Terms of Service

Last updated: July 2026. Working draft — pending review by qualified counsel.

By using Murder Maker (the « application » and the site murder-maker.com, together the « service »), you accept the terms below. If you do not agree to them, do not use the service. These terms are provided by the operator identified in the Legal notice (data controller in the Privacy Policy).

1. Purpose of the service

Murder Maker is a tool for creating and running Murder Parties. It lets you design scenarios — characters, plots, relationships, clues, groups, locations and timelines — then organise them, assign their roles and host them for your events. A read-only guest mode is available for demonstration. A community Workshop lets you publish scenarios and clone those published by other users. Certain advanced features may fall under a Premium plan (see §9).

2. Access to the service

The service is currently offered in early access: account registration is done directly in the application (a verified email address is required), and the operator may adjust, restrict or suspend the opening of new registrations during this phase. Access modalities are set by the operator and may evolve.

3. Minimum age

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account (where the law of your country sets a higher age of digital consent, that higher age applies). Because scenarios may involve crime or violence themes, some content is intended for a mature audience; authors must set a recommended minimum age on scenarios with mature themes. If you are a minor of the required minimum age, you confirm that you have a parent's or guardian's permission where such permission is required. Guests who join a Murder Party via an invitation code do not need an account and may be younger than 16, under the responsibility of the event host and of their parents or guardians, and subject to the scenario's recommended minimum age.

4. Your account

Creating content requires an account with a verified email address. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for the activity carried out from your account. If you suspect unauthorised use, notify us at contact [at] murder-maker.com. The session relies on short-lived access tokens and refresh tokens renewed by rotation (see the Privacy Policy).

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the service for unlawful purposes;
• upload or publish content that is hateful, harassing, defamatory of real persons, sexual content involving minors, that incites violence or is otherwise unlawful;
• infringe the intellectual-property or privacy rights of others (in particular by copying or adapting a protected work — book, film, game, TV series — or another user's published scenario, see §8);
• impersonate others or claim an affiliation that does not exist;
• attempt to disrupt the platform (intrusion, overload, mass data extraction, bypassing security measures or quotas, reverse-engineering beyond what the law permits).

Breaches may lead to content removal, suspension or termination of the account (§12).

6. Content: ownership and licences

6.1 You keep ownership

You retain full ownership of the original scenarios and content you create (« your content »).

6.2 Licence granted to Murder Maker (hosting and display)

To operate the service, you grant the operator a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence (sublicensable only to the extent needed to run the service through its processors) to host, store, back up, reproduce, re-encode (for example images to the WebP format), display and transmit your content, solely to provide and secure the service to you and to the recipients you designate. This licence ends when you delete the content, subject to §6.5 (published or cloned content).

6.3 Publishing to the Workshop

When you publish a scenario to the Workshop, you additionally grant: to the operator, the right to list, index, generate previews of and distribute it in the public Workshop; and to other users, the right to view and to clone it — that is, to create their own independent copy for their personal use. The public preview exposes only public fields (never solutions, secrets or objectives). You warrant that your content is original and that you hold all the rights required (see §8).

6.4 Clones

Cloning creates an independent copy owned by the user who clones it; a non-personal lineage reference and a clone counter are recorded. Attribution to the original author is displayed on clones. The user who clones has all rights to use and adapt their copy within the service, except the right to re-publish the cloned copy to the Workshop. Any commercial use of clones and adaptations is prohibited: all Workshop scenarios are for strictly personal, non-commercial use. Clones already granted cannot be revoked or deleted after the fact by the original author.

6.5 Effect of deletion on published content

Published scenarios are anonymised, not erased upon deletion: their ownership is transferred to a technical platform account and your personal link is removed, so the Workshop catalogue and existing clones survive without your personal data. Deleting your account therefore does not remove a published scenario that others may have cloned: to remove it, unpublish or delete it before deleting your account. Private or unpublished content is deleted in full. Murder Maker may take over stewardship of published content left by a deleted account, in order to keep the catalogue and clone lineage available. When published, the images you uploaded into the scenario are covered by the same licences as the scenario itself; the platform's library assets remain the property of the operator and may be used, including in clones, only within the service.

6.6 Murder Maker's own property

The « Murder Maker » brand, the software, the site, the visual identity and the illustration and asset library managed by the platform belong to the operator or its licensors and are not part of your content. You may use the library assets only within the service; extracting, redistributing or reselling them is prohibited.

7. Moderation, reporting and takedown

Publishing to the Workshop is subject to review: automated checks must be satisfied, then an administrator approves or rejects the request with a reason. We may remove, reject, unpublish or restrict content at any time in the event of a breach of these terms or the law, or where we consider, in our editorial discretion, that it has no place on the platform. Sexually explicit content is prohibited; only suggestive or mature themes, with an appropriate recommended minimum age, are allowed.

Any content you believe to be unlawful or infringing can be reported to contact [at] murder-maker.com, specifying the content concerned (link or identifier), the grounds for the report and your contact details (for intellectual-property infringements, proof of your rights). We acknowledge receipt, review the report and act on it within a reasonable time — the service being run by a single operator — with a reasoned response to the parties concerned and a possibility for the content's author to contest the decision.

8. Originality of scenarios

You must only publish scenarios that are your own original work. It is prohibited to copy or adapt an existing work (novels, films, games, TV series) or another user's published scenario. References to well-known works used in our communication serve only to convey a tone or an audience and must never be reproduced or adapted in your content. Breach of this obligation may lead to content removal and termination of the account (§12).

9. Premium plans

No paid plan is offered to date. Certain advanced features — in particular publishing and sharing via the Workshop, or a higher storage quota — may be offered under a Premium plan. In that case, the pre-contractual information required by the French Consumer Code (price incl. VAT, exact scope, duration, renewal and cancellation terms, right of withdrawal) will be provided before any purchase. Storage quotas apply; exceeding them may block uploads and cloning from the Workshop until space is freed or the plan is changed. The free features (create, assign roles and host your Murder Parties) remain available with no commitment.

10. Warranties

The service is provided « as is » and « as available ». We do not warrant uninterrupted or error-free operation, nor that the content in the Workshop is accurate, lawful or fit for a particular purpose. We recommend that you keep a copy of your important scenarios (an export tool is built into the application). The rights granted to you as a consumer under French and European law are not affected.

11. Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator cannot be held liable for indirect damages, loss of data or loss of profits arising from use of the service. These limitations do not affect the mandatory rights of consumers.

12. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the service and delete your account at any time (see the Privacy Policy). We may suspend or terminate an account in the event of a breach of these terms, the acceptable-use rules (§5), the originality obligation (§8) or the law, with notice where possible and immediately where the protection of users or of the service so requires. On termination, §6.5 governs the fate of published content.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date of the last update appears at the top of the page; for material changes, we will inform you by an appropriate means and, where the law requires it, ask you to accept the new version. Continued use of the service constitutes acceptance of non-material changes.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by French law. Any dispute relating to their interpretation or performance falls under the jurisdiction of the French courts, subject to the mandatory legal provisions protecting consumers, which remain applicable.

15. Contact

For any question about these terms, write to us at contact [at] murder-maker.com.