Frequently Asked Questions

Where we are

Where are your servers?

In the United States, on both coasts — east and west. If you and your friends are playing from anywhere in North America, you will be close to one of them.

Can I play from outside the US?

You are very welcome to, and plenty of groups have a player or two further afield who get on fine. We would just rather be straight with you: PlayDnD Games is built for players in the United States, and distance is the one thing no amount of hardware fixes. If your whole group is in Europe, Asia or Australia, a host nearer to you will give you a better game, and we would honestly rather tell you that now than take your money for a server that feels sluggish.

If you are not sure, buy one and try it — you have 72 hours to change your mind, no reasons needed.

Money and credit

Can I get a refund?

Yes, within 72 hours of paying — no reasons needed. Set the server up, try it, and if it is not what you wanted, ask and we refund it. After that we refund a charge that was our mistake, however long ago. The refund policy covers it in full.

What is account credit?

A balance you can spend here, on servers. It comes from topping up your own account, or from someone gifting toward your server. It works like a gift card: money becomes credit, and credit does not become money again.

Can I cash out my credit, or move it to another account?

No to both. Credit is not refundable, not transferable and not withdrawable — it is spendable only here. A balance can never be moved to another account; only a new card payment can put credit on someone else's account.

What happens to my credit if my account is closed?

It is forfeited. Closing an account removes its servers, cancels any active subscription so nothing is charged again, and writes the remaining balance down to zero with an entry recording that it was forfeited on closure. You get an email confirming all of it. Invoices and payment records are kept, because we have to hold them for tax and accounting.

Someone chipped in for my server. Can they ask for it back?

No. Once the payment goes through, the credit belongs to your account. The sender cannot spend it, redirect it or reclaim it — that is the point of the feature. They get an emailed receipt and an invoice for their own records.

Do chip-in links expire?

Yes — a year after it is made. On that day the link stops working and we remove it, and we email you to say so. Anyone following the old one sees a page explaining it has expired, not an error. Everything already chipped in stays exactly where it is, on your balance and in your contributions list. You can create a new link whenever you want, and that one gets its own year.

What happens if someone files a chargeback?

Their bank takes the money back from us, so we take it back from the account the credit landed on — whether or not it has already been spent. If it was a gift, that is the recipient's account, not the sender's, so the person who loses out is usually not the person who filed it.

The balance is allowed to go below zero, and it shows in red on your billing page. A negative balance suspends the servers on that account until it is cleared, which means topping up by at least the amount owed. We email everyone involved when a reversal lands, so nobody's first clue is a server that stopped.

If a charge looks wrong, use the support form before going to your bank. Where it is our error we correct it, and no server goes off.

Is there tax on top?

Tax is worked out when credit is spent on a server, not when it is bought. A top-up or a gift is always a zero-tax document; the tax, where any applies, appears on the invoice for the server. Whatever is due is shown on the invoice before you pay.

Servers, lapses and deletion

What happens if my payment fails or I cancel?

There is a fixed timeline, and there is a week in it for exactly the case of a card that expired without you noticing:

• Day 0 — we take a backup, then suspend the server. It stops, but the world is untouched.
• Days 0–7 — pay and it comes straight back. Nothing is lost.
• Day 7 — the server is deleted, and its files on the node go with it.
• Day 30 — the backup is purged. After that the world is gone.

The server stops straight away, but your world gets the full week — so a card that expired without you noticing costs you nothing but the downtime.

What happens to my world when a server is deleted?

The server's files are removed from the node with it. What survives is the backup — the one taken at suspension, or one taken at deletion, depending on which path got you there — and it is kept for 30 days from the moment it was made. One rule for both cases. After 30 days it is purged and there is nothing to bring back.

Why is my server suspended?

Usually one of three things: an invoice went unpaid, the subscription was cancelled, or the balance went negative after a payment was reversed. A suspended server is stopped, not deleted, and the controls on its card are replaced by a notice rather than left there to click. If you have settled up and it is still suspended, tell us through the support form and we will look.

Backups

How many backups do I get?

Two slots per server. It is a count of backups rather than an amount of disk, so a slot holds a whole world however large it is.

What are backups for?

Undoing your own mistake, and getting a world back after a lapse. Take one before you try something ambitious with your world, and restore it if the ambitious thing does not work out.

Why are there two different backup timeframes?

Because two different things are being kept, and they are easy to confuse:

• The backup file — 30 days. The archive itself, sitting on the node. After 30 days it is deleted and the world is gone.
• The record that makes an archive importable — six months. A tiny row holding the archive's checksum and which game it belongs to. If you export a world and keep the file yourself, you can bring it back for six months. After that the file is still yours and still perfectly good, but we will no longer accept it for import.

The six months is about bounding the promise, not saving space — the record is about a hundred bytes. We would rather say "six months" and mean it than leave open an obligation to import an archive from years ago.

Why can I only import archives you produced?

Importing means unpacking an archive straight into a running game server. An archive from anywhere else is an unknown pile of files chosen by whoever built it, and unpacking one is how servers get compromised — paths that climb out of the folder, links that point somewhere else, files that expand until the disk is full.

So we record a checksum when we make an archive, and check it on the way back in. A match means the bytes are exactly what we produced, which means there is no stranger's archive to defend against in the first place. We also record which game it came from, so a world cannot be pushed into a server running something else.

That is why an archive we made stays importable for six months, and stays yours indefinitely.

Can I take and restore backups myself?

Yes. The Backups tab has "Back up now" and "Restore", each behind a confirmation. The retention rules above apply either way.

Accounts and support

How do I close my account?

Ask through the support form. There is no self-service delete button, deliberately — closing an account destroys servers and forfeits credit, and that is not something to do by mis-click. Read what closure does under "What happens to my credit" above before you ask.

How do I get help?

The support form, for everything. It reaches PlayDnD Games directly. Include your invoice number if the question is about a payment.