CTRLLR Studio terms of service

You need an account to use the studio. You must be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live, and you must give a real email address that you control. Your account is for you alone: keep your password safe and tell us if you think someone else has used it. You are responsible for what happens in your account.

You describe a game and choose what goes into it (how many characters, places, levels, music tracks and so on). The studio then designs it, generates its pictures, animations, music, sounds and voices, writes and builds its code, playtests it, and publishes it at a private link. You can have the game made in one go, or step by step: the studio then stops after each step (the brief, the artwork ideas, the art direction, the game design, the characters, the world, the sound, the build) and you look at what it made before you start the next one. Afterwards you can leave notes, ask for changes and add to the game. All of this is done by automated systems, including artificial-intelligence models run by us and by other companies (section 9). No person reviews your game, or a step of it, before it is delivered.

The studio is new and still changing. We may change how it works, which models it uses, what a job includes, and the time a job takes.

The games, pictures, sounds, text and code the studio makes are generated by AI, and their results cannot be guaranteed. In particular, we do not promise that a game:

• matches your description, your taste or your expectations;
• is fun, balanced, complete, or free of bugs, glitches or errors;
• works on every device, browser, screen or network;
• is original or unique: similar results may be made for other people, and results may resemble existing works;
• is accurate, appropriate for every audience, or fit for any particular purpose.

Look at what the studio makes before you share it. You decide whether and how to use it, and you take responsibility for that decision.

A job is one piece of work you order: a whole game in one go, one step of a game made step by step, a redo of a step, or a change request. A job is delivered when the studio publishes what it was for, whatever you think of its quality: a playable version of your game, or, for a step, the documents, pictures or sounds that step makes. A delivered job uses its credits. Starting the next step, or ordering a redo, is a new job with its own price.

If a job cannot deliver, it has failed: its credits stay held, and you choose either to continue it at no extra charge (offered up to 2 times) or to take credits back to your balance. For a game ordered in one go, the steps the studio finished before the job failed were made and stay charged; you take back the credits of the steps it did not finish.

You pay for the studio with credits. Credits are a prepaid right to have the studio make and change games; they are not money, have no cash value, cannot be transferred or sold, and can only be used in the studio. Paid credits do not expire.

You buy credits in packs, by card, through our payment provider (Stripe). The price is shown in US dollars before you pay, and tax is added at checkout where it applies.

There is no fixed price for a game. A job is priced from what you order: each character, each of its animations, each place, object, level, music track, voice line and round of playtesting has its own price, worked out from what it costs us to make, plus our margin. The price of a job, and what it is made of, is always shown before you start it, and it does not change once the job has started. When you let the studio choose between 2D and 3D, the dearer of the two is held and the difference is returned if the cheaper one is built. When a job starts, its credits are held; they are used when the job is delivered. We may change prices; a change never affects credits you already hold or a job already running.

To limit fraud, an account can buy 2 packs a day and hold up to 500 credits, and new or unusual activity may be checked. Credits we give you for free (for example as a gift or to make up for a problem) are not bought credits.

Only unused credits can be refunded. Unused credits are bought credits that are in your balance: not held by a job that is running or failed, and not used by a delivered job.

• You can ask for a refund of unused credits from a purchase made in the last 120 days, from the billing section of your account. We refund the matching part of what you paid, to the card you paid with.
• Used credits are not refunded, including when you are disappointed with a delivered game: because AI results cannot be guaranteed (section 3), a delivered job counts as delivered. Ask for a change instead.
• Credits returned to your balance from a failed job are unused credits again. The credits of the steps a failed job did finish (section 3) are used credits.
• In a game made step by step, each finished step is a delivered job: its credits are used even if you stop there and never have the game built.
• Free credits are never refunded or exchanged for money.
• If you close your account, we refund its unused bought credits under this section. If we close it because you broke these terms, we may keep credits needed to cover the harm or cost caused.

If you dispute a payment with your bank instead of asking us, we may suspend your account while the dispute is open and remove the disputed credits.

Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under consumer law that cannot be excluded or limited by contract. Where the law gives you a right to withdraw from a purchase of digital services, you ask the studio to start work at once when you start a job, and you accept that you lose that right for the credits the job uses once it is delivered; your right to a refund of unused credits under this section is not affected.

You are responsible for your descriptions, notes and change requests. Do not use the studio to make anything that:

• is illegal where you are, or helps someone break the law;
• is sexually explicit, or sexualises minors in any way;
• promotes hatred, violence against real groups or people, harassment, or self-harm;
• depicts or imitates a real person without their consent;
• copies characters, worlds, logos, music or other work you do not have the right to use, such as characters from existing games, films or series;
• deceives people, such as phishing pages, fake brands or scams;
• attacks, overloads, reverse-engineers or tries to get around the limits or security of the studio or the systems behind it.

We may refuse a description, stop a job, take a game down or suspend an account that we reasonably believe breaks this section. If we stop a job for this reason, its credits may be used, not returned.

You keep the rights you have in what you write. As far as we are able to, we give you the rights we have in the game made for you (its pictures, sounds, text and game code), so that you can play it, share it and use it. The CTRLLR platform it runs on (our software development kit, game runtime, templates and the code they share) stays ours; you may use it as part of your game on CTRLLR.

The law on who owns AI-generated work differs between countries and is still developing: some or all of a generated game may not be protected by copyright, and we cannot promise that you can stop others using something similar.

You give us permission to store, process, copy, run, display and transmit your descriptions, notes and games as needed to provide, secure and support the studio, including sending them to the AI providers that make your game (section 9).

A delivered game has a link. It is not listed anywhere, but anyone who has the link can play it, so share it with care. You can switch the link off and on in the studio. We may take a game down if we receive a credible complaint about it or believe it breaks these terms.

The studio relies on other companies: AI model providers (who receive your descriptions and the material made from them to generate your game), Stripe for payments, Neon for accounts and sign-in, and Vercel for hosting and storage. Their own terms and policies apply to the parts they provide.

We work to keep the studio running and your games available, but we provide them "as is" and "as available". The studio may be paused, slow or unavailable, and jobs may fail; when a job fails its credits are held for you as described in section 3.

To the extent the law allows: we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, lost data or lost opportunities; and our total liability to you for anything to do with the studio is limited to the amount you paid us for credits in the 12 months before the claim. These limits do not apply where the law does not allow them, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

You can stop using the studio at any time; to close your account, contact us (section 13). We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, puts the studio or other people at risk, or is used for fraud. If we close the studio itself, we will tell you in advance and refund unused bought credits.

We may update these terms. When we do, we will show you the new version, and you will need to accept it to start new jobs or buy credits. Changes never take away credits you already hold.

These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, and its courts can hear any dispute about them. If you are a consumer, this does not take away the protection of the mandatory laws of the country where you live, or your right to bring a claim there. If a part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.

Questions, refunds you cannot request in the studio, account closure and complaints: gooey.tech@gooey.tech. Studio privacy is covered by our privacy policy.