Terms of Service

1. Introduction and Acceptance

Welcome to Hivecom. These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of our website, game servers, communication platforms, and other services (collectively, the "Services") operated by Hivecom.

By accessing or using our Services, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree with any part of these Terms, you must not use our Services.

2. About Hivecom

Hivecom is a community of friends hosting game servers and building open source projects for anyone and everyone. While not formally registered as a non-profit organization, we operate on a non-profit basis, with all donations and contributions being reinvested into server hosting costs or funding our projects.

3. Account Registration and User Profiles

3.1 Account Creation

You may create a user profile to access certain features of our Services. When registering, you must provide accurate and complete information and keep this information updated.

3.2 Account Security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activities that occur under your account. Notify us immediately of any unauthorized use of your account.

3.3 Age Requirements

You must be at least 13 years old to use our Services, or the applicable age of digital consent in your jurisdiction if higher (for example, 16 in many EU member states under GDPR). By using our Services, you represent and warrant that you meet this age requirement.

3.4 Profile Visibility and Forum Content

By default, your profile is only visible to signed-in users. You may choose to make your profile public, which makes it accessible to anyone on the internet, including visitors who are not logged in.

All forum posts and comments are publicly visible. However, for visitors who are not signed in, user identities are anonymized - your username is replaced with a randomly generated pseudonym that stays consistent within a conversation. If your profile is set to public, your real username and profile information are visible alongside your posts to everyone. If your profile is not public, only signed-in users can see your real identity in forum threads.

While anonymization provides a basic layer of protection against automated scraping, it is not a security guarantee. Any signed-in user can see your username and profile information in forum threads regardless of your profile visibility setting.

4. User Conduct and Content Rules

When using our Services, you agree not to:

• Violate any applicable laws or regulations
• Infringe upon the rights of others
• Share content that is illegal, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of our Services or any system or network connected to our Services
• Use our Services to distribute malware, viruses, or other malicious code
• Interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of our Services
• Engage in any activity that could disable, overburden, or impair our Services

4.1 Content Rules

Before posting content on our website (such as forum posts, comments, or other user-generated content), you must acknowledge our Content Rules. These rules cover topics like prohibited content, harassment, and the use of automated tools. You will be asked to agree to these rules when you first attempt to post.

Violating the Content Rules may result in content removal, temporary suspension, or permanent banning from our Services, at the discretion of our staff. The Content Rules are interpreted as guidelines by our staff, not as strict legal definitions.

5. Game Servers and Community Services

5.1 Game Servers

We provide game servers as a service to our community. When using these servers:

• You must comply with the specific rules of each game server
• We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or terminate access to any game server at our discretion
• In-game content and achievements may be subject to change or deletion
• Connection logs are kept for 14 days for security and moderation purposes, then deleted. Aggregate server history, meaning player counts over time, is kept indefinitely so community statistics stay intact. In-game usernames are not part of that history; the only stored name list is the current snapshot behind the live server displays, overwritten every few minutes. See the retention section of our Privacy Policy for the detail
• Your in-game username and other publicly visible server data may be captured in periodic snapshots used to power live server displays and community statistics - the same information any other connected player, or anyone querying the server directly, can already see
• Where your in-game identity can be matched to a linked Hivecom account (e.g. via a connected Steam account), that presence may be associated with your profile - see our Privacy Policy for details

5.2 Communication Services

Our IRC and TeamSpeak services are provided as community communication tools. When using these services:

• Connection logs are kept for 14 days for security and moderation purposes, including IP addresses, connection times, and disconnection times, then deleted. Ban records are the exception and are kept for as long as the ban stands, as set out in our Privacy Policy
• IRC channels (#public, #lounge, #staff) are logged for moderation purposes, and we reserve the right to review these logs
• Our IRC server stores channel history so you can catch up after being away. Registered channels are stored by default with no expiry date, and the channel owner can turn this off. Unregistered channels are never written to disk
• Direct messages are not stored unless you turn history on for yourself from your IRC client. If the person you are talking to has turned it on for themselves, their copy of the conversation stays in their history regardless of your own setting
• TeamSpeak voice channels have minimal connection logs but otherwise store no data about your voice conversations
• TeamSpeak channel chats are not logged but can be observed by others if in the same channel
• TeamSpeak display names are captured in periodic snapshots to power the live TeamSpeak viewer; where your TeamSpeak unique identity matches a linked Hivecom account, your presence is associated with your profile - enabling other users to navigate to your profile from the viewer

It's worth noting for any present and future services used by the community that are not hosted by us: We can't control any third-party communication services such as Discord, and we are not responsible for any data collected by these services

5.3 Third-Party Service Integrations

You may connect your Hivecom account to external services such as Steam, Discord, TeamSpeak, or Patreon. These connections are optional and can be removed at any time from your account settings.

Activity data from connected services (such as your online status or what you are currently playing) is not displayed by default. You can choose to enable rich presence from your account settings, which will show this activity on your profile. See our Privacy Policy for details on what data is collected from each service.

By connecting an external service, you also agree to that service's own terms and privacy policy. We are not responsible for how those services handle your data.

5.4 Community Voting

Our community referendum mechanism allows users to vote on community matters. We strive to consider the results of community votes when making decisions about our Services.

5.5 Community Projects and OAuth Access

Some community projects - whether operated by Hivecom directly or built by affiliated contributors and users - may request access to your Hivecom account data through an OAuth authorization flow. These are considered second-party integrations and are part of the broader Hivecom community ecosystem. Hivecom maintains responsibility for all OAuth clients, including those created on behalf of community-built projects.

By authorizing such a connection, you grant that sub-project access only to the specific data scopes you approve at the time of authorization. You may revoke this access at any time from your account settings.

Any community project that accesses Hivecom account data through OAuth is bound by these Terms of Service and may not circumvent, weaken, or contradict them. Specifically:

• The project inherits all user conduct and content rules defined in Section 4
• The project may not use Hivecom account data for purposes that would violate these Terms
• The project must apply the same privacy protections described in our Privacy Policy to any data obtained through this connection
• The project may not share, sell, or otherwise distribute Hivecom account data to external parties

Hivecom reserves the right to revoke OAuth access from any project that violates these requirements.

6. Intellectual Property

6.1 Our Content

All content, features, and functionality of our Services, including but not limited to text, graphics, logos, icons, and software, are owned by Hivecom or its contributors and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws.

6.2 Open Source Projects

Many of our projects are open source and released under specific licenses. When using our open source projects, you must comply with the terms of the applicable license.

6.3 User Content and Copyright

You retain full ownership and all copyright of any content you upload or share through our Services. We are not in the business of using our community members' creative content and intellectual property for profit or other gains. By submitting content, you grant us only the limited, non-exclusive rights necessary to display and host your content as part of providing our Services. You agree that we don't own your content, and we make no claim to ownership rights in your materials.

7. Disclaimers and Limitations of Liability

7.1 Service Availability

Our Services are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not guarantee that our Services will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free.

7.2 No Warranties

We disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

7.3 Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of our Services.

8. Termination

We may terminate or suspend your access to our Services immediately, without prior notice or liability, for any reason, including if you breach these Terms. Upon termination, your right to use our Services will immediately cease.

In practice we would rather talk to you first. For anything short of an egregious violation, our staff will normally warn you and give you a chance to correct course before removing your access. Immediate action without warning is reserved for cases where waiting would put our users or our infrastructure at risk. This is how we intend to operate, not a procedural right you can hold us to.

9. Changes to These Terms

We may revise these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes to these Terms, we will notify you by sending an email to the address associated with your account prior to the changes taking effect. By continuing to access or use our Services after those revisions become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised Terms.

10. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Province of Alberta and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Furthermore, because our primary server infrastructure is hosted in Canada and Germany, we acknowledge and comply with applicable regional regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regarding data hosted within the European Union.

11. Contact Information

If you have questions or concerns about these Terms or our Services, please contact us at:

• Email: contact@hivecom.net
• Primary Contact: Andrew Lake (@zealsprince), Primary Owner and Operator of Hivecom