Welcome to Academy of Heroes ("we," "us," or "our"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") constitute a legally binding agreement between you and Academy of Heroes governing your access to and use of our web application and services (collectively, the "Service"). Please read these Terms carefully before using the Service.

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Who May Use the Service

Teacher Accounts: The Service is intended for use by educators (teachers) who are at least 18 years of age. By registering for a teacher account, you represent that you are at least 18 years old, have the legal authority to enter into this agreement, and are using the Service in a professional educational capacity.

Student Accounts: Student accounts are either created by a registered teacher or self-registered by a student using their teacher's unique Guild Code; in the latter case, the teacher must approve the account before it becomes active. A student cannot register without a valid Guild Code issued by a teacher. Teachers are responsible for ensuring that student use of the Service complies with applicable school policies, parental consent requirements, and applicable laws including FERPA and COPPA. Students access the Service under the supervision and authority of their teacher.

Acceptance on Behalf of Students: By creating or enabling student accounts, the teacher represents and warrants that they have the authority to accept these Terms on behalf of their students and, where applicable, their school or district, and that they have obtained any parental or guardian consent required under COPPA, FERPA, or applicable state law. The teacher accepts these Terms on behalf of each student they enroll, and is responsible for the student's compliance with them. Students themselves are not required to separately accept these Terms.

Co-Teacher Accounts: Teachers may invite co-teachers to assist in managing a classroom. Co-teachers are bound by these Terms and their access is limited to the permissions granted by the primary teacher.

2. Teacher Accounts and Responsibilities

As a teacher using the Service, you agree to:

Provide accurate and complete registration information and keep it up to date.
Maintain the confidentiality of your account credentials and be responsible for all activity that occurs under your account.
Use the Service only for lawful educational purposes and in compliance with your school's acceptable use policies.
Obtain any required parental consents before enrolling students, particularly for students under 13 as required by COPPA.
Ensure that content you create within the Service (quests, missions, questions) is appropriate for your students' age group and complies with applicable educational standards.
Notify us immediately at support@academy-heroes.com of any unauthorized access to your account.

We are not responsible for the educational content created by individual teachers, including but not limited to quest narratives, quiz questions, or mission instructions.

3. Subscriptions, Billing, and Free Trial

Free Trial

New teacher accounts receive a 30-day free trial at the Archmage tier (our highest subscription level) upon registration. No payment information is required to start the trial. At the end of the trial period, your account access will be paused until you select and activate a paid subscription plan. You will not be charged automatically at the end of your trial.

Subscription Plans

Academy of Heroes offers the following subscription tiers for teacher accounts:

Squire — Basic access tier.
Journeyman — Intermediate access tier.
Archmage — Full access tier with all features.

Each tier is available on a monthly or annual billing cycle. Current pricing is displayed on the billing page within your account. We reserve the right to change subscription pricing with at least 30 days' notice to existing subscribers.

Payment

Subscriptions are processed through Stripe (credit/debit card) and PayPal, depending on the payment method you select at checkout. By subscribing, you authorize the applicable payment processor to charge your selected payment method on a recurring basis (monthly or annually) until you cancel. All payments are in U.S. dollars. Academy of Heroes does not store or have access to your full credit card number — all payment data is handled securely by the respective payment processor. You are responsible for ensuring your payment information is accurate and up to date.

Cancellation

You may cancel your subscription at any time through your account billing page or by contacting us at support@academy-heroes.com. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. You will retain full access to your plan's features until that date. Cancellation does not delete your account or your classroom data.

Refunds

Subscription fees are generally non-refundable. However, if you experience a material service failure or are charged in error, please contact us within 14 days of the charge at support@academy-heroes.com and we will review your request in good faith. Annual plan subscribers who cancel within 7 days of their renewal date may be eligible for a prorated refund at our discretion.

Failed Payments

If a payment fails, your account may be downgraded or suspended until payment is successfully processed. We will attempt to notify you via email before any access restrictions are applied.

4. Code of Conduct

All users (teachers and students) agree not to use the Service to:

Engage in any activity that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable.
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service, other user accounts, or Academy of Heroes systems.
Cheat, exploit software bugs, use automated scripts or bots, or otherwise undermine the integrity of the gamification system.
Post or transmit content that is inappropriate, offensive, sexually explicit, or in violation of your school's acceptable use policies.
Impersonate another person, student, teacher, or Academy of Heroes staff member.
Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code of the Service.
Scrape, crawl, or systematically harvest data from the Service.

Violation of this Code of Conduct may result in the immediate suspension or permanent termination of your account without refund.

Reporting Violations

If you encounter content within the Service that you believe violates this Code of Conduct — including inappropriate images, offensive text, or content that puts student safety at risk — please report it immediately to support@academy-heroes.com. We will investigate all reports in good faith and take appropriate action, up to and including removal of the content and termination of the responsible account. We do not proactively monitor all user-generated content, but we take reports seriously and act on them promptly.

5. AI-Powered Features

Academy of Heroes uses artificial intelligence to power certain features of the Service, including but not limited to: quiz question generation, automated answer grading, patrol hint generation, the in-app Oracle helper, story content creation, and AI-generated Hero Chronicle narratives and portraits. These features are provided by third-party AI providers. When you use these features, the content you submit (such as subject topics, grade levels, and student-typed responses) may be sent to these providers to generate a response.

The Service is architected so that only de-identified content reaches AI providers. Student names, email addresses, and account IDs are never included in any AI request. For grading and Oracle flows, the AI receives only the question text and the student's written response. For Hero Chronicle generation, the AI receives the student's chosen character-name pseudonym, gameplay statistics, and the student's composed avatar sprite (a fantasy character built from a shared library of game art — not a photograph or any image of the real student).
AI providers process submitted content under their own published API terms. We select providers whose terms are appropriate for an educational service.
AI-generated content — including questions, hints, narratives, portraits, and grading assessments — may not always be perfectly accurate or appropriate. Teachers are responsible for reviewing AI-generated content before using it with students.
Students are advised in-app not to include personal information in their typed answers.

By using AI-powered features, you acknowledge and accept that content you submit through those features will be processed by the applicable AI provider as described above and in our Privacy Policy.

6. Intellectual Property

Our Property: The Academy of Heroes platform, including its design, software, graphics, game mechanics, and all content created by us, is owned by Academy of Heroes and protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. You may not copy, modify, distribute, or create derivative works from our platform without our express written permission.

Your Content: Educational content you create within the Service (quest hubs, chapters, missions, etc.) remains your intellectual property. By using the Service, you grant Academy of Heroes a limited, non-exclusive license to host, store, and display your content solely as necessary to provide the Service to you and your students.

Royal Library Submissions: When you submit your own original content to the Academy of Heroes Royal Library, you grant Academy of Heroes and other teachers on the platform a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, reproduce, display, distribute, and use that content for educational purposes within the Service. You represent that the content is your original work (or that you otherwise hold all rights necessary to grant this license) and that it does not infringe any third-party rights.

You may not submit third-party copyrighted material that you do not own — including, for example, the full or substantial text of books or articles, song lyrics, or clips and images from films, television, or other media. All Royal Library submissions are reviewed by Academy of Heroes administrators before publication, and we may reject or remove any submission at our sole discretion, including any that appears to contain third-party copyrighted material.

Withdrawing your content. You may remove your content from the Royal Library at any time by unsharing it from your account or by emailing support@academy-heroes.com, and we will honor such requests. However, once your content has been published to the Royal Library, other teachers may import, copy, or save it. If another teacher did so before your content was removed, we cannot retrieve or control those copies — including any a teacher later exports or redistributes outside the Service. The license granted above survives with respect to those copies, and Academy of Heroes is not responsible for content that exists or is shared outside our platform.

7. Role of the Teacher and Limitation of Our Responsibility

Teachers act as the administrators and supervisors of their classroom's use of the Service. Academy of Heroes provides tools and infrastructure; we are not responsible for:

The accuracy or appropriateness of teacher-created educational content.
Student conduct within the platform.
Disputes between teachers and students, or between teachers and parents.
Any decisions made by teachers regarding grades, rewards, or student standing based on in-game performance.

In-game currency (gold) and experience points (XP) have no real-world monetary value and cannot be exchanged for cash or goods outside the platform.

Teacher Responsibility for User-Generated Content

The Service allows teachers to create and publish content including but not limited to: quest narratives, mission descriptions, broadcast messages, forum posts, and image uploads. Teachers are solely responsible for all content they create, upload, or publish within the Service. By uploading or publishing content — including images — you represent and warrant that:

The content is appropriate for the age group of your students.
The content does not violate any applicable law, third-party rights, or your school's acceptable use policies.
You have the right to upload and use the content within this platform.

Uploaded images and published content may be visible to your enrolled students. Academy of Heroes expressly disclaims all liability for any harm — including but not limited to emotional distress, reputational harm, or privacy violations — arising from content that a teacher uploads, publishes, or makes accessible to students through the Service. Teachers who upload inappropriate, offensive, or harmful content may have their account immediately suspended or terminated.

Teacher Responsibility for Student Data Entered into the Service

Academy of Heroes collects only the minimum student information necessary to provide the educational service (see our Privacy Policy). However, the Service provides teachers with free-form content creation tools — including text fields for quest descriptions, mission instructions, broadcast messages, and forum posts — that could theoretically be used to enter student personally identifiable information (PII) such as legal names, grades, addresses, or other sensitive data. To reduce this risk, the Service's enrollment tools and tutorial direct teachers to use a first name and last initial rather than a student's full name.

Teachers are explicitly prohibited from entering sensitive student personally identifiable information into any free-form text or content field within the Service. If a teacher nonetheless enters such information, that teacher bears sole responsibility for any resulting privacy violation, data exposure, or regulatory non-compliance (including under FERPA, COPPA, or applicable state law). Academy of Heroes shall not be liable for any harm resulting from a teacher's unauthorized entry of student PII into content fields not designed or intended to store such information.

Limitations of Chat, Voice, and Screen Privacy

The Service includes communication features such as the Guild Hall chat, forum posts, broadcasts, and real-time voice chat during Battle sessions. Academy of Heroes cannot control, prevent, or be held responsible for:

Any participant using an independent device (phone, camera, screen recorder, or other means) to capture, screenshot, record, or redistribute chat messages, voice conversations, or any content displayed on their screen during use of the Service.
Any participant sharing captured content outside the platform.

Voice chat transmitted through Agora.io is not recorded by us, but we have no technical means to prevent a participant from independently recording audio using a separate device or application. Teachers should make students aware of appropriate conduct expectations regarding communication features, consistent with their school's policies. All participants use the Service's communication features with the understanding that digital communications may be captured by others using means outside our control.

8. Account Termination

You may close your account at any time by contacting us at support@academy-heroes.com. Upon account closure, all associated student accounts and classroom data will be permanently deleted within 30 days.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account, with or without notice, for violation of these Terms, non-payment, or any conduct we determine to be harmful to the platform or its users. In cases of termination for cause, no refund will be issued.

9. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that:

The Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of viruses or other harmful components.
Any errors or defects in the Service will be corrected.
The results obtained from use of the Service will be accurate or reliable.

Data Security and Breach Limitation

Academy of Heroes implements industry-standard security measures to protect the data we collect and store through the Service. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute protection against unauthorized access, data breaches, or cyberattacks. If a breach affecting personal information occurs, we will notify affected schools and teachers without undue delay after we confirm the incident, consistent with applicable law.

Critically, the scope of any potential data breach is limited to the categories of information that Academy of Heroes actually collects and stores through the Service, as described in our Privacy Policy. That information is limited to: teacher account details (name, email, classroom name), billing records held by our payment processors, the student name (in enforced first-name-and-last-initial format) and/or character name entered by the teacher or student, class codes, any school-issued Google email stored for Google Classroom integration, direct messages and Guild Hall / Forum communications between users of the Service, in-game gameplay data, mission submissions and patrol responses retained as FERPA education records, and AI-generated Hero Chronicle content. We do not collect, store, or have custody of teacher school names or school addresses, student home addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, government-issued ID numbers, biometric information, or any photograph of any student.

Where such exposure results from a teacher entering sensitive student personally identifiable information into free-form content fields in violation of these Terms (see Section 7), Academy of Heroes expressly disclaims liability for that exposure, and responsibility for any resulting harm rests with the teacher who entered the data.

10. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Academy of Heroes and its owners, employees, and agents shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to loss of profits, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of or inability to use the Service, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total aggregate liability to you for any claims arising under these Terms shall not exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you paid to Academy of Heroes in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred dollars ($100).

11. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Academy of Heroes and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of or in any way connected with: (a) your access to or use of the Service; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) content you create or submit through the Service; or (d) your violation of any rights of another party.

12. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Nevada, United States, without regard to its conflict of law principles.

Before initiating any formal legal proceeding, you agree to first contact us at support@academy-heroes.com to attempt to resolve the dispute informally. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally within 30 days, either party may pursue resolution through binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, or small claims court if the claim qualifies.

Any legal action or proceeding arising under these Terms that is not subject to arbitration shall be brought exclusively in the federal or state courts located in Clark County, Nevada, and you hereby consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of such courts.

Class Action Waiver: You agree that any dispute resolution will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class, consolidated, or representative action. If a court finds this waiver unenforceable, the class action must be brought in court, not arbitration, and the rest of this arbitration agreement remains in effect.

13. Changes to These Terms

We may modify these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will provide notice through the Service or by email to the address associated with your teacher account at least 30 days before the changes take effect. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using the Service and may cancel your account.

14. Contact Us

If you have any questions about these Terms of Service, please contact us:

Email: support@academy-heroes.com
Website: www.academy-heroes.com
State of Incorporation: Nevada, USA
Mailing Address: Available upon request at support@academy-heroes.com