Terms of play

Last updated: November 4, 2026. By creating an account or playing Shinobi Shard you agree to these terms. They are short on purpose: play fair, respect other people, and the world stays good for everyone.

About the game

Shinobi Shard is a free, unofficial fan project in early development. There is no fee and nothing to buy.
The game is provided as is. The server may be offline, restarted or updated at any time, and the world — characters, items, ryō, ranks — may be changed or reset while the game is being built. We will try to announce resets in advance, but we can't promise that nothing is ever lost.
You must be at least 16 years old to play, or have your parent's or guardian's permission.

Accounts and characters

An account is for one person. Keep your password to yourself; you are responsible for what happens on your account.
Each account can have up to five characters. Don't use extra accounts to get around a limit, a sanction or a ban.
Characters belong to the game world, not to you: they, their items and their ryō can't be sold or traded for real money, goods or services.
Character names must fit a world of shinobi: no insults, slurs or sexual names, no names of real people, and no names of characters from existing books, films, anime or games. A Game Master may ask you to rename a character.

Fair play

Part of the game (and allowed): fighting other players outside the protected towns and villages, looting the fallen, stealing from backpacks, ambushes, betrayals, village wars, bounties — the world has its own law, and guards, criminals and murderers are part of it.

Not allowed:

modified clients, cheats, speed or wall hacks, packet editing, and anything that reads or changes what the game doesn't show you;
bots, macros and scripts that play for you — including training skills while you are away;
using bugs and exploits (duplicating items, getting through walls, making ryō from nothing). If you find one, report it to a Game Master — honest reports are welcome and never punished;
trying to overload, crash or break into the server, or other players' accounts.

Conduct

Play a villain if you like — in the game. What is not allowed is real-life harm: harassment and stalking of a player (as a person, not a character), threats, hate speech and slurs, sexual content aimed at others.
Don't share anyone's personal data (real name, address, photos, contacts) without their consent.
No spam, advertising, or pretending to be a Game Master.
Chat is part of a living world: what you say can be heard by everyone nearby, the way it would be on a street.

Game Masters and sanctions

Game Masters keep the world running and the rules respected. They may warn, mute, move, kick or ban a player, rename a character, and remove items, ryō or skill gained by breaking these rules.
Sanctions match what happened: a warning for a first small slip, a temporary or permanent ban for cheating, botting, exploiting or harassment.
If you think a decision was wrong, ask for it to be reviewed by talking to a Game Master — calmly, with what you know.

Privacy

The game keeps only what it needs to run the world and to keep it fair:

What	Why
Your login and password — the password only as a salted hash (it travels encrypted and is never stored as text)	to let you in
Your characters: name, look, skills, items, place in the world, who they were introduced to	it is the game
Connection log: when you connected, logged in and out, from which IP address	security, sanctions, abuse
Chat log: what was said in the world, by which character and account, where, and who could hear it	to check reports of harassment, scams and cheating

These logs are read only by the game's administrators, and only to keep the game fair and safe. Nothing is sold, nothing is used for advertising, and the website has no trackers or analytics.
Talking to NPCs: some townsfolk can hold a free conversation. What you say to such a character, with what the game knows about that character, is sent to an AI service (Anthropic's Claude) to write its answer. Don't tell NPCs anything personal.
The website itself only uses a session cookie that it needs to work.
You can ask to see your data or to have your account and its logs deleted through a Game Master. Logs about a sanction or an ongoing report may be kept until it is resolved.

Names, content and copyright

What you write in the game (names, chat, mission texts, notices) can be shown to other players in the game and kept in the logs above. Don't post anything you don't have the right to share.
Shinobi Shard is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners of any book, film, anime or game it may bring to mind.
The game's code, world and texts belong to its creators. Models, icons, sounds and fonts made by others are used under their licenses — see the credits below.

Changes to these terms

The game is growing, and these terms may change with it. The date at the top shows the latest version; bigger changes will also be announced in the game.

Credits

Shinobi Shard stands on the work of generous people. Thank you.

Characters, outfits, animations, nature and most creatures

Quaternius — Universal Base Characters, Modular Character Outfits – Fantasy, Universal Animation Library, Stylized Nature MegaKit, Ultimate Animated Animal Pack, Easy Animated Enemy Pack, LowPoly Animated Animals. CC0 1.0.

Street animals

Licensed under CC BY 3.0, via poly.pizza; recolored in the game.

“Cat” by J-Toastie
“Crow”, “Mourning dove”, “Sparrow”, “Hen” and “Rooster” by Poly by Google

Interface icons

From game-icons.net, licensed under CC BY 3.0; background removed and recolored in the game. By Carl Olsen, DarkZaitzev, Delapouite, Lorc, Lucas, Sbed, Skoll and Zeromancer.

Sounds

Footsteps, landings and the rustle of clothes: Kenney — Impact Sounds and RPG Audio, CC0 1.0. The music and the sounds of nature are synthesized by the game itself.

Fonts

Cinzel by Natanael Gama and Alegreya by Juan Pablo del Peral (Huerta Tipográfica), under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Engine and tools

Built with the Godot Engine (MIT license) and .NET; networking by LiteNetLib (MIT); this website runs on Laravel (MIT).