Terms of Service

The below is a universal Terms of Service for the Poffins Closed Species.
Poffins is an Art Roleplaying Game (ARPG).
The group is casual, and players are not obligated to participate in the group activities.

By joining Poffins, you agree and understand that you have to abide by rules set by the Owner and team.

Overview

  • Poffins refers to entirety of the closed species site and community created by Lait (Creator). Poffins is currently owned by Moif (Owner).
  • The Owner should be credited for the Poffins species, and all included sub-species.
  • Poffins art assets (including but not limited to items, shop art, trait art and NPCs) should not be copied, traced, edited, or used outside of the context of the website or in the creation of other art.
    • NPCs may be included in personal lore and art associated with your Poffins characters.

Participating in Poffins

  • You must be over 18 to join and participate in Poffins. If you're under 18, you will be banned from the group until you're verifiably 18 or for a period of 8 years if we are unable to verify.
  • You and your designs will be grandfathered in with limited participation if you joined before the Poffins 18+ rule. You may not enter the Poffins Discord server until you turn 18.
  • You do not need to have a Poffin to be active within the group.
  • You may not create an Poffins character without a Make-Your-Own (MYO) slot.
  • Poffins reserves the right to deny services to anyone.

Design Ownership and Use

  • Poffins are for personal use only.
    • This also means that they cannot be sold as, for, or associated with NFTs or Cryptocurrency.
  • Co-ownership of Poffins are not allowed.
  • You may use your Poffin in any setting or world and are welcome to make AU/Alternative forms for your Poffin. AU/Alternative forms will not be considered official or accepted in group activities.
  • You may choose to make a Poffin using an existing design as the base.
  • Poffins may not be used to promote content or appear in art that is racist, anti-LGBTQA+, anti-semitic, bigoted, offensive/fetishistic, or otherwise intentionally hateful/harmful content.

Design Terms of Service

All designs will follow the original designers Terms of Service. Designs fall under the terms stated below if there is no ToS provided by the original designer.

    • Paid Designs: May be resold, traded or gifted.
    • Traded Designs: Maybe be traded or gifted.
    • Resale value increases if commissioned art** is included
    • Free/Traded art does not count to the value.

Commissioned art is specified as any art paid for in real-life cash or virtual currency with a static, confirmable exchange rate. Commissioned art must be of your Poffins-specific design. If you create your own art for your Poffiin and have established commission values then this may also count under this rule.

Design Creation

    • Art from avatar/character makers/AI/Generated Art (ex. GaiaOnline, PicCrew, ArtBreeder) is never permitted. Art must be your own.
    • The use of free bases or bases you have purchased the rights to use is permissible.
      • You must credit the base artist with masterlist art made with that base.
    • Traced or Stolen art is never permitted.
    • The usage of celebrity, existing Intellectual Property (IP), copyrighted © or trademarked ™ media/material in your CS design is not allowed
      • There is more leniency granted to these kinds of elements being included as a part of clothing and accessories
    • Do not copy existing Poffins or characters for your design. If a design is found to be based on a canon character or someone else's oc - even after being approved - the design will have to be edited or will be discontinued from the species.

Design Resales, Trading, Gifting

The use of Poffins as trading fodder, or creating MYOs purely with the intent to sell as adopts (without prior permission as a GA), is discouraged.

Poffin design permissions are tagged as Sale, Trade, Gift, or a combination of the three. All transfers must be notified on this website. This website will note whether a Poffin may be traded or resold in the "Trading and Reselling" section. Reselling only applies to real world currencies (ie USD), Trading is inclusive of trading for this or other Closed Species currencies or items.

Free Designs

    • Inclusive of prizes, gifts, trades, or free MYOs, may not be resold for monetary value but can be gifted or traded.
    • You may only sell such designs if there is other commissioned art.

Redesign of Poffins

    • Redesigning requires obtaining permission from the original designer - ToS stating allowed redesigns counts as permission.
    • Any Trait changes with respect to these redesigns will require the appropriate items.
    • Characters must still remain identifiable as the original design.

Additional Note 
We also want to remind everyone that changing an aspect of your design in a fashion that could hurt a minority group or culture should not be done; this includes but is not limited to lightening a design's skin tone.

If you find your desired redesign may cross over this line or are unsure and prefer to be safe - you may wish to obtain a new MYO slot or trade the existing design for an MYO Slot with equivalent traits. We want to assist you in making your dream designs without causing harm to others, even if unintentional. Poffins aims to build an inclusive community, and part of this is helping others understand when something could be harmful and working together to learn and find a path forward. We thank you for and appreciate your understanding.

Voiding of Poffins

    • Please reach out via on site claims, or a help ticket in the discord server if you wish to have a Poffin voided
    • Voiding Poffins requires obtaining permission from the original designer - ToS stating allowed voiding counts as permission.
    • While we don't ask for trait removal redesigns as a part of voiding, if a design contains elements that are considered unique to the Poffins universe (Including but not limited to our unique flora, fauna, or accessory items), the Poffins team may request that these elements be removed from the design before voiding occurs.
    • You may bring removed designs back into the species. These designs will be assigned a new MYO number and require a MYO ticket & appropriate traits.

Payment

  • Payment is taken through PayPal (USD) unless stated otherwise. 
  • You may also use our In-Game-Currency (Star Tears (ST)) to purchase items.
  • You may trade or gift ST to other users. ST and other in-game items may not be sold for real world money.
  • Payments are to be made within 24 hours unless otherwise discussed.
  • Sales are final, and there will be no refunds. Buybacks may be discussed but are unlikely.
  • Trait changes, the retirement of traits, or changes to the species are not retroactive. No refunds are given for such a situation.
  • Charge-backs will result in an automatic blacklist and revocation of ownership of the design.

Conduct within the Group

Bringing up Concerns

Please feel free to bring any and all concerns to the moderation team via our ticketing system. This includes any user or hacker-related statements/warnings. Some of these may be hoaxes, and we want to make sure you get the correct information.​

Member Conduct

    • We are an LGBTQIAP+ friendly server and CS.🏳️‍🌈
    • Be civil and polite to each other, even if you don't get along with the other party. Please respect people's boundaries. 
    • We have a range of people from different cultural and country backgrounds and ages; this may shape how they type and perceive the world. Always be respectful and ask for clarification if you're unsure of what's being said.

Content Guidelines

The Poffins discord server is a community server, and while we aim to be a fun group that allows for plenty of non-Poffin content discussions, certain topics or extended conversations may be considered off-topic and be asked to be taken to DMs, including but not limited to:

    • Extended conversations about other Closed Species - some light conversation directly about a closed species, or discussion of characters in another closed species is acceptable.
    • Discussion of potentially triggering subjects (ex., suicide, mental health)
    • NSFW posted outside the designated channels
    • Excessive Gore - When posting things related to blood/gore, please spoiler the image and indicate why the picture is spoilered, and avoid posting images that have a high level of detail to the gore or of extreme injuries.
    • While this is an 18+ community many aspects are still publicly available, so we require profiles be kept at a PG-13 level or less on the Poffins World site and in the Discord server, and links to outside content must be appropriately flagged if applicable.

Harassment / Abuse

We do not stand for harassment of any form. Transgressions in this category can result in a two strike warning. This includes but is not limited to:

    • Targeting users for making off-brand Poffins or making unsolicited offers on designs, slots, or traits belonging to other members
    • Giving feedback or crit without another member's explicit go-ahead. 
    • Tracing art, stealing art, or art bashing without permission from the original creator of the art bashed images.
    • Comments regarding negative perceptions of yourself, your art, your MYOs or items, or compliment fishing.
    • Bragging regarding adopts or obsessive monitoring of any Poffin-related payment.
    • Any form of begging another user for Art, Items, Designs, or otherwise.
    • Scamming behavior such as low-balling, ghosting a trade or mis-representing value.
    • Site abuse, ie actively taking advantage of mistakes / bugs in the system to acquire currency, items, and/or characters in an illegitimate way.
      • Discovering mistakes or bugs by "using" them once or twice and then good-faith reporting to the staff team is not considered rule breaking.
    • Mini-Modding (aka when member acts like a member of our staff without being one).

Self-Promotion

    • Advertising of non-Poffin related adopts, art, character purges, and all similar should be kept to other-sales-and-trades in the discord server.
    • Direct CS advertisement is on permission basis, please feel free to open a help ticket in the discord server to request permission!
    • Affiliates are granted implicit permission to advertise their species. Reach out to the Owner if interested in Affiliation.

Strike System

You will be given up to three formal strikes if you break specific rules frequently, actively engage in drama with other members in this server, or cause harm to other outside members in a way that could affect our community.  

We do not monitor and will not monitor what our members post or do to their designs outside of our sphere (Discord, Toyhouse).

We reserve the right to remove you from the community immediately if you eggregiously violate our rules. The following is an example of things that could result in your removal:
  • Abuse or harassment of our moderators in ANY form. 
  • Starting fights with our moderators or owner.

Strike Forgiveness

Strikes may be dropped from your record a year from when they were added. It is the responsibility of the user to request of the staff team that the strike be dropped. If a user has more than one strike they must wait a minimum of an additional six months between dropping further strikes regardless of when the strike was acquired.

Discord Conduct

Poffins has a Discord where members may meet and interact with each other. All of the rules above also apply to the Discord.
Last updated: 2 December 2024, 17:51:39 EST