# AI Story Engine User Agreement and Privacy Notice

Effective Date: August 13, 2026

This Agreement applies to the AI Story Engine client distributed through Steam, the developer-operated relay service, and related AI services. By installing, launching, or continuing to use the product, you acknowledge that you have read and accepted this Agreement. If you do not agree, stop using the relay service and related online features.

## 1. Nature of the Product and License

1. The product is software containing local narrative tools, preloaded content, and online AI generation features. AI output is probabilistic and may differ between requests.
2. Subject to your compliance with this Agreement, the developer grants you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and non-sublicensable right to use the product. This license does not transfer ownership of the software, servers, models, trademarks, preloaded content, or service systems.
3. You may play normally, create worlds, characters, and stories on your device, and export or share content that you are entitled to use, subject to applicable law and third-party rights.
4. Except where applicable law makes such restrictions unenforceable, you may not sell, rent, resell, redistribute, or commercially provide access to the relay service without authorization.

## 2. Steam Identity and Prohibited Circumvention

1. Normal access to the relay service requires launching the game through Steam and passing Steam Ticket verification for identity and app entitlement.
2. You may not forge, steal, transfer, replay, or misuse a Steam Ticket; impersonate another Steam user; or bypass app entitlement, identity verification, rate limits, balance deductions, service licenses, content moderation, or order verification.
3. You may not modify the client, configuration, launch method, network requests, or local files to enable bring-your-own-key (BYOK), custom providers, direct third-party API access, or any other access path not authorized for Steam users.
4. The fact that client code, configuration files, alternative local entry points, or other technical methods may expose, restore, or circumvent such capabilities does not constitute permission or authorization. Their technical presence is not a product commitment, license, or support obligation.
5. You may not exploit defects to obtain unlicensed balance, falsify orders or refund status, manipulate usage records, interfere with billing, automate bulk calls, stress test, scan, attack, or disrupt the relay service or its upstream services.
6. Nothing in this section restricts security research, interoperability research, or reverse engineering that applicable law expressly permits and does not allow to be waived by contract. Such activity must not infringe third-party rights or disrupt the service.

## 3. User Input, Imported Content, and Responsibility

1. You are responsible for content you enter, import, upload, choose to retain after generation, export, share, or publish.
2. You must have the necessary rights to use imported stories, character cards, world settings, images, music, text, and other materials. You may not infringe copyright, trademark, publicity, privacy, trade secret, or other rights.
3. You may not use the product to create, request, distribute, or facilitate unlawful content, including sexual content involving minors, practical instructions for real-world violence or crime, terrorist or extremist content, encouragement of self-harm or suicide, hateful or real-world violent threats, or other content prohibited by applicable law.
4. Deliberately bypassing moderation, modifying the client, forging requests, using unauthorized entry points, or combining the product with other tools for unlawful, infringing, or abusive activity is your independent conduct. A moderation system's failure to block content does not mean the developer approves, requests, authorizes, or confirms that content as lawful.
5. You are responsible as required by law for complaints, claims, penalties, and losses arising from your input, imported materials, publication, commercial use, circumvention, or other deliberate conduct.

## 4. AI Output and Content Moderation

1. AI output may be inaccurate, fictional, incomplete, inappropriate, repetitive, or controversial. The developer does not guarantee accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, originality, eligibility for intellectual-property protection, or non-infringement.
2. AI output is not medical, legal, investment, financial, safety, or other professional advice. Do not rely solely on AI output for decisions affecting health, property, safety, or other significant interests.
3. Before publishing, commercially using, or acting on AI output, you must independently review its accuracy, legality, and rights status.
4. The relay service uses keywords, AI moderation models, and third-party content-safety services to identify risk. Some input may be blocked directly, and some may be subject to enhanced review.
5. Moderation may produce false positives, false negatives, delay, interruption, or failure, and may not detect obfuscation, metaphor, variants, or other circumvention. Moderation is not guaranteed to be continuous, complete, or perfectly accurate.
6. When violation records reach the system threshold, an account may enter enhanced-review mode, and later interactions may incur an additional review charge. Blocking or enhanced review is not a legal determination by a court or government authority.
7. The developer may reject requests, restrict online features, suspend service, or take other reasonable measures to comply with law, Steam requirements, upstream rules, or to address fraud, attacks, and serious abuse.

## 5. Model Services and Third-Party Channels

1. Depending on the selected model, the relay service may route requests to DeepSeek, Qwen, MiMo, or to GPT, Gemini, and Claude through third-party relay channels. Current models, providers, channels, and availability are shown in the in-game catalog.
2. User input, system prompts, necessary conversation context, and generation parameters are transmitted to the relay service and then to the selected model provider or channel.
3. For content-safety review, the latest user input or a deterministic sample of it may also be sent to a DeepSeek moderation model and Alibaba Cloud content-safety services.
4. Third parties may process, log, or retain request data under their own terms and privacy policies. The developer cannot control or guarantee their continued availability, response quality, model authenticity, prices, or all data-processing practices.
5. Third parties may change models, interfaces, prices, regional restrictions, or discontinue service. The developer may adjust the model catalog, routing, and service offering accordingly.

## 6. Privacy and Data Processing

### 6.1 Data the Relay Service May Process and Store

- Steam ID and Steam verification status;
- account creation time, promotional balance, licensed-service balance, and balance ledger entries;
- Steam orders, transaction status, refunds, chargebacks, and reconciliation records;
- selected model, input tokens, cached tokens, output tokens, cost, time, and billing source;
- moderation decisions, risk levels, labels, moderation RequestIds, sample hashes, strikes, and enhanced-review status;
- IP address, request times, errors, and technical logs necessary for rate limiting, abuse prevention, troubleshooting, and server security.

### 6.2 Data Not Stored as Business Save Data by the Relay Service

- complete local saves, worlds, characters, and local session files;
- the full original text of conversations.

"Not stored as business save data" does not mean the data never leaves your device. During online generation, request text passes in real time through the relay service, the selected model provider, and necessary moderation services. Whether a third party retains data is governed by that party's practices and policies.

### 6.3 Local Data

1. Saves are stored by default in the `data` directory within the local game installation and are not synchronized to the relay service.
2. The current version does not implement Steam Cloud. Uninstallation, relocation, updates, permission changes, disk failure, or manual file modification may result in save loss or corruption. Back up important local data yourself.

### 6.4 Uses and Necessary Disclosure

1. Data is used for identity verification, AI service delivery, billing, balance and order processing, refund reconciliation, content safety, rate limiting, fraud prevention, troubleshooting, and legal compliance.
2. The developer does not actively sell personal data. Data may be transmitted to model providers, moderation providers, Steam transaction services, and infrastructure providers as necessary to provide the service.
3. The developer may disclose necessary data in response to valid legal, judicial, or administrative requirements.

## 7. Service Licenses, Balance, and Pricing

1. AI interaction balance obtained through Steam is a limited license to use the relay AI service within this game. It is not ownership of software, servers, models, or digital property.
2. A service license is tied to the corresponding Steam account and may not be transferred, resold, shared, or redeemed for cash.
3. Balance is consumed according to the selected model, input, output, cache usage, time period, and current billing rules. Different models may have different multipliers.
4. AI providers continually adjust prices. Costs during peak periods, for example, may cause actual service costs to exceed the amount charged and turn the service into a loss. Model pricing may therefore change with costs. There is no better practical option, and the developer sincerely apologizes.
5. Internal test builds may use Steam Sandbox. Sandbox orders do not represent real charges. A real paid order exists only when Steam expressly displays and completes a real-money transaction.
6. Once real payments are enabled, orders, cancellations, refunds, chargebacks, and transaction status are governed by Steam records and applicable rules.
7. Balance associated with a refunded, charged-back, fraud-reversed, or cancelled transaction may be revoked. If that balance has already been consumed, the account may become negative and later balance may first offset that amount.
8. No model, price, multiplier, or service allowance is guaranteed to remain unchanged permanently. The developer will make reasonable efforts to explain material changes through the game interface, Steam announcements, or another appropriate channel.

## 8. Intellectual Property

1. Rights in the software, interface, original preloaded content, trademarks, and service systems belong to the developer or their respective rights holders.
2. Public-domain works remain in the public domain. Inclusion, organization, or adaptation does not create an exclusive claim over the underlying public-domain work.
3. Third-party music, images, dependencies, models, and other materials are used under their respective licenses or rules, and rights remain with their respective holders.
4. You retain rights recognized by law in your original input and original materials. The developer does not guarantee whether AI output attracts intellectual-property protection, who owns it, or whether it can be claimed.
5. The product's ability to accept a name, genre, or setting does not mean the developer owns that content, is affiliated with the relevant rights holder, or grants you permission to use third-party intellectual property.

## 9. Availability, Changes, and Termination

1. The product and relay service are provided as is. The developer does not guarantee permanent, uninterrupted, error-free service or the continuing availability of any particular model.
2. Networks, Steam, cloud services, model providers, moderation services, maintenance, policy changes, force majeure, or cost changes may restrict, delay, or suspend features.
3. The developer may modify, suspend, or discontinue online features for maintenance, security, compliance, cost control, or service changes. Discontinuation of online service does not affect local content already saved and usable without an online model.
4. If you seriously violate this Agreement, attack the service, commit fraud, or create material legal risk, the developer may restrict or stop providing online service to you and may pursue available legal remedies.

## 10. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

1. To the extent permitted by applicable law, the developer makes no express or implied warranty regarding the accuracy, completeness, fitness, rights status, or results of AI output.
2. The developer is not responsible for unlawful conduct, infringement, moderation circumvention, client modification, identity forgery, service abuse, publication, or commercial use deliberately carried out by a user.
3. The developer does not provide absolute guarantees concerning the acts, failures, data processing, or policy changes of model providers, Steam, networks, cloud providers, or moderation services.
4. To the extent permitted by law, the developer is not responsible for indirect loss, lost expected profit, lost business opportunity, or loss caused by a user's failure to back up local data.
5. Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits liability that applicable law does not allow to be excluded or limited, and nothing releases the developer from liability that the developer must bear by law.

## 11. Changes to This Agreement and Governing Law

1. This Agreement may be updated because of changes to features, data flows, prices, law, Steam rules, or third-party services. An updated version may be provided with the client, in the game interface, through Steam announcements, or by another appropriate channel.
2. Continued use of the updated relay service and online features constitutes acceptance of the updated Agreement, except where mandatory law requires otherwise.
3. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the People's Republic of China, without limiting rights that users have under mandatory consumer-protection laws applicable in their place of residence.
4. The parties should first attempt to resolve disputes through reasonable communication. If that fails, the forum and procedure will be determined under applicable law.

## 12. Contact and Feedback

Service, privacy, infringement, and content-safety concerns may be submitted through the AI Story Engine Steam Community, contact details displayed on its Steam store page, or any contact channel later provided in the game.