Terms of Service

1.Who we are

Case Closed is a detective game run by Case Closed Inc., a company based in Ontario, Canada. When these terms say “we”, “us” or “Case Closed”, they mean Case Closed Inc.. When they say “you”, they mean the person using the site.

These terms are a contract between you and us. By creating an account, joining a team or buying anything, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use Case Closed.

2.Who can play

• You must be 13 or older to have an account. We do not knowingly make accounts for children under 13; if we learn of one, we close it.
• You must be 16 or older to post in the forum or to publish a Creator CaseClosed Game. We ask you to confirm this the first time.
• If you are under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms for you.
• Players are welcome from anywhere in the world, as long as local law allows you to use a service like this.

3.Your account and guests

You can sign in with Google, an email and password, or a code we email you. Your email is your account. Keep your password private and tell us at info@playcaseclosed.ca if you think someone else is using your account.

Your alias is shown on leaderboards and on your public player page. Your display name is what teammates see. Choose names that follow the Community Guidelines; we may change or remove a name that does not.

Guests. Friends can join your team from a join link without an account. A guest account is temporary: it can play the team's case, and it can be turned into a full account (“claimed”) from the results screen. Guest accounts that are never claimed are removed after a while. Guests cannot buy anything.

One person, one account. You may not share, sell or transfer an account, or create accounts to get around a ban or the attempt limit.

4.Credits

Credits are the only currency inside Case Closed. Cases, extra teams and building your own case are all priced in credits. One credit is worth about $1 CAD (the rate of the smallest pack); every price in the game shows the credits and the Canadian-dollar equivalent side by side.

• Credits never expire.
• Credits are never cash. They cannot be withdrawn, exchanged for money or paid out, including credits you earn as a creator.
• Credits are non-transferable: they stay in the account that bought or earned them.
• Credits can only be spent inside Case Closed, on what Case Closed sells.
• If we close your account for breaking these terms, unused credits are lost. If you delete your account, they are lost too, so spend them first.

In Ontario, a prepaid balance like this is treated much like a gift card, which is one reason credits carry no expiry date. Where the law where you live gives you more rights over a prepaid balance, those rights apply.

5.Packs and subscriptions

Packs. You buy credits in packs through Stripe, our payment processor. Prices are in Canadian dollars (CAD) plus any tax that applies; if your card is in another currency your card issuer converts it at its own rate. Credits land in your wallet as soon as the payment clears, and you get an emailed receipt.

Subscriptions. The monthly plan ($30 CAD / month) and the annual plan ($200 CAD / year) both include the two new Official CaseClosed Games each month, the whole Official back catalogue while the plan is active, and bonus credits (10 a month on the monthly plan; 15 a month, granted month by month, on the annual plan). Creator CaseClosed Games are never included.

• Plans renew automatically until you cancel. Cancel any time from Account → Billing; you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for. There are no partial refunds for the rest of a period (see the Refund Policy).
• If a renewal payment fails, you get 7 days of grace to fix the card before the plan ends.
• Cases granted by a subscription stay playable for their remaining attempts after the plan ends. Bonus credits already granted are yours. Credits not yet granted on a cancelled annual plan are not.
• We may change plan prices with at least 30 days' notice by email; the new price applies from your next renewal after that.

6.Cases, attempts and Matches

Buying a case gives one account 3 attempts at it, each with a team of up to 4 people. An attempt is a team the leader has started; a team that never starts costs nothing. Only the leader (the buyer) starts, pauses, resumes and submits.

A Match lets bigger groups play the same case as several teams at once. Each extra team costs the full case price in credits and sits outside the buyer's three attempts.

Cases are fixed once published. Every case is generated and checked by us; a case you buy is a licence to play it, not a copy of it. We may retire a case from sale, but a case you already own stays playable for its remaining attempts.

The clock, ride counts, hints and grading work the way the game explains them. Grading is done by an automated reader; we review disputed grades if you write to us within 14 days of the result.

7.Leaderboards and aliases

A team's first attempt at a case is what goes on the leaderboard, under the leader's alias. Leaderboards and player pages are public. If you would rather not appear, choose an alias that does not identify you; you can change it at any time from Account → Profile.

We may remove an entry that was earned by cheating, by sharing solutions, or by an account that broke these terms. Staff and test accounts never appear on public boards.

8.Acceptable use

Please do not:

• share, post or sell a case's solution, answer keys, gate codes or hints outside your own team;
• use bots, scripts or more than one account to gain an advantage or extra attempts;
• try to read, copy or attack the game's servers, other players' data or content that is not shown to you in play;
• upload or post anything that is illegal, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, or that names a real person without their consent;
• pretend to be us, our staff or another player;
• resell, scrape or republish the game's text, images, maps or cases.

If you do, we may remove content, void attempts and leaderboard entries, suspend or close your account, and keep unused credits.

9.Creator CaseClosed Games

Any signed-in player 16 or older can write a brief and build a case from it for a one-time build price in credits. Creator CaseClosed Games are labelled as such, sold for 5–20 credits set by their creator, and kept separate from Official CaseClosed Games everywhere. The creator earns 15 % of each sale in credits — never cash.

Building a case means agreeing to the Creator Terms, which cover ownership, the licence you give us, pricing, earnings, content rules and when we may unpublish a case.

10.The forum

The forum is for players 16 and older. Access is earned by solving the Riddle of the Month (or granted by us). The Community Guidelines are part of these terms; breaking them can mean a hidden post, a locked thread or a forum ban.

You own what you write. By posting you give us permission to show it on Case Closed for as long as it stays up, and to remove it when the guidelines require.

11.Refunds

Purchases are final, with one exception: when a documented bug or glitch stopped something being delivered or played. The Refund Policy says exactly how that works, how to ask, and what your local consumer law adds.

12.Who owns what

Case Closed, the city of Port Merrow, its districts, people, cases, documents, images, music, code and design belong to Case Closed Inc. or our licensors and are protected by copyright and trademark law. Port Merrow is fictional; any likeness to a real business, person or street is unintended.

You keep what you make: your brief text, your forum posts and your notebook are yours. You give us the permissions set out in these terms and the Creator Terms so we can run the game. Ideas you send us about the game (“feedback”) we may use without owing you anything.

13.Ending your account

By you. Delete your account any time from Account → Settings. Deletion takes effect after a 7-day cooling period, during which you can change your mind; you can download a copy of your data first. Unused credits and unfinished attempts are lost when the account is deleted.

By us. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, is used for fraud, or that the law requires us to close. We will tell you why unless the law prevents it. We may also shut down Case Closed altogether; if we do, we will give at least 30 days' notice and, where we reasonably can, refund the unused part of a paid subscription.

Sections that by their nature should survive (ownership, disclaimers, governing law) keep applying after an account ends.

14.What we promise, and what we don't

We work hard to keep Case Closed running well, but we provide it “as is”. We cannot promise it will always be available, free of errors, or that a case will be to your taste. The game is fiction and entertainment, not advice of any kind.

To the extent the law allows, we are not responsible for indirect losses (lost time, lost data, lost enjoyment) or for anything outside our control. Where we are responsible, our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the problem arose.

Some places do not allow these limits. If you live in one, the mandatory rights of your local law apply and nothing here takes them away.

15.Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Ontario, Canada and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, and disputes go to the courts of Ontario. If you live somewhere whose consumer law gives you rights that cannot be waived — for example in the European Union, the United Kingdom or a US state — those rights still apply, and you may be able to bring a claim in your own courts.

Before anything formal, please write to us at info@playcaseclosed.ca. Most problems are fixed with an email.

16.Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Small fixes take effect when posted; changes that matter to you get at least 14 days' notice by email or a notice on the site. The change log at the bottom of this page lists every version. Using Case Closed after a change means you accept it; if you do not, delete your account before it takes effect.

17.Contact

Case Closed Inc., Ontario, Canada. Email info@playcaseclosed.ca. We answer within a few business days.