Plain words on coins, tribute, refunds, and your realm. Last updated 2026-10-14.
serf.games ("serf", "we") hosts on-demand multiplayer game servers ("realms"). You summon a realm and play. Until a realm reaches its monthly cap it is metered: you pay only for the hours it is running, and when nobody plays it rests and costs nothing. Past its cap, or once you light it, a realm is lit and stays awake until the 1st of the next month, already paid for (see Hold the Throne).
serf.games is a trading name of 3rd Software LLC, a Utah limited liability company. 3rd Software LLC is the party you contract with, and its registered address is 7533 S Center View Ct, Ste R, West Jordan, UT 84084. You reach a human at support@serf.games.
serf is in invite-gated beta. Features, prices, and supported games can change while we build.
One account per invitation. Keep your credentials to yourself; you are responsible for what happens under your account.
You must provide a working email address — it is how we send receipts, low-balance warnings, and account notices.
Your treasury holds coins, a prepaid balance denominated in US dollars ($1 = 1 coin). Coins are a prepayment for hosting services, not money, deposits, or investments. Coins you buy never expire. Promotional grants can carry a stated expiry — the Founding Charter's trial coin, for example, expires 30 days after it is granted — and any expiry is shown in your treasury before it happens.
A realm bills at the hourly rate shown when you summon it. Billing starts only when the realm is actually running and joinable — a failed boot is never charged. When you summon or wake a realm, the first hour is reserved from your balance; when the session ends, any unused remainder returns to your balance automatically.
If your balance runs out mid-session, the session ends cleanly and your world is saved. Worlds are never deleted because a treasury ran dry.
Coin packs are coins. Where a pack is described in months lit, that is what its coin buys at the rates shown when you buy it. If rates change later, your coin keeps its dollar value, not its month count.
Each realm's metered charges stop for the rest of the calendar month (UTC) once they reach the realm's monthly cap — 60 hours at the realm's hourly rate. The cap applies automatically per realm; there is no recurring charge, nothing to enroll in, and nothing to cancel.
A realm that reaches its cap is lit: it stays awake, at no further charge, until 00:00 UTC on the 1st of the next month. After that it is metered again.
You can also light a realm before it reaches its cap ("Light the fire"). We debit what is left of this month's cap — the cap, less what the realm has already been charged this month — from your treasury, and the realm is lit until the 1st. Lighting covers one realm for the rest of the current month. It never renews, and it never charges a card.
A lit realm runs on servers we operate. If none has room when it wakes, it may run on temporary cloud capacity instead, and there it rests when empty, as a metered realm does, at no charge. For any day a lit realm could not be kept awake on our servers, or was down because of a fault on our side, write to support@serf.games and we will credit back a pro-rated share of what you paid to light it, in coin.
Lit is not a promise of uninterrupted service: a lit realm still restarts for game updates and maintenance, and coming back from a restart can take a few minutes.
Anyone with a realm's court link can contribute tribute — a one-time payment into that realm owner's treasury to help keep the realm running.
Tribute is a gift toward the realm's hosting. It is not a subscription, not a deposit, not an investment, and grants the contributor no ownership, rights, or services from serf or the realm owner.
Tribute is non-refundable — to the contributor and to the realm owner alike. In the owner's treasury, tribute (together with promotional coin) is spent first against play charges and is never paid out as cash. If an account closes with tribute remaining, that remainder is not paid out.
Coins you bought with your own card (top-ups) that remain unspent are refundable on request — write to support@serf.games and we refund to the original payment method via Stripe.
Not refundable: tribute received from others; promotional coin (signup and founding grants, the Steward's match, and bonus coin included in coin packs); charges for server time already delivered; and coin spent to light a realm. Lighting is final, apart from the coin credits described under Hold the Throne.
Session refunds happen automatically and are separate from cash refunds: the unused remainder of a prepaid hour always returns to your coin balance when a session ends.
If a charge looks wrong, contact support@serf.games first — most issues are fixed faster than a dispute resolves.
A chargeback filed against credited funds may lead us to pause the affected realms or account while it is resolved, and forfeits any remaining promotional or tribute balance associated with the disputed credit.
World save data is yours. You can export it anytime (Export World) — the files are standard game saves, usable outside serf.
While your account is active we keep world backups so a dismissed or interrupted realm can be restored. You can ask us to delete your account and data at support@serf.games.
Realms are for hosting the game they were summoned for. No abuse of the infrastructure, no unlawful content, no attempts to disrupt other realms or the platform. We may suspend accounts that do.
If you believe something on serf infringes your copyright — a realm name, a court page, a contributor note — send a notice to our designated agent and we will act on it expeditiously.
DMCA Agent, 3rd Software LLC, 7533 S Center View Ct, Ste R, West Jordan, UT 84084. Email dmca@3rdsoftware.com, phone (712) 525-0530. 3rd Software LLC is on file with the US Copyright Office as a service provider, registration number DMCA-1079192.
A notice needs enough for us to act on it: the work you own, where the material is on serf, how to reach you, and a statement made in good faith and under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to complain. If we remove something of yours and you believe that was wrong, send a counter-notice to the same address.
serf is a beta service provided as-is, without an uptime guarantee. Realms run on servers we operate in a third-party data centre, or on cloud capacity. A hardware or network fault can take a realm offline until we restore it, and can lose play back to its last backup; a running realm backs up hourly. We work hard to keep sessions smooth, but we cannot promise uninterrupted service.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, serf's total liability for any claim related to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the three months before the claim. We are not liable for indirect or consequential damages, including lost game progress beyond the backups we keep.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Utah, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.
If you live somewhere whose consumer law gives you rights that cannot be signed away, that law still applies to you — nothing here is meant to take it from you.
We may update these terms as the service evolves; material changes will be announced by email or in the app, and the date above always reflects the current version. Continuing to use serf after a change means you accept it.
Questions, refund requests, disputes, deletion requests: support@serf.games.