Fair Play and Technical Abuse Policy

1. Scope

This Policy applies to all accounts, characters, sessions, devices, and tools that you control or use with ShardWorlds. It covers the game, our website, HTTP and socket interfaces, and related services.

2. Prohibited Conduct

• Cheating and automation: bots, macros, scripts, headless browsers, or other systems that perform, repeat, schedule, or react to gameplay without your active input.
• Exploits: deliberately using defects, race conditions, unintended states, or interfaces; retaining resulting advantages; repeatedly testing them; or concealing their use.
• Data scraping: automatically or systematically collecting game, map, character, building, monster, economy, or other data through APIs, socket events, pages, modified clients, or network traffic.
• External data services: creating, operating, supplying, or using unauthorized maps, databases, trackers, alerting systems, dashboards, or similar services fed with automatically or improperly collected ShardWorlds data.
• Scanning and probing: systematically requesting IDs, coordinates, endpoints, viewports, or object ranges to obtain information outside your intended gameplay context.
• Manipulation and circumvention: modifying, replaying, or forging requests or socket events; bypassing authentication, rate limits, visibility, location, or ownership checks; or disabling or circumventing safeguards.
• Disruption: access intended or reasonably likely to place unnecessary load on, disrupt, or make unavailable the server, database, network, or player experience.
• Assistance and distribution: developing, sharing, advertising, selling, or operating prohibited tools or methods for others, or using additional accounts to evade enforcement.

3. What Remains Allowed

• Normal play through the interface we provide and ordinary browser functions.
• Screenshots, streams, original guides, and personal notes based on information visible during ordinary play.
• Password managers and display, translation, or accessibility aids that do not automate gameplay, retrieve additional data, or transmit game data to third parties.
• Interfaces or tools expressly documented by us, within their approved purpose and limits.
• Browser developer tools for personal troubleshooting; not for manipulation, replay, scanning, or circumvention.

If you are unsure about a tool, ask before using it at mad@shardworlds-game.com.

4. Reporting Bugs and Vulnerabilities

If you discover a possible defect or exploit, stop using it, preserve only the information needed for a clear report, and disclose it privately to mad@shardworlds-game.com. Do not publish instructions or share the method before we have reviewed and corrected it.

Accidental discovery and responsible good-faith reporting will not be sanctioned. Continued use, concealment while benefiting, or retention of improperly obtained advantages is not protected. Security testing, automated scanning, or access to another person's data requires our prior written authorization.

5. Review and Enforcement

We review the available context and consider intent, scale, duration, harm, advantages obtained, repetition, cooperation with an investigation, and attempts to evade enforcement. Automated detection may temporarily limit access or flag activity for review; a permanent sanction is not imposed solely by an automated heuristic.

Measures may include:

• guidance or a formal warning and direction to stop;
• reversal, correction, or removal of improperly obtained advantages, data, or progression;
• session revocation, feature restrictions, or technical access blocks;
• temporary suspension during an investigation or as a sanction;
• permanent account termination for serious, intentional, repeated, or continuing violations;
• measures against other demonstrably controlled accounts used to continue, evade, or benefit from the same abuse.

Measures do not have to occur in this order. Where appropriate, we will warn before permanent termination or provide an opportunity to remedy the violation. Immediate action may be necessary for an active threat, significant manipulation, continuing abuse, or where a warning would clearly be ineffective. Mandatory legal rights remain unaffected.

6. Questions and Review

If you believe a measure was taken in error, contact mad@shardworlds-game.com. Include your account, the measure, and why you request another review. We will review permanent sanctions against the available context.

7. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains security and abuse detection, the technical metadata processed, and retention.