Acceptable use

This is the short version of what you may and may not run on Stars Games. It forms part of the terms of service, and where the two disagree the terms win.

Most of it comes down to one thing.

The line: free-to-play means free to play

Stars Games is built so that a prediction game can be run by a club, a brand or a broadcaster without becoming gambling. That is not a feature we added; it is the constraint the whole product is built inside. There is no stake, no wager, no cash prize and no cash-out, and the platform gives you no way to add one.

Which means the only way to cross the line is to build something around the game that we cannot see. So, plainly:

• Do not charge for entry. Not through us, not through a separate payment, not as a "donation" that happens to be required, not as a membership that exists to gate the game.
• Do not pay out. No cash prize, no bank transfer, no gift card, no cryptocurrency, no "expenses" that are winnings by another name.
• Do not create a market in the currency. Stars and gems are scorekeeping. Do not sell them for money outside the platform, buy them back, or let players trade them between accounts.
• Do not present the game as betting. Odds may be displayed as information where your plan includes them. Do not describe a prediction as a bet, a stake or a wager, and do not imply a return.

A genuine prize of nominal value — a shirt, a signed ball, a match ticket, hospitality — is a normal thing for a club to give the top of its leaderboard, and nothing here stops you. Once a prize is large enough that people would pay to have a chance at it, you are in a different legal category and it is your responsibility to know that before you offer it. Take advice. We cannot give it.

Your players

• Tell them the truth about what the game is, who runs it and what a prize actually is.
• Do not use the platform to harass, defraud, or discriminate against anybody.
• Do not upload content that is unlawful, obscene, or that you have no right to use — including badges, artwork and club marks that are not yours.
• If your market or your audience warrants age-gating or self-exclusion, switch them on. They are a setting away.

The platform

• Do not try to reach another operator's data. Each game has its own database and we watch the boundary closely.
• Do not probe, scan or load-test the platform without asking us first. Ask and we will usually say yes.
• Do not automate the API beyond your plan's published rate limits, or share API keys outside your organisation.
• Do not use the platform to send bulk email to people who have not asked your game for it. The broadcast tool is rate-limited to one message an hour for this reason.

Bots

The platform can seed a leaderboard with bots so that a game launching cold is not an empty room. They are off by default, they are excluded from payouts, from boards and from every statistic an operator is shown, and they are labelled. Do not present bot activity as real players. If you tell a sponsor a number, that number must be the honest one — which is why we make sure the number we give you is.

Reporting something

If you think a game on Stars Games breaks this policy, tell us at support@starsgames.co.uk. Security issues go to security@starsgames.co.uk and we will answer quickly.

What we do about a breach

Usually we email you and ask you to fix it. For anything that puts players, other operators or the platform at immediate risk we may suspend a game first and explain afterwards. Either way your data is not deleted and your export keeps working — see the terms.