Terms of Service

01 Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of theprodigaldevelopers.com and every page we serve from it — including /royal-flush, /only-hope, /keisey and /business-card — together with any early-access programme, playtest, download, or material we make available through them (together, the "Site").

By using the Site you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please stop using the Site. Our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy form part of this agreement.

"TPD", "we", "us" and "our" mean The Prodigal Developers, an independent game development studio based in Olongapo, Zambales, Philippines. "You" means whoever is using the Site.

02 Who may use the site

• You must be at least 13 years old to use the Site or to join an early-access list.
• If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Site only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.
• If you are using the Site for a company or other organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it to these Terms.
• You may not use the Site if we have previously barred you from it, or if doing so would break the law where you are.

03 What we provide

The Site is an informational and promotional home for our studio and our games. It lets you read about our work, follow development, download materials we publish such as the Only Hope pitch deck and press kit, contact us, and — where a programme is open — put your name down for early access.

We sell nothing directly through the Site and take no payment on it. Where a game of ours is for sale, it is sold by a storefront such as Steam under that storefront's own terms. See Third-party services and stores.

Everything we say about an unreleased game — features, art, platforms, dates — is a statement of current intent, not a promise. Games in development change, and some never ship at all.

04 Our intellectual property

The Site and its contents — the design, code, text, logos, the TPD mark, the Royal Flush and Only Hope names, their card art, characters, environments, music and other assets — are owned by The Prodigal Developers or our licensors, and are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws.

What you may do

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and view the Site for your own non-commercial use.

Press and creators: you may reproduce the screenshots, logos, trailers and copy from our press kit for news coverage, reviews, videos and streams about our games, provided you credit The Prodigal Developers and do not imply we endorse or sponsor your content. That is what a press kit is for, and we are glad when you use it.

What you may not do

• Copy, republish, or redistribute the Site or substantial parts of it as your own.
• Use our name, logo or game titles in a way that suggests partnership, endorsement or affiliation we have not agreed to.
• Sell, licence, or make merchandise from our assets, or mint them as tokens, without our written permission.
• Remove, obscure, or alter any copyright, trademark or credit notice.
• Use our content to train a machine-learning or generative model without our written permission.

All rights not expressly granted are reserved. If you want to do something not covered here, ask — the answer is often yes.

05 Acceptable use

When using the Site, you agree not to:

• break any applicable law, or infringe anyone's rights;
• probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Site, or breach or circumvent any security or access control;
• scrape, harvest, or bulk-download the Site by automated means, beyond ordinary search-engine crawling;
• submit false information, impersonate anyone, or sign up on someone else's behalf without their consent;
• upload or transmit anything malicious, or interfere with the Site's normal operation for others;
• send us unlawful, harassing, defamatory, hateful, or sexually exploitative material through any form or address on the Site;
• use the Site to advertise or solicit, other than a genuine business enquiry to us.

06 Early access and playtesting

Signing up to an early-access list is a request, not a guarantee. We select participants at our discretion and by the needs of the test, and we may close, pause, or change a programme at any time.

If you are given access to a pre-release build, you agree that:

• It is unfinished. Builds may be unstable, incomplete, or lost entirely. Progress, saves and unlocks may be wiped, and nothing in a test build carries any guarantee of carrying over to release.
• It is confidential unless we say otherwise. Do not share builds, keys, links, or the material we send with them. If a test is under embargo, do not stream, screenshot, or write about it until we lift the embargo. We will always tell you clearly which rules apply to a given test.
• Access is personal and revocable. Keys and invitations are for you. Do not sell, trade, or pass them on. We can withdraw access at any time, in particular if these Terms are broken.
• Participation is unpaid unless we have separately agreed otherwise in writing.

You can leave a programme whenever you like — email us and we will remove you from the list and delete your sign-up record, as described in our Privacy Policy.

07 Submissions and feedback

You may send us job applications, portfolios, internship enquiries, bug reports, playtest notes, suggestions and other material ("Submissions"). Two things are worth being clear about.

Feedback

If you send us feedback, ideas or suggestions about our games or the Site, you grant us a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use, modify and incorporate them into our work without obligation, credit, or payment to you. This is the only way a small studio can safely act on the volume of good ideas it receives. If you want to be paid or credited for an idea, do not send it here — propose a formal arrangement first.

Your own work

You keep ownership of your portfolio, code samples, art and CV. You grant us only the licence we need to receive, store, review and internally discuss them for the purpose you sent them. We do not publish or commercially use your work without your permission.

You confirm that anything you send is yours to send, does not infringe anyone else's rights, and does not include confidential material belonging to a current or former employer. We may already be working on something similar to an idea you send us — nothing here obliges us to treat a Submission as confidential, and we are not liable for developing something that resembles it.

We may remove, refuse, or delete any Submission at our discretion.

08 Third-party services and stores

The Site links to services we do not control, including Steam, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. We are not responsible for their content, policies, practices, or availability, and a link is not an endorsement.

Purchases of our games are made from the storefront that sells them, not from us. The storefront's terms, pricing, refund policy and support arrangements govern that purchase. Refunds for a game bought on Steam, for example, are handled by Steam under its refund policy — we cannot process them.

09 Availability and changes

We run this Site as a small studio, not a utility. We may change, suspend, or withdraw any part of it — a page, a download, a programme — at any time, with or without notice. We do not promise the Site will be available uninterrupted or error-free.

We may update these Terms as our work changes. When we do, we revise the "last updated" date at the top, and where a change materially affects your rights we will flag it on the Site. Continuing to use the Site after a change means you accept the revised Terms; if you do not, stop using the Site.

10 Disclaimer of warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Site and everything on it are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, or non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Site will be uninterrupted, secure, or free of errors or harmful components, that any defect will be corrected, or that information on the Site is complete or current. Pre-release builds carry no warranty whatsoever.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is so, the exclusions above apply only to the extent permitted, and nothing in these Terms removes a consumer right you hold that cannot be waived — including your rights under the Philippine Consumer Act.

11 Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, The Prodigal Developers and its team will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, lost goodwill, or business interruption, arising from or relating to your use of the Site — whether the claim is in contract, tort, or any other theory, and even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Site is limited to PHP 5,000 or the amount you paid us directly in the twelve months before the claim, whichever is greater.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

12 Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless The Prodigal Developers and its team from any claim, loss, liability, or reasonable legal cost arising out of your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Site, your infringement of someone else's rights, or any Submission you send us. We will tell you promptly of any such claim and give you a reasonable opportunity to take part in its defence.

13 Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Site or to any early-access programme at any time, without notice, if you breach these Terms or if we reasonably believe your use puts the Site, our work, or other people at risk.

You may stop using the Site at any time. Sections that by their nature should survive — intellectual property, feedback licence, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and governing law — survive termination.

14 Intellectual property complaints

We respect other people's rights and expect the same. If you believe something on the Site infringes your copyright or trademark, email [email protected] with:

1. identification of the work you say is infringed;
2. the exact URL of the material you want removed;
3. your contact details;
4. a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised by the rights holder or the law;
5. a statement that the information in your notice is accurate, and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.

We investigate every properly made complaint and remove infringing material where the claim is well-founded.

15 Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of the Philippines, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.

Before starting any formal proceeding, please write to us and give us 30 days to resolve the matter. Most disagreements end there, and it costs us both nothing to try.

Any dispute that is not resolved that way will be brought exclusively in the competent courts of Olongapo City, Zambales, Philippines, and you consent to their jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer-protection rules of your country of residence, or of your right to bring proceedings in your local courts where the law gives you that right.

16 General terms

• Entire agreement. These Terms, with the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, are the whole agreement between us about the Site, and replace anything said before.
• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, we have not waived it.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• No agency. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship between us.
• Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely beyond our reasonable control.
• Language. These Terms are written in English; an English version governs if we ever publish a translation.

17 Contact us