Terms of Service

Version 2026-09-03 · Effective 3 September 2026 · Private alpha

KATAPULT is a private alpha. These terms are short on ceremony and blunt about what that means: the game can break, change, or lose your progress, and it is offered free, as is, while it is being built. Reading this page takes about eight minutes. Please do read it.

1. Who you are contracting with

KATAPULT is operated by Uppercut Studio (“Uppercut Studio”, “we”, “us”), the operator of the websites katapult.cards and the play client at katapult-play.web.app (later play.katapult.cards), together the “Service”.

You can reach a human at katapult@uppercut.studio. That address is monitored and is the correct one for every question, complaint, privacy request and takedown notice about KATAPULT.

2. Accepting these terms

Before you can create an account or play, the game asks you to confirm that you are 18 or older and to accept these Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, which is part of them. Nothing is playable before that. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Your acceptance is recorded on our servers as the version of these terms you accepted and the moment you accepted it. This document is version 2026-09-03, and that is the identifier the game records. When we publish a new version, you will be asked to accept it before you can keep playing (section 15).

These terms are written in English. If we publish a Portuguese translation, and the two versions ever conflict on a point of meaning, the Portuguese version governs for users resident in Brazil.

3. What KATAPULT is right now

KATAPULT is a browser card game: both players hold the same twelve cards, plan a round in secret, lock in, and reveal simultaneously. It is currently a private, invitation-based alpha for designers and playtesters. That is not marketing language — it describes the actual state of the product:

• the Service may be unavailable, slow, or broken at any time, including in the middle of a match;
• rules, cards, balance, screens and whole features may change or be removed without notice;
• matches, statistics, streaks, rewards and unlocked content may be reset or permanently deleted at any point in the alpha (see section 8);
• we make no promise about a public release, a release date, a feature, a price, or that any alpha content will exist in a later version.

The Service is provided free of charge during the alpha. Nothing in the Service is for sale, and we do not ask you for payment details.

4. Eligibility

You must be 18 years of age or older to use the Service. The alpha is not designed, tested or moderated for children or adolescents, and we do not knowingly allow accounts for people under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will terminate it and delete the associated data (see the Privacy Policy).

You confirm your age yourself, in the same box in which you accept these terms. We do not verify it, and we do not ask you for a document — but a false confirmation is a breach of these terms, and an account we find to belong to someone under 18 will be terminated and its data deleted.

You must also be legally able to enter into this agreement, and not barred from receiving the Service under any law that applies to you.

5. Your account

Playing requires an account. You can create one with Google sign-in or with an email address and a password. There is no anonymous play: every seat in a match belongs to a real account that has accepted these terms.

• You are responsible for everything done under your account, and for keeping it secure. Choose a password you do not use anywhere else.
• Give us an email address you can actually receive mail at — it is how a password is reset and how we reach you about your account.
• One person, one account. Do not share, sell or transfer an account, and do not use another person's.
• Tell us at katapult@uppercut.studio if you believe someone else is using your account.
• You can ask us to delete your account and its data at any time (Privacy Policy, section 10).

6. Fair play and acceptable use

KATAPULT resolves every match on our servers precisely so that a match is decided by play, not by what a client can be made to do. You agree not to:

• cheat, or try to: modifying the client, intercepting or forging commands, automating play with bots or scripts, exploiting a bug for advantage, or attempting to see an opponent's hidden information;
• attempt to read, write or infer match state that the Service does not deliberately show you;
• use multiple identities to match against yourself, farm rewards, manipulate statistics, or evade a suspension;
• disrupt the Service: denial-of-service, load or penetration testing without our written permission, defeating rate limits or abuse protections, scraping, or probing our infrastructure;
• reverse engineer, decompile or derive the server rules engine, except to the extent that Brazilian law (notably Law 9.609/1998) expressly permits despite this clause;
• harass, threaten, defame or abuse other players or us, including through display names, room names and any free text the Service accepts;
• use the Service for anything unlawful, or in breach of anyone's rights;
• resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit access to the Service.

If you find a bug that gives an unfair advantage, or a security flaw, the right thing — and what these terms require — is to report it to katapult@uppercut.studio instead of using it. We will not pursue a good-faith reporter who tells us privately, does not exfiltrate other players' data, and gives us reasonable time to fix it.

7. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may ask us to delete your account and data at any time (see the Privacy Policy).

We may suspend or terminate your access, remove content, or end a match, where we reasonably believe you have broken these terms, where it is necessary to protect other players, the Service or a third party, or where we are required to by law. Because the Service is a free alpha, we may also discontinue the alpha, an account tier, or the whole Service, for any user or for everyone.

Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will tell you why, and give you a way to reply at katapult@uppercut.studio. We do not make that a promise of prior notice in cases of cheating, abuse or a live security problem.

On termination, your licence to use the Service ends. Sections 8 to 17 survive.

8. Alpha data, progress and rewards

This clause is the one people are most likely to be surprised by, so it is stated plainly:

• Matches, replays, profile statistics, win/loss records, streaks, daily rewards and any unlocked art may be wiped, reset or deleted at any time during the alpha, including as part of a routine rules or data-model change, and including without notice.
• Rooms, invitations and reconnect data are short-lived by design and are removed automatically after they expire.
• In-game rewards, streaks and unlocked content are not property, are not currency, have no monetary value, cannot be exchanged for money, and are not transferable. They are a display of your progress inside the Service.
• We do not promise backups and we do not promise migration of alpha data into any future version.

What we do commit to: we will not sell your data, and we will honour deletion requests as described in the Privacy Policy.

9. Ownership of the game

The Service and everything in it — the KATAPULT name and wordmark, the twelve card definitions, their names, numbers, rules text and art, the Realm tiles, the rules engine, the design system, the client and server code, the copy on this site, and the look and feel — are owned by Uppercut Studio or licensed to it, and are protected by Brazilian and international copyright, software and trademark law (including Law 9.610/1998 and Law 9.609/1998).

We grant you a personal, limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to access and play the Service for your own non-commercial entertainment, for as long as these terms allow. That licence does not transfer any ownership and does not let you copy, distribute, modify or build on our content beyond what these terms or the law permit.

What you may do without asking: record, stream and publish your own gameplay footage and screenshots, including on monetised channels, as long as you do not present it as an official Uppercut Studio channel or product, do not use it to publish leaked or confidential material, and do not use our name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse or sponsor you. We can withdraw this permission from a specific person if it is abused.

10. What you send us

10.1 Feedback and bug reports

If you send us feedback, ideas, bug reports, match notes or suggestions, you grant us a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to use them to operate and improve KATAPULT, with no obligation to compensate you, credit you, keep them confidential, or use them at all. Please do not send us anything confidential or anything you are not free to share.

10.2 Artwork and Deck Art Set submissions

Artwork is deliberately treated differently from feedback. If you submit art for a Deck Art Set:

• You keep the copyright in your artwork. You do not assign anything to us by submitting it.
• You grant us only a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, view, internally test and evaluate your submission, and to show it to you in a preview inside the Service.
• Any publication, distribution or commercial use of your artwork — including publishing a Deck Art Set in the game or on this site — requires a separate written agreement signed by both of us, setting out the revenue share, term and credit. The revenue share we currently document for artists is 70% to the artist; the signed agreement, not this page, is what will bind us.
• You confirm that the artwork is yours, that you have the rights to submit it, that it does not infringe anyone else's rights, and that it does not contain third-party material you are not licensed to include.
• You can withdraw a submission that is not yet covered by a signed agreement by emailing katapult@uppercut.studio; we will stop evaluating it and delete our copies within a reasonable period.

10.3 Names and free text

You are responsible for any text you enter that another player can see. We may remove or change any name or text that breaks section 6, and we may do so without notice.

11. Third-party services and ads

The Service runs on Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore, Cloud Functions, Hosting) and, if you choose to link an account, Google Sign-In. Your use of those services is also subject to Google's own terms. We are responsible for how we configure and use them; we are not responsible for Google's platform itself.

The Service shows advertising slots. Today those slots carry only our own house advertising for KATAPULT and its Deck Art Sets: no third-party ad script is loaded and no advertising cookie is set. We may enable third-party advertising (for example Google AdSense) later. If we do, we will update the Privacy Policy with a new version date before or at the time it goes live, and ads will be requested non-personalised by default. We do not endorse any advertised product and we are not party to your dealings with an advertiser.

12. No warranty

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, with all faults. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, or uninterrupted or error-free operation. We do not warrant that a match will complete, that a result is preserved, that data will survive, or that a defect will be corrected.

This clause does not remove rights you have that cannot be waived. If you use the Service as a consumer in Brazil, the Consumer Protection Code (Law 8.078/1990) gives you rights — including in relation to defects in a service — that a contract cannot exclude, and nothing here is intended to exclude them.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by Brazilian law, and except where the law does not allow the limitation:

• we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, for lost profits, lost opportunity, lost data, lost progress, or loss of goodwill, arising out of or related to the Service;
• our total aggregate liability to you for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you actually paid us for the Service in the twelve months before the event, which during the alpha is zero, and (b) R$ 100,00.

Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for wilful misconduct (dolo), for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by us, or any liability that the Consumer Protection Code makes non-excludable. Article 25 of that Code prohibits clauses that exclude or reduce a supplier's liability toward a consumer, and article 51 makes abusive clauses void — where that applies to you, this section is read down to the strongest limitation the law does allow, and no further.

14. Your responsibility to us

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to hold us harmless from and, where you are legally able to, indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable costs (including legal fees) brought by a third party and caused by: your breach of these terms; your unlawful use of the Service; content or artwork you submitted that infringes a third party's rights; or your fraud or wilful misconduct.

We will notify you of any such claim, let you participate in the defence, and will not settle it in a way that admits fault on your part without your consent. If you use the Service as a consumer, this section applies only as far as Brazilian consumer law allows — it does not create an obligation that the Consumer Protection Code would treat as abusive.

15. Changes to the game and to these terms

We may change the Service at any time during the alpha, as described in section 3.

We may also change these terms. When we do, we publish a new version identifier and effective date at the top of this page, and the game asks you to accept the new version before you can keep playing — your acceptance of the previous version does not carry over. If you do not accept the new version, you can stop using the Service and, if you wish, ask us to delete your account. For a change that materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we will also make a reasonable effort to tell you inside the Service or by email.

Every version of these terms carries its own effective date. This is version 2026-09-03, effective 3 September 2026.

16. Governing law and venue

These terms are governed by the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil, including the Civil Code (Law 10.406/2002), the Consumer Protection Code (Law 8.078/1990), the Internet Civil Framework (Marco Civil da Internet, Law 12.965/2014) and the General Data Protection Law (LGPD, Law 13.709/2018), without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

If you are a consumer, this choice of venue does not take away your right, under article 101, I of the Consumer Protection Code, to bring a claim in the court of your own domicile. Nothing here prevents you from contacting a consumer protection body (PROCON), the courts, or — for data protection matters — the Brazilian National Data Protection Authority (ANPD).

Before going to court, we would rather fix it: please write to katapult@uppercut.studio first.

17. General terms and contact

• Severability. If a clause is held invalid or unenforceable, the rest stays in force and the invalid clause is limited to the minimum extent necessary.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a right immediately, we do not lose it.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours to a successor of the KATAPULT project, provided your rights under these terms and the Privacy Policy are preserved.
• Whole agreement. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the Service, and replace any earlier understanding about it — except a separate signed agreement about artwork, which governs that artwork.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for a failure caused by something beyond our reasonable control, including a failure of a platform provider or network we depend on.

Contact. Uppercut Studio — katapult@uppercut.studio.