These terms govern your use of Cool Idle Games (the "site"), operated by William Wan ("we", "us"), a sole operator based in Australia. By using the site, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.
1. What this site is
Cool Idle Games is a directory and information site about idle and incremental games. It includes:
- Original written pages about games we did not make, describing how they work, how to play them, and where to find them.
- Playable frames for open-source games that we build from source and serve from our own domain, under the licence each of those games is published under.
- Pages for games we have no right to host, which carry no frame and link out to the developer instead.
- Guides and collections written by us.
Display advertising is intended but not yet live. If any other kind of frame, feature, or paid product is added, these terms will be updated before it ships.
2. Who owns what
2.1 Our own content
The written text, page structure, and design of this site are owned by us, or licensed to us, and protected by copyright. You may read, link to, and share pages from this site. You may not republish our written content elsewhere, scrape it for another product, or present it as your own without our written permission.
2.2 Games
Every game on this site remains the property of its original developer or publisher. We do not claim ownership of any of them, and every game page credits and links the person or team who made it, above our own writing.
Where a game is playable here, it is because its own licence permits us to build and serve it, and the licence page linked from that game reproduces the licence in full, names the exact source commit we built from, and says what we changed. Where we hold no such right, there is no frame.
If we later embed a game hosted by a third party, whether under a distribution network's publisher terms or by direct permission from a developer, that game's page will state which of those applies before the embed goes live.
If you believe a game is used here without proper rights, see Section 8.
2.3 Your use of the games
When you play a game here you are using someone else's work, made available under their licence. Playing it here does not give you any right in it beyond what that licence gives everyone. Your save file is stored in your own browser, not by us; see our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.
3. Acceptable use
Please do not:
- Attempt to bypass, scrape, or automate interactions with the site or the games on it in a way that disrupts them or the arrangements that keep the site running.
- Use the site to distribute malware, harass others, or break the law.
- Click on advertisements on this site in order to inflate revenue, whether your own or someone else's; this harms advertisers and can get a site's advertising shut off entirely.
4. No warranty on the games
We write the descriptions on this site carefully, but a game is somebody else's software. Games we build and serve ourselves are within our control, and we take responsibility for keeping those working; if one breaks, tell us and it will be fixed or removed. For any game we link to rather than host, the developer may change, break, or withdraw it without notice, and we will update or remove the page when we learn of it.
Length estimates, mobile verdicts, and mechanical descriptions on this site are judgements, and judgements are sometimes wrong. Tell us when one is and it will be corrected.
5. Consumer rights
Nothing in these terms overrides your statutory consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law, or equivalent consumer protection law in your own country, where those rights cannot lawfully be excluded.
Nothing on this site is sold. If a paid product is ever offered here, separate terms for that purchase, including refund terms consistent with the Australian Consumer Law, will apply and will be linked at the point of purchase.
6. Disclaimer
The site and the games on it are provided "as is". To the maximum extent permitted by law, we make no warranty that the site or any game on it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, and we are not responsible for the content, availability, or conduct of third-party sites we link to or of advertisers.
7. Limitation of liability
To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from your use of the site or any game on it, including loss of game progress or save data, except where such liability cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law or other applicable consumer protection law.
Save files for games played here live in your own browser's storage. Clearing your browser's site data for this domain deletes them, and we cannot recover them, because we never had them.
8. Takedown and content requests
Developers get the last word on their own work. If you are a developer or a rights holder and believe a game is used here without permission, or a page about your game contains an error, email [email protected] with details. It will be investigated promptly, and the page will be corrected or removed if warranted, without argument. See the contact page.
9. Advertising
This site is intended to carry display advertising, through Google AdSense and potentially other networks as it grows. See our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy for how that affects your data. Advertisements are provided by third parties; we do not vet every individual ad creative, and we are not responsible for the content of third-party advertisements beyond removing ones reported to us as inappropriate.
No developer has paid for an entry, a position in the directory, or a favourable write-up, and no page on this site is a paid placement.
10. Changes to the site or these terms
We may update the site's content, features, or these terms at any time. We will update the date at the top of this page when we do. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.
11. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, without regard to conflict of law principles, except where a visitor's local consumer protection law mandatorily applies regardless of choice of law, as is generally true for EU, UK, and Australian consumers.