Terms of Service

These terms are the agreement between you and Hive House Games, a sole proprietorship (“Hive House Games,” “we,” “us”) covering your use of this site and the games, events, and tools on it. By creating an account, hosting an event, or joining a game, you agree to them.

If you do not agree, do not use the platform. If you are agreeing on behalf of an organization, you are confirming you have the authority to bind it.

We may update these terms. When we do, the date at the top of this page changes. If a change materially affects hosts who have taken money, we will email account holders before it takes effect.

You must be 13 or older to hold an account. You must be 18 or older to host an event or receive payouts, because hosting involves a contract with your attendees and payouts involve a financial account in your name.

Players do not need an account. Anyone can join a game with a join code or a QR scan, and we ask them only for a display name.

• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.
• Give us an email address you can actually receive mail at. It is how we reach you about your account, your events, and anything that goes wrong.
• One person, one account. Do not sell, rent, or share your account with someone else.
• Tell us promptly if you think someone else has gotten into your account.

You can close your account at any time. See account deletion in the privacy policy for what happens to your data when you do.

Games get played in front of a room. That room often includes other people’s colleagues, congregations, students, and children. The standard here is simple: do not put something on a screen that the host would have to apologize for.

You agree not to:

• Upload or submit content that is illegal, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, or that targets a person or group based on who they are.
• Impersonate anyone, or represent yourself as connected to an organization you have no connection to.
• Upload content you do not have the rights to. This is covered in detail under copyright below.
• Attempt to break, overload, scrape, or reverse engineer the platform, or to reach accounts, events, or data that are not yours.
• Use the platform to send spam, run a scam, or collect people's information under false pretenses.
• Resell or redistribute access to the platform itself.

Display names and typed answers are filtered automatically. We screen names chosen at signup and text that reaches a shared screen against a list of banned words, including deliberate misspellings, letter substitutions, and separators. A name that fails is refused rather than silently altered. The filter is a floor, not a substitute for the rules above, and passing it is not permission.

Hosts can remove a player from their own event at any time, for any reason. We can suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, and we will do so without notice where someone is being harmed.

When you host, the event is yours. You choose the games, the date, the venue or the call link, and who is welcome. You are responsible for the event itself, including anything you are required to do where it takes place.

• Describe your event accurately, including when it starts, where it happens, and what attendees should expect.
• Run the event you described, or cancel it, which tells the people who signed up.
• You are responsible for any questions, clues, images, or other content you upload, and for having the right to use it.
• You are responsible for your own venue, permits, insurance, and local law. We provide software; we do not run your event.
• Do not use a host account to collect money for an event you do not intend to run.

Your plan sets what your events can do: how many events a month, how many players, which games, and how many rounds. Those limits are shown on the pricing page and enforced in the product.

Ticketing is not yet available. Events today are free to attend. This section sets out the terms that will apply once ticketing launches, so that hosts can see them before they commit to a plan.

Payments and payouts will run through Stripe. Hosts will connect a Stripe account through Stripe Connect, and money from attendees will go to that account directly. Stripe handles card processing, identity verification, and the payout itself, under Stripe’s own agreement with you. We never hold your money and we never see your bank details or a buyer’s card number.

We will take a platform fee per paid ticket, set by your plan:

• Free: 4% + $1.25 per ticket
• Pro: 3% + $1.00 per ticket
• Team: 2% + $0.75 per ticket

Free events carry no platform fee. Stripe’s own card-processing charge is separate and on top, and is charged to the host by Stripe. Hosts will choose per event whether the platform fee comes out of their payout or is added to the buyer’s total at checkout.

You are responsible for your own taxes on money you receive, and for any refunds you owe your attendees. What happens when an event is canceled or cut short is set out in the refunds and cancellations policy, which forms part of these terms.

You keep ownership of the questions, clues, images, and other content you upload. You give us permission to store it, process it, and display it as part of running your events and the features you have turned on. That permission lasts as long as the content is on the platform.

You confirm that you have the right to upload what you upload, and that it does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, trademark, privacy, or other rights.

Uploaded media is stored with Cloudinary and is readable by anyone who has the URL. The address is long and not guessable, and it is not listed or indexed by us, but it is not a private vault. Do not upload anything that would be damaging if the link were shared.

A custom game is one of our games with the content built around a subject you give us. Two rules govern what happens to that content afterward, and both matter.

General commissioned content stays ours, and we may make it available to other hosts and players. If you commission a round on 1990s music, state capitals, or classic movies, we own the questions we write and we may add them to the library that every host draws on. You are paying us to build and run it for your event, not to take a general subject out of circulation.

Content built around a specific organization or specific people stays yours, and we never reuse it. A quiz about a couple for their wedding, a round on your company’s own history, a board about your congregation, your school, or your team: that content is yours. It is not added to the general library, it is not shown to another host, and it is not used to build anyone else’s game. It exists for your event.

If a commission mixes the two, the parts about you or your organization are treated as yours and the general-knowledge parts are treated as ours. If it is unclear which side something falls on, ask before you commission it and we will put the answer in writing.

We respect copyright and expect everyone using the platform to do the same. Hosts upload their own questions, images, and media, and the person who uploads content is responsible for having the right to use it. We do not review uploads before they appear.

Repeat infringers lose their accounts. We keep a record of takedown notices we act on, and we terminate the accounts of users who are repeatedly the subject of valid notices.

To report infringing content, send a notice to our designated agent at hello@hivehousegames.com with the subject line “DMCA Notice.” Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), your notice must include:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed.
• Identification of the material you say is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it. A direct link is best.
• Your address, telephone number, and email address.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

We will remove or disable access to material that is the subject of a valid notice, and we will tell the person who uploaded it.

To file a counter-notice, if your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, send a counter-notice to the same address. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3) it must include your signature, identification of the removed material and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification, and your name, address, and telephone number. It must also include a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the district where you live, or where we may be found if you are outside the United States, and that you will accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice.

If we receive a valid counter-notice, we may restore the material in 10 to 14 business days unless the original complainant tells us they have filed an action seeking a court order.

Filing a notice or counter-notice that misrepresents the facts can make you liable for damages under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). Notices and counter-notices are accepted by email only, at the address above.

A host can cancel their own event at any time. Canceling marks it as not happening, and everyone who signed up is emailed so that nobody turns up to a room that is not open.

A canceled event stays visible to the people who signed up. It comes off the public listings, but its page still opens for anyone holding the link, and it says plainly that the event is off. Reserved spots are released.

Deleting is a different thing, and it is only available while nobody has signed up. A host can delete a draft, or an event nobody has responded to, and it simply comes down. Once one person has reserved a spot, deleting is refused and canceling is what applies, because canceling is what tells them.

A canceled event still counts toward the monthly event limit on the Free plan. The limit counts events scheduled in a month, and canceling one does not hand the slot back.

Once ticketing launches, what a buyer gets back, and who absorbs the platform fee, is set out in the refunds and cancellations policy.

Disputes between a host and an attendee are between them. Our role is the software and, once ticketing launches, the payment path. We are not the organizer of your event and we are not a party to your arrangement with your attendees. If we can help resolve something with the records we hold, we will.

If you have a problem with us, email hello@hivehousegames.com first. Most things are faster to fix than to argue about.

We work to keep the platform up, particularly while an event is live, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. Games run over a live connection, and connections fail. Rounds hold their place and players reconnect, but a venue’s internet is not something we control.

We may add, change, or remove features. Where a change removes something a paying host relies on, we will give notice by email before it takes effect.

The platform is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for any claim arising out of or relating to these terms or the platform is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred United States dollars.

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or the cost of substitute services, even if we were told such damages were possible.

Some states do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

You agree to indemnify us against claims arising from your events, your content, or your breach of these terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict of law rules. You and we agree that any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California, and we each consent to those courts’ jurisdiction.

If a provision of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.

Questions about these terms, legal notices, and DMCA notices all go to hello@hivehousegames.com. For anything else, the contact form reaches the same people.