Terms of Service

1Acceptance and who may use the platform

By using Nyxtale — opening the reader application, the Nyxtale Studio authoring tool or any other part of the platform — you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

To create an account and use the platform you must be at least 16 years old (or older where the law of your country requires it) and have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement. If you are younger, you may use the platform only under the supervision and with the consent of a parent or legal guardian.

Some stories are rated 16+ or 18+ and contain heavy themes. By opening such content you confirm that you are of the corresponding age. If you use the platform on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these Terms on its behalf.

2What Nyxtale is

Nyxtale is a platform for interactive text stories in horror and adjacent genres (thriller, mystery and others). It has two main parts:

• Reader applications — where readers play through interactive stories, make choices and shape the plot;
• Nyxtale Studio — the authoring tool (web and desktop) in which authors create, style, validate and publish their stories.

This is a single account platform: one Nyxtale account works across all of its applications, including the “Nightfall Stories” reader and future applications in other genres.

We keep developing the product and may add, change or discontinue individual features, applications or parts of the platform. Where possible we give advance notice of material changes, but we do not guarantee the continuous availability of any particular feature.

3Accounts and sign-in

Signing in to Nyxtale is passwordless. You sign in one of two ways:

• with your Google account;
• with a sign-in link we send to your email address.

We may add further sign-in methods; the same rules apply to them. One Nyxtale account works across every application on the platform. You are responsible for keeping access to your account secure — your mailbox, your devices and the linked Google account used to sign in. Do not pass sign-in links to anyone else. Tell us if you notice unauthorised access to your account.

Some content may be available in guest mode, without creating an account. Guest progress and data may be stored on the device only and can be lost if data is cleared, the device changes, or the retention period expires; sign in to keep progress across devices.

What exactly we collect at sign-in and how to control it is set out in the Privacy Policy.

4Author content and licences

This section concerns authors — those who create stories in Nyxtale Studio.

Your rights in your stories

You retain all rights in the stories and materials you create. We claim no ownership of your content.

Licence to the platform

By publishing a story you grant the Operator a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, reproduce, display and deliver your story to readers through the platform's applications and infrastructure, and to create the technical copies and previews needed for that (covers, share cards) to the extent required to operate the service. The licence lasts while the story is published and for a reasonable technical period after it is taken down (caches, backups).

Responsibility for the materials you use

You are responsible for holding the rights to every material in your story — text, images, fonts, audio and other assets. By publishing a story you confirm that it is original or that you hold the necessary rights and licences.

Our approach to content licensing rests on several principles:

• Attribution. For content under licences that require crediting the source (for example Creative Commons BY-SA material), the work's title, author and a link to the source are mandatory. Without valid attribution such a story is not published.
• A licence per asset. Licence, attribution and source are recorded for each asset separately (stock, font, audio, image), not only for the story as a whole. At publication we check that asset licences are compatible with the story's licence.
• Licence inheritance. Where content is distributed on share-alike terms, those terms and the attribution are inherited by derivative materials — translations, share cards.
• AI transparency. Material created with AI is labelled as AI-generated. The label is visible and travels with the content; purely AI-generated material may not attract exclusive protection, which authors should bear in mind when choosing a licence.

At your first publication you accept a separate author agreement detailing originality warranties, distribution terms and revenue-sharing rules. Using someone else's protected material (franchises, licensed IP) requires proof of rights.

5Acceptable use and prohibited content

Content warnings

Nyxtale is a platform for dark stories, and fictional violence and heavy themes are legitimate here as artistic devices. Stories with heavy themes must, however, carry content warnings and a correct age rating. Declaring a story's categories and rating is the author's obligation.

Prohibited content

Regardless of genre, the following is prohibited on the platform:

• Illegal content, including any material relating to child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE/CSAM). Such content is unacceptable under any circumstances, is removed, and the account is banned; it may be reported to the competent authorities.
• Content infringing third-party rights — copyright, trade marks, likeness/voice rights, privacy.
• Real-world instructions for causing harm, incitement to violence, targeted harassment and hate speech against protected characteristics.
• Circumvention of age ratings and warnings, and any malicious, fraudulent or service-disrupting behaviour.

The line between permitted fictional horror and genuinely prohibited content is a matter of meaning and context, not of genre labels.

Moderation

Publication goes through moderation — automated filters and, in borderline cases, human review. We may remove, hide, restrict or block content that breaches these Terms or the law, and suspend an author's access. We give the author a statement of reasons for such a decision, and it can be appealed. We operate a reporting and takedown mechanism for rights holders.

6Platform intellectual property

The Nyxtale platform itself — including the Nyxtale story engine, Nyxtale Studio, the software, design, interfaces and the “Nyxtale” name and brand — belongs to the Operator and its licensors and is protected by intellectual-property law.

These Terms transfer no rights in the platform's brand or technology to you, other than the right to use the service in accordance with these Terms. You may not copy, decompile, extract or use the platform's software and brand without our written permission, except where the law expressly allows it. Authors' rights in their stories (section 4) remain with the authors.

7Payments and subscriptions

Certain features, stories or the platform's in-app currency may be paid. As at the effective date of these Terms, specific paid offerings may not yet have launched.

When paid features become available, the payment terms — price, billing, subscriptions and refunds — will be shown to you at the point of purchase and will form part of these Terms for that purchase. Payments may be processed by third parties (including the Apple and Google app stores and a payment provider for purchases made on the website) on their own terms. Revenue sharing with authors is governed by the author agreement (section 4).

8Disclaimer and limitation of liability

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. We do not warrant that the platform will operate without interruption or error, that story content will be accurate, suitable or unchanged, or that data will never be lost.

Stories on the platform are created by authors and reflect their views, not the Operator's position. To the extent the law permits, the Operator is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential loss, nor for loss of data, profit or progress arising in connection with use of the platform.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability where such a limitation is prohibited by law (for example in respect of consumer rights that cannot be excluded).

9Termination

You may stop using the platform at any time and delete your account — in your account settings or on request (see the Privacy Policy).

We may suspend or terminate your access — in whole or in part — if you breach these Terms or the law, if the security of the platform or its users requires it, or if we discontinue the service. In case of a serious breach (for example prohibited content under section 5) access may be terminated immediately. After termination, provisions that by their nature should survive (content rights, disclaimers, limitation of liability) remain in force.

10Governing law and disputes

These Terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and disputes are subject to the courts of England and Wales. This does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where you habitually reside: if you are a consumer, you keep the right to bring proceedings in your place of residence and to the protection of your local consumer law.

Before going to court, please contact us — many matters are resolved directly (section 12).

11Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time — for example when launching new features or when legal requirements change. The current version is always available at nyxtale.com/terms with its effective date.

We will give notice of material changes by reasonable means — for example in the app or by email — before they take effect. By continuing to use the platform after the changes take effect you accept the updated Terms. If you do not agree with them, stop using the service.

12Contact

For questions about these Terms, contact the Operator, Tessermind LTD:

legal@nyxtale.com

For questions about personal data: privacy@nyxtale.com and the Privacy Policy.