whose app store confirms they are 18 or over. The game tells you when this applies. We may also switch chat off for everyone at any time.
• How long messages last. A House’s feed keeps its most recent 200 items and nothing older than 30 days. Our Privacy Policy explains what else we keep and for how long.

The community rules in section 9 apply to every message.

13. Our content and your licence

Hype Rivals, including its name, artwork, cards, characters, sounds, music, code and text, belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by copyright and other laws. We give you a personal, revocable, non-exclusive and non-transferable licence to use the Service for your own entertainment, in line with these Terms. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, rent or reverse engineer any part of it, or create works based on it, except where the law allows you to.

If you send us something, such as feedback or a report, or choose a display name, you give us a worldwide, royalty-free licence to use it to run and improve the Service. The same applies to House names and chat messages: we can show them to the players the Service shows them to, and keep and review them as our Privacy Policy describes. Do not send anything you do not have the right to share.

Word list. Our word filter is built in part on the “List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene, and Otherwise Bad Words”, © 2012–2020 Shutterstock, Inc., used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). We have changed it: we removed some entries and added others. The original list is at github.com/LDNOOBW.

14. Services from other companies

The Service works with services we do not control, including Telegram, Google, Apple, the app stores, payment providers, crypto wallets and blockchains. Their own terms and privacy policies apply when you use them, and we are not responsible for them.

Our Android app works with Google Play Games, and our iPhone and iPad app with Game Center. They are services of Google and Apple, which keep your achievements there, and in Game Center your scores, under their own terms.

Crypto-asset prices can change quickly, and blockchain transactions cannot be undone. You are responsible for your wallet, its security and the transactions you approve.

15. Suspension, termination and account deletion

• By you. You can stop playing at any time, and you can delete your account in the game (open the menu, tap Account, then Delete account), on the web, in our apps and in Telegram, or by email, as our account deletion page describes. If you sign in to your account with Telegram, deleting it erases all of its Hype Rivals data and keeps only your Telegram sign-in, because you share that sign-in with Rich App, our publisher on Telegram; to remove it as well, email [email protected]. Deletion is permanent: your progress and virtual items, including anything you bought, are gone and cannot be restored, and no refund is due for anything unused, unless the law requires one. If you sign in again later, you start with a new, empty account. Deleting your account also takes you out of your House.
• By us. We may suspend or terminate your access, in whole or in part, if you break these Terms, if the law or a platform requires it, if your account is used for fraud, or if we stop offering the Service. Where it is reasonable and lawful, we will tell you why.
• If we close the game. If we shut Hype Rivals down, we will give notice in the game where we reasonably can, and we will stop selling anything that could no longer be used.

16. Apple and Google

These Terms are between you and us, not between you and Apple or Google. We, not Apple or Google, are responsible for the Service and its content.

If you downloaded our app from Apple’s App Store:

• Your licence to use the app is limited to Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in Apple’s Media Services Terms and Conditions.
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app.
• If the app fails to meet an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app, if any. To the extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app.
• Apple is not responsible for addressing any claim you or anyone else has relating to the app, including product liability claims, claims that the app does not meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection, privacy or similar laws.
• If anyone claims that the app or your use of 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 U.S. Government embargo or designated by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms. Once you accept them, Apple has the right to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

If you downloaded our app from Google Play, Google Play’s terms also apply, and Google is not responsible for the app.

You must also follow any third-party terms that apply when you use the app, such as your mobile network’s terms.

17. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement.

Some places do not allow certain warranties to be excluded. Where that is the case, the exclusions above apply only as far as the law allows, and you may have rights that these Terms cannot take away.

18. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, progress or virtual items, arising out of or relating to the Service, even if we were told such damages were possible. To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for all claims relating to the Service in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of what you paid us for the Service in that period, or 20 US dollars.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that the law does not allow us to exclude or limit, such as liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. If you are a consumer, these Terms do not affect your statutory rights.

19. Governing law and disputes

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of them or out of the Service, are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates, without regard to their conflict-of-law rules. The courts of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, have exclusive jurisdiction over such disputes.

Before bringing a claim, please contact us first at [email protected], so that we can try to resolve it informally. As far as the law allows, claims must be brought individually, not as part of a class or representative action.

If you are a consumer living in a country whose law gives you the right to bring proceedings in your own courts, or the protection of mandatory consumer laws there, nothing in these Terms takes that right away.

20. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we do, we update the date at the top of this page. If a change is significant, we tell you in the game or on this website before it takes effect. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, the updated Terms apply to you. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service, and you may delete your account.

21. General

• If any part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest remains in force.
• If we do not enforce a part of these Terms, that is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours to an affiliate or to a successor of the Service.
• These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the in-game rules mentioned in section 1, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service.
• If we translate these Terms, the English version applies where the versions differ.

22. Contact us

IntelliVentures LLC FZ
Meydan Grandstand, 6th floor, Meydan Road, Nad Al Sheba, Dubai, U.A.E.
Email: [email protected]

For help with the game, your account or a purchase, see our help and support page.