Cassette Content and Takedown Policy

Last updated: TODO: publish date

This policy explains what is allowed on Cassette, how to report something, how we decide, and how community listings work. It is part of our Terms of Service and Developer Distribution Agreement.

What this covers

Everything people publish or show on Cassette:

• games listed on Cassette, which run from their developers' own hosting;
• game pages, covers and screenshots;
• items and their descriptions;
• developer profiles and @usernames;
• player reviews, posted under a @username by players who played or own the game;
• community listings.

Developers publish on Cassette themselves. We don't review each game before it goes live; we rely on these rules, on reports, and on our own checks.

What's not allowed

Illegal content, including:

• child sexual abuse material (we report it to the authorities);
• terrorist content, incitement to violence or hatred;
• content that infringes copyright or trademarks;
• defamation;
• personal data published without a legal basis.

Also not allowed on Cassette:

• Harmful code: malware, crypto mining, phishing, or anything that tricks players into approving payments or signatures, or collects data without telling them.
• Gambling: games that pay out money, or anything of monetary value, based on chance; paid tournaments with cash or crypto prizes.
• Hidden odds: paid random rewards without the odds shown before purchase, and paid random rewards that are transferable tokens.
• Sexual content: pornography or sexually explicit content.
• Unmarked mature content: realistic violence or gore, drug use, or strong language must be marked as mature on the game page.
• Deception:
  • impersonating other developers, games or brands;
  • copies of other people's games without permission;
  • misleading pages, prices, device labels, item descriptions or seller details.
• Spam: mass-produced near-identical games, or ranking manipulation.
• Fake or manipulated reviews: reviewing your own game or one you work on; paid or rewarded reviews that don't say so; reviews from several accounts; coordinated reviews about something other than the game (see the Terms, section 8).
• Usernames and profiles that impersonate someone, use someone else's trademark, or are hateful or obscene.

How to report something

Every game page, community listing and player review has a Report link. You can also write to [email protected]. To act quickly, we need:

1. What and where: the exact Cassette link (or game, @username or item).
2. Why it's illegal or breaks our rules: a short explanation; for copyright, which work is yours and how it's being used.
3. Your name and email, so we can tell you what we decide. You can leave them out if you're reporting child sexual abuse material.
4. A statement that you believe in good faith that the information in your report is accurate and complete.

You can report in English or Spanish. If you report something by email, we confirm that we received it.

What happens next

• A person reviews every report. We act promptly, and faster when there may be a risk to someone's safety.
• If we find a report credible, we may restrict content right away while we look into it. Reports about community listings hide the listing straight away, pending review.
• We tell the person who reported what we decided and why, if they gave contact details.
• If we have reason to believe there is a threat to someone's life or safety, we inform the police or other competent authorities.

What we can do:

• hide a game from the store or search;
• remove a game from Cassette, so it is no longer listed or shown inside Cassette;
• stop showing a @username, profile, review or comment;
• suspend a developer's or player's access to our services;
• for security (for example malicious code), sanctions or a legal order only: have Cassette's wallet refuse payment requests to a storefront, with a recorded reason.

We choose the lightest measure that works. We never remove or hide a player review because it is negative or because a developer disagrees with it; a developer's report about a review is judged by the same rules as anyone else's. These measures affect Cassette only: games are hosted and sold by their developers, and we can't change their storefronts, their hosting or anyone's tokens. A removal may be recorded in our public game registry with a short reason, which never includes personal data. Restrictions in our self-refund abuse registry follow their own criteria, not this policy.

Statement of reasons

When we restrict someone's content or account, we tell them, unless the law prevents it:

• what we did, and whether it covers everything or part, and for how long;
• the facts, including whether it came from a report or our own checks;
• whether automated tools were involved;
• the law or the rule in our terms that was broken, and why;
• how to contest the decision.

Contesting a decision

Anyone affected, including the person who reported, can contest a decision within six months by replying to our message or writing to [email protected]. Someone who wasn't involved in the original decision reviews it, and we reverse it if we got it wrong. You can also go to the courts, or to an out-of-court dispute settlement body certified under the EU Digital Services Act.

Copyright and trademarks

If you believe something on Cassette infringes your copyright or trademark, report it as described above. Include:

• the work or mark and proof that it's yours, or that you act for its owner;
• the exact links to the infringing material.

We remove or restrict access to infringing material promptly and tell the developer. If the developer believes we made a mistake, they can contest the decision with an explanation. We'll share it with you before restoring anything, unless your report was clearly unfounded. We end the accounts and profiles of repeat infringers.

Misuse of reporting

We may stop processing reports from people who repeatedly send clearly unfounded ones, after warning them, and we may suspend players or developers who repeatedly publish clearly illegal content.

Player reviews

Reviews are posted under a @username, by players with at least 10 minutes of play on Cassette or who own the game (see the Terms, section 8). What's public is the @username, the review, the playtime, whether it's marked as a purchase, its dates and its helpful count; never the wallet address.

Anyone, including the game's developer, can report a review with its Report link. A person reviews the report under the rules above. We may hide a review while we check a credible report about illegal content or personal data. If we remove it, we tell its author why, and they can contest the decision as described above. We don't edit reviews, and a negative opinion about a game is never a reason to remove one.

Community listings

To help players find browser games, Cassette lists games published on the open web, clearly marked as community listings.

Where they come from: public sources, including GitHub repositories tagged as browser games, Show HN posts, js13kGames entries and Ludum Dare. We link to itch.io games but never show them inside Cassette.

What we keep:

• the game's title and links;
• its author's public handle;
• its licence;
• a short description: one we write, or the project's own one-line summary;
• a cover: a link to the page's own preview image, or one we generate.

We don't copy or host the game itself.

How we show them: a person at Cassette approves each community listing before it is public. Then, inside Cassette only when the game's page allows other sites to embed it and its licence permits it; otherwise as a link. Community listings can't be bought, and their authors aren't affiliated with us unless the listing says it's claimed.

Our crawler:

• identifies itself as cassette-crawler;
• fetches no more than one page per second from each site;
• respects robots.txt;
• skips pages with <meta name="cassette" content="noindex">.

Removing a listing: use Request removal on its page, or write to [email protected]. The listing is hidden immediately, and if you're the author, or the request is otherwise justified, we delete it and keep the game out of future crawls.

Claiming a listing: if it's your game, sign in, choose Claim, and add the claim code we give you to the game's page (as a cassette-claim meta tag), to /.well-known/cassette.json on its site, or to a cassette.json file in its repository. Once verified, the listing is yours: you can edit it, remove it, or publish the game as your own release. See the Developer Distribution Agreement.

Contact points

We work in English and Spanish.

Our size

Cassette is run by a small company. Under the EU Digital Services Act, providers that qualify as micro or small enterprises are exempt from some obligations, such as periodic transparency reports. We still aim to explain our decisions clearly. If we stop qualifying, we'll update this policy.