1About these terms
These terms are an agreement between you and Aki Laboratories Limited ("we", "us", "our"), a company registered in England and Wales.
- Company number
- 14904443
- Registered address
- 124-128 City Road, London, England, EC1V 2NX
- Contact
- help@aki-labs.com
- Contact form
- instances.aki-labs.com/contact
They govern your use of Instances, our platform for provisioning and managing game hosting infrastructure, at www.instances.aki-labs.com.
By creating an account you agree to these terms. If you don't agree with them, don't create an account.
Our Privacy Policy explains what we do with your personal data and forms part of this agreement. Annex A sets out how we handle personal data on your behalf, and also forms part of this agreement.
Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer. Where anything here conflicts with those rights, your statutory rights win.
2Some words we use
- Instance
- A game server or other hosting resource you create through our platform.
- Your Content
- Anything you upload, install, configure or generate on an Instance, including game files, world data, mods, configuration and logs.
- Players
- People who connect to an Instance you run.
- Supported Games
- The games we've made available on the platform, listed at instances.aki-labs.com a dedicated Supported Games page — to be published.
3Who can use Instances
Instances is for individuals. Accounts are personal, and you may not open one on behalf of a company or use the platform to provide hosting services to others commercially. If that's what you need, contact us at help@aki-labs.com and we'll talk.
You must be 18 or over to hold an account. If you're under 18, you can't use Instances, and we'll close any account we find belongs to someone underage.
You must also:
- have the legal capacity to enter into a contract;
- not be located in, or ordinarily resident in, a country subject to UK or applicable international sanctions, and not be a person subject to such sanctions.
4Your account
You're responsible for your account and for anything done through it.
Keep your login details secure and don't share them. We strongly recommend turning on multi-factor authentication. Tell us at help@aki-labs.com as soon as you suspect someone else has access.
We won't be responsible for losses arising from someone else using your account, unless the unauthorised access was our fault.
You need one account per person. Don't create accounts to get around a suspension, a limit, or a free allowance.
5What we provide, and what we don't
Our platform lets you create, configure, run and manage game servers across the hosting regions we offer. Each one you create is an Instance.
We supply the platform and the container images that make Supported Games run on it. We don't own the games, and we don't license them to you.
Where a game's server software is included in, or downloaded by, one of our images, it reaches you under that game publisher's own licence and end-user terms — not ours. Your right to run it comes from the publisher. We're not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or acting on behalf of any game publisher or developer, and nothing here grants you any rights in their software.
We support a limited list of games. You'll find the current list at instances.aki-labs.com. We may add games, and we may remove them — including where a publisher changes its terms, withdraws permission, or asks us to stop. If we remove a game you're running, we'll give you at least 14 days' notice — to be confirmed and time to get your data out, unless a publisher or the law requires us to act faster.
We may also add, change or remove platform features. If a change materially reduces the value of what you're using, section 15 applies.
6Your Instances and Your Content
Your Content belongs to you. We don't claim any ownership of it.
You give us permission to host, store, copy, transmit and display Your Content only to the extent we need to in order to run the service, keep it secure, and provide support you've asked for. That permission ends when the content is deleted.
You're responsible for what runs on your Instances. That means:
- complying with the licence and end-user terms of any game you run, including any restrictions on commercial use, paid access, advertising or monetisation — several major publishers restrict these, and it's on you to check;
- having the right to use any mods, plugins, assets or custom content you install;
- complying with the law wherever you and your Players are;
- what your Players do on your Instance, and moderating it.
If you charge Players for access, or monetise your Instance in any way, that's between you and the publisher. We don't check it and we're not liable if you get it wrong.
7Acceptable use
Don't use Instances to:
- host, store or distribute anything illegal, or anything that infringes someone else's rights;
- host child sexual abuse material — we report this to the authorities without notice and terminate immediately;
- send spam, or run phishing, fraud, or malware distribution;
- attack anyone: DDoS, port scanning, brute-forcing, or unauthorised access attempts against any system, including ours;
- mine cryptocurrency, or run workloads whose purpose is to consume compute rather than host a game;
- harass or threaten anyone, or facilitate harassment, including of Players on your own Instance;
- run pirated or cracked game server software, or circumvent licensing or DRM;
- resell, sublicense or white-label the platform as your own service;
- deliberately evade resource limits, or degrade the service for other customers;
- misrepresent your identity or your authority to act.
If you're unsure whether something is allowed, ask us at help@aki-labs.com before you do it.
8Our access to your Instances, and moderation
We can access your Instance's contents, including files, world data, logs and chat records. We only do this where you've asked us to as part of a support request, where we're investigating a security incident or a report of abuse or illegal content, where we need to protect our infrastructure or other customers, or where the law requires it. Our Privacy Policy explains this in more detail.
We don't monitor Instances proactively and we're not obliged to. But when something is reported to us, or we detect it, we may investigate.
If we find a breach of section 7, we may — depending on how serious it is — warn you, suspend the Instance, suspend your account, remove specific content, or terminate this agreement. We'll normally tell you first and give you a chance to fix it, unless the breach is serious, unlawful, or fixing it would risk harm to others.
9Pricing and payment
You pay for what you use
There's no subscription and no minimum commitment. Charges accrue based on the resources your Instances consume, at the rates published at instances.aki-labs.com/pricing. You can see what you've accrued in your account at any time.
When you pay
We total your usage at the end of each calendar month and charge your saved payment method shortly afterwards. You need a valid payment method on file to run an Instance.
How you pay
Payments are processed by Stripe. You authorise us to charge your saved payment method for amounts due.
When charges stop
Compute charges stop when an Instance stops. Storage charges continue for as long as we're holding your data, including for an Instance that's stopped but not deleted. To stop all charges, delete the Instance. We'll make the difference clear in the product.
Tax
VAT position — to be confirmed. Cloud hosting is an electronically supplied service, so for consumers the place of supply is their own country; EU consumer sales have no registration threshold
Currency
All charges are in GBP or USD — to be confirmed. Your bank may apply conversion fees we don't control.
Failed payments
If a payment fails we'll try again and tell you. If it's still unpaid after 7 days — to be confirmed we may suspend your Instances. If it's unpaid after 30 days — to be confirmed we may terminate your account and delete your data. Suspended Instances may continue to incur storage charges — we'll tell you this when we suspend.
10Your 14-day right to change your mind
As a consumer buying online, you have a legal right to cancel this agreement within 14 days of entering into it, without giving a reason.
Because you only ever pay for what you've used, this right is straightforward here. If you cancel within 14 days, you'll be charged for the resources you actually consumed up to that point and nothing else. There's no subscription or upfront payment to refund.
If you'd prefer not to incur any charges at all during the 14 days, don't create an Instance.
To cancel, email help@aki-labs.com or use the form at instances.aki-labs.com/contact. You don't have to give a reason.
11Closing your account, and what happens to your data
You can close your account at any time from your account settings, or by emailing help@aki-labs.com.
Charges stop as described in section 9. We'll bill you for usage accrued up to closure in the normal monthly cycle.
Your data. When your account closes:
- your Instances are stopped and your data is scheduled for deletion;
- you have TBC days to export Your Content before deletion;
- after that it's deleted, and backups of our own systems expire within a further TBC days;
- we keep billing records for six years, as UK tax law requires.
Export Your Content before you close your account. Once deleted, we can't recover it.
12Suspension and termination by us
We may suspend or terminate your account, or a specific Instance, if:
- you breach these terms, particularly section 7;
- you don't pay;
- we're required to by law, a court, or a regulator;
- keeping the Instance running would expose us or others to a real risk of harm or legal liability.
We'll normally warn you first and give you a reasonable chance to put it right. We may act without warning where the issue is serious — illegal content, an active attack, or a risk to other customers.
If we suspend or terminate for a reason that isn't your fault, we won't charge you for the period you couldn't use the service, and we'll give you a reasonable opportunity to export your data.
We may also stop offering Instances entirely, in which case we'll give you at least 30 days' notice — to be confirmed and time to export your data.
13Availability
We don't offer a service level agreement, and we don't guarantee that the platform or your Instances will be available without interruption.
What we do commit to
We'll provide the service with reasonable care and skill, as the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires. We'll give advance notice of planned maintenance where we reasonably can, and aim to schedule it at quieter times. Service status page — to be published, or this sentence dropped
What an outage costs you
Because you're charged for what you use, compute charges stop when your Instance stops. An outage doesn't leave you paying for something you're not getting. Whether storage charges continue to accrue during an outage — to be confirmed and stated plainly either way
Things that can interrupt the service
Planned and emergency maintenance, faults at our infrastructure providers, network problems between you and your hosting region, and events outside our reasonable control.
Things outside our control entirely
Your own internet connection, the game software you choose to run, mods and plugins you install, and the behaviour of your Players.
14Backups
We don't back up Your Content. There is no backup or restore service on the platform, and you shouldn't rely on us to recover anything.
Some games write their own save files or periodic snapshots to the Instance's own storage, as part of how that game works. This is not a backup service, and please don't treat it as one. It varies from game to game, we don't manage it or guarantee it, and it doesn't survive the Instance being deleted or its storage being lost.
Keep your own copy of anything you can't afford to lose. How to export or download Your Content — to be documented; this section is much harder to rely on until customers have a way to actually do it
15Changes to these terms, the service, and prices
These terms
We may update these terms where there's a good reason — a change in the law, a change to how the service works, new features, or security requirements. We'll give you at least 30 days' notice by email and in the product. If you don't accept the change, you can close your account before it takes effect and you'll owe nothing beyond the usage you've already incurred.
Prices
We may change our rates. We'll give you at least 30 days' notice, and new rates apply from the start of the next monthly billing period. Usage you've already incurred is always charged at the rate in force when you incurred it.
The service
We may change features. If a change materially reduces the value of what you're using, we'll tell you at least 30 days beforehand.
We won't make changes retrospectively.
16Our responsibility to you
What we don't limit
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that can't be excluded under English law. Your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 — including that services are performed with reasonable care and skill — always apply.
What we're responsible for
If we fail to comply with these terms, we're responsible for loss or damage you suffer that's a foreseeable result of that failure. Loss is foreseeable if it's obvious it will happen, or if we both knew it might when you entered into this agreement.
What we're not responsible for
- Loss of Your Content, where section 14 puts backups in your hands and you haven't kept your own.
- Problems caused by game software, mods or plugins you chose to install.
- Anything your Players do.
- Consequences of you breaching a game publisher's licence terms.
- Losses arising from someone accessing your account because you didn't keep your credentials secure.
Our overall limit
Except for the things we don't limit above, our total liability to you for all claims in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of £100 — placeholder, to be decided or the total amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.
17Your responsibility to us
If someone brings a claim against us because of Your Content, your use of an Instance, or your breach of section 7, you agree to cover the reasonable costs and losses we suffer as a direct result.
This only applies where the claim genuinely arises from something you did or failed to do, and we'll tell you promptly about any such claim, let you be involved in how it's handled, and not settle it without talking to you first.
18Our intellectual property
The platform, its software, design, documentation and branding belong to us. These terms give you permission to use the service, not ownership of any part of it.
Don't copy, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works from the platform, except where the law says you may.
You may tell people you host with us. Don't use our name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse you or your Instance.
19Beta and preview features
We may offer features marked beta, preview or experimental. These are provided as-is, may change or disappear, and are excluded from any commitments in section 13. Don't run anything you care about on them.
20Complaints
Email help@aki-labs.com or use instances.aki-labs.com/contact. We'll acknowledge within 2 working days — to be confirmed and aim to resolve things within 14 days — to be confirmed.
If we can't sort it out between us, you can take the matter to court. Nothing here requires you to give up that right.
21Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes may be brought in the courts of England and Wales.
If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in your own courts. If you live outside the UK, you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections in your own country — this clause doesn't take those away.
22General
- Transfer. You can't transfer your account or your rights under these terms without our agreement. We may transfer ours to a company that takes over our business, and we'll tell you if we do.
- Severability. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
- No waiver. If we don't enforce something straight away, that doesn't mean we've given up the right to.
- Notices. We'll contact you at the email address on your account. Keep it current. You can reach us at help@aki-labs.com.
- Whole agreement. These terms, the Privacy Policy and Annex A are the whole agreement between us about Instances.
Annex A
Data Processing Terms
These terms apply where we process personal data on your behalf. They form part of the agreement between you and Aki Laboratories Limited and satisfy Article 28 of the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR.
A1Roles
For personal data about you — your email, username, billing and account records — we are the controller. Our Privacy Policy governs that.
For personal data processed on or through your Instances — Player IP addresses, in-game identifiers, chat and event logs, and anything else your game software records — you are the controller and we are your processor.
A2What we process for you
| Subject matter | Hosting and operating the Instances you create. |
|---|---|
| Duration | For as long as your account and Instances exist, plus the deletion periods in section 11. |
| Nature and purpose | Storage, hosting, transmission, security monitoring, and support. |
| Types of personal data | IP addresses, in-game usernames and account identifiers, chat and event logs, and whatever else the game software you run records. |
| Categories of data subject | Players and other people who connect to or interact with your Instances. |
A3Our obligations
We will:
- Process this data only on your documented instructions — which include your configuration choices in the platform and any support requests you raise — unless the law requires otherwise, in which case we'll tell you first unless we're prohibited from doing so.
- Make sure anyone we authorise to access it is under a duty of confidentiality.
- Keep it secure using appropriate technical and organisational measures, including encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, and logging of administrative access.
- Help you respond to requests from Players exercising their data protection rights, so far as we reasonably can.
- Help you with data protection impact assessments and consultations with regulators, so far as is reasonable given the information available to us.
- Tell you without undue delay if we become aware of a personal data breach affecting your Instances, with enough detail for you to meet your own notification obligations.
- Delete this data when your account closes, in line with section 11, unless the law requires us to keep it.
- Make available the information you reasonably need to demonstrate we're meeting these obligations.
A4Sub-processors
You give us general authorisation to engage sub-processors. Our current sub-processors are listed in our Privacy Policy. We'll tell you at least 30 days — to be confirmed before adding or replacing one, and you may object by closing your account before the change takes effect.
We remain responsible to you for what our sub-processors do.
A5International transfers
Your Instances run in the hosting region you select. Our platform operates in the United States. Where personal data moves outside the UK or EEA, we rely on the transfer mechanisms described in our Privacy Policy — adequacy decisions, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension, or Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.
A6Your obligations as controller
You are responsible for:
- having a lawful basis for the personal data your Instance processes;
- telling your Players what's collected and why;
- responding to Players exercising their rights;
- configuring your Instance appropriately, including what it logs and how long it keeps it;
- not using the platform to process special category data or children's data without the additional safeguards the law requires.