Terms of Service

1. What is being offered

ComputingCache is an independent, operator-run project on hardware the operator owns or rents. Most of the services, the website and the federated and self-hosted apps, are provided free of charge at the operator's discretion, with no subscription and no service level agreement. Game server hosting is a paid service and is covered additionally by section 2.

A service may be changed, moved, restricted or discontinued at any time. Where a shutdown is planned rather than forced, reasonable notice will be given and there will be an opportunity to export your data. For a paid game server, if we discontinue it we will refund any unused prepaid time.

2. Game server hosting, payments and refunds

This section applies to paid game server hosting ordered through the customer panel at gamehosting.computingcache.com. It is in addition to the rest of these terms, all of which still apply.

Payment. Services are billed as a recurring plan and paid in advance in cryptocurrency (Bitcoin or PIVX) through our self-hosted BTCPay Server. We do not accept, request or store card or bank details. Prices are shown in US dollars and converted to crypto at checkout using public exchange rates; the crypto amount is fixed for the life of each invoice.

Renewals and suspension. A server runs for as long as its plan is paid. Before each period ends you are sent an invoice. If it is not paid by the due date the server is suspended, and if it stays unpaid the server and its data are deleted after a short grace period. Keep your account email current so you receive these notices.

Refunds. We aim to be fair. If something genuinely goes wrong, or you honestly need a refund, email admin@computingcache.com and we will sort it out reasonably. Refunds are granted at the operator's discretion, case by case; there is no automatic entitlement, and abusing a refund policy is itself grounds to decline. Because payment is in cryptocurrency, a refund is normally returned in the same currency, at the value paid, to an address you provide.

Use of a server. You are responsible for what runs on your server and for the mods, plugins and content you install. Do not use a server to cause harm or abuse: no attacking or disrupting other systems or players, no illegal content, no malware or phishing, and nothing that breaks the acceptable-use rules in section 5. Servers run within the CPU, memory, disk and network limits of the plan you bought; deliberately exceeding them, or using a game server as general-purpose storage or for unrelated workloads, is not allowed.

As-is. Game hosting is provided on a best-effort basis with no uptime guarantee. We take backups for our own recovery, but keep your own backups of any world or configuration you cannot afford to lose.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to hold an account. If the law where you live sets a higher minimum age for consenting to online services (16 in parts of the EU, for example), that higher age applies to you.

4. Your account

You are responsible for keeping your credentials secure and for everything done through your account. Use a strong, unique password, and enable two-factor authentication where the service supports it. Tell us promptly at admin@computingcache.com if you think your account has been compromised.

Do not share an account with other people, and do not impersonate anyone else in your username or profile.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to use these services to:

• Post, store or transmit anything illegal under the laws of the United States, including child sexual abuse material, which results in immediate termination and a report to the authorities.
• Engage in targeted harassment, stalking, or incitement of violence against any person or group.
• Post content that infringes someone else's copyright, trademark or other rights.
• Publish another person's private information without their consent, including home addresses, phone numbers and identity documents.
• Distribute malware, run phishing, or use the services to attack other systems.
• Send unsolicited bulk messages, or operate spam accounts and relay-flooding scripts.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the infrastructure, or to another user's account.
• Place a deliberately unreasonable load on shared resources, whether through automation, mass scraping, or use as general-purpose file storage or a CDN.
• Evade a suspension or ban.

The Mastodon instance additionally publishes its own server rules, which apply to accounts there alongside this policy. Where they overlap, the stricter reading applies.

6. Your content

You keep ownership of everything you create, upload or post. Nothing here transfers copyright.

To operate the services, you grant a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, transmit and display your content, and to distribute it to other servers where the protocol requires it. That licence exists purely so the software can do its job. It ends when you delete the content, subject to the backup and federation realities described below. Your content is never used for advertising, never sold, and never used to train anything.

7. Federation

Matrix, Mastodon and Nostr are federated protocols. When you post on them, copies are transmitted to other servers run by other people under their own rules.

You acknowledge that: deleting content here sends a deletion request outward but cannot force any remote server to comply; content that has left this server should be treated as permanently public; and we have no control over, and accept no responsibility for, how a remote server handles it. Content that arrives here from remote servers is theirs, not ours, and is moderated on a best-effort basis. See the reporting and takedown page for what can actually be done about it.

8. Moderation, suspension and termination

Content that breaks these terms may be removed, and accounts may be limited, suspended or terminated, at our discretion. Where circumstances allow, you will be told what happened and why, and you can dispute it by replying to that notice.

Serious cases, in particular illegal content, are actioned immediately and without warning. Accounts subject to repeated valid copyright infringement notices are terminated as described in the takedown policy.

You may close your account at any time. Email admin@computingcache.com and it will be deleted along with its content, within the limits set out in the privacy policy.

9. Availability and backups

These services run on a small amount of self-managed hardware, on a residential-grade internet connection, maintained by one person in their spare time. Outages happen. Hardware fails. Maintenance windows are not always announced.

Backups are taken, but you are responsible for your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose. Do not treat any of this as your only copy of important data.

10. No warranty

The services are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. No promise is made that the services will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that any data will be preserved.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, ComputingCache and its operator are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, revenue or goodwill, arising from your use of or inability to use the services.

Because these services are provided free of charge, total aggregate liability for any claim relating to them is limited to one hundred United States dollars (US$100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of certain damages. Where that is the case, these limits apply only to the extent the law permits, and nothing here limits liability for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

12. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless ComputingCache and its operator from any claim or demand, including reasonable legal fees, brought by a third party and arising out of content you posted or your breach of these terms. This does not apply where the claim results from our own negligence or wilful misconduct.

13. Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated. Changes take effect when posted on this page, and the “last updated” date reflects the most recent revision. A material change will be announced from @CCAdministrator on the Mastodon instance. Continuing to use the services after a change means you accept the revised terms.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California and the United States, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any dispute that cannot be resolved by talking it through will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California, and you consent to their jurisdiction. Nothing here deprives you of the protection of mandatory consumer law in your own country of residence.

15. General

If any provision of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest remain in effect. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. These terms, together with the privacy policy and the reporting and takedown policy, are the entire agreement between us regarding the services.

16. Contact

Questions about these terms: admin@computingcache.com.