Terms of Service | GamezServers

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Brandon Gamez, an individual doing business as GamezServers ("GamezServers", "we", "us" or "our"). They cover gamezservers.com, our control panel, our game servers and everything else we provide (together, the "Service").

Please read the Disputes and arbitration section carefully. It requires most disputes to be resolved by individual arbitration instead of in court, and it waives class actions and jury trials. You can opt out of arbitration within 30 days, as explained there.

Agreeing to these terms

You accept these Terms when you create an account, tick the box at checkout, pay for a server or a share of one, or use the Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

These Terms include our Privacy Policy and, if you join our affiliate program, the Affiliate Program Terms.

We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will tell you by email or in your dashboard at least 14 days before it takes effect, unless the change is required by law or made to stop abuse, in which case it may take effect sooner. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the new Terms. If you do not accept them, cancel before then. Changes never apply to a dispute that has already been raised.

Who can use GamezServers

You must be at least 13 years old.
If you are under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, a parent or legal guardian must agree to these Terms for you and is responsible for your account and every payment made on it.
You must give us accurate information and keep your email address up to date. Important notices, including price changes and payment problems, go to that email.
One person per account. You are responsible for everything done through your account and for keeping your password and sign in methods secure. Do not share your login. To let friends help run or pay for a server, use the panel access and Server Share features built for that.
We may refuse or stop providing the Service to anyone, including people we have previously removed and anyone acting for them, where the law allows.

The service

We host game servers on hardware we rent in data centers. Each plan lists its memory (RAM), processor and player limits.

Shared hardware. Servers share physical machines with other customers' servers. The numbers on a plan are the most your server can use, not dedicated hardware reserved only for you. Performance depends on your game, mods, player count and activity, and can vary. We manage capacity so servers perform well, and we may limit, move or pause a server that is harming others.
Sleep. Servers with sleep turned on stop after a period with nobody playing (currently 4 days). Anyone with access can start them again from the dashboard. Do not use bots, fake players, scripts or repeated restarts to keep a sleeping server awake.
Addresses and ports. Your server's address and port may change when we move servers between machines, replace hardware or respond to attacks. We will give notice when we reasonably can. You have no right to keep a particular address, port or machine.
Maintenance. We sometimes need to restart or move servers for maintenance, updates or security. We try to give notice for planned work.
Games and software. The games, server software, mods, plugins and control panel we provide or you install are made by third parties. We do not guarantee that they work, stay compatible after updates, or are free of bugs. Game developers and publishers are not affiliated with us and are not responsible for the Service.
Features change. We may add, change or remove features, games, plans and server types. If we stop offering a game or plan you pay for, we will give you reasonable notice and help you move to another option or cancel.

Billing, prepaid time and automatic renewal

Two ways to pay. A server is paid either by subscription (monthly, every 6 months or yearly) or with prepaid time (3 days, 30 days, 6 months or 1 year). Payments are processed by Stripe.
Subscriptions renew automatically at the price shown at checkout until you cancel. You agree to this when you tick the renewal box at checkout, and you authorize us to charge your payment method at the start of each billing period.
Prepaid time is a one time payment and does not renew. When it ends, the server pauses, and its files are kept as described in Cancelling and what happens to your files. You can add more time or switch to a subscription at any point before the files are deleted. Shorter lengths cost more per day than longer ones, because every server is set up from scratch whatever its length.
Prices are in US dollars and shown before you pay. You are responsible for any taxes that apply.
New customer offer. The first payment discount for new customers (shown at checkout, for example a percent off the first month, or months off the first year of a yearly plan) applies to a first subscription only, never to prepaid time. It is limited to one per person, household, device and payment method, for people who have never had a subscription with us, including people switching a prepaid server to their first subscription. If we find it was used more than that, including through multiple accounts, we may charge the full price for the period or cancel the servers involved.
Free month offer. We sometimes email a free first month to people who started a checkout and did not finish. It works only for the account it was sent to, until the date in the email, on a monthly subscription to one of the game's plans (not custom builds or prepaid time), and replaces the new customer offer and any promo code on that payment. A card is needed to start it. After the free month the subscription renews monthly at the plan price shown at checkout until you cancel, and if you cancel before the free month ends you are not charged. It is limited to one per person, household, device and payment method, for people who have never had a subscription with us. If the card or account already had a free month or a subscription, the first month is charged right away instead, and the server keeps running.
Promo codes. One code per order. A creator's affiliate code credits that creator and comes with the new customer offer, but adds no discount of its own. Other codes discount only the first payment of the server they are used on, have no cash value, cannot be sold or exchanged, and may expire or be withdrawn. You cannot use your own affiliate code. We may refuse or reverse a discount from a code that was obtained or used against these Terms or the code's own conditions.
Failed payments. If a payment fails, the server may pause once its paid time runs out. See Cancelling and what happens to your files.
Plan changes and switches to a longer billing period are for subscriptions, and take effect as shown in your panel. The difference is prorated, charged or credited through Stripe. Prepaid time keeps the plan it was bought with.

Server Share lets up to 10 people split one server's bill. It is not a payment plan or a loan.

The owner is the person who bought the server. Each friend who pays does so with their own card and has their own separate subscription with us, under these Terms.
The price is split evenly across everyone in the split, plus a share fee per person on each payment, as shown at checkout.
Every paid share keeps the server running for its part of the billing period. If only some shares are paid, the server runs for that part and then pauses.
If someone leaves or stops paying, the others' shares can go up, to as much as the full price of the server, as shown when you agreed at checkout. We email each affected payer at least 7 days before a higher amount is charged, and it applies from their next renewal after that notice. You can cancel your share at any time before then. When a new person joins, everyone's share goes back down.
The owner controls the server, who has access and who is in the split. Paying a share gives you access to play and help manage the server as the owner allows. It does not make you an owner or give you rights to the server's files, name or world.
Each payer can cancel their own share at any time from their dashboard or the private link in their receipt email.

Price changes

We may change our prices. A new price for an existing subscription applies only from a future renewal. We will email you at least 7 days before the new price is first charged, telling you the new price and how to cancel, and we will follow any longer notice period the law where you live requires. If you do not want to pay the new price, cancel before that renewal.

For yearly subscriptions we also send a reminder before each yearly renewal, with the amount and how to cancel.

Cancelling and what happens to your files

You can cancel any time, without contacting us, from Billing in your dashboard, or from the private link in your receipt email if you pay a share. Cancelling stops future charges. Your server keeps running until the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not give partial refunds for unused time, except under Refunds.

When a server's paid time runs out:

if everyone paying for it has cancelled, the server shuts down when its paid time ends,
if a payment failed, the server is paused about 3 days later, to give the payment a chance to go through, and
either way, the server and all its files, worlds and backups are permanently deleted about 14 days after it shut down or paused.

Deleted data cannot be recovered. Download anything you want to keep before then. If a paused server is paid for before deletion, it comes back as it was.

Refunds

If you are new to GamezServers and not happy, email support@gamezservers.com within the first 10% of the billing period you paid for for a full refund of that first payment. When we refund, the server and its files are deleted.

What you bought	Refund window
3 days prepaid	7 hours
Monthly, or 30 days prepaid	72 hours
6 months	18 days
Yearly, or 1 year prepaid	36 days

Our pages and ads describe this as a 72 hour refund, because monthly is the period most people choose. The window above for what you actually bought is the one that applies.

This applies once per person, household and payment method, to the first server you ever buy (or your first share of one).
Renewals, later payments, added prepaid time, additional servers, plan upgrades, proration charges and share fees are not refundable, including yearly renewals.
There is no refund for time lost to a pause, suspension or termination caused by a breach of these Terms, or after a chargeback.
We may give other refunds or service credits at our discretion. Doing so once does not oblige us to do it again.
Refunds go back to the original payment method.

Nothing in these Terms takes away a refund right that the law where you live gives you and that cannot be waived.

Payment disputes and chargebacks

If something is wrong with a charge, please email us first. We can usually fix it faster than your bank can.

If you open a chargeback or payment dispute, we may pause the server and your account while it is open. If the dispute is decided in our favor or withdrawn, you agree to pay the disputed amount plus the fees our payment processor charged us. We may end the Service for accounts with fraudulent or abusive disputes. Nothing here limits any right you have under law or your card network's rules to dispute a charge.

Acceptable use

You are responsible for your servers and everything that happens on them. You and anyone using your servers must not:

Break any law, or help anyone else break one.
Host, share or link to child sexual abuse material. We remove it, close the account and report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to the police.
Harass, threaten, dox or promote violence or hatred against people, or post content that exploits minors in any way.
Distribute malware, run phishing pages, steal accounts or collect personal data without permission.
Launch, coordinate or help with denial of service (DDoS) attacks, port scans, hacking or intrusion attempts, or attract or send attack traffic to test or overwhelm our DDoS protection.
Mine cryptocurrency, run proxies, VPNs or Tor relays, send email, or use a game server for anything other than running its game and the tools it needs.
Store files that are not needed to run your game server, such as personal backups, media collections or other people's files, or inflate file sizes.
Get around plan limits, sleep, security measures or the control panel, or try to access servers, files or accounts that are not yours.
Run pirated or cracked games, server software, paid plugins or mods without a license, or get around a game's licensing or login checks (for example running a Minecraft server in offline mode to let players without a paid account join).
Break a game's end user license agreement or its publisher's rules for servers, including the Minecraft Usage Guidelines (for example selling gameplay advantages on a Minecraft server).
Run gambling where it is illegal, send spam, impersonate us or others, or infringe anyone's copyright, trademark or other rights.
Resell or rent out the Service, or run a hosting business on it, without our written permission.
Use so much of a machine's processor, disk, memory or network that it harms other customers, even within your plan's numbers.
Abuse, threaten or harass our staff, or knowingly give us false information.

Anything your players, moderators or friends do on your server counts as done by you under these Terms.

We do not watch what happens inside your server, but we act on reports and on what our systems detect. If you break these rules, we may warn you, remove content, limit, pause or delete the server, or close your account. For serious harm, illegal content or risk to others, we may act immediately and without notice. There is no refund when we act because of a breach.

Your content and your players

You keep ownership of the worlds, files, configurations and other content you put on your servers ("your content"). You give us permission to store, copy, back up, transmit, display and process your content only as needed to run, secure and support the Service and to follow the law.

You are responsible for your content and for your server's players:

You must have the rights to everything you upload, including mods, plugins, maps and music.
Your server may collect player data, such as player names, chat and IP addresses in its logs. For that data, you decide what is collected and why, and we only process it to host your server. You are responsible for telling your players what your server collects, handling their requests, following privacy and children's privacy laws that apply to you, and following the game's rules on player data.
We are not responsible for what players say or do on your server.

Our staff may access your server's files, console and logs to provide support you ask for, keep the Service running, investigate abuse or security problems, or comply with the law. We do not use your server's content to train artificial intelligence models.

Backups and data loss

Keep your own copies of anything you care about. Backups we take or let you take are a convenience, provided on a best effort basis, and can fail, be incomplete or be lost with the hardware they are on. We are not responsible for lost, corrupted or deleted data, whether caused by hardware failure, software, mods, a game update, an attack, your actions or ours, except where the law does not allow us to limit that responsibility.

Availability and DDoS protection

We work hard to keep servers online, but we do not guarantee any particular uptime. The Service can be interrupted by maintenance, hardware or network failures, attacks, problems at our providers and things outside our control.

DDoS protection comes from our network and data center providers and is provided on a best effort basis. It does not stop every attack. To protect other customers, we may block traffic to, stop or move a server that is under attack or causing problems.

If your server has a long outage caused by us, contact us. We may offer a service credit at our discretion. A credit is your only remedy for downtime.

Copyright complaints

We respond to notices of copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Send notices and counter notices to our designated agent at support@gamezservers.com with the information the DMCA requires: the work, where the infringing material is (such as the server address or page), your contact details, a good faith statement, a statement under penalty of perjury that you are authorized, and your signature. We may remove or disable material in response and tell the customer. We close the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

Third party services

The Service relies on third parties, including Stripe for payments, Google for Google sign in, email providers, data centers and the software that runs our control panel and servers. Their terms and privacy policies apply to your use of their services, and we are not responsible for their services. Links to other websites are provided for convenience only.

Suspension and termination

You can stop using the Service and cancel at any time. We may pause or end your servers or account, with or without notice where the law allows, if you break these Terms, do not pay, pose a security or legal risk to us or others, commit fraud or abuse, or if we are required to by law. We may also stop providing the Service to you for any other reason with 30 days' notice, and in that case we refund any unused prepaid time.

When your account or server ends, your right to use it ends and its data is deleted as described above. Sections that by their nature should survive, including payment obligations, disclaimers, limits of liability, indemnity and disputes, survive.

Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, ERROR FREE OR THAT DATA WILL NOT BE LOST.

Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS:

WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, PLAYERS OR IN GAME ITEMS, EVEN IF WE WERE TOLD THEY WERE POSSIBLE.
OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) WHAT YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE 3 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT THAT GAVE RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) 50 US DOLLARS.

Some places do not allow some of these limits, so they may not all apply to you. These limits apply however the claim is described and even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose.

Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless GamezServers and Brandon Gamez from claims, losses, damages, fines and costs, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your content, your servers and their players, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any law or anyone else's rights.

Disputes and arbitration

Talk to us first. Before starting any claim, email support@gamezservers.com with your name, account email and a description of the problem and what you want. We will do the same for you. Both of us agree to try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days.

Binding individual arbitration. If we cannot resolve it, you and we agree that any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service (a "Dispute") will be resolved by binding arbitration on an individual basis, and not in court, except as stated below. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section.

The arbitration will be run by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect, which are at adr.org. Fees are split as those rules provide, under which the business pays most of the costs.
The arbitration may be held by video, phone or written submissions, or in person in the county where you live or another place we both agree to.
The arbitrator may award the same individual relief a court could, but only for you individually and only as needed for your claim.
Small claims. Either of us may instead take an individual Dispute to small claims court if it qualifies.
Intellectual property and abuse. Either of us may go to court to stop infringement of intellectual property or unauthorized access to or misuse of the Service.

No class actions and no jury. You and we may bring claims against each other only individually, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated or representative proceeding. You and we both waive the right to a jury trial. If this class waiver is found unenforceable for a claim, that claim must go to court, not arbitration.

Mass filings. If 25 or more similar demands are brought against us by or with the help of the same law firm or organization, they will be administered in batches under the AAA's mass arbitration rules, and the limitation periods for demands not yet in a batch are paused until they are.

Opt out. You can opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing support@gamezservers.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, with your name, account email and a clear statement that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect anything else in these Terms.

Governing law and courts. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan and applicable United States federal law, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any Dispute not subject to arbitration will be brought only in the state or federal courts located in Michigan, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction. If you live outside the United States, this does not take away mandatory consumer protections of the country where you live.

Time limit. To the extent the law allows, any claim must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred.

General terms

Events beyond our control. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by things outside our reasonable control, such as natural disasters, power or internet outages, attacks, failures of our providers, government action, war or labor disputes.
Entire agreement. These Terms, with the Privacy Policy and any terms shown at checkout, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
Severability. If part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies, and that part is enforced as far as the law allows.
No waiver. If we do not enforce something right away, we can still enforce it later.
Assignment. You may not transfer your account or these Terms without our permission. We may transfer them, for example if GamezServers becomes a company or is sold, and we will tell you if that happens.
Notices. We send notices to your account email or show them in your dashboard. You send notices to support@gamezservers.com.
Trademarks. Game names, logos and artwork belong to their owners and are used only to identify the games we host.

Contact

Brandon Gamez, doing business as GamezServers, Michigan, United States. Email: support@gamezservers.com.