terms & the commons deal
Your worlds are yours to manage — publish, unpublish, open or close building, and (within the co-builder rules) delete.
Code on the free and editing tiers is open source. The code of playable worlds — shaders, hooks, nodes — is readable by every member through the library, may be reused inside other cartridge.cafe worlds, and is published on each world’s public source page, where anyone on the open web (including search engines) can find and read it. Attribution travels with it: lineage, version history, and the library record who made what. This is the commons that makes the cafe compound — and discoverable.
Want copyright and confidentiality? The ◆ IP control membership ($100/mo, on the premium suite page) is the opt-out: a private development chamber that closes the source of every world you make — playable on the shelf, never readable, never reusable, never indexed — and includes your company space: a named page and subdomain of your own. The open-source deal above stops applying to your work the moment you hold it. Teams: contact us.
Playable worlds are on the shelf. Make a world playable and anyone can play it. Forking — taking a copy to build on — exists only for bases: worlds explicitly marked as starting points. A fork becomes its maker’s own world, keeps its lineage back to the base, and the original always stays its maker’s — untouched.
Unplayable worlds are yours alone. No one else can see, open, or fork an unplayable world (crew members you have invited keep their access). A shared link simply doesn’t open for anyone else.
Be decent. No illegal, hateful, or seizure-inducing content. We can remove worlds and close accounts that break the rules.
1 · Your account
You need an account to brew and keep worlds. You’re responsible for what happens under your account. One person, one identity; don’t impersonate others. We can suspend or remove accounts that abuse the service or break these terms. Manage your subscription and your data — including full export and deletion — any time from your account page.
2 · What you make, and who owns it
You keep ownership of the worlds and content you create. By using cartridge.cafe you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive license to host, store, display, and back up your content so the service can run — nothing more. We don’t claim ownership and we don’t sell your worlds.
The platform commons: unless you hold the IP control membership, publishing a playable world grants every member a license to read its code and reuse it within cartridge.cafe worlds, with attribution preserved through lineage and the library, and grants us a license to publish that world’s source, vision, and description on a public source page so the work is discoverable on the open web (search engines and AI systems included). Reuse remains platform-scoped — the public page is for reading and discovery, not for taking work outside the cafe — and unpublishing a world takes its source page down, though work already legitimately reused stays where it landed. Private worlds and IP-control worlds are never part of the commons and are never publicly exposed.
IP control (premium): holders’ worlds are excluded from the platform commons entirely — closed source even when public — and the membership includes a company space (your named page and yourname.cartridge.cafe subdomain). While the membership lapses, worlds stay closed-source-by-you but new publishing falls under the standard commons deal.
3 · Forking (when the maker allows it)
When you make a world playable, every other member gets a license to view and play it. Forking — taking an independent copy to build on — exists only for bases: worlds explicitly marked as starting points (the house’s base formats, or a world whose maker flips the base switch). A fork becomes its maker’s own world; the base is untouched. Every fork carries lineage — a link back to what it came from — so credit follows the work.
Forkable worlds are shared under a CC BY-SA-style arrangement: attribution is preserved through lineage. You can disable forking or make a world unplayable at any time to stop new forks, but forks already made remain their creators’.
4 · Private worlds
A private world is visible only to you. It can’t be opened, played, or forked by anyone else, and its link won’t load for anyone but you. Privacy is the off-switch for the commons.
5 · Rules of the cafe
Don’t upload or build content that is illegal, infringing, hateful, harassing, or that endangers people — including strobing / flashing visuals, which are rejected culture-wide. Don’t attack the service, other members, or their worlds. We may remove content and close accounts at our discretion to keep the cafe safe.
6 · AI-built worlds
Worlds are built by AI agents you connect — there is no house AI building on your behalf. You’re responsible for the briefs you submit, the agents you connect, and the worlds they produce, the same as anything else you make here.
7 · Payments
Playing is free. The editing membership is a monthly subscription (currently $10/mo) that grants a seat to build on open building worlds and includes 2 world-build credits every month; the ◆ IP control membership (currently $100/mo, on the premium suite page) is a premium subscription that closes your worlds’ source, unlocks asset imports (sprite uploads/ripping today; 3D models and music/sfx as those pipelines land), and includes a company space — a private-dev door for your apps (yourname.cartridge.cafe); world generation is a one-time purchase per world; some worlds are paid experiences priced by their makers. All payments are processed by Stripe — we never see your card. You can cancel your subscription at any time from your account page — one direct click, or through Stripe’s own portal; canceling keeps your seat until the period ends. Your worlds and credit stay yours after a lapse — only the build seat pauses.
8 · Open building & co-builders
A world whose maker opens building invites others’ real work into it. In fairness to co-builders, a public open-building world that others have built in can’t be deleted outright — its maker can close building or unpublish it (both reversible) first. If an account is deleted, such worlds are preserved for the community, disconnected from the departed maker’s identity.
9 · Our software
The cartridge.cafe platform itself — its code, engine, shaders, design, and branding — is proprietary and remains ours (see the project’s license, All Rights Reserved). Running the site in your browser to use the service is fine; copying, reverse-engineering, or reusing our software to build a competing or derivative product is not. This is separate from the worlds you make, which stay yours under sections 2–4.
10 · The service, as-is
cartridge.cafe is provided “as is,” without warranties. Worlds can change, break, or be removed; we don’t guarantee uptime or that your data is permanent. To the extent the law allows, we’re not liable for losses arising from using the service. Keep your own copies of anything you can’t bear to lose.
11 · Changes
We may update these terms. If we make material changes we’ll note it here and update the date above. Continuing to use cartridge.cafe means you accept the current terms.
Questions? See our Privacy Policy, your account page, or ask in the commons.