Frequently Asked Questions

1 What is VibeTopList?

A community toplist for AI / "vibe-coded" indie games. Creators add a listing with a 728×90 banner; visitors vote; games get ranked 1–100. Rankings reset on the 1st of every month, and the final standings for each month live forever on the Hall of Fame.

2 How do players vote?

You embed a "Vote on VibeTopList" link in your game (the URL is /vote/<your-slug>?ref=<player>). They land on the vote page, click Vote, solve a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge, and we count it. One vote per IP per listing every 12 hours.

3 How do I reward voters?

Set a callback_url when you create your listing. After every successful vote we fire a POST + GET to that URL with secret, voted, userip, userid, reset, and vote_id parameters. Your server verifies the secret, deduplicates by vote_id, and grants the in-game reward. Full contract + example receivers in the API docs.

4 How long until my listing is approved?

Listings auto-publish on submission | there's no manual review queue. You only need a real game URL, an exact-spec 728×90 banner (≤10 MB, GIF/PNG/JPG), and a description. Admin moderation only steps in for policy violations.

5 Can I list more than one game?

Yes | submit each game separately. We only enforce one active listing per game URL, not per account.

6 What does Gold do?

Gold is a per-listing visual + bonus-vote upgrade. It paints your rank-card with a gold-themed gradient, adds a GOLD badge to the listing title, and grants bonus votes every monthly cycle.

• 30 days — $9, +50 bonus votes
• 90 days — $24, +100 bonus votes per month
• 365 days — $79, +150 bonus votes per month
• Lifetime — $199, +250 bonus votes per month forever

Rank order stays vote-driven; Gold is a visual + vote-bonus product, not a ranking shortcut. Every tier is paid through Stripe Checkout, by card or PayPal.

7 How does the monthly reset work?

At 00:00 UTC on the 1st of every month, VibeTopList snapshots every listing's final rank into the Hall of Fame, then zeroes the votes_this_month counter on every listing. All-time totals are preserved, so longevity still shows on each profile.

8 How are fake votes blocked?

Every vote runs through a layered defense:

• 12-hour per-IP cooldown per listing;
• Per-IP and per-/24 subnet rate limits;
• Bot user-agent regex (blocks curl, wget, headless browsers, scrapers, social-link previewers);
• Stateless signed nonce embedded in the form, with min/max age (kills instant-submit bots and expired-form replays);
• Origin / Referer host-match against our base URL;
• Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA on every vote;
• Admin IP blocklist for repeat offenders.

Voter IPs are HMAC-hashed before storage | we never persist raw IPs. Blocked attempts are logged for fraud review.

9 How much does advertising cost?

Banner slots run from $90 to $350 per 30-day period. Some slots are single-occupant exclusive (sponsored 728×90 above the toplist, footer banner); others rotate across up to five buyers so each one gets ~20% of impressions. Live availability + a placement preview is on the Advertise page.

Reserve → upload → pay with Stripe → banner is live. No admin approval step, no waiting list.

10 How do I get my game removed?

Sign in and delete the listing from your dashboard. If you can't access your account, email vibetoplist@gmail.com from the address on the account and we'll handle removal within 24 hours.

11 How do reviews work?

• Who can review: anyone with a verified VibeTopList account (one account per email inbox). You review a game once and can edit or delete your review later. A game's owner can't review their own game.
• What we check: sign-ups are checked against bots and throwaway email addresses, and an account (and a connection) can only save a few reviews an hour and a day. We can't see whether a reviewer played the game.
• Every review counts: the summary on a game's page counts every review that's online, positive and negative alike. We never hide a review because of its verdict.
• Replies: anyone with a verified account can reply under a review, and the reviewer can answer. A reply from the game's maker carries a Developer label, which we add only for the account that listed the game, so nobody else can claim it. The first time the developer replies, we email the reviewer once (they can turn that off). Replies don't change a game's review summary.
• Reports and removals: anyone can report a review or a reply with its Report link. We remove reviews and replies that are spam, fake, abusive, illegal or not about the game, by the same rules whatever a review's verdict. We tell the author why (not for obvious spam, or while the police ask us to wait) and they can ask us to look again.
• No money involved: Gold, banners and other payments never change reviews or a game's review summary, and VibeTopList doesn't pay or reward anyone for a review.

See also: API docs · Terms · Privacy.