Vaultara Entertainment

Terms of Service

These terms are the agreement between you and Vaultara Entertainment LLC (“Vaultara”, “we”, “us”) covering your use of the Vaultara app for iPhone and the leaderboards and services inside it. When you first open the app it asks for your date of birth and says that continuing means you agree to these terms and acknowledge the Privacy Policy, with a link to each. That is how you agree, and by using the app you accept them. If you do not, delete the app.

They are written to be read. Where a clause describes how something actually works, it is describing the real mechanism, not a possibility we reserved.

1. What Vaultara is

Vaultara is a daily challenge in three 30-second stages: Recall (trivia questions), Lock (stopping a needle in a target zone) and Sprint (jumping over blocks). A run is about ninety seconds of play, with weekly and all-time leaderboards. It is free to use. It contains no advertising, no in-app purchases and no subscription, and this version of the app has no ticket sales.

A run that counts needs a connection to our server, because the questions and targets for it are issued there and the run is scored there. If the server cannot be reached when a run starts, the app lets you play anyway, on questions built into the app. That run is not sent to us and is not ranked, and the result card says so.

2. Who may use it

You must be at least 18 years old to use Vaultara. By using it you confirm that you are, and that you are not barred from doing so under the laws that apply to you. The app checks by asking for your date of birth before anything else. That is an age check and not verification: we take your answer, and if it says you are under 18 the app will not let you in.

If you use the app on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to accept these terms for it.

3. Your identity and your account

You do not need an account. The app creates an anonymous session for your device, a guest, the first time you play or open a leaderboard. You can play indefinitely on that alone.

If you want your progress to survive a lost or replaced phone, you can create an account. An account is an email address, a username and a password and nothing else: no phone number, and no marketing consent, because we send no marketing. It converts the guest identity you already have rather than creating a second one, so your run history carries over intact. A consequence worth understanding: your account and your identity are the same thing. There is no way to keep the identity while removing the account.

You are responsible for keeping your password to yourself and for everything done through your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has it. Do not share an account, and do not create accounts in bulk.

The app has no password-reset flow in this version. If you lose access to an account, write to vaultara.entertainment@gmail.com and we will help you by hand.

4. Your username

Your username is the name other players see on the boards, next to your rank and total score, and it is the only thing about you that identifies you to them. A guest starts with an automatically generated one. You may change it at any time, and creating an account asks you to choose one.

Usernames are screened automatically against a list of slurs and profanity when you choose or change one. The screen is deliberate but crude. It matches on text and it will not catch everything, and it occasionally refuses an innocent name that happens to contain a listed sequence. If yours is rejected and you believe it should not be, write to us.

Choose a username that is not:

• a slur, or abusive, hateful, sexual or threatening;
• an impersonation of a real person, a public figure, or of Vaultara staff;
• someone else’s trademark used in a way likely to confuse;
• another player’s personal information;
• an attempt to evade the screen through spelling or substitution.

Vaultara does not tolerate objectionable content or abusive users. Names that break these rules are removed and barred, and the account that chose one may be reset or deleted.

Those are the things we can do, and we say so rather than promise more. We can reset a username, replacing it with a generated one. We can bar the old one so that nobody can choose it again. And we can delete the account. We use the least that settles it. Every reset is logged internally with a reason, and we do not do any of this silently to punish a score. It is a moderation action against a name.

If you see a name that should not be there, press and hold it on the Board tab and choose Report this name, or open the Account tab, then Names on the board, then Report a name. Either one opens a report screen whose Open Mail button prepares an email to us, and which shows our address to copy if your phone has no mail account set up. From the Board the name is already filled in, along with a reference to that player so we can find them if they rename; from the Account tab you type the name yourself. You can also email us directly at vaultara.entertainment@gmail.com. We review every report within 24 hours.

You can also block a player: press and hold their name on the Board tab and choose Block this player. On your phone their name is then replaced with Blocked player; their row, rank and score stay where they are, so the board still adds up. The list of players you have blocked is kept on your phone only. Blocking sends nothing to us, so we do not know who you have blocked, and the player you block is not told. (If you choose Block and report, or report a player any other way, the report is an email that you send, and it names that player.) Unblock all on the Account tab, under Names on the board, lifts every block at once; this version has no way to unblock one player alone.

5. Fair play

Vaultara scores runs on the server. The server does not send answers with the questions, and the score that goes on a board is never taken from your phone: the app reports what you did (the choice you made and how long it took, when you tapped, which blocks you cleared) and the server replays it and works out the score itself. The app does show you a running score while you play, and it carries its own copy of the question bank so it can show you the right answer afterwards; neither decides anything, and where they differ from the server’s score, the server’s wins. Runs that could not have happened are refused.

You agree not to:

• modify the app, or use a modified, repackaged or emulated client;
• submit fabricated or altered run data;
• automate play, in whole or in part, by any means;
• interfere with the timing of a run, including by manipulating your device clock;
• probe, scrape, or make automated requests against our servers, or try to access data belonging to another player;
• attempt to obtain question answers other than by playing;
• use another person’s account, or let another person use yours to post a score.

Where we find any of this, we may refuse a run, remove a score from the leaderboards, reset a username, or delete an account. We will use the least of those that resolves the problem, and we will tell you what we did if you ask.

6. Leaderboards, and prizes when there are any

These are rules of the game rather than legal terms, but they cause more confusion than anything else in the app, so they belong here.

The weekly board opens on Sunday at 11:00 pm, US Eastern time, and the same boundary applies to every player wherever they are. It is the server’s clock that decides, not your phone’s.

We may change the scoring, reset or re-point a board, or correct scores that were recorded wrongly. Where a change makes earlier runs unrankable we will say so in the release notes.

What a place on a board is, and is not

By itself, a leaderboard position confers nothing: no payment, no property, no entitlement. In this version of Vaultara that is the whole story: it is a number next to a name, and you are playing for the position.

This version of Vaultara offers no prize. In a future version we may announce a prize for a particular competition week. We are not obliged to, we may decide not to offer one in any given week, and we do not promise a prize every week or that we will keep running them at all. Where there is a prize, what it is, what it is worth, how many people win it and by when it must be claimed are stated for that week, and those can differ from one week to the next. A future prize need not resemble a past one in kind or in value.

A prize exists only where we have published both a prize notice and Official Rules for that week, in the app. If you cannot see both, there is no prize that week, whatever you may have seen said elsewhere. Who may enter, how the winner is decided, how a tie breaks and everything else particular to that week are governed by the Official Rules published with it.

Entering guarantees you nothing, and appearing at the top of a board is not a promise of payment. The leading entrant is a provisional winner: a prize is awarded only after we have confirmed, under that week's Official Rules, that the entrant is eligible and that the score was achieved by ordinary play. Where we have a reasonable basis to conclude it was not (cheating, automation, manipulation, fraud, exploiting a defect, or breach of these terms or of the Official Rules), we may disqualify the entry or the entrant, remove the score from the board, and withhold the prize.

We may change how we run prize competitions in future, or stop running them altogether. Once a particular week has opened, though, the rules published for it are the rules that govern it: we may suspend or cancel that week only on the grounds those rules state, and where we do, we record the reason.

7. What you may and may not do with the app

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use Vaultara on Apple-branded devices you own or control, as permitted by the App Store Terms of Service. That is the whole of what you get; we keep everything else.

You may not copy, sell, rent, sublicense or redistribute the app; decompile or reverse-engineer it except where law expressly permits; circumvent any security or rate limit; or remove any notice of ownership.

The app, its name, its design, its questions, and the Vaultara marks are ours or our licensors’. Your username is yours, and by using it you give us permission to display it on the leaderboards and in the app, which apart from the moderation record described in section 4 is the only use we make of it.

8. Changes to the service

We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of Vaultara, including the leaderboards, at any time. We may change these terms; if we make a material change we will update the effective date and announce it in the app’s release notes before it takes effect. Continuing to use the app after that means you accept the new version. If you do not, delete the app and your account.

9. Ending it

You can stop at any time. Deleting your account from the Account tab → Delete account, where you type DELETE to confirm, removes your account, your username and every run you have played, immediately and irreversibly. It needs a connection, because the deletion happens on our server. It does not remove absolutely everything: a nameless standing is left on any board you were ranking on, a moderation record survives if we ever reset a username of yours, and the age-gate answer and your list of blocked players stay on your phone, along with the phone’s ordinary settings such as the daily reminder. The Privacy Policy sets out each of the four, and the settings, and why.

We may delete your account if you break these terms or if we are required to by law, and we may stop operating the service. Except where you have broken these terms, we will give you reasonable notice where we can.

10. No warranty

Vaultara is provided as is and as available. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, timely, error-free, or that scores, leaderboards or run history will always be accurate or preserved. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this may not apply to you. Nothing here limits rights you have as a consumer that cannot be limited by agreement.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither we nor our suppliers are liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of data, scores, leaderboard position, goodwill or profits, arising out of your use of or inability to use Vaultara, on any theory of liability, even if we were told such damages were possible.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability for all claims relating to the app is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for it (which for v1.0 is nothing) or ten US dollars.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

12. Apple

Vaultara is distributed through the App Store, and these terms are between you and us, not between you and Apple. Accordingly:

• Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support for the app.
• If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price to you, if any. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the app.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the app or your possession and use of it, including product liability claims, any claim that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection or similar legislation.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of any third-party claim that the app or your use of it infringes that third party’s intellectual property rights.
• You confirm you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms, and upon your acceptance Apple will have the right, and is deemed to have accepted the right, to enforce them against you.

You must also comply with any applicable third-party terms when using the app, including the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the courts of Maricopa County, Arizona are the agreed venue for any dispute, in each case to the extent permitted by applicable law.

That qualifier is doing real work, so we would rather spell it out than leave you to find it. Consumer law in many places gives you rights that cannot be signed away by agreeing to terms like these, among them the protection of the mandatory law of the place you live, and the right to bring proceedings in the courts there. Nothing in this section removes or limits any such right. Where the law of the place you live gives you a protection or a venue that this section would otherwise displace, that law governs and this section yields to it.

If any provision of these terms is held unenforceable, it is limited or severed to the least extent necessary and the rest stays in effect. Our not enforcing something is not a waiver of it.

14. Contact

Questions about these terms, reports, or anything else:

vaultara.entertainment@gmail.com
Vaultara Entertainment LLC
852 E Taurus Pl
Chandler, AZ 85249-3655
United States

For help with the app itself, start at the support page.