This information serves to make clear the Terms and Conditions of the use of this website as well as the game. Please read it thoroughly before purchasing, and/or using the website, and/or playing the game.
Weird Internet (TM) is an online adventure game paid once per year.
It's more than just a game though. Think of it more as a membership. A community.
The number of members will be limited to 200,000.
This brings 2 benefits:
The content rating for this adventure game will be inline with content generally being recognized as safe for teenagers by the society in the United States, which is the country where our primary customer base resides. This includes things like mild cursing, mild to medium levels of violence (but without any explicit intentions - only for normal game effect). In other words, you're going to see some blood, but it won't be flying all over the place every 3 seconds like some games. You're likely to hear some phrases like "don't get under my skin", but unlikely to hear words like too much worse. There won't be any nudity, of course, but the adventures will also not include any content with strong sexual connotations. For example, a character in the game might express that they "like" another character, and that they find them attractive, but won't express anything of a sexual nature. Characters in bathing suits, including bikinis will be allowed, though the characters private areas will be fully covered, and not explicit in nature. For example - no thongs, no g-strings, no half-covering bikini tops. I think you get the point. We're heading for attire would be normal for most people in the real world (teenagers and up). This however, is NOT intended to be a boring site, and other than the characters staying "clothed", the characters are likely to have unique and often weird styles, including crazy haircuts, distorted faces, drool, scabs, scars, wounds with blood, and weird personalities such as being spastic or erratic.
If you have a very old computer, it's not likely to work unless you have a GPU card. Most newer computers have pretty good embedded GPUs which will work fine. An example is the mac mini M1 or above would be perfectly fine. If you have an Nvidia or AMD graphics card, you're good to go. It should work perfectly fine on most modern tablets that have a GPU. Newer devices will get better graphics, plain and simple, but we are reaching for compatibility with devices that are game ready.
Upon payment of your subscription, you will receive 365 days of game play from the date of your first login after you completed payment (assuming the payment clears successfully). Vagus Media, LLC reserves the right to terminate your service if it believes you are violating the terms of service of the game and/or website. If termination is made for breach of governing rules by the subscriber, a refund will not be made. If termination is made for another reason, a refund might be made. An example would be breaking an arm, and not being able to play anymore, but this would require proof. In that case, a partial refund will be granted based on how many months the subscription was used for.
Weird Internet is more that just an adventure game subscription. I consider all subscribers to be members. Members get benefits. Exclusivity of Weird Internet events (only members allowed), which could include both free or paid events (no specific plans yet). The numbers of subscribers to this service is going to be capped at 100,000 subscribers in order for us to provide customer service to our customers. This subscription limit is a number that we are holding firm on. In addition, the domain, weirdinternet.com will not be sold unless the purchaser continues the same adventure game and deal with subscribers to keep it going. Currently, it's just me, but I'll be hiring a team as soon as the initial marketing/funding campaign(s) complete. Subscribers will have the option to re-sell their seat before giving their seat up to someone else. A resale of your seat must be managed by you and the buyer of the seat, and we will not participate in a transaction related to seat transfer in any way. We will have a web page where the new seat owner can initiate the seat transfer, and you can approve it. We will keep record of the transfer itself, but not any information about any financial transaction between the old subscriber and new subscriber. Don't use that as an excuse not to pay income tax in the event that you make a net profit on the sale of your seat. Uncle Sam tracks all income, so make sure to pay your federal and state income taxes due on your sale if you profit from the sale of your seat. You can also simply give your seat away to someone else that you know for free, or simply let it expire and the next person on the waiting list will get your seat. Your subscription slot will become immediately available to other people 30 days after the due date for your annual renewal if you haven't paid your subscription fees by then. We will make several attempts to contact you before transferring your seat to the next on the waiting list, so be sure to keep your contact information up to date including email and optionally phone.
The pricing is not fixed. Each week, it can change, however, you are guaranteed your same rate for the first 5 years. We're offering cheaper pricing for the early-birds who show up first to support the game. The only downside to the cheaper pricing is that the first few months will be a little slower. By that, I mean, expect a new game segment once every 3 weeks. As 2023 progresses, and more game developers are hired, our release cycle will come down to a new game segment once every 2 weeks, and then eventually once every week.
Most web browsers have functionality built into them to allow use of your computer's GPU (graphics processing unit). However, that functionality is not enabled by default. There is some concern in the security industry that the GPU could be used for computer attacks. We certainly aren't going to attack your machine in any manner and will have efforts to guarantee that the code that we deploy is the code that stays in place on the server. To the extent it's ever needed, we will have an audit trail of the deployed files since the deployments are made directly from source control. If an attack is ever launched against the server, we will immediately notify everyone in the system, and let them know of our path forward, and whether or not any actual issues occurred. We will be "signing" any code that we are able to with digital certificates and/or signatures.
This game is not designed or intended for any particular culture, and will additionally be multicultural by design. Specifically, we plan on including characters from lots of different cultures around the globe, and will always do our best not to step on anyone's feet (culturally). That means that regarding any humor in the game, we'll be thoughtful of everyone's viewpoints, and thus will not target any race or creed in any negative manner.
This site is for those of all political beliefs and we will not be taking political jabs and stabs during these adventures. It's going to be all about new types of adventures, much humor, and many challenges. We leave the politics for other people.
During 2023, we will be releasing new portions (segments) of your adventure every three weeks. Starting in 2024 we will have new adventures every week, including in Virtual Reality. The Virtual Reality industry is currently in flux. There are lots of different technologies in VR, and we are hoping to use the (standard) browser api so we can program to a single API, which is the browser's WebXR api, and WebGPU. However, the specification for this API is not yet stabilized and as such is missing from some game frameworks, such as the one we're using. I know things will likely change here quickly in 2023 with regards to VR headsets and APIs, as many more users obtain a VR device since prices are coming down and options are increasing.
None of the adventures will require a VR headset. If you choose to play in VR mode (once we begin VR - down the road), then all players playing in a multiplayer environment together will also need to play in VR mode. This is because VR mode will enable some features not available in non-VR mode, and we want everyone playing against each other to be able to have the same capabilities. Overall, VR will offer a better experience, but not advantage those using a VR device versus those in non-VR device (desktop / laptop / tablet) with regards to points, collectibles, and/or any other game status items. It will however change the "game play", which is why everyone in the same group needs to be in the same mode.
Our business model does not involve any gambling, in-app purchases, or prizes to play this adventure game.
This is a browser based game, and while it does download to your computer, and loads into memory, and might get cached on disk, it never gets "installed" on your computer. It's all "sandboxed" by the browser's security system, so is safe by nature. You start it each time by launching the website, and logging in. You'll be presented with a button to load the game.
To ensure you can always pick up where you left off, even when playing at a different location, we store much of the game state in a data storage on the server as well. This includes things like your 'assets collected', which adventures you've already completed, your score, the state of your current adventure, and other such game play data.
The renewal pricing is not yet set, and will be partially determined on your initial pricing.
Each adventure will support up to 30 players in a group, but no more at this point in time.
An internet connection is required to play this game. That's because assets will be loaded dynamically from the server. Additionally, we keep all of your game state on the server so you can pick up from any machine you login into that is ready to play this game based on hardware and browser type and configuration requirements.
In some games, one or more of the client machines might also be designated a "server" which means that that client machine will be processing more than the others. This involves calculations like "collision detection", certain physics simulations, and overall authoritative decision make, and broadcaster of "authoritative data" to the other clients about events that occured in the game. In other words, only one machine processes certain things so that there's no conflicts where one machine calculates one way, and another machine with slightly different timing calculates another way. The reason are unlikely to process some of this on a central server is because it creates a bottleneck that could take everyone down, so by decentralizing, we have the best likelihood of getting things up and running for everyone. That said, the person who's machine runs as a server will need to ensure they have a stable connection to the internet, else the game could go down for everyone in the group. Note that "client as server" does not mean "peer to peer". The networking still goes through our central server, and does not expose your IP address. We may offer some peer to peer services down the road, but you will need to "opt-in" (as we personally see peer-to-peer as a possibly security concern since it exposes players's IP address).
We are going to work very hard to ensure the game server stays available to everyone, however, we cannot make any uptime guarantees at this point in time as we are just getting started. If the game disconnects, there will be different options for what to do when you start the game. a) The first option will be to have the game "auto-pause" (on the server), and players will be given the opportunity to be in the lounge awaiting everyone to be connected and ready. b) Let the player with connection problems "drop out", and let the rest continue onwards (assuming its not the player who's machine is running the server code, else everyone goes to lounge waiting for everyone to reconnect)
Some of the game will load when you initially start the game, but portions will load dynamically while playing the game, and thus a network connection is required. Some adventures may have assets, such as 3d models, textures, shaders, and other assets related to the game that are too large to load all at once. This allows us to create large environments where only the portion of the environment you visit gets loaded. If the network connection is dropped while playing, your game will stop loading necessary items.
If you are subscribing before the initial launch date of the game, which will be April 2023), then the subscription will not start until launch date. If you are subscribing after initial launch date, the subscription start date will be your purchase date.
We're keeping these rules simple, but violation of these rules will result in termination without refund.
As of this moment, it is unknown how much server and network bandwidth costs will be for the game. Due to this face, we reserve the right to change pricing at any point in time. You can lock in up to 3 years at current price when you purchase (which would mean purchasing 2 years for early-bird discount, and receiving 3 years) We will not do any outrageous hikes, but could possibly go up a fair amount after initial launch (as much as a double in price, but no more within a 5-year period from your purchase). We will seek competitive pricing on server and bandwith costs from our server hosts, and may alternatively self-host in order to keep costs low.
Currently, due to the startup nature of the business, we are not allowing refunds. In exchange for this, we are currently offering discounted pricing (see below).
The current discounted pricing is this. One year extra from the "date of first game play" - meaning the discount gives you a full two years of game play instead of one.
Portions of the game might be licensed to hotels, parks, or other businesses to be run at their local business operation to entertain their guests. If this occurs, it will be outside of the main network and will not affect your game play. They will need to host their own game servers. There will be limited number of "game adventures" available in the independent deployments, roughly only 10% as compared with a subscription.
Your financial obligations to the government (taxes) regarding sale of your slot are fully managed by you outside of this website / game system. Vagus Media, LLC will not be held accountable if you choose not to pay taxes on any income related to sale of your subscription slot.
We will have at least 2 monitoring script(s) and/or service(s) that ensure the game file (.wasm) doesn't change without our knowing it.
The 'Game File' is a .wasm (WebAssembly) file. A .wasm file uses a technology called WebAssembly that is built in the browser itself, and is designed to be secure by the browser manufacturers, and thus very unlikely that any kind of malicious code could attack your computer via a .wasm file. If we ever detect an unknown change to the .wasm game file on the server, we will immediately halt the game, and notify any users connected during that period via email, and then further look into the issue. We feel like this is very unlikely - however, anything is possible.
You will be notified of any changes to these terms and conditions. As an early startup, there will likely be a lot of changes in the early period. You will be notified the first time you login after after any changes are made since your last login, and presented with links to view this page.