Terms of service

By downloading, installing or using PlayBurst, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the app.

You may install PlayBurst on your own devices and play all 48 games for personal, non-commercial use, at no charge.

You may not:

• Reverse engineer, decompile or modify the app
• Use cheats, exploits or automation tools
• Sell, rent or redistribute the app
• Remove copyright notices or proprietary labels

There is no minimum age to play PlayBurst, and no game is gated on one. PlayBurst is not directed to children: it is a general audience app, and it is not offered in Apple’s Kids Category, in Amazon Kids or in Google Play’s Designed for Families programme. It applies children’s privacy protections to every player by default all the same, which costs you nothing and means we do not have to ask anybody their age to open the app. Both halves are described in the privacy policy.

One feature does need an age, and it asks for one. The friends screen asks for a year of birth on the press that would put you in touch with another player, and nothing else in the app asks. It is asked once and cannot be retyped. If the answer makes you under 13, the friends screen turns off and nothing else changes; if it makes you 13 or over, it is recorded against your account as well as on your device, so that the protection survives a reinstall.

The app creates an anonymous guest identity the first time you open it, so it can save your scores, and you can play all 48 games that way and never do anything else. You are responsible for what happens under it on your own device.

You may also sign in, from the Profile tab. Google is the only way in. It is needed for a friends list, for carrying your progress to a second device, and for buying anything at all, since a purchase belongs to an account rather than to a device and a guest account cannot hold one. What Google passes us is described in the privacy policy. Keeping that Google account secure is your responsibility, since anybody who can sign in to it can sign in as you here. We may suspend an account of either kind that breaks these terms.

You agree not to:

• Choose an offensive display name, since display names appear on public leaderboards
• Manipulate leaderboards, scores or achievements
• Exploit bugs rather than reporting them
• Impersonate anybody, including us
• Send friend requests to somebody who does not want them
• Use the app for anything illegal

PlayBurst has a friends list and no messaging. There is no screen anywhere in the app on which you can send another player a message, and the only text you type that anybody else sees is your own display name, which our servers check for length, for hidden characters and against a blocklist before accepting it. What passes between two players is a friend request and its answer, a match invitation and its answer, and the moves of a game. A request can be declined, and any player on your list or asking to join it can be blocked or reported from the row they appear on. A report blocks that account and records the report with us, in one step, with a reason picked from a fixed list. We review reports and may suspend an account we find has broken these terms.

Every game can be played on its own, against the device or against whoever is sitting next to you. Chess, checkers and Reversi can also be played as turn-based matches against somebody already on your friends list: one move at a time, through our servers, with no clock running between moves. There is no live or real-time play, no matchmaking, and nothing that puts you in a game with a stranger.

PlayBurst is free to install and free to play, and some things in it can be bought. The shop sells coins, and it sells removing the ads. Nothing you buy unlocks a game: every game is there from the first launch, and none of them is ever put behind a payment.

Coins are also earned by playing, mostly from the daily reward, and are spent inside a game at the moment you want one: a hint, or carrying on a run that has ended. Coins are not money. They cannot be exchanged for money, cannot be moved between accounts, and have no value outside the app.

Purchases go through the store you installed from. That store takes the payment and that store’s refund policy applies, not ours. We never see your card details. Buying anything needs an account you have signed in to: a guest can play every game and buy nothing, because there would be no account for the purchase to belong to afterwards.

PlayBurst is free and carries advertising served by Google AdMob. Advertising is contextual rather than personalised for every player who has not told the app they are 13 or over, which the privacy policy sets out. How often ads may appear and where they may appear is described in full on how ads work. We do not control the content of individual ads beyond restricting them to a “G” rating.

We own the PlayBurst app, its code, artwork and characters. The card, board and word games it contains are traditional games in the public domain; where a game descends from a title somebody else owns, it carries our own name rather than theirs. Third-party content belongs to its owners.

To report copyright infringement, email legal@playburstgames.com with the information a DMCA notice requires. We respond to valid takedown notices.

What we collect and what we do with it is set out in the privacy policy, which forms part of these terms.

The app is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind.

We are not liable for:

• Service interruptions or lost progress
• Bugs, errors or inaccuracies
• Unauthorised access to an account
• The content of third-party advertisements
• Indirect, incidental or consequential damages

Our total liability to you is limited to 100 US dollars, or the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim, whichever is greater.

You can stop using PlayBurst at any time by deleting the app. To delete the data we hold, use Settings, then Account, then “Delete account”. If you have already uninstalled the app, email privacy@playburstgames.com and we will do it for you. We may suspend access for anyone who breaks these terms or acts fraudulently.

We may update these terms. Material changes will be posted here with a new effective date and announced in the app or by email. Continuing to use PlayBurst after a change means you accept it.

We would rather sort a problem out by email than any other way, so please write to us first. Failing that, disputes will be resolved by negotiation, then mediation, then binding arbitration. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States.

Questions about these terms: legal@playburstgames.com.