Terms

What you get when you buy a plot, what may go on it, and what happens if either of us changes our mind. Written to be read once, rather than to be impossible to read at all.

Who you are dealing with

indie.town is run by Semih Özsoy, an independent developer in Türkiye. These terms are between you and him — there is no company here, and no “we” standing in for one. Anything below can be asked about at support@indie.town.

What is being sold

One of the 60 plots in the town, and a building on it carrying your project’s logo, name, tagline and links, for a stated number of weeks. What a plot costs is on the pricing page, and the price shown is the price of one week.

Nothing here renews. A lease is paid for once, up front, for between one and 4 weeks. It is not a subscription, no card is kept on file, and no second charge is ever made. When the weeks run out the building comes down and the plot goes back on the market — you are not billed again and you are not asked to cancel anything.

More weeks can be added at any time, from the same panel you built from, as long as no more than 4 weeks are ever standing ahead of you. That cap is the only reason anybody else ever gets a turn on the good corners.

A plot is held against your email address. Somebody else’s building can be walked up to and read, but nothing on it can be edited, and that rule is kept on the server rather than in the page.

A taller building may take the plot

A plot can also change hands before its weeks are up, and only in one direction: upwards. A house makes way for three storeys; three storeys make way for a tower; a shorter tower makes way for a taller one. Nothing ever makes way for something the same size or smaller, so a building is only ever replaced by more of a building.

A tower at the full 10 storeys has no height left to be beaten on, so there money settles it: whoever has put more on top of the storeys holds the plot, and there is no ceiling on that. It is the only place in the town where paying more does anything at all — below full height, no amount of money moves a building that is tall enough.

Time already run on a plot taken this way is not refunded. It is the flat side of a rule that also works for you: the same ladder is what lets you take a plot somebody else is standing on. If you would rather not be moved, build tall — and at full height, that is what the money on top is for. You are told by email when it happens, and the crane is visible from the street.

Paying

Payments are taken by Creem as merchant of record. In practice that means the contract for the payment itself is with them: the receipt is theirs, any sales tax or VAT is theirs to calculate and remit, their terms cover the transaction, and a line on your statement you do not recognise will carry their name. Card details are entered on their pages. This server has never seen a card number and has nowhere to put one.

Changing your mind

14 days from the purchase, for any reason or none. Write to support@indie.town and the money goes back the way it came, for the weeks you have not yet stood. The plot is cleared, the building comes down and the plot goes back on the market.

A week already spent on the street is not refunded, because it was delivered: the building was up the whole time for anybody walking past to see, which is the entire thing being bought. So a one-week lease is refundable in full before it starts and not after it has run, and a four-week lease given back after a fortnight gets its remaining two weeks returned.

After 14 days a purchase is final, except where a refund is owed under the heading further down — a building taken down by mistake.

What may go on a building

• Your own project, or one you are allowed to speak for.
• A logo you have the right to use.
• A name and tagline that would not embarrass somebody reading them off a building. Both go through the same filter a chat message does, for a stronger reason: a message scrolls away, and a name is painted three storeys high on something everybody walks past.

What will be taken down

• Anything illegal, where it is hosted or where it is being looked at.
• Impersonating a project, a company or a person that is not yours.
• Hate, harassment, or a slur, in a name, a tagline or a message.
• Sexual content.
• Malware, phishing, or a link that goes somewhere other than where it says.
• Claims made to deceive — an invented endorsement, a product that does not exist.

You will hear about it first, and where something can be fixed rather than removed you get the chance to fix it. A building taken down for one of the reasons above is not refunded outside the 14 days. One taken down by mistake goes back up with the time it lost added to it, and if it cannot go back up, the weeks it did not get are refunded in full whenever that happens. A building that came down because its weeks ran out, or because somebody built taller, has not been taken down by mistake — that is the town working.

What is not promised

• No traffic. Nothing is promised about how many people will see your building, click a link on it, or arrive because of it. Buying a plot buys the plot.
• The town changes. This is an early project and it is still being built: how a building looks, what the ground under it looks like and where the camera sits may all change. What will not change under you is the shape you paid for — the tier and the storeys — for as long as the weeks you paid for last.
• It can be down. One server, one person. Interruptions happen, and there is no uptime figure being offered here that would mean anything.

If the town closes

If indie.town is shut down for good, it will be said at least 30 days ahead, and nothing will be sold after that is said.

30 days is deliberately longer than the longest lease anybody may hold, which is 4 weeks. Every building standing on the day of the announcement therefore runs to the end of its own weeks and comes down when it was always going to come down. Nobody is left holding time the town does not have, so there is nothing to buy back.

Your account

There is no password. Signing in is a link sent to your address, good once and for an hour, which means whoever can read that inbox can edit your plot — that is the trade, and it is the same trade your other accounts make when you use their password reset. If the address stops being yours, or you think somebody else has it, write and the sittings on it will be ended.

The law that applies

These terms are governed by the law of Türkiye, and its courts are where a dispute would go. If you are buying as a consumer somewhere else, that sentence does not take away rights your own country’s law gives you and is not trying to.

If these terms change

The date at the foot of the page changes with them. A change never applies backwards to something already bought: whatever these terms said on the day you bought a plot is what that plot was sold under, and it stays that way. What the town keeps about you is a separate page — the privacy notice.