Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these Terms

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the ZuStory.com website (the “Site”) and the associated game realm and related services (together, the “Service”). By creating an account, connecting to the realm, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. About ZuStory.com

ZuStory.com (the “Project”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is a community-run, non-commercial fan project that operates a custom server built from ground-up. It is run by volunteers for educational and hobbyist purposes. The purpose of the Project and Service is to let people explore Chinese culture, humor, and the Legend of the Zu Mountain Chinese folk tale.

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the original game's publisher or any of its affiliates. All related game names, marks, art, and content are the property of their respective owners. We claim no ownership of their intellectual property. You are responsible for owning any game client you use and for complying with the rights of those owners. If a rights holder objects to any part of the Service, we will act on a valid request.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Service only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian. By using the Service you represent that you meet these requirements and that the information you give us is accurate.

4. Your Account

A single account is used for both the Site and the in-game realm.

If you have been granted explicit written permission via an official @zustory.com email to create an account, you choose a username and password and provide an email address.

You are responsible for keeping your password and account secure, and for everything that happens under your account.

Choose a unique password and do not reuse a password from another service. We store passwords using a one-way verifier and cannot recover or read your password for you.

Do not share, sell, transfer, buy, or trade accounts, and do not use anyone else's account.

Pick a username and character names that are not offensive, impersonating, or misleading. We may reclaim or rename accounts or characters that break these Terms or that impersonate staff.

Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

5. Acceptable Use and Conduct

We want a fair, friendly, and bug-free Service. When using it, you agree not to:

• Cheat or gain an unfair advantage, including using hacks, third-party automation, bots, macros that play for you, exploits, duplication bugs, or modifications to the game client or network traffic. Automated play is detected and is not permitted. We have an extensive anticheat monitoring your every move inside the game, if you cheat you will be caught and banned. We reserve the right to ban you at our own disclosure.
• Create an unauthorized account without explicit written permission in the form of an email from @zustory.com.
• Exploit bugs instead of reporting them. If you find a bug or exploit, report it in our Discord server, rather than abusing it.
• Harass, threaten, defame, or discriminate against others; post hateful, sexually explicit, or otherwise abusive content; or spam.
• Engage in real-money trading: buying or selling accounts, characters, in-game gold, items, services, or any in-game advantage for real-world money or anything of value.
• Impersonate staff, other players, or any person or organization.
• Attempt to disrupt, overload, probe, or gain unauthorized access to the Service, its servers, or other users' accounts or data (including denial-of-service attempts, scraping, or vulnerability scanning without our written permission).
• Use the Service for anything unlawful or in violation of the rights of others.

We may add or clarify rules of conduct in-game or on our community channels, and those rules form part of these Terms.

6. Open Testing, Availability and Wipes

The Service is under active development and is provided for testing. As a result:

• Expect instability. The realm and Site may be unavailable, slow, restarted, or reset at any time, with or without notice.
• Expect wipes. Characters, progress, currency, items, and other game data may be reset or deleted at any time, including before any public launch. Do not treat in-game progress as permanent.
• Content is unfinished and may change. Features, custom content, balance, and rules may be added, changed, or removed at any time.
• Project discretion: We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service, or the entire Project, at any time without liability to you.

7. No Fees and No Real-Money Value

The Service is free to use. We do not sell game advantages, and there is no pay-to-win. We do not charge for accounts, characters, or in-game items. In-game items, currency, and progress have no real-world monetary value, are not your property, cannot be redeemed for money, and may be removed or reset at any time. If we ever accept voluntary donations to cover running costs, donations are gifts and do not buy any in-game benefit, priority, or guarantee of service.

8. Content You Submit

The Service lets you submit content such as bug reports, comments, applications, character and account names, and in-game chat (“User Content”). You are responsible for your User Content and represent that you have the right to submit it and that it does not break these Terms or the law.

You keep any rights you already have in your User Content. By submitting it, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, display, reproduce, and use it for the purpose of operating, moderating, and improving the Service (for example, showing a bug report on the tracker and acting on it). We may remove any User Content at our discretion, and we are not obligated to store or return it.

9. Enforcement and Termination

We have an extensive anticheat monitoring your every move inside the game, if you cheat you will be caught and banned. We reserve the right to ban you at our own disclosure.

We may investigate suspected violations and take any action we consider appropriate, including issuing warnings; muting, kicking, suspending, or banning accounts or characters; removing content; rolling back or removing game data; and restricting access, with or without notice, and at our discretion. Serious or repeated violations (such as cheating, automation, real-money trading, creating an account without explicit written permission from @zustory.com, or abuse) may result in a permanent ban without warning.

You may stop using the Service and request deletion of your account at any time (see the Privacy Policy).

10. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or free from data loss, or that any defect will be corrected. You use the Service at your own risk.

11. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Project and its volunteers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, or for any loss of data, progress, profits, or goodwill, arising out of or relating to your use of (or inability to use) the Service. Because the Service is provided free of charge by volunteers, our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid us for it, which is zero. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

12. Third-Party Services

The Service links to and relies on third parties, for example we use Cloudflare to deliver some of the content and Discord for community discussions.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date above and, for significant changes, try to give reasonable notice through the Site or our community channels. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

14. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Reach us on our Discord Server.