Refunds and Cancellations

Ticketing is not yet available, and every event on the platform is free to attend. Nobody has paid us or a host for a ticket, so there is nothing to refund.

This page sets out the rules that will apply once ticketing launches. It is published now so that hosts choosing a plan, and attendees deciding whether to trust an event, can read the terms before either of them is asked for money.

Subscription plans are separate from tickets and are covered under plan subscriptions below.

A host can cancel their own event at any time, for any reason. A canceled event stays visible to the people who signed up rather than disappearing, and everyone who signed up is emailed, because someone counting on an event needs to see that it is off.

A buyer can cancel their own ticket up to the cutoff the host sets. Each event carries its own cutoff, chosen by the host when they set the event up, and it is shown before you pay. After that moment passes, self-serve cancellation closes, because the host has already committed to a room, a venue, and a headcount.

A host may set no cutoff at all. Where that is the case, it will say so before you buy, and tickets for that event will not be self-serve refundable.

Cancel inside the host’s window and you are refunded the price of the ticket. The platform fee is not returned.

The fee pays for the work of taking the booking, which happened whether or not you come. Where the host chose to absorb the fee rather than add it to your total, you never paid it separately and you will simply receive what you paid; the fee is retained from the host’s side in that case.

After the cutoff, a ticket is not self-serve refundable. You can still ask the host, and hosts can refund whoever they like, whenever they like. That is between you and them.

Every buyer is refunded in full, including the platform fee. You get back everything you paid, whether the fee was added to your total or absorbed by the host.

We do not profit from a host canceling. The fee is returned rather than retained, because charging for a booking that produced no event would be charging for nothing.

Tickets for a canceled event are voided and cannot be used. You do not need to do anything: refunds go back automatically to the card you paid with.

Live events run over live connections, and sometimes something fails. What you are owed depends on what actually happened.

• The event never starts, for any reason. Treated as a host cancellation: full refund, fee included.
• The event is abandoned before any round is completed. Treated the same way: full refund, fee included.
• The event is cut short after some rounds have been played. The host decides whether to refund, in full or in part, and we will process what they decide.
• The event runs but a technical failure on our side made it unplayable. Contact us and we will refund in full, fee included, without needing the host to arbitrate.
• A player's own phone or internet fails. The game holds a player's place and reconnects them, so this is not usually a refund situation. If you missed the event entirely, ask the host.

The distinction we hold ourselves to is simple: if the platform is the reason an event did not happen, we refund without argument, and we return our fee.

Refunds will be issued to the original payment method through Stripe. We do not send refunds by any other route, and we cannot refund to a different card than the one used.

Once a refund is issued, the money typically appears within 5 to 10 business days. That window is set by your bank or card issuer, not by us or by Stripe, and we cannot speed it up. A refund on a canceled event is issued at the point of cancellation.

Start with the host. They know what happened at their event, they can refund you directly, and it is almost always faster.

If that goes nowhere, email us at hello@hivehousegames.com. Include the event, the date, and the email address you booked with. We hold the order record and can see what was charged and what was refunded. We will look at it and tell you what we find, including when the answer is that the decision is the host’s.

A card chargeback should be the last step, not the first. You are entitled to raise one with your bank. It is worth knowing that a chargeback takes the money back from the host rather than from us, is slower than a refund, and cannot be reversed once it is decided.

A host’s plan subscription is separate from event tickets, and this page’s ticket rules do not apply to it.

You can cancel a plan at any time. Canceling stops the next renewal and you keep the paid features until the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not prorate a refund for the remainder of a period you chose to leave early.

If you upgrade mid-cycle you pay only the difference, with credit for what is left on the old plan. If you were charged in error, email us and we will fix it.

Refund questions go to hello@hivehousegames.com. This policy forms part of the terms of service.