Terms of Service

These terms apply to every use of Ruination Bots (the "Service"), operated by Youri Hoffmann ("we", "us"). By creating an account you accept them.

Your own general terms do not apply, even if we do not expressly object to them and perform the contract without reservation.

• Consumer means a natural person entering into the contract for purposes outside their trade, business or profession (§ 13 BGB).
• Entrepreneur means a natural or legal person acting in the exercise of their trade, business or profession (§ 14 BGB).
• Bot means a Discord application you connect to the Service using a token you control.
• Content means everything you configure, upload or cause your Bot to produce.

The presentation of the Service on our website is not a binding offer. To create an account you sign in with Discord, answer a few setup questions, and on the last step tick the box confirming that you accept these terms and our Data Processing Agreement, then press "Create account". Until you press it you can go back to any earlier step and change your answers, or leave without creating an account. Pressing it is your offer to conclude a contract on these terms; we accept it by making the account available to you.

The contract can be concluded in English or in German. These terms are published in both languages with the same content; where the two versions differ, the one more favourable to you applies. We store which version of these terms and of the Data Processing Agreement you accepted, and when. The version in force can be retrieved and printed from this page at any time, and on request we will send you the text of the version you accepted.

A Discord account is required. We are not affiliated with Discord Inc. and your use of Discord is governed exclusively by Discord's own terms.

You must be old enough to hold a Discord account under Discord's terms and the law of your country. If you are under 18, you may create an account and buy a plan only with the consent of a parent or legal guardian. The Service is not directed at children.

We host and run Discord bots on your behalf and provide a dashboard to configure them. The specific scope follows from the description on our website and the features available in your plan at the time.

We may develop the Service further, add features and discontinue individual ones, provided the change is reasonable for you taking account of our interests. Where a change materially reduces the functionality you are paying for, we will give you at least 30 days' notice and you may terminate for that reason.

We aim for the highest availability we reasonably can, but we do not owe a specific uptime unless it is expressly agreed in writing. Maintenance windows, faults at our upstream providers, and outages or changes at Discord are outside our control. Discord may at any time change its API, rate limits or policies in ways that restrict or prevent the operation of a Bot; that is not a defect in our Service.

Each Bot you add is set up for exactly one Discord server, which you choose when you add it. That assignment is fixed: it cannot be changed afterwards, and moving a Bot to a different server means adding it again for that server. Everything the Service does for a Bot, and everything the dashboard lets you configure, applies to that one server only.

A Bot can still be added to further servers, because that is done inside Discord and not through us. Anyone holding the "Manage Server" permission in another server can add your Bot to it, and if your Bot's "Public Bot" setting is switched on in the Discord Developer Portal, anyone at all can. In those servers the Bot does nothing: it does not respond to commands, it does not act on events, and none of your configuration applies there.

Because a Bot in a server it does not manage still receives that server's traffic from Discord, you can instruct us to keep the Bot to its own server. When that setting is switched on, the Bot automatically leaves every other server it is in, both when it next connects and whenever it is added to one. The setting is off by default for Bots that existed before it was introduced, and on by default for Bots added afterwards; you choose when adding a Bot and can change it at any time in the Bot's settings.

Please note that leaving a server cannot be reversed by us or by you alone. To bring a Bot back into a server it has left, somebody holding "Manage Server" in that server must invite it again. You are responsible for the state of this setting on your Bots, and we act on it as your instruction.

Plans are sold to you by Polar Software, Inc. ("Polar") as our reseller and merchant of record. Polar concludes the contract of sale with you, takes your payment, charges and remits any VAT or sales tax that applies in your country, and issues your invoice. Prices shown on our website are final prices; for consumers in the EU they include the VAT of your country, which Polar calculates at checkout. Polar's Checkout Buyer Terms apply to the purchase. These terms govern your use of the Service itself.

Payment is due in advance for the billing period you choose. A monthly plan renews month by month until cancelled. A plan with a longer billing period runs for the period you bought; if you do not cancel it before that period ends, it continues for an indefinite period and you may then cancel it at any time with one month's notice. Billing continues in the same rhythm, and if you cancel during such a continued period the part you have paid for beyond the end of the notice period is refunded to you pro rata. A one-time purchase does not renew.

A Founder's Lifetime is a one-time payment of €49 for one Premium bot slot. The payment covers a fixed initial term of 24 months from your purchase. During that term ordinary cancellation is excluded; a cancellation you send during it takes effect at the end of the term, and the price is not refunded. After the initial term the slot continues free of charge for as long as we offer Premium bots, and you can cancel this free continuation at any time with immediate effect; as nothing further is paid, nothing is refunded. If we stop offering Premium bots, we will tell you at least 30 days in advance, and if that happens during your initial term, we refund the part of the price that corresponds to the unused days of it. Your statutory right of withdrawal, your right to terminate for cause with the statutory refund of what you paid for the time after that, and your statutory rights if the Service is defective are unaffected.

You can cancel any plan without logging in on our cancellation page, linked as "Cancel contracts here" at the bottom of every page, or by email to support@ruination-bots.com. We confirm your cancellation by email straight away, with the date your contract ends.

We will not raise the price of an existing plan without your express consent. If we want to change it, we will ask you at least six weeks before the change would take effect. If you do not agree, your plan continues at its existing price; we may then end it at the end of a billing period by giving at least six weeks' notice, and any amount you have paid for time after that date is refunded. One-time purchases are never subject to a price change.

If a renewal payment fails, we tell you by email. Polar, which sells you the plan, tries the payment again several times over up to 21 days, and your plan keeps running in that time; we remind you a week before the last attempt. You can update your payment method at any time under Billing in your dashboard. If the payment still fails, the plan ends and your bot stops; nothing is deleted, its configuration is kept, and you can book a plan again at any time. If your payment method cannot be charged at all (for example because the card has been reported lost), Polar ends the plan straight away instead, and we tell you by email. You are not charged for a period that was not paid. Statutory rights on default remain unaffected.

Deleting your account also ends any active subscription, immediately rather than at the end of the paid period. Your bots are deleted in the same step, so there would be nothing left for the remaining period to give you. Time already paid for is not refunded by us; refunds are decided by Polar as the seller. If you would rather use up the period you have paid for, cancel the subscription first and delete your account afterwards - you are told this before the deletion is confirmed. Deleting your account also ends a Founder's Lifetime, immediately and without a refund of the one-time price, including during its initial term, because the deletion is your choice. Your statutory right of withdrawal is unaffected by this paragraph.

If you are a consumer you have a statutory right to withdraw from the contract within 14 days. The full instructions, including the model withdrawal form and what you pay if you asked for your plan to start during the withdrawal period, are set out at Right of Withdrawal and form part of these terms. Because a plan is provided continuously, the right does not end early for it (§ 356(5) BGB). You can withdraw without logging in on our withdrawal page, linked as "Withdraw from contract here" at the bottom of every page, or by email to support@ruination-bots.com. We confirm a withdrawal sent through that page by email straight away, with its content and the date and time it reached us. Before you continue to the checkout we ask whether you want your plan to start straight away, before the withdrawal period ends; if you do and then withdraw, you pay for the time provided until then. After your purchase we email you a confirmation of the contract with these terms and the withdrawal instructions.

You are responsible for everything that happens under your account. Keep access to your Discord account secure, and treat bot tokens as secrets. Tell us without delay if you suspect unauthorised access.

You may grant other users moderator access to your Bots. You remain responsible for what they do with the permissions you grant, as if it were your own conduct.

One person may not maintain multiple accounts to circumvent limits, suspensions or pricing.

You must not use the Service, and must not configure a Bot, to do any of the following. This list is deliberately concrete; anything unlawful is prohibited whether or not it is named here.

• Break the law of Germany, of your own country, or of any country where your Bot operates.
• Breach Discord’s Terms of Service, Developer Terms or Community Guidelines, or evade any Discord restriction, rate limit or ban.
• Send unsolicited messages, mass DMs, advertising or any other form of spam.
• Distribute malware, phishing links, or content designed to obtain other people’s credentials.
• Harass, threaten, defame, or incite hatred or violence against anyone, or operate a Bot whose purpose is to enable others to do so.
• Publish or distribute content depicting the sexual abuse of minors, or any other content prohibited by §§ 184b, 130 or 86a StGB or equivalent law.
• Infringe third-party intellectual property, or scrape or resell data obtained through the Service.
• Impersonate another person or organisation, or misrepresent your Bot’s affiliation.
• Attack, probe or overload our infrastructure or that of our providers, circumvent technical restrictions, or use the Service for crypto mining or other disproportionate resource consumption.
• Resell, sublicense or white-label the Service without our prior written agreement.

We do not monitor Content proactively and are not obliged to under §§ 8 to 10 DDG. Where we become aware of a specific infringement we may remove the Content, suspend the Bot or suspend the account. We choose the mildest effective measure and, where practicable, tell you first and give you the chance to remedy the problem. In cases of serious or repeated breach, of manifestly unlawful content, or of risk to our infrastructure or to third parties, we may act immediately.

What a suspension means. A suspended Bot stops running and cannot be started again, and its token cannot be replaced, until the suspension is lifted. Your configuration and your data are retained and stay visible in your dashboard — a suspension is not a deletion. We decide suspensions case by case; our systems do not suspend a Bot automatically for technical reasons such as exceeding an API rate limit. We will tell you the reason, and you may contest the decision by writing to support@ruination-bots.com. If the suspension turns out not to have been justified, we lift it.

If you believe content on the Service infringes your rights, write to support@ruination-bots.com with enough detail to identify it and we will review it promptly.

The Service stores content that you provide - messages, embeds, images and similar settings - so that your Bot can use it. Under the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) this makes us a hosting service, and this section sets out how we deal with content that may be illegal or that breaches these terms.

Reporting. Anyone can report content they consider illegal, using the "Report illegal content" option of our contact form or by email to support@ruination-bots.com. Please include why you consider the content illegal, where exactly it is (for example the server, channel or message and the Bot concerned), your name and email address, and a statement that you believe in good faith that the report is accurate and complete. Name and email may be left out only for reports concerning the sexual abuse of children. Where you give an email address we confirm receipt straight away by email; we then decide on the report promptly and diligently, and tell you what we decided and how you can challenge it.

How decisions are made. We do not monitor content proactively. Every decision to restrict content, a Bot or an account is taken by a person; we do not use automated tools to decide on reports or to impose restrictions. We act objectively and proportionately, taking into account the rights and legitimate interests of everyone involved.

What we may do. Depending on the seriousness of the case: remove or disable the content, suspend the Bot, or suspend or terminate the account, as described under "Acceptable use". Where we restrict anything of yours, we tell you which measure we took, the facts and the rule it is based on, and how you can challenge it.

Challenging a decision. Whether you reported content or your content was restricted, you may ask us to review the decision by writing to support@ruination-bots.com within six months. A person who was not involved in the original decision where possible reviews it, and we reverse it if it was not justified. Your right to go to court is unaffected.

Where we become aware of information giving rise to a suspicion that a criminal offence involving a threat to the life or safety of a person has taken place, is taking place or is likely to take place, we inform the competent law enforcement authorities.

Where your Bot processes personal data about members of your Discord servers, you are the controller within the meaning of Art. 4(7) GDPR and we act as your processor. You are responsible for having a legal basis for that processing, for informing your members, and for answering their requests.

Our Data Processing Agreement under Art. 28 GDPR forms an integral part of this contract and is concluded automatically with it. You do not need to sign anything separately, though we will countersign a copy on request.

Discord API data. For Discord's Developer Terms we act as your service provider. We access and use the Discord APIs, your Bot's token and all data your Bot receives from Discord only for you, at your direction and to operate your Bot, and for no purpose of our own; in particular we do not sell it, use it for advertising, or use message content to train any machine learning model. When your Bot or your account is deleted, we stop using the APIs for it and delete that data as described in the Privacy Policy.

Discord requires every application to have its own privacy policy and to give its users a way to ask for their data to be corrected or deleted and to report problems. For your Bot, that is your responsibility: publish a privacy policy for it, link it in the Discord Developer Portal, and use the member tools in the dashboard to act on requests.

Our own processing as controller - your account, your billing data, security logs - is described in the Privacy Policy.

The Service, its software, design and documentation remain ours. You receive a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use them for the term of the contract and for the purposes set out here.

Your Content remains yours. You grant us a simple, worldwide right to store, reproduce and transmit it strictly to the extent necessary to operate the Service for you - for instance to relay a configured message to Discord or to hold a backup. This right ends when the Content is deleted, save for backups that expire on their normal cycle.

The contract runs for an indefinite period. You may terminate at any time and without notice by deleting your account in the settings. A paid plan is cancelled separately, on the cancellation page or by email: cancelling it ends it at the end of the current billing period, for a longer plan that has continued beyond its first term one month after you cancel, and for a Founder's Lifetime at the end of its 24-month initial term or, after that, on the day you cancel, as set out under "Plans, prices and payment". Deleting your account instead ends the plan immediately, as described there. Statutory rights, including the right of withdrawal and termination for cause, are unaffected. We may terminate a contract for which you pay nothing with 30 days' notice.

The right of either party to terminate for cause without notice remains unaffected (§ 314 BGB). Cause exists for us in particular where you seriously breach the acceptable use rules, where your use exposes us to legal liability, or where you are in default of payment despite a reminder.

On termination your Bots stop, your data is deleted as described in the Privacy Policy, and access ends. Export anything you need beforehand.

You can leave at any time, and you can take your data with you. This section sets out your rights under Chapter VI of the EU Data Act (Regulation (EU) 2023/2854).

• Starting a switch. Tell us by email that you want to switch to another provider or to your own infrastructure, or that you want your data erased. No notice period applies; we start straight away.
• Transition. Within a transitional period of at most 30 days from your request we provide your data, keep the Service running for you on the terms of your plan, help you as far as reasonably possible, and keep your data secure. You may extend the transitional period once by a period you consider more appropriate.
• Retrieval. After the transitional period your data remains available for you to retrieve for at least 30 more days. After that it is erased completely, as it is when you delete your account.
• What you can take. Your account data, every Bot's configuration and module settings, custom commands, message templates, panels and uploaded images, and the data your Bots have stored about the members of your servers, such as levels, moderation records, tickets and invite statistics, all in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format (JSON). Ask by email to privacy@ruination-bots.com and we provide it, including the member data, within the transitional period. The only thing we do not hand out is a Bot's token, which you already hold in the Discord Developer Portal and should reset there if you move.
• Cost. Switching and exporting are free of charge.
• Choosing erasure. Deleting your account in the settings is a request for erasure. It takes effect immediately and skips the transitional and retrieval periods; export anything you need first.

Where our infrastructure is located and which jurisdictions it is subject to is set out for every provider in the Sub-processors list.

Statutory rights on defects apply. For consumers, §§ 327 ff. BGB on digital products apply, including our obligation to maintain conformity and provide updates for as long as you may reasonably expect.

A defect does not exist where a fault results from your configuration, from a change to Discord's platform or API, from third-party services you have connected, or from use contrary to these terms.

We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz), and to the extent we have given a guarantee.

For slight negligence we are liable only where an obligation is breached whose fulfilment is essential to the proper performance of this contract and on whose observance you may regularly rely (a cardinal obligation). In that case liability is limited to the damage typical for this type of contract and foreseeable at the time it was concluded.

Any further liability for slight negligence is excluded.

The above limitations also apply in favour of our employees, agents and vicarious agents. They do not apply to claims under the Product Liability Act or to fraudulently concealed defects.

If a third party brings a claim against us because of Content you provided or conduct of your Bot that breaches these terms or the law, you will indemnify us against that claim and against the reasonable costs of legal defence, unless you are not responsible for the breach. We will inform you of any such claim without undue delay and will not settle it without consulting you.

We may amend these terms where necessary because of changes in the law or case law, because of technical developments, or to close a gap that arises after conclusion of the contract - provided the amendment is reasonable for you. Changes to the Service itself are governed by "What the Service is".

We will notify you of any amendment by email at least six weeks before it takes effect. An amendment that does not affect the price or the main obligations of either of us, and does not shift the balance of the contract to your disadvantage, is deemed accepted if you do not object in text form before that date; we will point that consequence out to you separately in the notice. If you object, the existing terms continue to apply, and we may terminate with effect from the date the amendment would have taken effect. Any other amendment, including every change to prices, takes effect only if you expressly agree to it.

German law applies, to the exclusion of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer with habitual residence in another country, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of that country's law.

If you are a merchant (Kaufmann), a legal person under public law or a special fund under public law, the exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from this contract is the court having jurisdiction for our business address as stated in the Legal Notice. We remain entitled to bring proceedings at your general place of jurisdiction.

We are neither obliged nor willing to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (§ 36 VSBG).

Should any provision of these terms be or become invalid, the validity of the remainder is unaffected. The invalid provision is replaced by the statutory rule.

These terms are available in English and in German with the same content. Where the two versions differ, the one more favourable to you applies.