Terms of service

These terms are the agreement between you and Sigilbase Ltd, trading as HCIA (“we”, “us”) for using HCIA.io, the hosted control panel for game servers at hcia.io. By creating an account, or by using HCIA.io for a community, you agree to them. If you use HCIA.io for a community, you also accept them for that community. Our privacy policy explains what we do with personal data.

About us

• Run by: Sigilbase Ltd, trading as HCIA
• Company: registered in England and Wales, company number 17332548
• Registered office: 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, United Kingdom
• Email: [email protected]

Your account

• You must be at least 13 to have an account. To pay for a plan, you must be 18 or have permission from a parent or guardian.
• Use an email address you can read: it is how you reset your password, and how we tell you about changes to these terms or to your community’s plan.
• Keep your password to yourself, and turn on two-factor sign-in. You are responsible for what is done with your account. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used it.
• One account per person. Don’t share yours.

Communities

• A community is a group of people running game servers together. Whoever starts one is its owner. The owner, and members whose groups allow it, decide who joins, what each member may do and which servers it manages.
• What a community records (its servers’ logs, players, bans and settings) is the community’s. You let us store and process it only to run HCIA.io for you, and to back it up.
• The owner is responsible for the community’s use of HCIA.io, including what its members do with it. To leave HCIA.io, an owner first hands the community over to another member.

Game servers you add

• Only add servers you are allowed to manage: your own, or ones whose owner has given you their RCON password for this.
• We keep each server’s RCON password encrypted and use it only to do what your community asks: the commands its members send, and the background work and automation it turns on (such as automods, chat commands, map votes, VIPs, seeding rewards and kill-rate checks).
• What HCIA.io does on your servers, it does on your community’s instructions. You are responsible for the rules you set, and for what you and your automation do to players.
• Follow the rules of the games you run and of your server host. HCIA.io is not made, endorsed or supported by the developers or publishers of Hell Let Loose, WARDOGS, Arma 3 or Arma Reforger, or by Valve. Their names are their owners’ trademarks.
• Games change their remote control (RCON) from time to time. When one does, a feature can stop working until we update HCIA.io. We will try to do that quickly, but can’t promise how quickly.

Players on your servers

• Your community decides what HCIA.io records about the players on its servers: their names and game IDs, when they play, their chat, kills and matches, and the bans, kicks and notes about them. For that data your community is the controller and we are its processor, under the data processing terms below.
• Tell the players on your servers that you use HCIA.io and what it records (in your server rules or on your Discord, for example), and record only what you have a good reason to.
• If your community turns on public statistics, anyone can see its servers’ statistics and its players’ names, playtime, kills and matches on the web. Notes, bans, kicks and what moderators did are never public.
• Treat players fairly. Don’t use HCIA.io to harass, threaten or discriminate against anyone.

Acceptable use

Don’t use HCIA.io to:

• break the law, or help anyone else to;
• get into accounts, communities or servers you aren’t allowed into, or try to read another community’s data;
• attack, probe, overload or disrupt HCIA.io, game servers or anyone else’s systems, including through webhooks or the WARDOGS pass-through;
• send spam or malware, or collect data about people beyond what managing your servers needs;
• resell HCIA.io, or offer it as part of a service of your own, unless we have agreed to it in writing.

We may suspend access that breaks these rules (see Leaving, suspension and closing).

Plans and payment

• Every community runs one game server free, with every feature. Each further active game server costs $2.50 a month. Servers that are switched off cost nothing.
• Prices are shown on the home page and on the community’s Billing page before you pay. If VAT or other taxes apply, they are shown before you pay too.
• In crypto (through NOWPayments): you pay ahead for 1, 3 or 12 months, in the cryptocurrency you choose, at the rate NOWPayments quotes. It does not renew by itself. A payment counts once NOWPayments confirms it; a payment of less than the amount due is not applied until it has been sorted out with us. Network fees are yours.
• If a payment fails or the time paid for ends, the extra servers keep running for 7 days. After that they are paused: HCIA.io keeps them and everything recorded about them, but stops managing them until a payment covers them again. Nothing is deleted because a payment is late.
• We may change our prices. We will tell community owners at least 30 days before a new price applies; it applies from the next period you pay for, and you can cancel before then.
• Refunds. You can cancel at any time, but we don’t refund the part of a month, or of time paid ahead, that you didn’t use, unless the law requires it or the fault is ours. If you are a consumer in the UK, you may cancel within 14 days of first paying for a plan: we then refund what you paid, less a proportionate amount for the days the paid servers ran. We refund crypto payments in the coin they were made in, less network fees, to an address you give us.

Availability and changes

• We work to keep HCIA.io running and your data safe, and we back it up, but we can’t promise it will always be available or free of faults. We sometimes need to stop it for maintenance; we keep that short and warn of planned work where we can.
• We may change or remove features. If a change takes away something a paid plan relies on, we will tell community owners first; if it matters to you, you can cancel and we will refund time paid for ahead that you haven’t used.
• HCIA.io relies on things we don’t control: your game servers and their hosts, the games’ remote controls, Steam, Discord and the payment providers. We aren’t responsible for them.

Leaving, suspension and closing

• You can stop using HCIA.io at any time. Cancel any card plan first, then delete your account under Settings → Profile. To delete a whole community and everything it recorded, its owner can ask us at [email protected].
• We may suspend or close an account or community that breaks these terms, puts HCIA.io or other people at risk, or when the law requires it. Where we reasonably can, we will tell you why first and give you the chance to put it right.
• If we close HCIA.io for good, we will tell community owners at least 30 days before, and refund time paid for ahead that would go unused.
• Data that is deleted goes from HCIA.io straight away, and from our backups within 30 days.

Our responsibility to you

• Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit.
• We are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable.
• We are not responsible for what a community, its members or its automation do on its servers, for decisions made about players, or for what happens on a game server because of commands sent on a community’s instructions.
• If you use HCIA.io for a business, we are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, business or goodwill, and our total liability to you in any 12 months is limited to what your community paid us in those 12 months.
• If you are a consumer, you have legal rights these terms do not affect. Advice about them is available from Citizens Advice.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms; the date at the top says when they last changed. If a change matters (to what you pay, or to your rights), we will tell community owners by email or on HCIA.io at least 14 days before it applies. If you don’t agree to it, you can stop using HCIA.io and cancel. Using HCIA.io after the change applies means you accept it.

Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and its courts decide disputes about them. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in your own courts. Please tell us about a problem first, at [email protected]: most are quicker to sort out that way.

Data processing terms

These apply where we process personal data for a community, as its processor under UK data protection law (Article 28 of the UK GDPR): mainly data about the players on its servers, and about its members’ work in it.

• What and for how long: running HCIA.io for the community (storing, organising, showing and sending data to manage its game servers, as the privacy policy describes), for as long as it uses HCIA.io and until the data is deleted under these terms.
• Whose data, and what: players’ names, game and platform IDs, when they play, chat, game events, kills and matches, bans, kicks, warnings, notes and watchlist entries; members’ names and what they did in the community.
• Instructions: we process it only as the community instructs: through its use of HCIA.io and its settings, and these terms. We will tell the community if we think an instruction breaks data protection law.
• People: everyone working for Sigilbase Ltd who can see it is bound to keep it confidential.
• Security: data is sent over HTTPS; RCON passwords and two-factor secrets are stored encrypted and account passwords hashed; every page and background job is limited to its own community, and within a community to what its groups allow; data is backed up.
• Sub-processors: the community authorises the companies listed in the privacy policy. We list any new one there at least 14 days before it starts; if the community objects, it can stop using HCIA.io and we refund time paid for ahead that it hasn’t used.
• Help: we help the community answer people who use their data protection rights, and with security and data protection impact assessments, as far as we reasonably can.
• Breaches: we tell the community without undue delay after we learn of a personal data breach affecting its data.
• At the end: when the community stops using HCIA.io, we delete its data (it can ask for a copy first), unless the law requires us to keep it.
• Records: we give the community the information it reasonably needs to show these terms are met.

Questions about these terms: [email protected].