Terms of Use
1. Agreeing to these terms
By creating a Swimcraft account and playing the game, you agree to these Terms of Use and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not create an account.
You must be at least 13 years old to hold a Swimcraft account. If you are under 18, please make sure a parent or guardian is happy for you to play a game that includes player-created content and public leaderboards.
We may update these terms as the game develops. If we make a material change, we will ask you to accept the new version the next time you sign in, and the "version" above will change. Continuing to play after accepting means the new version applies.
2. Early Access — please read this bit
- Features may change substantially, be reworked, or be removed. Planned features may never arrive.
- There will be bugs, and there may be periods of downtime.
- Game balance, progression, XP and the economy will be tuned, and in rare cases progress may need to be reset. We will avoid this wherever we can, and warn you if it is coming.
- Please buy Swimcraft based on the state it is in now, and whether you enjoy it now — not on a promise about the future. Refunds are handled by Steam under Valve's refund policy.
3. Your account
- You need a Swimcraft account (email address and password, or Google/Apple sign-in) to play. Keep your password to yourself; you are responsible for what happens on your account.
- One account per person. Do not share, sell or transfer your account.
- Choose an angler name you are happy for other players to see — it appears on records, on venues you publish, and in future chat. It does not have to be your real name, and we would gently suggest it isn't.
- You may delete your account at any time from the account menu. What that does to your data — including the one thing it does not delete — is set out in section 9 and in our Privacy Policy.
4. The game itself
We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to install and play Swimcraft for your own private, non-commercial enjoyment. Swimcraft, its code, art, sounds, branding and its stock content remain ours (or our licensors').
You agree not to:
- Cheat, or use tools, modified clients or automation to falsify catches, records, XP or leaderboard positions. Records are the heart of the game and we treat forging them seriously.
- Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to break or overload our servers.
- Resell, redistribute or commercially exploit the game or its content.
- Use Swimcraft for anything unlawful.
5. Community Guidelines — what you may and may not upload
Swimcraft is built on player-created content. You can upload photographs of real waters, name and describe venues, name individual fish, and set records that carry your name and a picture of the fish. All of this can be seen by other players. That is the point of it — and it is why these rules exist.
You must not upload, publish, write or transmit content that:
- Is unlawful, or encourages or facilitates anything unlawful.
- Sexualises, endangers or exploits children in any way. There is no grey area here and no appeal.
- Is sexual, pornographic, obscene or gratuitously violent.
- Is hateful, abusive, harassing, threatening or discriminatory — including on grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.
- Contains profanity or slurs. This applies to your angler name, venue names, venue descriptions, the names you give fish, and (when it launches) chat.
- Promotes self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, terrorism or extremism.
- Is spam, advertising, a scam, or a link to somewhere we would rather you didn't send our players.
- Impersonates another person, another angler, or Swimcraft staff.
- Cruelly or gratuitously depicts harm to animals. Swimcraft is a fishing game, and we expect the same respect for fish welfare here that a decent angler shows on the bank.
Photographs — the specific rules
When you upload a photograph to build a venue, you are publishing someone's photograph to other people. So:
- The photograph must be yours, or you must have permission to use it. Do not upload photographs you found on the internet, in a magazine, on a fishery's website, or in someone else's social media.
- Do not upload photographs containing identifiable people unless they have agreed to it. Never upload a photograph containing a child.
- Strip out anything private: number plates, house names, addresses, signage with personal details, phone numbers.
- Respect the fishery. If a water is private, or its owner would not want it recreated and published, do not publish it. Consider whether you would be happy to show the venue owner what you have made.
The licence you give us
When you upload a photograph or write text into Swimcraft, you keep ownership of it. You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to host, store, reproduce and display that content within Swimcraft and in material promoting Swimcraft, for as long as you keep it published.
You warrant that you own the content or have the rights to it, that you have any consent needed from people appearing in it, and that publishing it does not break the law or anyone else's rights. If a claim is made against us because of something you uploaded, you agree to be responsible for it.
6. How we moderate
We are responsible for the content players can see in Swimcraft, and we take that seriously.
- Text is screened. Angler names, venue names, venue descriptions and fish names are checked automatically before they can be saved.
- Venues are checked before they go live. A venue you create is private to you until it is reviewed and published. Photographs are screened before a venue can be published.
- Anything public can be reported. Every published venue, every record and every angler name can be reported from inside the game. We review reports and act on them.
- We keep records of what we do — reports received, content flagged, and the decisions we took — so that enforcement is consistent, so we can review a decision if you challenge it, and so we can meet our obligations under UK online safety law.
What we can do if you break these rules
Depending on what has happened and how serious it is, we may:
- Remove or edit the offending content;
- Unpublish a venue, or return it to you as a draft;
- Remove a record from the leaderboards;
- Reset an angler name;
- Suspend your account temporarily;
- Terminate your account permanently, and refuse you a new one;
- Report you to the police, where the content is criminal.
We aim to be proportionate. An accidental swear in a venue description is not the same as uploading something illegal, and we will not treat them the same.
Appeals
If we have removed your content or acted against your account and you think we got it wrong, email info@harbledowndigital.com with the details. We will look at it again and reply. We would rather correct a bad call than defend one.
7. Reporting content
If you see something in Swimcraft that breaks these rules, use the report control in the game, or email info@harbledowndigital.com. Tell us what you saw and where. If content is illegal or involves a child, please report it to us and to the police — do not sit on it.
8. Records and leaderboards
Swimcraft has venue, national and world records. When one of your catches sets a record, the following becomes public: your angler name, the species, the weight, the venue, the peg, and the image of the fish. Your wider catch history stays private to you. This is set out in full in our Privacy Policy.
Records are derived from an append-only ledger of catches, so they cannot be edited or forged. We may remove a record — and the account behind it — if we have good reason to believe it was obtained by cheating.
9. Deleting your account
You can delete your account at any time. We will delete your account, your email address, your catch history and your personal data within 30 days.
Venues you published are content other players may be fishing. On deletion we will anonymise your creator credit unless you ask us to remove the venue instead — just tell us which you would prefer.
10. Availability, and the limits of what we promise
Swimcraft depends on online services. We will do our best to keep them running, but we cannot promise the game will always be available, uninterrupted or error-free, and we may change, suspend or discontinue features — or, eventually, the online service itself — with as much notice as we can reasonably give.
Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Subject to that, and to the extent the law allows: we provide Swimcraft "as is"; we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost data, lost progress, or lost profits; and our total liability to you is limited to the amount you paid for the game.
If you are a consumer, you keep all your statutory rights under UK consumer law. Nothing here takes those away.
11. Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction — although if you live elsewhere in the UK, you may also bring proceedings in your own courts.
12. Contact
Harbledown Digital (Elliott Lee, sole trader)
Tonford Manor Farm, Tonford Lane, Harbledown, Kent, CT2 9BH
info@harbledowndigital.com