Terms of Service

1. Agreement
2. Age and eligibility
3. Your account
4. Your licence to play
5. Fair play
6. Conduct and community
7. Your content
8. Virtual items and currency
9. Purchases
10. Early access
11. Third-party services
12. Suspension and termination
13. Disclaimers
14. Limitation of liability
15. Indemnity
16. Governing law and disputes
17. Changes to these Terms
18. General
19. Contact

01Agreement

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and EKC Studios, operated by Eastern KCrew, LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company (“we”, “us”), for your use of the Neonyx Idle game on the web and on Android, this website, and related services (together, the “Game”). By creating an account or playing, you agree to these Terms, our Community Guidelines, and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Game.

02Age and eligibility

• You must be at least 13 years old to use the Game.
• If you are under 18, or under the age of digital consent in your country (up to 16 in parts of the European Economic Area), a parent or legal guardian must review and agree to these Terms on your behalf. By letting you play, they accept responsibility for your use of the Game.
• You may not use the Game if you are barred from doing so under the laws of the United States or the country you live in.

Buying things. To make a purchase you must be at least 18 years old, or at least 13 years old and have your parent or guardian’s permission to make that purchase. The payment card or other payment method must be yours, or its owner must have authorised you to use it. If the law where you live sets a higher age for making a purchase contract, you must meet it. The checkout asks you to confirm this before you pay. See Purchases.

If we learn that a player is under 13, we will close the account and delete its data as described in our Privacy Policy.

03Your account

You can start as a guest, or sign in with email or Discord. A guest account exists only on the device and browser where you created it. If you clear your browser data, uninstall the app, or lose the device before linking email or Discord, the guest account and its progress cannot be recovered. Link your account in Settings to keep it safe.

You are responsible for keeping your sign-in method secure and for what happens on your account. Do not share your account or let anyone else use it. Tell us promptly at ekchelp@easternkc.com if you think someone else has accessed it.

One person may hold one account. Creating additional accounts to gain an advantage, for example to funnel resources to a main account, is not allowed and may lead to restrictions on every account involved.

04Your licence to play

We give you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Game for your own non-commercial entertainment, subject to these Terms. We and our licensors own the Game and everything in it, including its code, art, music, text, and names, except content you create (see Your content). These Terms don’t give you any other rights to it. The full software-licence terms, including what you may and may not do with the game client itself, are in our End User License Agreement, which is part of these Terms.

05Fair play

You agree not to:

• modify, decompile, automate, or script the Game client, or use bots, macros, or tools that interact with our servers on your behalf;
• exploit bugs or errors for gain instead of reporting them;
• access or attempt to access other players’ accounts or data, or any part of our systems you aren’t meant to reach;
• interfere with, overload, probe, or disrupt our servers or networks, except through responsible disclosure as described on our Support page;
• buy, sell, or trade accounts, items, currency, or services for real-world money or anything else outside the Game. The only real-money purchases allowed are from the official Store, through Stripe in the web version of the Game or through Google Play where the Android app is available, as described in Purchases;
• impersonate us, our staff or moderators, or another player.

If you find a bug that gives an unfair advantage, please report it. We would much rather fix it than penalise someone for finding it.

06Conduct and community

You must follow our Community Guidelines wherever you interact with other players, including chat, direct messages, display names, faction names and images, and the market. Moderators appointed by us may remove content and restrict chat or account access. Chat restrictions escalate for repeated behaviour.

You can block other players, and report messages or players to our moderators, from inside the Game.

07Your content

“Your content” means anything you submit to the Game, such as chat messages, display names, faction names and descriptions, and faction images. You keep any rights you have in it. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display, and distribute your content as needed to run, moderate, and promote the Game. This licence ends when your content is deleted from the Game, except for copies kept for moderation or legal reasons as described in our Privacy Policy.

You are responsible for your content. Only upload images and text that you have the right to share, and that follow our Community Guidelines. We may remove any content at our discretion.

Copyright complaints. If you believe content in the Game infringes your copyright, email ekchelp@easternkc.com with: your contact details; a description of the work; where the material appears in the Game; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for the owner; and your physical or electronic signature. We will review it and remove infringing material where appropriate, and we may close the accounts of repeat infringers.

08Virtual items and currency

Credits, items, equipment, and other in-game content are part of the Game service. They are licensed to you, not sold, and they are not your property. This is true of items you buy in the Store too: you pay for the right to use them in the Game. Items and credits have no cash value, cannot be exchanged or redeemed for money, and cannot be transferred outside the Game’s own trading features.

The Exchange. Players can sell items to each other on the in-game Exchange, for in-game credits only. The seller pays a sale tax of 12% of the price. The Hacking skill’s Exchange Loophole passive, from Hacking level 85, takes a share off the tax itself: 3% of it at level 85, rising to 6.5% at level 120, so the 12% tax becomes 11.64% at level 85 and 11.22% at level 120. You can have 3 active listings at a time, or 6 if you own Preem, an item sold in the Store. If you already have more listings than your limit allows, you keep them and can still sell or cancel them, but you cannot list another until you are under the limit. Selling or cancelling a listing frees its place. Like other game balance, these numbers can change.

We may change, rebalance, or remove in-game content as part of developing the Game. We will try to avoid resetting player progress. When we can’t, we will announce it in advance where possible.

09Purchases

What we sell. The Store sells optional digital items for use in the Game only, such as account upgrades, extra capacity, and a name-change item. Nothing is required to play. The items on sale and their descriptions are shown in the Store.

Where you can buy. Purchases are available in the web version of the Game at play.neonyxidle.com, where they are paid through Stripe, and in the Android app, where they are paid through Google Play. You pay through whichever one you are playing on, and the item is delivered to your Neonyx Idle account either way. Any other app version that shows the Store points you to the website instead. You must be signed in with a linked account (email or Discord) to buy, because a guest account cannot be recovered if it is lost.

Price and tax. On the website, prices are shown by Stripe at checkout. Applicable sales tax or VAT is calculated and added automatically by Stripe Tax, based on your location, and you are shown the final total before you pay. In the Android app, Google Play shows the price in your currency, with any tax it adds, on its purchase screen before you pay. Your bank or card issuer may add its own fees, which we do not control.

Order and delivery. Your order is complete when Stripe (website) or Google Play (Android app) confirms your payment and, for the Android app, our server has checked the purchase with Google. The item is then delivered to your account’s in-game inventory, usually within moments, and you use it in the Game to switch on its effect. If an Android purchase cannot be delivered straight away, for example because your connection dropped, the app finishes it the next time you open it while signed in to the account you bought it on. If a paid item has not arrived after a few minutes, contact us (see the Refund Policy) and we will correct it.

What you confirm at checkout. Before you pay, the checkout asks you to confirm two things:

• “I want my purchase delivered to my account immediately. I understand that once it is delivered I lose my legal right to withdraw from this purchase (the 14-day cooling-off period that applies in some countries, including the EU and the UK).”
• “I am 18 or older, or I am 13 or older and my parent or guardian has given me permission to make this purchase, and the payment card is mine or its owner has authorised me to use it.”

For website purchases we keep a record of what you confirmed and when, as part of your order record.

In the Android app you confirm the purchase on Google Play’s own purchase screen, and Google Play’s terms apply to it as well as these Terms. The item is delivered to your account straight after Google confirms your payment. The Refund Policy explains how this affects your right to withdraw.

No cash value, no cash-out. Items and credits have no cash value and cannot be redeemed for money. You can sell items you own to other players on the in-game Exchange, but only for in-game credits. Trading items or credits for real money outside the Game is still not allowed (see Fair play).

Refunds. All sales are final once the item is delivered, except where the law gives you a right and where we correct a duplicate or erroneous charge or a failed delivery. Refund requests are reviewed by a person. Once a purchase is refunded in full or reversed by a chargeback, the item it bought is taken back from your account automatically. The full rules, including the right of withdrawal for buyers in the EU and the UK and what applies to Google Play purchases, are in our Refund Policy, which is part of these Terms.

If your account is closed. If we ban or close your account for breaking these Terms or the Community Guidelines, you give up any right to a refund for what you bought on it. If you delete your own account, you lose the items you bought and you are not refunded. In both cases this does not remove any right the law gives you that cannot be waived.

Prices and changes. We may change prices, or add or remove Store items, at any time. A change does not affect a purchase you have already completed. We do not sell subscriptions, and we never charge you again without you going through checkout (or, in the Android app, Google Play’s purchase screen).

Fraud and abuse. If we reasonably believe a purchase involves fraud, an unauthorised payment method, abuse of refunds or chargebacks, or a payment that fails or is reversed, we may refuse or cancel the order, remove the item or the in-game value it produced, restrict further purchases, and suspend or close the accounts involved. We review these cases by hand and may ask you for information first.

Payment providers. Website payments are handled by Stripe, which has its own terms and privacy policy. Android app payments are handled by Google through Google Play, under the Google Play Terms of Service and Google’s privacy policy. We never receive your card number. See our Privacy Policy for what we, Stripe and Google each keep.

Nothing in these Terms removes any statutory refund or consumer right you have that cannot be waived.

10Early access

11Third-party services

The Game lets you use services run by other companies, such as Discord for sign-in and community, Stripe for website payments, and Google Play for the Android app and its purchases. Their own terms and privacy policies apply when you use them. We are not responsible for those services.

12Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close your account, or remove access to features, if you break these Terms or the Community Guidelines, if required by law, or if needed to protect other players or the Game. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will tell you why. If you think we made a mistake, email ekchelp@easternkc.com and a person will review it.

You can stop playing at any time and ask us to delete your account. See Account & Data Deletion. Sections that by their nature should continue after termination, including licences to your content, disclaimers, limits of liability, and dispute terms, will continue.

13Disclaimers

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Game is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t promise that the Game will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, or that progress or content will never be lost.

14Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of data, in-game progress, or virtual items, arising from your use of the Game. Our total liability to you for any claim relating to the Game is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or US$50.

Some places do not allow these exclusions or limits. Where that is the case, they apply only as far as the law permits. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

15Indemnity

To the extent the law allows, you agree to cover our reasonable losses and costs from third-party claims caused by your content or by your breach of these Terms. This does not apply to consumers where local law does not permit it.

16Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Before filing a claim, please contact us at ekchelp@easternkc.com so we can try to resolve it informally within 30 days. If we can’t, the state and federal courts located in North Carolina will have exclusive jurisdiction, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction.

If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another country whose laws give you mandatory consumer protections, you keep those protections and may bring a claim in the courts where you live.

17Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The dates at the top of this page show when they last changed. If a change is significant, we will announce it in the Game or on our Discord before it takes effect. If you keep playing after a change takes effect, you accept the updated Terms. If you don’t agree, stop using the Game and you may delete your account.

18General

These Terms, together with the documents they link to, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Game. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we don’t enforce a term, that isn’t a waiver. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

19Contact

EKC Studios
Eastern KCrew, LLC
ekchelp@easternkc.com