Terms of Service

Last updated: 2026-05-25

1. Acceptance of these terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Akash Awase, operating Board Game Guru as a sole proprietor ("Board Game Guru," "we," "us"). By creating an account, signing in, or otherwise using boardgameguru.org ("the Service"), you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you are between 13 and the age of majority where you live, you confirm that a parent or guardian has read these Terms and agrees to them on your behalf.

The Service is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly accept accounts from anyone under 13. See our Children's Privacy Notice.

3. Your account

To use most features, you create an account with email and password, or sign in with a supported third-party identity provider (Google, GitHub).

You agree to:

  • Provide accurate information when you sign up and keep it up to date.
  • Keep your password (or your linked third-party account) secure. You are responsible for everything done under your account.
  • Tell us as soon as possible at privacy@boardgameguru.org if you believe your account has been used without your permission.

We may suspend or close an account that does not comply with these Terms.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • Use the Service in any way that breaks the law, infringes someone else's rights (including intellectual property and privacy rights), or harms others.
  • Send or upload content that is illegal, harassing, defamatory, sexually explicit, or promotes violence or self-harm.
  • Try to reverse engineer, decompile, or extract the source of the Service, except where local law expressly permits.
  • Scrape, mass-download, or otherwise extract our content (including game data, rulebook text, and assistant answers) for use in another product, dataset, or AI training corpus, unless we have given you written permission.
  • Use bots, scripts, or other automated means to interact with the Service in a way that imposes more than a reasonable load.
  • Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service or break or circumvent any security or authentication measure.
  • Interfere with another user's enjoyment of the Service.

We may remove content or restrict accounts that breach this section.

5. Content you submit

The Service lets you submit content: questions to the assistant, conversation history, game requests, and feedback comments ("Your Content").

Ownership. You keep ownership of Your Content.

Licence to us. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, display, and process Your Content as needed to provide the Service and to operate, secure, and improve it. This licence ends when you delete Your Content or your account (except for backup copies which expire on the schedule in our Privacy Policy, and for content we are required to keep by law).

Your promises. You confirm that:

  • You have the rights to submit Your Content.
  • Your Content does not infringe anyone else's rights and does not break the law.
  • You will not submit personal data about another person unless you have the right to do so.

Our right to remove. We may remove Your Content if we believe in good faith that it breaches these Terms or the law. We are not obliged to monitor user content.

6. AI-generated answers

The Service uses large language models from OpenAI and Google to generate answers to your questions about board game rules.

These answers can be wrong. They can contain errors, omit nuance, mix up editions, or invent rules that don't exist. They are a study aid, not the official rulebook.

We make no warranty that any AI-generated answer is accurate, complete, or fit for any particular purpose. Do not rely on the assistant for tournament decisions, contests, prize-pool play, contract interpretation, or any other situation where a wrong answer would cost you something you care about. Verify against the printed rulebook.

By using the assistant, you accept this.

See the full AI / Rules Accuracy Disclaimer.

7. Third-party game content

The Service displays information about board games — names, publishers, descriptions, cover art, rules text, age and player-count metadata. Game titles, logos, packaging, and rulebook text are the property of their respective publishers, designers, and rights-holders.

We display this information descriptively to help you learn and play the games. We do not claim ownership of any third-party game content and we do not claim any endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation with any publisher unless we say so explicitly.

If you are a rights-holder and want content removed, please see our Copyright / DMCA Policy. We will respond promptly.

8. Our intellectual property

We own (or license) everything on the Service that is not Your Content and is not third-party game content, including:

  • The site design, code, and underlying software.
  • The "Board Game Guru" name and logo.
  • Our written copy, illustrations, and product layouts.
  • The curated database structure (separate from the third-party data inside it).

You may use the Service for its intended personal, non-commercial purposes. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or create derivative works of our materials without our written permission.

9. Paid features

The Service is currently free. We may introduce paid features (for example, a Supporter tier or a café/business licence). When we do, the pricing, billing cycle, refund, and cancellation terms will appear in this section or in a separate Subscription Agreement that you accept before being charged. We will not start charging you without your explicit consent.

10. Suspension and termination

By you. You can stop using the Service at any time. You can delete your account from your profile page (or by emailing us until that control is live).

By us. We may suspend or terminate your account if:

  • You materially breach these Terms.
  • We are required to by law or by a competent authority.
  • Continued provision would expose us or other users to a meaningful risk.

For breaches that can be cured, we will give you reasonable notice and a chance to fix the issue, unless the breach is serious enough that immediate action is justified. On termination, the licences in Sections 5 and 8 survive only to the extent reasonably needed to wind down, and our Privacy Policy governs how long we keep residual data.

11. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, or that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free.

If you live in a jurisdiction (such as the EU, UK, Quebec, or Australia) where some warranties cannot be excluded, those warranties apply to the minimum extent required by your local law.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

  • Neither party will be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or business interruption, even if advised of the possibility.
  • Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of US$100 or the amounts you paid us in the twelve (12) months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited under applicable law — for example, liability for fraud, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or (for EU/UK consumers) statutory consumer rights that cannot be waived.

13. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Board Game Guru, its officers, employees, and contractors against any claim, damage, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from:

  • Your breach of these Terms.
  • Your misuse of the Service.
  • Your infringement of someone else's rights.
  • Your Content.

This does not apply to claims caused by our own wrongdoing, and (for EU/UK/Quebec consumers) does not displace any non-waivable consumer protections.

14. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The exclusive courts for any dispute that is not resolved through the process in Section 15 are the state and federal courts located in the State of Delaware, USA.

If you are an EU, UK, or Quebec consumer, this clause does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country where you live; you may bring proceedings in your local courts and they may apply your local consumer law.

15. Disputes

Informal resolution first. Before filing a formal claim, please email us at privacy@boardgameguru.org with a description of the issue and what you'd like us to do. We will try in good faith to resolve it within 60 days.

Arbitration (where enforceable). If we can't resolve a dispute informally, you and we agree that any dispute will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered under the rules of a recognised arbitral body in the State of Delaware, USA, except as expressly prohibited by your local law.

Class action waiver (where enforceable). You and we agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative proceeding. If this waiver is held unenforceable, the rest of Section 15 still applies.

These arbitration and class-waiver provisions do not apply where they are prohibited by your local law — including for EU and UK consumers.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms. We will post the updated version here and update the "Last updated" date.

  • Material changes (e.g., changes to fees, dispute resolution, or your rights): we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email or a prominent in-app notice. If you keep using the Service after the notice period, you accept the new Terms. If you don't, you can close your account.
  • Non-material changes (e.g., typos, clarifications): take effect when posted.

17. General

Severability. If any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.

Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any policy linked from them are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service.

No waiver. If we don't enforce a right, we haven't waived it.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, provided the recipient agrees to be bound by these Terms.

Notices. We will send notices to you at the email associated with your account. You can send notices to us at privacy@boardgameguru.org.

Questions? Contact us at privacy@boardgameguru.org.