Terms of Service

1 Agreement

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you and the operator of VibeTopList ("we", "us", "VibeTopList") covering your use of vibetoplist.com and any related features ("Service"). If you don't agree, don't use the Service.

2 Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old (16 in the EEA) to create an account. If you use the Service on behalf of a company or studio you confirm you're authorized to bind it to these Terms.

3 Accounts

You're responsible for keeping your password secret, for everything that happens under your account, and for keeping your email current so we can reach you for security alerts and receipts. Tell us right away if you suspect unauthorized access: vibetoplist@gmail.com.

One person, one account. You may not create multiple accounts to evade moderation, inflate votes, or claim multiple Gold trials.

4 Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Submit malware, phishing pages, drive-by-download payloads, or other malicious software;
• Submit content that infringes someone else's copyright, trademark, or other rights;
• Submit content that is sexual content involving minors, incites violence, or breaks applicable law;
• Inflate, manipulate, or sell votes; coordinate vote brigades; use proxies, VPN farms, residential-proxy services, click-farms, emulators, or bots to vote;
• Bypass or attempt to bypass anti-abuse defenses (rate limits, CAPTCHA, cooldowns, IP filtering);
• Probe, scan, or attack the Service or its infrastructure outside of a coordinated disclosure (write to us first | we'll work with you);
• Scrape data at volumes that burden the Service, ignore robots.txt, or harvest user data;
• Misrepresent your identity, impersonate other developers, or pose as a VibeTopList employee;
• Use the Service to harass, dox, threaten, or harm others.

We can remove content, take listings off the site or delete them, suspend accounts, and invalidate votes that break these rules. When we remove or restrict your content or your account, we tell you why and how to ask us to look again (section 13).

5 Your content

You keep ownership of everything you submit (listings, banners, screenshots, descriptions, blog comments if/when we add them). You grant VibeTopList a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, display, reformat, resize, and distribute that content as needed to run the Service, promote it, and produce derivative previews (e.g. OpenGraph cards, monthly recap posts). The license ends when you delete the content, except where retention is needed for legal records or Hall-of-Fame snapshots.

You warrant that you have all rights necessary to grant this license and that your content does not violate anyone else's rights or applicable law.

6 Listings & games

To list a game it must have a working public URL, an accurate title and description, and content that complies with section 4. While an account has fewer than 3 listings on the site, a new listing goes live at once; after that, new listings go live once a person on our team has looked at them, and an account can add up to 5 listings in 24 hours. We can take any listing off the site or delete it under these Terms; section 13 says how, and how we tell you. Banner image specs are exactly 728×90 px, ≤10 MB, GIF/PNG/JPG. Screenshots are up to 8 per listing, ≤4 MB each. YouTube links are validated server-side and must point to genuine YouTube URLs.

Gambling games (casino, slots, poker and the like) must use play money only: a game that takes real-money bets or deposits, pays out real money or crypto, or links to a real-money gambling site can't be listed, and we pause it when we find one.

7 Voting integrity

The toplist ranks by votes received this calendar month. Each visitor can vote for a given listing once per 12 hours, enforced via HMAC-hashed IP cooldowns plus rate limits and CAPTCHA. Votes obtained through botting, automation, residential-proxy farms, click-farms, paid services, brigading from accounts created to vote, or any other manipulation are invalid and will be removed. Repeated manipulation gets the listing delisted and may forfeit any paid Gold or banner placement without refund.

8 Callback API

If you wire your game into the VibeTopList callback API to grant voters in-game rewards: you're responsible for honoring rewards accurately, keeping your callback_url reachable over HTTPS, protecting the callback_secret (treat it like a password), and gracefully handling duplicate deliveries (callbacks are at-least-once). We may rate-limit, retry, or disable your callback if it consistently errors out. We're not party to the relationship between you and your players; if a reward isn't delivered, that's between you and them.

9 Banner advertising

Banner slots are sold on a 30-day basis at the price shown at checkout. All banners must:

• Match the slot dimensions exactly;
• Not impersonate VibeTopList chrome or simulate system dialogs;
• Not auto-play audio, flash at seizure-inducing frequencies, or carry deceptive "you won!" / "your PC is infected" creative;
• Link to a destination that complies with section 4.

We reserve the right to refuse, edit, or remove any banner that breaks these rules. Where a banner is removed for policy violation, the slot and its remaining time are forfeited without refund.

10 Paid services & billing

Paid features ("Gold" tiers, banner slots, sponsored placements) are sold in the currency and at the price shown on the checkout page. Payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. | by paying, you also accept Stripe's terms. We don't receive or store your card details.

Gold tiers (30-day / 90-day / 365-day / Lifetime) are per-listing. Gold grants bonus votes per monthly cycle as described on the purchase page; it does not guarantee a ranking position | rank order is vote-driven. The Lifetime tier remains active so long as the Service operates; if we end the Service we'll give Lifetime customers at least 60 days notice.

11 Refunds

• Banner ads are non-refundable once the banner has gone live.
• Gold purchases are non-refundable once we have credited the bonus votes to your listing.
• Failed deliveries: if a payment is captured but we fail to grant the purchased feature within 24 hours, contact us and we'll either deliver the feature or refund in full.
• Statutory rights: nothing in this section limits any non-waivable consumer right you have under your local law (e.g. the EU's 14-day right of withdrawal for digital services, where it applies and has not been waived by you starting the service).

12 Intellectual property

The VibeTopList name, logo, mascot, design, code, and editorial content are owned by us and protected by copyright and trademark law. You may not use our marks except for fair, descriptive reference (e.g. "listed on VibeTopList") or under written permission.

13 Reporting content & how we moderate

Reporting illegal content

Anyone can report content on VibeTopList they believe is illegal: with the Report button at the bottom of every game page, the Report link on a review, or our report form. Tell us what and where, why you believe it's illegal, your name and email address (optional for reports of sexual content involving minors), and confirm that you believe in good faith that your report is accurate and complete. We confirm by email that we received it. If you can't use the form, email vibetoplist@gmail.com.

How we handle reports

A person on our team reviews every report: reports of scams, threats, private images or child abuse within 24 hours, others usually within 7 days. We may ask the person who reported, or the game's maker, a question first. We decide carefully and objectively, with the same rules for every game, and we email the person who reported our decision. We may ignore reports that are clearly unfounded or abusive.

What we may do

Remove part of a game page (screenshots, the banner or the trailer), remove a review, take a game off the site or remove it, or suspend an account. We take the smallest step that deals with the problem.

We tell you why

When we remove or restrict your content or your account, after a report or on our own initiative, we email you what we did and for how long, the facts it's based on, the law or the section of these Terms it breaks, whether automated tools were involved, and how you can object. We don't send this for deceptive commercial spam, when the police or another authority asks us to wait, or when we have no email address for you.

Ask us to look again

For 6 months after a decision, the person it affects and the person who reported can ask us to look again, with the link in our email. A person on our team answers, and if we got it wrong, we put things back. You can also take a decision to court (section 18).

Copyright and trademarks

If your work or brand is used on VibeTopList without permission, use the report form: tell us which work, where we can see the original, and how you're connected to it. We tell the game's maker who the rights holder is, so they can respond. An account that has had content removed for copyright or trademark infringement 3 times may be suspended.

Authorities and the police

We act on orders from courts and authorities under the EU Digital Services Act and tell them what we did. If we learn of a crime that threatens someone's life or safety, we tell the police. Our point of contact for authorities and users is on our Contact page.

Automated tools

We don't use automated tools to judge whether content is illegal; a person decides. We do use automated checks that refuse or hold things back: checks on uploaded files (format and size), a check that a game link is a public web address, a limit on new listings (see section 6), bot checks and rate limits on sign-up, voting and reports (including Cloudflare Turnstile), and automated vote checks whose findings a person reviews before votes are removed.

14 Termination

You may close your account at any time by writing to us. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, if required by law, or if continuing service would expose us or other users to risk, and we tell you why (section 13). Sections of these Terms that should reasonably survive (IP, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, governing law) do survive termination.

15 Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components, that votes will produce particular outcomes, or that listings will receive any particular level of traffic.

16 Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent allowed by law, VibeTopList is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of the Service. Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising under these Terms is capped at the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, and (b) €50.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or any other liability that can't be excluded under applicable law.

17 Indemnification

You agree to defend and hold VibeTopList harmless from any third-party claim, demand, or damages (including reasonable legal fees) arising from (a) content you submit, (b) your breach of these Terms, or (c) your violation of applicable law or someone else's rights.

18 Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Netherlands, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute will be brought in the competent courts of the Netherlands, unless mandatory consumer law in your country of residence gives you another forum.

19 Changes

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. For material changes we'll post a notice on the site at least 14 days before the new terms take effect, and the "last updated" date will change. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the revised Terms; if you don't agree, close your account.

20 Miscellaneous

• Severability: if any provision is held unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
• No waiver: our failure to enforce a provision isn't a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment: you may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor in the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Force majeure: neither party is liable for delays caused by events outside its reasonable control.
• Entire agreement: these Terms (plus our Privacy Policy) are the complete agreement between you and us about the Service.

21 Contact

Questions about these Terms: vibetoplist@gmail.com. Every way to reach us, including our point of contact under the EU Digital Services Act, is on our Contact page.

See also: Privacy Policy.