These terms are the agreement between you and Dec's Game Vault ("the Vault", "we", "us") for using the app and website at decs-vault.com. By creating an account or using the Vault, you agree to them. If you don't agree, please don't use the Vault. They work alongside our Privacy notice, which explains how we look after your data.

Who we are

The Vault is run by Dec (the site owner), based in the United Kingdom. The easiest way to reach us about anything here — including a copyright issue — is the Contact page.

Who can use it

You need to be at least 13 years old to have an account. By signing up you're confirming you are, and that the details you give us are accurate.

Your account

• Keep your password to yourself — you're responsible for what happens under your account, so pick a strong one and don't share it.
• Tell us (via the Contact page) if you think someone else has got into your account.
• One account per person, please. Don't sign up on someone else's behalf without their say-so.

Using the Vault fairly

The Vault is here to catalogue game collections. Please don't:

• Upload anything unlawful, hateful, or that you don't have the right to share;
• Use it to break the law, infringe someone else's rights, or harass anyone;
• Try to break, overload, probe or bypass the site's security, or hammer it with automated scraping or bots;
• Impersonate someone else, or pass your vault off as theirs;
• Upload content that is illegal, that sexualises or endangers children, that promotes terrorism or violence, or that is defamatory, obscene, harassing, or a serious invasion of someone’s privacy;
• Upload or link to malware, viruses or anything designed to harm devices, the Vault or the people using it;
• Add other people’s personal information without their consent;
• Inject code, scripts or markup, or otherwise interfere with how the Vault works for other people;
• Get around (or try to get around) usage limits, the daily photo-scan allowance, or any account restriction — including by sending automated or bulk submissions, or using the identify features to run up cost or load;
• Copy, reverse engineer, resell or rebrand the Vault, or build a competing or derivative service from it.

If you seriously or repeatedly break these rules, we may suspend or remove your account.

Your collection and content

Your collection is yours. The games, notes, photos and details you add stay yours. To actually run the app, you give us permission to store and display that content back to you — and, if you set your vault to public, to show the parts you've chosen to share (like your list and its stats) to other people. That permission lasts only as long as you keep the content in the Vault; delete it, or your account, and it goes.

You're responsible for having the right to whatever you upload — for example, photos you take of your own items are fine; images you don't have permission to use are not. Public vaults are visible to anyone with the link, so only make public what you're happy for others to see.

Because that content is yours, it’s also your responsibility. By adding anything — a title, a note, a display name or a photo — you confirm you have the right to, and that it doesn’t break these terms, break the law, or infringe anyone else’s rights (including copyright and privacy). If someone brings a claim against us because of content you added, or because you broke these terms, you agree to cover the reasonable, direct costs and losses that genuinely result from it. This never applies to anything that’s our fault, and — if you use the Vault as a consumer — it never takes away the statutory rights the law gives you, or asks you to cover more than is fair and reasonable.

Following, profiles & community

If you make your vault public, other signed-in people can follow it, a short summary of your updates (games added, titles beaten, collection milestones) appears in their activity feed, your profile can be listed in the Discover directory, and your follower and following lists show on your profile. Your handle, display name, avatar and any social links you add are shown publicly on a public profile. A private vault takes part in none of this — it can't be followed, listed or seen by anyone but you.

When you interact with other people here, be decent: don't use following, profiles, feeds or any public field to harass, stalk, threaten, impersonate or spam anyone, and don't put anything into your handle, display name, avatar, links or notes that breaks the fair-use rules above. You can block another account from their profile — that removes any follows between you and hides you from one another across the app, and you can manage your blocks from the account menu. Blocking governs signed-in interactions; it doesn't turn a public page private, so if you want your collection hidden from everyone, set it back to private.

Keeping the Vault safe — content we can remove

We don’t pre-screen or actively monitor what people add, and user content doesn’t represent our views. But to keep the Vault safe and lawful, we may — at our discretion, and without being obliged to — review, refuse, hide, remove or disable any content, and restrict any feature, where we reasonably believe it breaks these terms, is unlawful or harmful, or puts the Vault, its users or anyone else at risk. Where we can, we’ll tell you why; where the law or someone’s safety means we can’t, we may act first and explain after. We’re not responsible for the content our users create, but we will act on it when we’re made aware of a problem.

Reporting something

Spotted something that shouldn’t be here? If you come across content on a public vault that’s unlawful, harmful, infringing, or otherwise breaks these terms, please tell us via the Contact page with a link and a short description. We review reports, and where something genuinely breaks the rules or the law we’ll remove it and — for serious or repeat cases — suspend or close the account behind it. (For copyright specifically, see the takedown steps below.)

When we might need to step in

Where we genuinely need to — to comply with the law, respond to a lawful request, enforce these terms, or protect the Vault, its users or the public from harm or fraud — we may access, preserve or disclose content and account information. We only do this where it’s necessary and proportionate, and we handle any personal data as set out in the Privacy notice.

Photos you scan

The Snap a Photo, Bulk photos and Scan a shelf features use automated (AI) processing to suggest a game — the suggestions can be wrong, so glance over them before you save. Only scan images you have the right to use, and don’t scan anything that contains other people’s personal information or anything unlawful. Photos are used once to identify a game and aren’t stored (see the Privacy notice). There’s a fair daily limit on scans to keep the feature free for everyone — please don’t try to get around it or automate it.

Game data, box art and prices

Game titles, box art, screenshots and console images belong to their respective publishers and owners — the Vault doesn't claim any rights over them, and shows them only to help you identify and organise your collection. Game details and cover art are provided by IGDB.com.

Any price or value information is indicative only. Where you check a price, the Vault sends you out to third-party marketplaces (like eBay, PriceCharting or CeX) that open in your own browser — those figures are theirs, not ours, and we don't guarantee they're accurate, current or what you'd actually get. Nothing in the Vault is financial, investment or valuation advice; treat any number as a rough guide and do your own checks before buying or selling.

Some links take you off the Vault to sites we don't run or control — a game's speedrun.com leaderboard or RetroAchievements page, a marketplace price check, or the social links another user has added to their profile. Those sites have their own terms and privacy practices, and we're not responsible for their content.

Connecting Steam, Xbox, PlayStation and RetroAchievements

You never have to connect anything — manual, barcode and photo entry work on their own. If you do choose to connect an account:

• You're responsible for following the terms of the platform you're connecting, and for only importing or looking up your own library and progress;
• Your credentials are stored encrypted and used only to fetch that library and — where the platform supports it — your own achievement and trophy progress. That progress is displayed only to you unless you choose to share it with your followers (off by default, reversible at any time — see the Privacy notice);
• PlayStation import is unofficial. Sony doesn't provide a public import API, so this uses a community method that can stop working at any time and isn't endorsed by Sony. You choose to use it at your own risk — the app flags this before you connect, and you can catalogue your PlayStation games manually instead. Trophy lookups use the same connection, so the same caution applies;
• RetroAchievements works the same way as the others. Your RA username and web API key are used only to find the right game on their site and to fetch your own achievement progress for it, which is shown on that game's card and credited with a link back to the game's RetroAchievements page. Nothing is fetched for anyone else's account, and nothing is shown to other people unless you turn on Share achievements.

Copyright and takedowns

We respect copyright and expect our users to as well. If you believe something in a user's vault infringes your copyright, send us a notice via the Contact page including:

• What the work is, and that you own it or are authorised to act for the owner;
• Where the infringing material is (the vault link or a description that lets us find it);
• Your contact details;
• A statement that you believe in good faith the use isn't authorised, and that the information you've given is accurate.

We'll review genuine notices promptly and remove or disable anything that infringes. We may also remove content and, for repeat offenders, close accounts.

The Vault itself

The Vault — its code, design, look and feel, branding and original content — belongs to us. Using the Vault doesn’t give you any ownership of it, and nothing here transfers our rights to you. Please don’t copy, reverse engineer, decompile, resell, rebrand, or build a competing or derivative service from the Vault or its design. (Game titles, box art and console images belong to their respective owners, as set out above — this is about the Vault’s own software and branding.)

Paid features

The Vault is free to use. If we ever offer paid or premium features, the price, what's included and any specific terms will be shown to you clearly before you pay, and nothing here takes away your statutory rights as a consumer — including any cancellation and refund rights you have under UK law.

Availability

The Vault is a hobby-run project, provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We work to keep it up and your data safe, but we can't promise it'll always be available, uninterrupted or error-free, and we may change, pause or retire features as the app evolves. We'll try to give notice of anything significant in the app.

No warranties

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Vault and everything in it (including game data, box art and price information) is provided without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied — we don't guarantee it'll be accurate, complete, uninterrupted or fit for a particular purpose. Some of this comes from third parties, and we can't vouch for their data.

Our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we won't be liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of data, profit or opportunity, arising from your use of the Vault. Please keep your own record of anything you can't afford to lose — while we keep rolling backups, the Vault isn't a substitute for your own.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability where it would be unlawful to do so — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't be limited under the law. If you use the Vault as a consumer, you keep all the statutory rights the law gives you.

Ending your access

You can leave whenever you like: open the account menu (top-right avatar) and choose Delete account, or ask us via the Contact page. We may suspend or close an account that seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms. We may also suspend or restrict an account straight away, without notice, where we reasonably believe it’s necessary — for example if it’s being used for something unlawful or harmful, if it’s putting the Vault’s security or other users at risk, or where the law or a court requires it; we’ll lift the restriction if and when the reason is resolved. If your account ends, the licence you gave us to show your content ends too, and your data is handled as set out in the Privacy notice.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time — if we do, we'll change the date at the top, and we'll flag anything significant in the app. Carrying on using the Vault after a change means you're OK with the updated terms.

A few legal odds and ends

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stand. These terms, together with our Privacy notice, are the whole agreement between us about the Vault. If we don’t enforce a rule straight away, that doesn’t mean we’ve given it up. We may transfer these terms if the Vault ever changes hands (for example, if it’s taken over or acquired); you can’t transfer yours without our agreement.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and any dispute falls to the courts of England and Wales. If you're a consumer based elsewhere in the UK or the EU, you still get the protection of the mandatory laws of the place you live.

Image & data credits

Game details and cover art are provided by IGDB.com. Console and accessory photography comes from Wikimedia Commons — the cut-out hardware shots are the public-domain work of Evan Amos (Vanamo Media Library), and the remaining accessory photos are used courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributors under their respective Creative Commons licences. Game titles, box art and console imagery remain the property of their respective owners; the Vault claims no rights over them and shows them only to help you identify and organise your collection.

Get in touch

Questions about these terms, or anything else? The Contact page is the place. We're friendly.