Legal

Brewery Wars — Terms of Service

DRAFT — not yet lawyer-reviewed. This draft is written to be complete so counsel's time is spent narrowly. Blocks marked Draft note for review are decisions the owner or counsel should look at specifically; delete those blocks from the published version.
Effective date: [TBD — set at publication]

These terms are an agreement between you and Zero-Day Brewery ("we", "us"), the California-based operator of Brewery Wars — the app and, if you opt into it, the online service at brewerywars.beer.

Draft note for review: "Zero-Day Brewery" is the name on the LICENSE file. Counsel should slot the actual legal entity (sole proprietorship d/b/a, or LLC if one is formed before launch) and a physical mailing address here.

We wrote these in plain language on purpose. Where a section has legal weight, it says so plainly rather than hiding it in jargon.

1. Accepting these terms, and who can use Brewery Wars

By using the Brewery Wars app or creating a War Passport, you accept these terms.

You must be 21 or older. Brewery Wars is about brewing beer. If you are under 21, you may not use the app or the service.
US only at launch. Accounts and purchases are available only to people in the United States for now. If we open other regions later, we will update these terms and the checkout flow first.
You must have the legal capacity to enter this agreement.

2. Two different things, two different sets of rules

Brewery Wars is two things, and it matters which one you're using:

The app — the single-player brewing tool. Free, works offline, needs no account. Sections 3–5 cover it.
The service — the optional online layer: your War Passport, your @handle, results on the record, wars, seasons, and backups. Sections 6–13 cover it.

The app never requires the service. That is a commitment, not a description — see Section 5.

3. The free app

The single-player app is free. All of it: recipes, brew sessions, logging, scoring, inventory, calculators, both themes. No recipe caps, no batch caps, no account, no time limit.

We grant you a personal license to install and use the app. The software itself is proprietary — see LICENSE — so this is a license to use the app, not a right to copy, resell, or redistribute the software.

Your brewing data is yours. Everything you enter in the app — recipes, batches, readings, notes — lives on your device, belongs to you, and works offline forever. We never see it unless you explicitly send it to us (Section 5). The app's export and backup tools exist so you can take your data anywhere, any time. Because it lives on your device, protecting it is also in your hands: devices fail and browsers evict local storage, so take regular backups.

Optional integrations you operate, not us: if you configure the AI companion with your own API key, the data you ask about goes directly from your device to the provider you chose, under that provider's terms — see our Privacy Policy. If you run the self-hosted sync daemon or any other component on your own infrastructure, you are its operator: securing it, backing it up, and complying with whatever applies to it are yours.

4. Brewing disclaimers (read this even if you skip the rest)

Every calculation is an estimate. Gravity, ABV, IBU, SRM, water chemistry, yeast pitch rates, carbonation — all of it comes from published models. Real results vary with your equipment, ingredients, process, and measurement error. Cross-check anything that matters.
Pressure is dangerous. Some outputs relate to pressurized vessels (force carbonation, spunding setpoints, line balancing, bottle conditioning). Treat them as guidance only. Always check pressures against the rated maximum allowable working pressure and the manufacturer's documentation for your specific keg, fermenter, valve, and tubing. Never rely on a calculator as the sole safeguard against over-pressurization — over-pressurized vessels and bottles can rupture and cause serious injury. You assume all risk from applying any value the app produces.
Not professional advice. Nothing here is engineering, legal, tax, or regulatory advice. If you brew commercially, compliance with the laws that apply to you (TTB, state and local rules, or your local equivalents) is your responsibility.

5. The account firewall — our binding commitment

We commit to the following, as terms of this agreement, not just as marketing:

The app opens, brews, logs, and scores with no account, offline. It always will.
A War Passport is an upload credential, never the app's identity. War entry is an explicit export-and-upload you choose to make. There is no background sync of your brewing data.
No feature that works offline today will be moved behind an account later.

6. Your War Passport (the account)

A War Passport is the account for the online service.

How it works: you register with an email address. You sign in with a one-time code we email to you, or with a passkey you add to your account. Sessions are tokens held on your device — keep your devices and email account secure, because anyone who controls your email can request sign-in codes.
Accurate email: your email address is how you sign in and how we reach you about your account and purchases. Keep it current.
One person, one passport. Don't share your passport or use someone else's.
Deleting your passport: you can erase your passport at any time. Erasure removes your personal data from the service as described in our Privacy Policy. If you paid for Premium, we keep a minimal, de-identified purchase record so that if you ever come back and register with the same email address, your Premium is restored automatically instead of requiring a support ticket. The Privacy Policy describes exactly what that record contains.

7. Premium — a one-time purchase, and what it actually buys

Premium is a one-time payment for your account license and competitive access while the service operates. It is not a subscription. There is nothing to renew.

Premium includes:

your @handle (Section 8);
putting your results on the record — server-attested results tied to your handle;
the record strip on your share cards, with a live claim URL and your @handle byline;
competitive citizenship: a place on the evergreen ladder, head-to-head wars, and the records and cards you earn.

Plain words about what "one-time" means: you will never be charged again for these features, and we intend to run this service for a very long time — but Premium features need our servers to exist, so they are available while the service operates, not "forever." What happens if the service ever winds down is covered by our Continuity Pledge (Section 14) — short version: at least 12 months' notice, a full export, and pro-rata refunds for recent purchases. The offline app is unaffected either way.

Premium is a license, not property. You are buying revocable access to features, not ownership of anything on our servers. The grounds for revocation are listed in Sections 8 and 13 — we can't take Premium away on a whim, and these terms say when we can.

8. Your @handle

This section is the heart of the deal, so it is spelled out completely.

What a handle is: a unique name (like @stonefruit) granted once with your Premium purchase. It appears on your profile, your on-the-record results, and your share-card bylines.
A handle is a license, not property. You have the exclusive use of the handle under these terms. You do not own it, and it is not an asset you can sell, trade, transfer, or bequeath outside the platform. If we ever build an official transfer mechanism, transfers will happen only through it, under its own published rules.
Your handle survives lapse. There is nothing to lapse from — Premium is one-time — and simply not using the service does not cost you your handle.
Inactivity recycling — by petition only, after 4+ years. If a handle has been inactive for four years or more, another brewer may petition us to release it. We review petitions case by case; we notify the current holder at their registered email and give them a reasonable window to respond before any release. An erased account's handle sits in quarantine on the same 4-year clock before it can be released.
We can revoke a handle for: impersonation of a person, brewery, or organization; conflict with someone else's trademark; or abuse (including the conduct in Section 13). Where the problem is fixable, we will contact you first. If your handle is revoked for a trademark or impersonation claim and you were not at fault, we will work with you to pick a replacement at no charge.
Disputes about a handle — yours or someone else's — go to disputes@brewerywars.beer. Include the handle, your relationship to the name, and any supporting material (for trademark claims: the registration or evidence of use).
A chargeback revokes the handle. If you dispute the Premium charge with your bank and the payment is reversed, the Premium license ends and the handle is revoked. If the dispute was a mistake or fraud on your card, contact us — we can restore a wrongly-revoked purchase.

Draft note for review: disputes@brewerywars.beer must actually receive mail before publication — the .beer zone currently has no receiving mailbox configured (its SPF is locked down for sending; MX for receiving is separate and unbuilt). Either wire it up or change the address.

9. "On the record" — what it means, and what it doesn't

Results "on the record" are server-attested: our server received the submission, timestamped it, scored it with the published engine, and tied it to your handle. That is the whole claim. We do not inspect your brewery, and we cannot know what happened in your kettle. "On the record" means the record exists on our servers as submitted and scored — it is not a guarantee about events in the physical world.

10. Championship Seasons

Seasons are dated, operated, judged competitive events, separate from Premium.

Per-entry tickets. Each season you enter is its own purchase, priced per entry and shown at checkout. Buying Premium never obligates you to enter a season; entering seasons is how you compete for titles.
Launch seasons are free to enter and carry no prizes. They build the ladder. When paid or prize-bearing seasons begin, they will begin under published rules.
Each season has published rules. Entry requirements, schedule, judging criteria, scoring, and any prize terms are published before entry opens, and those rules are part of these terms for that season. If a season's rules conflict with this document, the season's rules govern for that season.
Judging: season results are decided by the published judging process for that season. Honest scoring disputes should go to the season's stated contact within the review window its rules set; after that window closes, results stand.
Season entry refunds: you can get a full refund on a season ticket any time before that season's entry deadline. After the deadline, entries are committed and tickets are non-refundable — except as the Continuity Pledge provides if we cancel the season ourselves, in which case you get a full refund.

Draft note for review: the "refundable until the entry deadline" cutoff is a drafting choice, not a decided policy. Settle or replace it.

11. Backups — the only subscription

The backups service is a monthly subscription, and it is the only recurring charge anywhere in Brewery Wars.

What it is: encrypted copies of your brewing data, stored on our servers as a second copy alongside your local one.
End-to-end encrypted. Your backups are encrypted on your device before upload. We store blobs we cannot read. This also means we cannot recover your data if you lose your encryption credentials — the Privacy Policy and the product's own warnings cover this in detail.
Auto-renewal, stated plainly (California Automatic Renewal Law posture): the subscription renews monthly at the price shown at signup, and keeps renewing until you cancel. You will only be subscribed after you affirmatively agree to those renewal terms at signup — they are never buried. Your signup receipt restates the price, the interval, and how to cancel.
Cancel anytime, easily. Cancellation is self-serve through the customer portal linked from your account settings — no phone call, no chat queue, no retention gauntlet. Cancelling stops future charges; your subscription runs to the end of the period you already paid for, and then billing stops.
After cancellation: your local data is untouched (it was always the primary copy). We retain and then delete server-side backup blobs on the schedule described in the Privacy Policy.
Price changes: if the monthly price ever changes, we will tell you at least 30 days before it affects you, and you can cancel before it does.

12. Payments, refunds, and chargebacks

Processing: payments are processed by Stripe. We don't store your card number.
Premium refunds — 14-day goodwill window. If you buy Premium and it isn't what you wanted, tell us within 14 days of purchase and we will refund it, no questions asked. A refund ends the Premium license and releases the handle. A refunded payment cannot re-grant Premium later — if you come back, that's a new purchase, and you are welcome to make it.
Season tickets: refund terms are in Section 10.
Backups subscription: cancel any time (Section 11). Cancellation is forward-only; we don't prorate or refund partial months.
EU/UK buyers: not applicable at launch (US only). If we open EU/UK sales, the checkout flow will handle the 14-day withdrawal right there, including the express consent to immediate access that waives it — that acknowledgment lives at checkout, not in this document.
Chargebacks: a reversed payment revokes what it paid for — Premium and handle for the Premium charge, season entry for a season charge. See Section 8 for wrongly-reversed payments.

Draft note for review: the 14-day goodwill window length is a drafting choice (it deliberately matches the EU withdrawal period so US buyers are never treated worse). Settle the length.

13. Acceptable use

Keep it honest. On the service, you may not:

impersonate any person, brewery, or organization — in your handle, profile, or results;
submit manufactured or misleading results, or otherwise game the scoring;
probe, enumerate, or hammer the sign-in and account surfaces (these endpoints answer uniformly on purpose; automated guessing, credential stuffing, and enumeration attempts are abuse);
scrape or bulk-harvest profiles, ladders, or records, or republish them as a dataset;
buy, sell, or trade handles or accounts outside the platform;
interfere with the service's operation, circumvent rate limits, or access another brewer's passport;
use the service for anything unlawful.

Profiles show your handle, stats, records, and the social links you choose to list. There is no free-text public posting surface, and links you list must be yours.

Violations can lead to revocation of your handle, removal of results, or termination (Section 15), proportionate to the violation.

14. The Continuity Pledge, in brief

The full pledge lives in CONTINUITY.md and is part of these terms. The short version: if we ever wind the service down, you get at least 12 months' notice, a full export of your data, and pro-rata refunds on recent purchases — and the offline app keeps working forever regardless, because it never depended on our servers in the first place.

15. Termination

You can stop using the app any time, and can erase your passport any time (Section 6).
We can suspend or terminate your passport for material violation of these terms. Unless the violation is severe (fraud, impersonation, attacks on the service), we will warn you and give you a chance to fix it first. Termination for cause ends the Premium license without refund.
Termination of the service as a whole is governed by the Continuity Pledge, not this section.
The free app is unaffected by any account termination. It doesn't know your account exists.

16. Warranties and liability

The service and app are provided "as is." We make no warranty that they are error-free, uninterrupted, or fit for a particular purpose, and no guarantee about any calculation or stored value (Section 4).
Liability cap. To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for all claims arising out of the app or the service is capped at the total amount you have paid us. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, or for lost data you did not back up.
Some jurisdictions don't allow certain limitations; where the law gives you rights these terms can't take away, you keep them. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited (for example, for gross negligence or willful misconduct).

Draft note for review: the cap is "total amount paid" with no time qualifier. Counsel may prefer "amounts paid in the 12 months before the claim" — decide which.

17. Disputes — talk to us first, no forced arbitration

Informal first. Before filing anything, email disputes@brewerywars.beer with a description of the problem and what you want. We commit to responding within 30 days and genuinely trying to fix it. Most problems are a refund, a restore, or a bug fix — not a lawsuit.
Small claims stays open. Either of us can use small claims court for anything within its limits.
No forced arbitration. These terms do not require arbitration and do not waive class actions. If you sue us, you do it in open court.
Governing law and venue: California law governs these terms. Any suit that isn't in small claims court must be brought in the state or federal courts located in California.

Draft note for review: no-forced-arbitration is a deliberate owner choice (it is brewer-friendly and reads well publicly) and can be reversed — but reversing it later, against existing customers, is much harder than choosing it now. Counsel should also decide whether to pin venue to a specific county.

18. Changes to these terms

We will change these terms over time — new features, new laws, lessons learned. When we do:

the effective date at the top changes, and the change history is public in this repository;
for material changes, we will notify passport holders by email at least 30 days before they take effect;
a material change never retroactively shrinks what a purchase you already made included — if we ever must change what Premium includes in a way that hurts you, the Continuity Pledge's refund logic applies to the difference;
continuing to use the service after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you don't accept it, stop using the service — the offline app remains yours to use either way.

19. The boring but necessary bits

Entire agreement: these terms, the Continuity Pledge, the per-season rules you enter under, and our Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the app and the service.
Severability: if a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest stands.
Assignment: you can't transfer this agreement; we can transfer it as part of a sale or reorganization of the business — in which case every commitment here, including the Continuity Pledge, binds the new operator.
No waiver: if we don't enforce something once, we haven't given it up.
Contact: support@brewerywars.beer · disputes: disputes@brewerywars.beer

Drafted 2026-08-16. This document is a draft for counsel review and is not yet in force.