Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms are an agreement between you and PLAYYOURWAYHOSTING (ABN 33 985 231 059), trading as Play Your Way Hosting (“Play Your Way”, “we”, “us”). By creating an account or using playyourway.com.au and the game-server hosting services, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

Our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Refund Policy and Service Level Agreement form part of these Terms.

2. Eligibility

You must be 18 years or older to purchase a subscription or to hold the billing account behind one. By subscribing you confirm you meet that requirement.

A person under 18 may hold an account for one purpose only: to accept an invite to someone else’s server and use the panel access that account holder grants them. They must have a parent or guardian’s permission to do so, and the account must not be used to buy a subscription or to store a payment method. The account holder who issued the invite stays responsible for that server and for everything done on it, as set out in section 4.

People under 18 may of course play on a server you host without holding an account with us at all.

3. The service

We host game servers: you choose a game and plan, and we provision a server with the resources described on the plan’s pricing page, plus a control panel to manage it (console, files, backups, subusers). Plan specifications, supported games and features may evolve; material reductions to a plan you are subscribed to will not apply until your next renewal, with prior notice.

4. Your account

• Provide accurate account details and keep them current - billing and service emails go to your account address.
• You are responsible for your credentials and for everything done under your account. Two-factor authentication is available and recommended.
• If you grant subusers access to a server, you are responsible for their actions on it - including where a subuser is under 18 (section 2).
• Tell us promptly at support@playyourway.com.au if you suspect unauthorised access.

5. Acceptable use

You must not use the service to:

• host or distribute content that is illegal under Australian law or the law that applies to you, or that infringes anyone’s intellectual property or other rights;
• launch, participate in or facilitate attacks (including DDoS), scanning, or unauthorised access to any system;
• run workloads other than the game server you purchased - including cryptocurrency mining, proxy/VPN exits, or bulk email;
• deliberately abuse shared resources in a way that degrades other customers’ servers;
• bypass or attempt to bypass billing, plan limits, or security measures;
• resell the service without our written consent.

Mods, plugins and custom configurations are installed at your own risk; outages they cause are excluded from the SLA. We may investigate suspected breaches and act under section 12.

6. Your content

Everything you upload to or generate on your server (worlds, saves, configs, files) remains yours. You grant us the limited licence needed to store, back up and run it, solely to provide the service, and you are responsible for having the rights to whatever you upload. When a server is deleted its files are removed, so keep your own copies of anything you care about - backups are a convenience, not an archival guarantee.

7. Billing and renewals

• Subscriptions are billed in advance on the cycle you choose at checkout: monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual.
• All prices are in Australian Dollars (AUD) and inclusive of GST where applicable.
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing cycle using your saved payment method, until cancelled. By subscribing you authorise us, via our payment processor Stripe, to charge your payment method for each renewal.
• Price changes for an existing subscription take effect from your next renewal, with prior notice by email.
• We email a renewal reminder ahead of each charge on quarterly, semi-annual and annual subscriptions. Monthly subscriptions do not get one by default - your renewal date is always shown on your billing page.

8. Cancellation

You can cancel any subscription at any time from your dashboard - no call or support ticket required. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period: your server keeps running until then, after which it is suspended and its data is retained while it stays suspended. Section 9 explains when we may eventually delete it. See the Refund Policy for when a payment can be refunded instead.

9. Failed payments, suspension and deletion

If a renewal payment fails, your server enters a short grace period during which it stays online while we retry payment and email you. If payment still fails, the server is suspended - it stops running, but your data is retained for as long as it stays suspended. Fixing payment during suspension restores the server as it was.

We do not keep suspended data indefinitely. Once a subscription has been cancelled - at the end of its paid period, or straight away after a refund or a withdrawal - its suspended server is deleted 14 days later, including its files and backups. Before that we email you a warning at the account address, normally a week ahead and again the day before, so you can restore it from your billing page or ask us to keep it. A server suspended for a failed payment is not deleted while its subscription can still be paid, and a server is never deleted while a chargeback on it is open. Deletion is permanent, so treat a suspension notice as the point to download anything you want to keep.

10. Refunds

Refunds are governed by our Refund Policy, which includes a full-refund window after each payment, your EU/UK withdrawal rights where they apply, and your Australian Consumer Law rights - which nothing in these Terms limits.

11. Service levels

Our uptime commitment and service credits are set out in the Service Level Agreement. SLA credits are in addition to any remedy the Australian Consumer Law gives you.

12. Suspension and termination by us

We may suspend or terminate a server or account for material breach of these Terms (including section 5), for non-payment (section 9), or where required by law. Unless the breach is severe or unlawful, we will warn you first and give you a chance to fix it. If we ever terminate for convenience rather than breach, we will refund the unused portion of your current period. Sections that by nature survive termination (liability, indemnity, governing law) survive.

13. Third-party services and game publishers

The service depends on third parties - Stripe (payments), Supabase (authentication and data), our infrastructure providers, and optionally Discord - and their terms apply to their parts of the service. The games you host are licensed by their publishers: you must comply with the applicable game licence, such as the Minecraft EULA for Minecraft servers or Steam’s terms for Steam-distributed games. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by any game publisher.

14. Our intellectual property

The Play Your Way name, logo, website, panel and code are ours or licensed to us; these Terms give you no licence to copy, modify or redistribute them. Your content (section 6) is explicitly excluded from this section.

15. Consumer guarantees, warranties and liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law, or, if you are a consumer in New Zealand, under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986 - or, if you are a consumer in the EU or UK, any protection your local law makes mandatory - that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Subject to that: the service is provided “as is”, we do not warrant it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and to the extent permitted by law our liability for any failure is limited, at our option, to resupplying the service or paying the cost of resupply, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss (including lost game progress caused by your own mods or configuration). Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

16. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you indemnify us against claims and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your content, your breach of these Terms, or your breach of law or third-party rights - except to the extent we caused the loss.

17. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia, Australia, and the courts of Western Australia have jurisdiction over disputes. If you are a consumer in New Zealand, the EU or the UK, this does not deprive you of protections or forums your local law grants you mandatorily.

18. Changes and contact

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be posted with a new “Last updated” date, and significant changes notified by email or on the site. Your continued use of the service after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

Questions about these Terms: support@playyourway.com.au. Copyright or content complaints: the same address with “Content complaint” in the subject.