Terms of Use
These are the rules for playing Vega Bell. They are short, and they are written so a 12-year-old can read them, because plenty of our players are 12. Using the game means you agree to them.
1. The short version
Play fair, be decent, use one account, keep your password safe. We will keep the game running, keep it free of ads, and never sell your data.
- Anyone can play. Under 13 needs a parent or guardian to agree first.
- No bots, no scripts, no extra accounts to climb the leaderboard.
- Your nickname is public, so keep it clean and keep your real name out of it.
- We can remove scores or close an account that is cheating.
- You can delete your account yourself, at any time, and it really deletes.
2. Who can play
Everyone is welcome. If you are under 13, a parent or guardian has to say yes before you can have an account.
Vega Bell is built for players from about age 6 upwards, all over the world.
If you are under 13, the sign-up form asks for a parent or guardian's email address and their explicit agreement. Without both, the account is not created. If you are a parent, the Parents & COPPA page is written for you.
Some countries set a higher age for online consent, sometimes 16. If that is the rule where you live, treat it as the age here too and ask a parent first.
3. Your account
One account per person, real details where we ask for them, and it is yours to look after.
- One account each. Extra accounts made to fill the leaderboard, farm scores or dodge a suspension are not allowed, and we will remove them.
- Use an email you can actually get into. It is how you sign in and how we reach you about your account.
- Do not share your account. Anything done on it counts as done by you.
- Tell us if something looks wrong. If you think someone else got into your account, email us and change your password.
You can change your settings (your nickname, your country and your optional school year) in the game. Nickname and country changes are limited, so that leaderboards stay recognisable rather than becoming a game of hide and seek.
4. Your password (please read this one)
We genuinely never receive your password, so nobody here can look it up for you. Keep it somewhere safe.
Your browser scrambles your password before it is sent, and we only ever store a scrambled version of the scrambled version. This is unusually good for your security: even if our whole database were stolen, your password would not be in it.
The honest trade-off is that we cannot read it, email it to you, or tell you what it was. Write it down somewhere safe, or use a password manager. If you lose access to your account entirely, email privacy@vegabell.com and we will help as far as we can, but we will never be able to recover the password itself.
5. Playing fair
Spell the words yourself. No bots, no scripts, no looking the answer up, no fake accounts, no abusing bugs.
Vega Bell is a competition, and a competition only means something if everybody is really playing. So, while you play:
- Do it yourself. No scripts, bots, macros or automated tools.
- No looking it up. Do not use a dictionary, spellchecker, search engine or AI assistant to answer a word.
- No sharing answers from the Daily Bell with other players before they have played it.
- No extra accounts to farm scores, boost a friend or dodge a suspension.
- No poking at the game's insides: do not attack our servers, try to pull out the word list, or reverse-engineer the game to find answers in advance.
- Found a bug? Tell us instead of milking it. We would much rather hear from you. Report it to privacy@vegabell.com.
How we check
To spot cheating we look at answer timings, a hashed version of your internet address and a device hash. These are used only for keeping the game honest: never for advertising, never for profiling, never for following you around. See the Privacy Policy.
If something looks wrong, a run can be flagged for review. That may mean a score does not count, or is held back until we have looked. Serious or repeated cheating means the account is suspended.
6. Nicknames and being decent
Your nickname is public and children will read it. Keep it clean, and keep your real identity out of it.
A nickname must be 3 to 16 characters, using only letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. Sign-up rejects slurs, sexual terms and anything pretending to be Vega Bell staff.
Two things we ask, sincerely
- Do not use your real name. Or your school, your town, or your birth year. Your nickname is visible to everyone in the world, including adults you do not know. We say this at sign-up too.
- Remember who is reading. Six-year-olds play this game. Pick something you would be happy for one of them to see.
We may change or remove a nickname that breaks these rules, or that gives away a child's identity. If we do, we will tell the account holder.
There is no chat, no messaging and no comments in Vega Bell. The nickname is the only thing you type that other players ever see, which is deliberate, and one of the reasons the game is safe for young children.
7. Scores and leaderboards
Leaderboards show your nickname, country, score, Orbit and tier. We can correct or remove scores that are not genuine.
When you finish a run, your result may appear on a leaderboard. Other players see five things: your nickname, your country, your score, your Orbit and your tier. Nothing else. (Your school year shows only if you switched it on yourself.)
The Daily Bell is one entry per player per day. That is what makes it comparable.
We may recalculate, hold, or remove scores when a run has been flagged, when a bug produced an impossible result, or when someone has been cheating. We would rather a leaderboard be right than be quick.
If your account is deleted, past leaderboard rows stay but are anonymised, so historical standings for everyone else still make sense.
8. The words and the audio
Words, definitions and pronunciations come from Wiktionary and dictionaryapi.dev. They are good, but they are not a school authority.
The word list, definitions and pronunciation audio originate from Wiktionary and dictionaryapi.dev, and we store copies on our own servers so the game is fast and your browser never has to contact them.
Language is messy. Spellings differ between countries, dictionaries disagree, and a recording may not match the accent you know. We accept alternative spellings where we can, and if you think we have got a word wrong, tell us. We do fix them.
Vega Bell is a game, not an official dictionary. Please do not use it to settle a homework argument or a real spelling bee ruling.
Source material is used under [UPSTREAM LICENCE AND ATTRIBUTION: CONFIRM BEFORE LAUNCH].
9. What belongs to us, and what you may do with it
Play as much as you like. Do not copy the game, scrape the word list, or sell anything from it.
The name Vega Bell, the mascot, the artwork, the sounds, the game design and the code are ours (or licensed to us). You get permission to use all of it for one thing: playing the game, for yourself, not for profit.
Please do not copy the game or its artwork, extract or republish the word database, run the game inside another product, or charge anyone for access to it.
Sharing a screenshot of your score with friends is absolutely fine, and we hope you do.
10. Privacy
No ads, no trackers, nothing sold. The full details are in the Privacy Policy.
How we handle your information is set out in the Privacy Policy, which is part of these terms. The headline: there is no advertising, there are no analytics trackers, we do not sell or share your personal information, and you can download or delete everything from inside the game.
Parents should read the Parents & COPPA page. Cookies (there is one) are on the Cookies page.
11. Suspending or closing accounts
We may suspend an account that breaks these rules. You may delete yours whenever you want, and it really deletes.
What we may do
If an account is used to cheat, to abuse other players, to impersonate staff, or to attack the service, we may remove scores, reset a nickname, suspend the account, or close it. For anything other than an obvious attack we will try to warn first and explain what happened. If you think we have made a mistake, email us. A person will look again.
What you may do
Go to Settings → Delete my account, type your nickname to confirm, and your account, sessions, word history and runs are deleted from our database. It is permanent and it cannot be undone. Old leaderboard rows remain, anonymised.
A parent or guardian can do this for a child's account too (see the parents' page).
12. If the game changes
We will keep improving the game, which means things sometimes move, change or go away.
Vega Bell is a living game. We add words, tune difficulty, redesign screens and occasionally retire a feature that is not working. Scores, tiers and Orbits may be recalculated when the scoring system is improved.
If we ever have to shut the service down, we will give as much notice as we reasonably can, and long enough for you to export your data first.
13. Promises we can and cannot make
We work hard to keep the game running and correct, but we cannot promise it is perfect or never offline. Nothing here takes away rights your law gives you.
Vega Bell is provided as it is. We do not promise that it will always be available, always be free of bugs, or that every word, definition or pronunciation is flawless. We do promise to take it seriously and to fix what we can.
To the extent the law allows, we are not responsible for losses that come from things we could not reasonably foresee, for example a lost streak during an outage, or a score that changes when scoring is corrected. We do not limit our responsibility for anything that cannot legally be limited, including death or personal injury caused by our negligence, and fraud.
Nothing in these terms removes rights the law gives you. If you are a consumer, or a child, or a parent acting for a child, your statutory rights stand whatever this page says.
14. Which country's law applies
One country's law governs these terms, but if you are a consumer, you keep the protections of your own country.
These terms are governed by the law of [GOVERNING LAW: COUNTRY OR STATE], and disputes go to the courts of [COURTS / JURISDICTION].
If you are a consumer living somewhere else, this does not take away the protections of your own country's consumer law, and you can normally bring a claim in your local courts.
If you ever have a problem, please email us first. Almost everything is solvable that way, and it is far quicker than lawyers.
15. Changes to these terms
We will tell you in the game before an important change starts, and the date at the top always says when this page last changed.
We will update this page as the game develops. The "Last updated" date at the top tells you when it last changed.
For a change that actually affects you (new rules, new limits, anything that changes what you agreed to), we will show a clear notice in the game, and email account holders, before it takes effect. If you do not agree with a change, you can delete your account. We will not quietly rewrite a page and pretend it always said that.
16. Contact us
Email privacy@vegabell.com. A real person reads it.
- Email privacy@vegabell.com
Tell us your nickname and what happened. Never send us your password. We could not use it, and we do not want it.