Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these terms

These terms form the agreement between you and the operator of World of Bidders for your use of the service. By creating an account, claiming a territory, or paying for a claim, you accept these terms and the documents they reference: the Rules, the Refund Policy, the Privacy Policy, the Community Guidelines, the Cookie Policy and the Copyright Policy.

If you do not accept them, do not use the service. Before any payment you are asked to confirm the Terms of Service, the Rules and the Refund Policy by version, and that confirmation is recorded with the payment attempt.

The operator of the service is Stimilon LLC, at 30 N Gould St, #54165, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA.

2. Minimum age

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, and at least that age to make any payment. The service is not directed at children, and an account believed to belong to someone under the minimum age is suspended.

If you are old enough to hold an account but not old enough under your local law to enter a binding agreement on your own, you may only use the service with the involvement of a parent or legal guardian who accepts these terms with you.

3. Your account

You are responsible for everything that happens under your account, for keeping your sign-in method secure, and for the accuracy of the contact details you provide. Accounts are personal. Do not share credentials, do not sell or lend your account, and do not operate accounts on behalf of other people to circumvent limits or enforcement.

Tell us immediately if you believe someone else has access to your account. We may suspend an account while we investigate a credible security report.

4. What the service is

The service displays a world map made of administrative territories drawn from open geographic data. Each territory can be held by one account at a time, and the account holding it is shown on it together with a chosen handle, a display name and, optionally, one promotional link.

Everything on World of Bidders is entertainment and promotion. It is a public, priced attention market with a border-shaped surface. Nothing about it is a market in land, securities, or any other regulated asset.

5. What a claim is

A claim is a revocable digital promotional placement inside the service, together with a cosmetic title, for one territory on the map. It exists only inside this product and only for as long as nobody else pays more for it.

A claim is not a licence over the real place, not an exclusive right to promote anything anywhere else, not a contract with any person or body connected to that place, and not a right that survives the service. It grants exactly one thing: your handle, name and permitted link appear on that territory here, until someone takes it from you.

6. No ownership of land

Paying for a territory does not buy land, real estate, property, mineral, mining, water, air, development, access or occupation rights of any kind. You do not acquire title, tenancy, an easement, a lease, or any interest in any real property anywhere in the world.

Never describe a claim on this service as owning a place, buying a place, or holding land. Doing so breaches these terms and the Community Guidelines, and content presenting a claim as real land is removed.

7. No governmental or sovereignty rights

A claim confers no governmental, sovereign, administrative, diplomatic, civic, electoral, military, policing, taxation or judicial authority, and no relationship with any government, municipality, agency, official, or the people who live in a territory.

Borders shown on the map come from open geographic datasets. Displaying a border is a data choice, not a political position, and never an endorsement of any sovereignty claim.

8. Boss titles

The account currently holding a territory is called its Boss. Boss titles are cosmetic labels generated from the level of the territory: Country Boss, Region Boss, County Boss, Locality Boss and Neighborhood Boss. Two aggregate titles also exist: the World Boss, which is the single highest-priced active claim, and the Empire Leader, which is the account with the largest combined value across all of the claims it currently holds.

Titles are descriptive, revocable, and carry no authority of any kind, here or anywhere else. They change the moment the underlying claim changes.

9. Territory levels are independent

Every territory is claimed and priced on its own. Holding a country grants nothing inside that country. Holding every county in a region grants nothing at region level, and holding a region grants nothing over the counties, localities or neighborhoods inside it.

Parent and child territories are separate claims with separate Bosses, separate prices and separate histories. There is no inheritance, no bundling and no discount between levels.

10. Pricing

All amounts are in US dollars. Every target price must be a whole number of dollars. The maximum target price for a single claim is 999,999 dollars.

An unclaimed territory has a starting price set by its level:

• Country, dependency: 100 dollars
• Macroregion, region: 25 dollars
• Macrocounty, county: 10 dollars
• Localadmin, locality, borough: 5 dollars
• Macrohood, neighborhood, microhood: 2 dollars

Once a territory has been claimed, the next target must be at least the current price plus a minimum increment. The minimum increment is the greater of 1 dollar and the current price multiplied by 5 percent, rounded up to the next whole dollar:

minimum increment = max(1 dollar, ceil(current price x 5 percent))

So at a current price of 19 dollars the increment is 1 dollar, at 20 dollars it is 1 dollar, and at 21 dollars it is 2 dollars. You may always set a target higher than the minimum.

A territory's price never decreases. There is no bidding down, no expiry back to the starting price, and no way to hold a territory for less than the last person paid for it.

The server is the only authority on price. Any amount shown in the interface is recalculated from the locked database record when a payment is created, and again when it settles. An amount supplied by a browser is never trusted.

11. Takeovers

Anyone other than the current Boss who wants a claimed territory is a challenger. A challenger chooses a target price that is at least the current price plus the minimum increment, and pays that full target.

When the payment settles, the territory changes hands: the challenger becomes the Boss, the new price is the target they paid, and the previous Boss loses the placement. Being outbid is a normal outcome of the game. The previous Boss is not refunded, because their own claim was delivered in full for as long as they held it.

12. Strengthening your own claim

The current Boss can raise the price of their own territory without giving it up. This is called strengthening the claim.

The current Boss chooses a higher target, subject to the same minimum increment, and pays only the difference between that target and the price they already hold. The territory's price becomes the new target, so the next challenger has to clear a higher bar.

The difference payment is calculated from the price the Boss currently holds. If that price changes before the payment settles, the discount no longer applies, and the payment is refunded rather than applied at a stale figure.

13. Payments and Stripe

Payments are processed by Stripe through Stripe Checkout. Your card details are entered on Stripe's payment page, are handled by Stripe, and never reach this service. What the service receives is identifiers and status information about the payment, not card numbers.

Your use of Stripe Checkout is also subject to Stripe's own terms and privacy notice. Amounts are charged in US dollars. Any card network, bank or currency conversion charge is between you and your bank.

14. Pending payments

Starting a checkout does not claim a territory and does not reserve it. Nothing is held for you while a payment is pending. Several people may have a checkout open for the same territory at the same time, and none of them holds it.

A claim exists only after the payment is confirmed and settled on the server. A pending payment never appears on the map, in the activity feed, or on the leaderboard.

15. Settlement order

Settlement happens on the server, one territory at a time, against locked records, in the order payments are confirmed. The first confirmed payment that still satisfies the pricing rules takes the territory.

Ties do not create two claims. A payment that only equals the current price does not clear the current minimum, so it does not take the territory, and the claim that settled first keeps it.

16. Stale checkouts

A checkout can be paid and still arrive too late. That happens when the territory moved on while the payment was in flight. A paid checkout is stale when either of the following is true:

• the payer is the current Boss strengthening a claim and the territory changed at all since the checkout was created, so the difference calculation no longer holds; or
• the payer is a challenger and their target no longer clears the current price plus the current minimum increment.

A stale payment never takes the territory at a reduced price, and is never quietly kept. It is refunded in full, exactly once. See the Refund Policy.

17. Refunds

The Refund Policy is part of these terms. It describes when money is returned, how automatic stale-payment refunds work, and how to reach support with a payment or claim reference. Being outbid is not a refund event.

18. No transfer

Claims, Boss titles and accounts are not transferable. They cannot be gifted, assigned, inherited, escrowed, wagered, or moved to another account, whether by you or by an arrangement between users. A claim ends where the account that paid for it ends.

19. No resale or secondary market

You may not sell, auction, list, broker, tokenize, or offer a claim, a title, or an account to anyone else, here or on any other platform. We do not recognise, honour, or enforce any such arrangement, and we may end a claim made in furtherance of one.

20. No cash-out

There is no payout, dividend, withdrawal, balance, wallet, credit, points system, or any other way to convert a claim back into money. Money paid to hold a territory buys the placement and the title for as long as you hold them, and nothing else.

21. Not an investment

A claim is not an investment, a security, a share, a fund, a commodity, a derivative, a deposit, a loan, a collectible with a guaranteed market, an NFT, a crypto-asset, a token, or a revenue-share product. Nothing on the service is financial advice, and no return of any kind is offered, implied, or possible.

A rising price is a rule of the game, not a yield. It does not accrue to you and it cannot be realised.

22. What you put on a territory

You choose a handle, a display name, and optionally an avatar, a short pitch and one promotional link. That content is public, appears on every territory you hold, and is subject to the Community Guidelines.

You are responsible for what you submit. You confirm that you have the right to use it, that it is accurate about who you are, and that it does not infringe anyone's rights. Links must be direct and honest about their destination: redirect chains, cloaking, and destinations that differ from what the link implies are prohibited.

23. Licence to display your content

You keep ownership of what you submit. You grant the operator a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, resize and display that content inside the service, in its map, feeds, leaderboards and share images, and in the operational records described in the Privacy Policy.

The licence exists so the product can show your content. It is limited to running and promoting the service, it does not permit selling your content to third parties, and public display ends when the content is removed or your account is closed. Copies may persist in backups and in the immutable records the service keeps of payments and claims.

24. Prohibited conduct

You may not use the service to break the law; to promote illegal goods, services, fraud, or deceptive financial offers; to impersonate a person, company, or public body; to distribute malware or phishing; to post hateful, harassing, sexual, exploitative or violent material; to publish someone's private information; or to present a claim as real land, a real title, or governmental endorsement.

You may not attempt to manipulate pricing or settlement. That includes automated high-frequency claiming intended to disrupt the service, chargeback abuse, payment fraud, coordinated accounts used to evade enforcement, interference with the payment flow, and scraping, probing or load that degrades the service for other people.

25. Moderation

Submitted content is reviewed after publication and on report. Anyone can report a Boss, a link, or a territory from the interface.

Depending on severity we may hide or remove a link, avatar, pitch or handle; restrict an account; suspend it; or close it. Removing content for a rule violation does not by itself create a refund. Money already paid for a claim that has been enforced against is dealt with under the Refund Policy and applicable law.

26. Territory suspension

A territory may be made unclaimable, with claiming disabled and any existing placement hidden, when its boundary data is broken or unresolvable, when the boundary is contested and claiming has been switched off, when the territory is being abused, or when a legal notice requires it.

Where a suspension ends an existing paid claim through no fault of the Boss, the Refund Policy applies.

27. Coverage is not uniform

Boundaries and names come from open geographic sources. Coverage is broad at country and region level and varies enormously at county, locality and neighborhood level. The service does not promise that any particular place is present, correctly named, correctly shaped, or claimable.

A territory that is visible on the map may still be unclaimable if its data is incomplete. Boundaries change over time. Imported updates never delete a paid claim, and a materially changed boundary is reviewed before it moves.

28. Disputed boundaries

Where sources disagree about a border, the service shows the source's default view and keeps every hierarchy the source publishes. This is a data-display decision and not a statement about any sovereignty dispute.

Claiming can be disabled on contested territories. Neither displaying a border nor allowing a claim on it expresses any position about who governs the place.

29. Availability

The service is provided as it is and as it is available. Features may change, pause, or be withdrawn; maintenance and outages happen; and the service may be discontinued. No uptime level is promised.

If the service is discontinued, claims end with it. Claims are not permanent, are not stored outside the service, and have no existence independent of it.

30. Intellectual property

The name, interface, design, code, copy and compiled data presentation of the service belong to the operator or its licensors. You may not copy the product, reuse its interface or content commercially, or present a derivative as the original.

Geographic data is used under the terms of its open sources, with attribution displayed on the map. Those sources keep their own rights and licences.

31. Third-party services

The service depends on third parties, including a payment processor, an authentication and database provider, map rendering libraries, and open geographic data providers. Their availability, terms and changes are outside the operator's control.

Links submitted by Bosses lead to sites the operator does not run and does not endorse. Visiting them is at your own risk and under their own terms.

32. Ending your account

You can stop using the service at any time and ask for your account to be closed under the Privacy Policy. Closing an account ends its claims. It does not create a refund of payments that have already settled.

We may suspend or close an account for breach of these terms, for payment fraud or chargeback abuse, for a legal requirement, or where continuing to serve the account would put the service or other users at risk.

33. No warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy of geographic data, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.

Nothing in these terms excludes a warranty or a right that cannot be excluded under the law that applies to you.

34. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, nor for lost profits, lost opportunity, lost promotional value, lost data, or the value of a claim or a title.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, total liability arising from the service is limited to the amount you paid for the claim the dispute concerns in the twelve months before the event that gave rise to the liability.

These limits do not apply to liability that cannot be limited under applicable law, including liability for fraud, and they do not affect mandatory consumer rights.

35. Governing law

These terms are governed by Wyoming, USA.

If mandatory consumer protection law in your country of residence gives you rights that this section would otherwise remove, those rights continue to apply to you.

36. Where disputes are heard

Disputes arising from these terms or from the service are subject to the following venue: Sheridan County, Wyoming, USA.

Before starting formal proceedings, please contact support so the issue can be looked at directly. Most problems, such as a duplicate charge, a stale payment, or a settlement that looks wrong, are resolved from the payment record.

37. Changes to these terms

These terms are versioned. The current version and its effective date are shown at the top of this page, and previous versions stay available.

When a change materially affects payments, refunds, or what a claim is, the version is raised and you are asked to accept the new version before your next payment. Continuing to use the service after a non-material change means you accept the updated terms. Changes are not applied retroactively to a claim that has already settled.

38. Contact

For questions about these terms, for support, or for a payment problem, write to buzzicra@gmail.com. For privacy requests, write to buzzicra@gmail.com.

Postal contact: Stimilon LLC, 30 N Gould St, #54165, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA.