Legal

Terms of Service.

The rules that govern access to and use of Dexes.

Last updated: August 2026Version 1.7

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using Dexes ("the Service"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

These Terms apply to all users of the Service. We may update these Terms at any time. Material changes will require you to re-accept the Terms the next time you sign in. Continued use of the Service after any update constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

2. Description of Service

Dexes is a browser-based creative writing and world-building application. It allows users to create and manage fictional worlds, characters, groups, items, locations, nations, maps, timelines, image libraries, long-form written stories organized into Tomes, chapters, and pages, and other story elements. The Service requires a Google account to access.

Optional premium tiers are available through our Patreon integration. Subscribing via Patreon grants access to higher storage limits and additional features depending on the tier. Patreon handles all payment processing; Dexes does not store payment card or financial information. Tier access is governed by your active Patreon membership status and these Terms.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years of age to use the Service. By using the Service, you represent that you meet this requirement. If you are under 18, you should review these Terms with a parent or guardian.

4. Your Account

You sign in to Dexes using your Google account. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your Google account and for all activity that occurs under it. You agree to:

  • Maintain only one active account per person.
  • Provide accurate information when using the Service.
  • Notify us immediately if you suspect unauthorized access to your account.

Shared stories. You may invite other people into a story you own, and you may be invited into theirs. The owner of a story controls access to it: they decide each person’s role, and may change it or remove that person at any time, without notice. You may leave a story you were invited to at any time. Access to a story you do not own is a permission the owner grants, not something you acquire a right to.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms.

Authorized administrators may access account information and a read-only view of world content strictly to investigate support requests or reports of abuse, and may apply bans, tier overrides, or the deletion process described in Section 13. See our Privacy Policy for details on administrative access.

5. Your Content

You retain ownership of all creative content you create using Dexes ("User Content"), including worlds, characters, stories, maps, images you upload, and any other data you input into the Service.

By using the Service, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to store, display, and process your User Content solely for the purpose of providing the Service to you.

Content in a shared story. If you add content to a story owned by someone else, you keep ownership of what you created, but you grant that story’s owner and its other members access to it for as long as it remains in that story, and you accept that it stays with the story if you leave or your access ends. If that matters to you, keep your own copy: the Export Story feature produces one. Equally, when you invite someone into a story you own, you are responsible for what you choose to share with them, and you should not put content in a shared story that you are not willing for the people you invited to see.

You are solely responsible for your User Content and agree that it will not:

  • Violate any applicable law or regulation.
  • Infringe the intellectual property rights of any third party.
  • Contain malware, harmful code, or attempts to interfere with the Service.
  • Include illegal or harmful imagery in uploaded files.
  • Harass, threaten, or harm any individual.
  • Contain child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or any depiction of a minor in a sexual context. We are legally required to report such content to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and will cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities.
  • Depict, defame, harass, or sexualize real, identifiable individuals without their consent.

6. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

  • Use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of these Terms.
  • Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service, Firebase database, or other users' data.
  • Reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Service.
  • Use automated scripts, bots, or scrapers to access the Service.
  • Upload or transmit malicious files, including via the image upload feature.
  • Attempt to exceed storage limits through technical means or account abuse.
  • Impersonate another person or entity.

7. Intellectual Property

The Dexes application, including its design, interface, code, and non-user-generated content, is © Kevin Herr and protected by applicable intellectual property laws. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from any part of the Service without express written permission.

Font Awesome icons used within the Service are licensed under the Font Awesome Free License.

The Outfit, Lora, Uncial Antiqua, Eagle Lake, and Almendra SC typefaces used within the Service are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and are served via Google Fonts. Each is copyright its respective author.

The Service also incorporates open-source software libraries, including CodeMirror, Cytoscape.js, html2canvas, and JSZip, used under their respective open-source licences (MIT and similar). Each remains the property of its respective authors.

8. Copyright Infringement (DMCA)

If you believe that content available through the Service infringes your copyright, you may submit a written notice to us under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Your notice must include:

  • A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf.
  • Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed.
  • Identification of the material you claim is infringing, with sufficient detail for us to locate it within the Service.
  • Your contact information, including name, address, telephone number, and email address.
  • A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
  • A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on their behalf.

Send DMCA notices to: terms@dexes.one

We will review all valid notices and, where appropriate, remove or disable access to the infringing content and notify the user who uploaded it. Users who repeatedly infringe third-party copyrights may have their accounts terminated.

Counter-Notices: If you believe content you uploaded was removed in error, you may submit a counter-notice to the same address containing the equivalent declarations under penalty of perjury. We will restore the content within 10-14 business days unless we receive notice that the original claimant has filed a court action seeking to restrain you from the infringing activity.

9. Privacy

Your use of the Service is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. Please review the Privacy Policy to understand our practices.

10. Service Availability

We strive to keep the Service available and reliable, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted access. The Service may be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance, Firebase downtime, or circumstances beyond our control.

Backups. We take regular encrypted backups of the Service and keep them for a limited period (currently 90 days, as described in the Privacy Policy). Backups exist so that we can recover from failure or data loss on our side; they are not a guarantee against loss, and we cannot promise that any particular item can be recovered or that a recovery will be complete or timely. They are also not a personal archive service: we do not restore individual items on request, and content removed through deletion is not reinstated from a backup. If your work matters to you, use the built-in Export Story feature to keep your own copy.

The Service may be placed into a temporary read-only or unavailable state while we perform maintenance, migrations, or a restore. Where practical we will show a notice in the app beforehand.

We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service (or any part of it) at any time, with or without notice.

11. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTY 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 ERROR-FREE OR THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED.

12. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, WE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOSS OF DATA OR PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Our total liability to you for any claim arising from these Terms or your use of the Service shall not exceed the total amount you have paid us (via Patreon or any other means) in the twelve months preceding the claim.

13. Account Deletion and Termination

Shared stories are not yours to delete. Deleting your account removes the stories you own, together with everything in them — including content other people added while you had shared them. It also removes your access to every story other people invited you to. It does not delete those stories, even ones you contributed to; they belong to their owners, and what you added stays with them.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at our sole discretion, without notice, if we believe you have violated these Terms or engaged in conduct harmful to other users or to the Service.

You may delete your own account at any time from the Profile menu within the app. Deletion removes your creative content from our Firebase database and your uploaded images from our servers. Your Google account itself is not affected by self-service deletion. Note that certain administrative records (such as ban flags or Patreon index entries, if applicable) may be retained for abuse-prevention purposes.

Deletion takes effect immediately in the live Service. Because we keep encrypted backups for a limited period, a copy of deleted content may remain in a backup until that backup expires, for up to 90 days. Those copies are not accessible through the Service, are not used to reinstate deleted content, and are deleted automatically when the backup expires. The same applies to administrator-initiated deletion below.

Administrator-Initiated Deletion: Where we determine an account has violated these Terms, an administrator may suspend the account and schedule it for deletion. A 7-day grace period applies before deletion is carried out, during which the account remains suspended and access to the Service is blocked. If we determine during that period that deletion should not proceed, the suspension may be lifted instead.

Once the grace period expires, your creative content and uploaded images are permanently deleted. Unlike self-service deletion, which leaves the underlying account record intact, the account record itself is also removed.

If you cancel a Patreon subscription, a grace period applies before your tier is downgraded. Once the grace period expires and no active pledge is detected, your account is automatically returned to the free tier.

Inactive Free-Tier Accounts: Free-tier accounts (those without an active Patreon subscription at Copper tier or above) that show no sign-in activity for 12 consecutive months are subject to automatic deletion of your account and all associated User Content without further notice. To prevent deletion, simply sign in to the Service at least once every 12 months. We are not liable for any loss of User Content resulting from inactive-account deletion carried out under this policy.

14. Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with applicable law. Any disputes arising from these Terms or your use of the Service shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts in the territory where the Service is operated.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may revise these Terms at any time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date above. Material changes will require you to re-accept the Terms the next time you sign in.

16. Contact

For questions about these Terms, or to exercise rights under our Privacy Policy, please contact:

terms@dexes.one