Terms of use

Who we are

Orrery Arcade is run in the UK by the arcade’s owner, a sole trader. It’s a one-person project. “We”, “us” and “our” mean whoever runs it. “You” means the person who signs up and holds the account.

By creating an arcade or paying for a membership, you agree to these terms. Our Privacy policy explains how we use your details.

If the arcade moves to a company: we may transfer this agreement to another organisation, for example a limited company we set up to run the arcade. We’ll email you to tell you, and it won’t reduce your rights. If you’re unhappy with the change, you can cancel and we’ll refund any paid time you haven’t used.

What you get

• Your family’s own arcade: the games, your players’ names and scores, stats and history, ready whenever you want to play on a TV, laptop or tablet.
• Parties: you host on the big screen and everyone else joins with a party code on their phone. Party guests don’t need an account and never pay.
• Updates: fixes, and new games from time to time. Games may change or be retired (see Changes).

What you need: an internet connection, and a reasonably up-to-date web browser on each device (a recent Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox, or a TV browser that can run them). Some older TV browsers can’t run the arcade, so please try the free demo on your TV before you pay.

Orrery Arcade is for personal, family use at home, not for running a business or paid events.

Playing safely

• Mind your surroundings: leave room around players, keep drinks and cables clear, and make sure the TV is secure so it can’t be knocked over in an exciting moment.
• Take breaks: a few minutes every hour, more if you’re tired. Play in a well-lit room, a comfortable distance from the screen, and stop if your eyes, hands or wrists ache.
• Grown-ups in charge: an adult should supervise children while they play and keep an eye out for the signs above. The After Dark games are for adults (18+) only; you can hide them in Settings.
• Don’t play on a phone while walking about, driving or cycling.

This is guidance to help everyone play safely. It doesn’t reduce our responsibility to you (see Our responsibility).

Your account and family

• Age: the account holder must be 18 or over. Children are welcome to play, with you in charge.
• Signing in: there’s no password. We email a six-digit code each time you sign in. Keep the email accounts you sign in with secure, because anyone who can read them can sign in. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has got in.
• Sign-in emails: your arcade works with the email you signed up with, plus a limited number of other family emails (currently one), which you manage from the welcome page. The sign-up email stays in charge of the account.
• You’re responsible for what happens in your arcade, unless it’s caused by something we did wrong. That includes who you invite and share party codes with, and the names and drawings people enter.
• Keep it friendly: no names, drawings or messages that are offensive, abusive, hateful, sexual or someone else’s private information. We may remove or rename anything like that.
• What you add stays yours. You let us store and show the names and drawings you add, only so your arcade and parties work.

Price and payment

• The price is always shown before you pay, on the welcome page and again on the checkout page.
• Your first payment covers setting up your arcade and your first 30 days.
• After that, you pay monthly, starting 30 days after your first payment (or later, if an offer adds free days), on the same day each month, until you cancel.
• Payments are handled by Stripe, on its secure checkout page. We never see or store your card details.
• Price changes: if the monthly price ever goes up, we’ll email the address on your account at least 30 days before, and you can cancel before it applies.

If paid memberships aren’t open yet when you read this, nothing is being charged. You will only ever pay on the checkout page, after seeing the price.

Offers, free trials and referrals

• An offer can lower your first payment or add free days before your monthly payments start. The offer page shows what you get before you use it. One trial or offer per person or household, unless the offer says otherwise.
• If a free trial didn’t ask for a card, nothing is charged when it ends: your arcade locks until you choose to pay.
• Referral rewards come off your payments, either at checkout or as credit on your account with Stripe that comes off your next payments. They aren’t cash: they can’t be swapped for money, moved to another account, or paid out if your membership ends.
• Share invite links fairly: no spam, and nothing misleading about the arcade or what a friend gets.
• We may hold back or cancel rewards and offers gained by abuse, such as referring yourself or using fake or extra accounts.
• We may change or end offers and referrals for the future. Rewards you’ve already earned are kept.

Cancelling

You can cancel any time in your arcade, under Settings → Membership → Manage, or from the welcome page if your arcade is paused. You can also email the address shown here before launch and we’ll cancel it for you.

Cancelling stops future payments. Your arcade stays open until the end of the time you’ve already paid for, then it closes (see Closing).

Your 14-day right to cancel

• Changed your mind? You can cancel within 14 days of your first payment, for any reason. We’ll refund that payment in full within 14 days of you telling us, to the card or wallet you paid with.
• How: email the address shown here before launch saying you want to cancel, with the email you signed up with, or cancel in Settings (or from the welcome page) within the 14 days; either way you get the refund. You can use the form below, but you don’t have to.
• A refund ends your membership straight away: your arcade closes and nothing more is taken.
• After the 14 days, you can still cancel any time and payments stop, but we don’t refund part-months.
• If something we provide is faulty and we can’t put it right, you’re entitled to a fair refund. None of this affects your legal rights as a consumer.

Missed payments and closing

• If a monthly payment doesn’t go through, your arcade is paused straight away.
• You then have 15 days to pay just the missed month. Pay it, and your arcade opens again with everything kept. No new set-up fee.
• After those 15 days, or when a cancelled membership runs out, your arcade closes and is locked, and payments stop.
• A closed arcade’s players and scores are deleted when you choose Start again on the welcome page, when you ask us to, or otherwise by us within 12 months of it closing.
• To come back after closing, choose Start again (a fresh arcade, where you pay the set-up fee again), or email us.

Disputed payments

If a payment is disputed or reversed through your bank or card provider (a “chargeback”), the time it paid for becomes unpaid, so we may pause your arcade until the dispute is resolved. Everything in it is kept. If it turns out we charged you by mistake, we’ll reopen it straight away.

If something’s wrong, please email us first: it’s usually quicker. This never affects your 14-day right to cancel or your legal rights.

Licence and fair use

The arcade, its games, art, sounds and code belong to us or to the people we license them from. While you have an arcade with us, we give you a personal licence to use it for private, non-commercial family use. You can’t pass your membership or this licence to someone else unless we agree.

Please play nicely. You agree not to:

• share your arcade’s sign-in with, or sell or rent your arcade or membership to, anyone outside your family or household (inviting party guests with a code is fine: that’s what it’s for);
• copy, scrape, reverse engineer or resell the arcade, the games or their art, except where the law allows it;
• use it commercially or in public places, such as pubs, events, venues or classes, without our written permission;
• try to break into, overload or attack the arcade, or other families’ arcades;
• use automated tools to sign up, sign in or play.

The arcade has sensible limits (for example how often codes can be sent) to keep it fast and safe for everyone.

Ideas and feedback are always welcome. If you send us some, we may use them freely, without owing you anything.

If we need to pause or close an arcade

We may pause or close an arcade for fraud, abuse, attacks on the arcade or its players, or for seriously or repeatedly breaking these terms. Where we can, we’ll tell you why first and give you a chance to put things right; for fraud or an attack we may act straight away and tell you afterwards. If you think we’ve got it wrong, email us and we’ll look again.

If we close your arcade, we’ll refund any whole month already paid for and not yet used.

Availability and changes

We work hard to keep the arcade running, but it’s a small service. It may sometimes be down for maintenance or for reasons outside our control (see Outages). Party games need a working internet connection on every device.

If a change would make the arcade significantly worse for you, we’ll email the address on your account at least 30 days before. You can then cancel, up to 30 days after the change, and we’ll refund what you’ve paid for the time after you cancel.

We may update these terms, for example when the law or the arcade changes. If a change matters to you, we’ll email the address on your account at least 30 days before it applies. If you don’t like it, you can cancel before then.

If we ever have to close Orrery Arcade for good, we’ll email the address on your account at least 30 days before, and refund any time you’ve paid for and can’t use.

Events outside our control

We’re not responsible for delays or breaks in the arcade caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as an outage at Cloudflare (our host) or Stripe (our payment provider), or a failure of the internet. If one happens, we’ll let you know (for example on the welcome page or by email) and do what we can to keep the effect small.

If such an event stops your arcade working for more than 7 days in a row, you can cancel and we’ll refund the time you’ve paid for and couldn’t use.

Our responsibility to you

• We provide the arcade with reasonable care and skill, as described here, as UK consumer law requires.
• Foreseeable loss: if we break these terms or don’t use reasonable care, we’re responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result. Loss is foreseeable if it was obvious it would happen, or if we both knew it might happen when you agreed to these terms.
• Unforeseeable loss: we’re not responsible for loss nobody could have expected.
• Home use only: the arcade is for domestic and private use, so we’re not responsible for any loss of profit, business, business opportunity or income.
• Damage to your devices: if something we supply damages your device or other digital content because we didn’t use reasonable care, we’ll repair the damage or pay you fair compensation. We’re not responsible for damage you could have avoided by following our advice, for example keeping your web browser up to date.
• Overall limit: apart from the things in the next point, our total responsibility to you is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before your claim, or £100, whichever is higher.
• What we never limit: we don’t exclude or limit our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence; for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; for your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (including the arcade being as described, of satisfactory quality and provided with reasonable care and skill, and your right to a repair, a price reduction or a refund); for damage to your devices as above; for your 14-day right to cancel; or for anything else the law doesn’t allow us to limit.

Other legal bits

• Each part stands alone. If a court decides part of these terms can’t be used, the rest still applies.
• Not acting straight away on something you haven’t done doesn’t stop us acting on it later.
• This agreement is between you and us. Nobody else can enforce it under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. Your family and party guests still keep all their own legal rights.

Complaints and the law

If something goes wrong, please email us first: most things can be sorted quickly. We don’t use an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme, but you can get free, independent advice from Citizens Advice (0808 223 1133).

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring a claim in your local courts.

How to contact us

Email the address shown here before launch and we’ll reply as soon as we can, usually within a few days.

Postal address: to follow before launch