soullinked.io

Terms of Service

Effective date: [DATE] Operator: the operator of soullinked.io ("we", "us", "Soullinked")

TL;DR

  • Soullinked runs linked-fate and challenge runs of classic games you already own, played right in your browser. You bring your own game file; it stays on your device, and we never store, transmit, or distribute a ROM — not even a piece of one.
  • We are not affiliated with Nintendo, Game Freak, The Pokémon Company, or any game publisher.
  • You must be 13 or older.
  • Your account is a username and a password. Use a password you don't use anywhere else, and keep it to yourself. If you forget it, there are recovery paths (section 5).
  • Don't cheat leaderboards, don't harass people. Communities moderate themselves; we step in rarely and keep a record when we do.
  • Points on Soullinked can never be bought, cashed out, or traded for anything of value.
  • The gameplay platform is free. Nothing here is a paid product today.
  • The service is provided as-is. If it breaks, we'll be sorry and we'll try to fix it, but our legal liability is limited.

The TL;DR is a summary, not the agreement. The sections below are what you're agreeing to.

1. What Soullinked is

Soullinked (soullinked.io and api.soullinked.io, including the play page that runs games in your browser — together, the "Service") is a platform for organizing and automating linked-fate and challenge runs ("soul link" runs, Nuzlockes, and similar formats) of classic monster-catching games. It provides lobbies and rosters, in-browser play, run automation (encounter tracking, link death propagation, shared experience, level caps), live overlays, run boards, career stats, leaderboards, and community spaces.

What the Service is not: it is not a source of games. It does not include, host, sell, or link to game ROMs. The play page runs an emulator inside your own browser, on your own device, with a game file you provide; the Service never supplies the game. See Section 4.

By creating an account, joining a lobby, playing in your browser, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to the Privacy Policy.

2. Not affiliated with Nintendo

Soullinked is an independent, fan-operated project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or approved by Nintendo, Creatures Inc., GAME FREAK Inc., The Pokémon Company, or any other game publisher or rights holder. All game titles, characters, and trademarks referenced by users of the Service belong to their respective owners. Compatibility statements (for example, "works with Game Boy Advance titles you own") are factual descriptions only.

3. Who can use the Service

  • You must be at least 13 years old. If you are under 13, you may not use the Service, and we do not knowingly collect information from you (see the Privacy Policy).
  • If you are under the age of legal majority where you live, you may use the Service only if a parent or legal guardian has reviewed these Terms and agrees to them on your behalf.
  • You may not use the Service if you have previously been banned from it.
  • During the closed alpha, creating an account requires a single-use invite code from the operator.

4. Your games, your ROMs ("bring your own ROM")

This section is the foundation of the Service, and it is a condition of use, not fine print:

  • You affirm that you legally own each game you play through the Service, and that any game file (ROM dump) you use was made by you from your own copy, or otherwise obtained in a way that is lawful where you live. If you can't truthfully affirm that for a game, don't play that game here.
  • The Service never stores, transmits, receives, proxies, caches, or distributes ROMs — or any byte range of one. There is no upload endpoint for game files, by design. Everything that requires a game file (verification, randomization, patch assembly, play) happens in your own browser, on your own device, from your own dump. The game file you choose is kept in your browser's storage on that device and is never uploaded.
  • The play page checks your game file against the cryptographic hashes (fingerprints) of known clean copies, in your browser. At most that fingerprint, never the file, reaches our servers — for example, to confirm that every player in a run plays from the same clean copy. A hash cannot be turned back into the game.
  • Do not use the Service to request, share, or point other people to ROMs or other infringing copies of games. Doing so — anywhere on the Service, including lobby names, ruleset descriptions, or profile text — is grounds for termination.

5. Your account: username, password, and recovery

  • How identity works. You pick a username, a password, and a color, and the Service mints a player ID that never changes. You sign in with your username and password. Usernames are unique on the Service. Your display name — what other players see on boards — starts as your username, can be changed in your settings, and is not unique; your public form is name#id4.
  • You are responsible for your password. Anyone who signs in with your username and password is, as far as the Service can tell, you. Use a password you don't use anywhere else, don't share it, and change it if you think someone else knows it — changing it signs out every other browser. We store only a salted Argon2id hash of your password, and we will never ask you for it.
  • Recovery paths. If you forget your password:
    1. Recovery email — you may attach an email address in your settings (it's optional, and used for recovery only) and reset your password through it.
    2. Reset link — an operator of the Service can send you a one-time link, valid for 30 minutes, that lets you choose a new password. Ask in our Discord. Using it signs out every other browser.
    3. Passkey — when available, you may attach a passkey (WebAuthn) for phishing-resistant sign-in and recovery.
  • A reset link needs us to recognize you. If you haven't attached a recovery email, an operator must be satisfied that an account is yours before sending a reset link, and may not always be able to be. If your career matters to you, attach a recovery email or keep your password in a password manager.
  • One account per person, please. Don't create accounts to impersonate others or evade bans, and don't pick a username that pretends to be someone else or the Service.

6. Conduct

Soullinked is built for groups of friends and communities. Keep it that way:

  • No cheating on leaderboards. Submitting forged, spliced, tool- assisted-beyond-the-rules, or otherwise dishonest runs to leaderboards or weekly seed boards is prohibited. Run automation is honor-system by design — the overlay warns, it never blocks — but dishonest submissions, detected violations (for example logged illegal catches or state-load flags in rulesets that forbid them), and audit failures may result in score removal, trust-tier demotion, or a ban. Cheating inside a private run among friends is between you and your friends; cheating a shared board affects everyone.
  • No harassment or abuse. No harassment, hate, threats, sexualized content involving minors (zero tolerance, reported to authorities where required), doxxing, or spam. This applies to every player-authored string: display names, lobby titles, ruleset names and descriptions, profile text, and anything else other people can see.
  • No breaking the Service. No attempts to bypass rate limits or authentication, probe or attack the infrastructure, scrape private data, disrupt other players' runs, or interfere with other users' access. (Good-faith security research is welcome — contact us first at [SECURITY CONTACT].)
  • No unlawful use, including the ROM-sharing conduct prohibited by Section 4.

Moderation. Communities are moderated by their own admins, who can remove members and ban within their space; that is the first and usual line of moderation. The platform operator maintains a report queue and may act on reports anywhere on the Service. Platform-level bans are rare, recorded in an audit log, and used for conduct that community moderation can't or shouldn't handle. The Service has no direct messages and no general forums; community conversation happens on services like Discord, under those services' own rules and the community's moderators.

7. Your content

  • "Your content" on Soullinked is deliberately narrow: plain-text strings (names, lobby titles, ruleset names/descriptions, profile text), run events generated by your play, and save files you choose to store in the vault. There are no image or file uploads; avatars come from curated and earned sets only.
  • You keep whatever rights you have in your content. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, display, reproduce, and transmit it as needed to operate the Service — for example, showing your ruleset description to your community, rendering your run on a board, or generating a shareable death card. This license ends when the content is deleted, except where it already appears in other players' shared run history (see the Privacy Policy on pseudonymization) or in backups for a limited period.
  • You are responsible for what you post. Don't post content you don't have the right to post.

8. Saves and the save vault

The saves you make while playing — the game's own saves, autosaves, and backup snapshots — are kept in your browser's storage on your device, not on our servers. They stay in that browser: clearing your browser's data for soullinked.io, or playing in a private window, can delete them, and another device won't have them. The play page lets you download your save file at any time; keep a copy of anything you can't stand to lose.

If you store save files with the Service (the save vault), they are private player data: encrypted at rest, size-capped, format-validated, never shared with other players, and never used by us for anything except storing and returning them to you. You can download or delete your saves at any time. Retention after account deletion is described in the Privacy Policy. Keep your own local backups too — the vault is a convenience, not an archival guarantee (see Section 11).

9. Points, predictions, and anything that looks like money

Some features award or track points (achievements, predictions, bounties). Points are never purchasable, never redeemable for cash or anything of value, and never transferable for value. They are bragging rights, full stop. Any prediction or bounty features operate on these points only. Do not buy, sell, or trade points or accounts; we may void balances and terminate accounts involved in it.

10. Free service, donations, and future paid features

  • The gameplay platform — creating and joining lobbies, run automation, every run format, boards, and leaderboard participation — is free, and keeping it free is a stated commitment of the project.
  • There are currently no paid products on the Service. We may accept voluntary donations with no perks attached.
  • A paid "Supporter" tier covering infrastructure and cosmetic perks (never gameplay advantages, never anything derived from Nintendo's works, never leaderboard benefits) is planned for the future. It will launch only after legal review, and these Terms will be updated before any payment is ever collected.

11. Termination

  • By you: stop using the Service anytime, and/or delete your account from your settings (or by contacting [CONTACT EMAIL]). The Privacy Policy describes exactly what deletion does and doesn't erase, and why.
  • By us: we may suspend or terminate your access — with notice where practical — if you materially violate these Terms (including Sections 4, 6, and 9), create legal risk for the Service, or if we discontinue the Service or a feature. Where the violation is minor and fixable, we'll aim for a warning first; ban decisions at the platform level are logged.
  • On termination, your license to use the Service ends. Sections that by their nature should survive (including 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, and 17) survive.

12. Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that data (including saves, run history, and leaderboard standings) will never be lost. The Service reads and writes the emulated game's memory and save data in your browser as part of run automation (for example, moving a fainted Pokémon to the PC or sharing experience); while it is engineered carefully (checksummed writes, verified read-backs, savestate backups), you use run automation on your own saves at your own risk — keep backups of anything you can't stand to lose. Some jurisdictions don't allow certain warranty disclaimers, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law: (a) we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost saves, lost runs, or lost profits, arising out of or relating to the Service; and (b) our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service is capped at the greater of US $50 or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (which, while the Service has no paid features, is zero). Some jurisdictions don't allow certain liability limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

14. Indemnity

If your violation of Section 4 (ROM affirmations) or Section 6 (conduct) results in a third-party claim against us, you agree to indemnify us for reasonable costs and damages arising from that claim, to the extent permitted by law.

We respect intellectual property rights and expect users to do the same. The Service hosts no user-uploaded media; user content is limited to plain-text strings and private save files. Still, if you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, you may send a takedown notice.

Designated Agent (registration with the U.S. Copyright Office Designated Agent Directory is pending — IMPLEMENTATION B-LEGAL-1; this block must be completed and registered before public launch):

the operator of soullinked.io (entity name pending formation) [STREET ADDRESS] [CITY, STATE ZIP, COUNTRY] Email: [[email protected]] Phone: [PHONE]

Takedown notice. Send the Designated Agent a written notice including: (1) identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed; (2) identification of the material claimed to be infringing and enough information for us to locate it (a URL to the page or item); (3) your contact information (name, address, email, phone); (4) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; (5) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner; and (6) your physical or electronic signature.

On receipt of a valid notice we will remove or disable access to the material promptly, notify the user who posted it, and record the action.

Counter-notice. If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or misidentification, you may send the Designated Agent a written counter-notice including: (1) identification of the removed material and where it appeared; (2) a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed by mistake or misidentification; (3) your name, address, and phone number; (4) a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your district (or, if you are outside the United States, of [DISTRICT]) and that you will accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice; and (5) your physical or electronic signature. Unless the original claimant notifies us they have filed a court action, we may restore the material in 10–14 business days.

Repeat infringers. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

16. Changes to the Service and to these Terms

The Service is under active development; features will change, and some may be discontinued. We may update these Terms; if a change is material, we will give notice on the Service (and by email, if you attached one) before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date of updated Terms means you accept them. If you don't, stop using the Service and (if you wish) delete your account.

17. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of [STATE], United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Courts located in [COUNTY, STATE] have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising from these Terms or the Service, and both sides consent to venue there. (Both placeholders pending attorney review and entity formation.)

18. Miscellany

  • These Terms plus the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
  • If part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
  • Our not enforcing a provision isn't a waiver of it.
  • You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them as part of a reorganization of the project (for example, into an LLC), and we'll give notice if that happens.

19. Contact

Questions about these Terms: [CONTACT EMAIL] Security reports: [SECURITY CONTACT] Copyright notices: the Designated Agent in Section 15.