Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

By ordering or using ShadowNode services (game servers, private VPS, encrypted storage) you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the services.

2. Acceptable Use

You may NOT use our services for: anything illegal under applicable law; malware, phishing, spam, or botnets; DDoS or attacks against others; unauthorized scanning; or distributing content that infringes copyright (DMCA).

Game servers are for hosting Minecraft (and supported games). You may NOT repurpose a game server as a general-purpose proxy, relay, tunnel or VPN — for example running a Velocity/BungeeCord proxy that forwards to external (non-ShadowNode) servers, or a server whose sole purpose is to relay traffic rather than run a game. A proxy is only permitted in front of your own ShadowNode game servers. Servers used this way are suspended without warning.

Violations lead to immediate suspension or termination without refund. We cooperate with valid legal requests but do not proactively monitor storage content. Storage is encrypted at rest; content you protect with end-to-end (zero-knowledge) encryption is not technically readable by us.

3. Free tier

The free Minecraft plan was discontinued on 4 August 2026 and can no longer be ordered. Free Minecraft servers created before that date keep running under the terms below; the free 30 GB Storage plan is unaffected and remains available (1 free storage account per account).

Free resources are best-effort and may be reclaimed on inactivity or abuse. Existing free game servers may sleep when idle.

Inactivity archiving (existing free Minecraft servers): if nobody joins your free server for 14 days, it is archived — your world, settings and server address are saved, and the capacity slot is released. You will see a notice on your order page from day 10. You can restore an archived server at any time from your order page: if capacity is available it comes back within minutes, otherwise you are placed in a first-come, first-served restore queue and it returns automatically when a slot frees up.

Archived worlds are stored for at least 90 days after archiving. We may remove archives older than that, or sooner if the order is cancelled. Paid game servers are never archived for inactivity.

4. Payments

Paid plans are billed in cryptocurrency, prepaid, on a monthly basis. As digital services activated on demand, payments are non-refundable and there are no chargebacks.

If payment is not received or confirmed, the service may be suspended and the server/data deleted.

5. Availability

We aim for high uptime but provide the services "as is" without a guaranteed SLA. Maintenance, hardware faults or network issues may cause downtime.

6. Your data & backups

You are responsible for your own data and backups. If you enable end-to-end (zero-knowledge) encryption you hold the key — if you lose it, your data is unrecoverable. Optional paid backups are available as an add-on.

On termination or cancellation we may permanently delete your servers, volumes and data.

7. Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, ShadowNode is not liable for data loss, downtime, or indirect damages. Our total liability is limited to the amount you paid for the affected service in the last month.

8. Termination

You may cancel at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these Terms, fail to pay, or endanger our infrastructure or other customers.

9. Operator & governing law

ShadowNode is operated by a privately held entity established outside Germany and outside the European Union. The company has no registered seat, branch or permanent establishment in Germany.

Servers and hardware located in Germany are rented third-party infrastructure used solely to deliver the service; their location does not establish a place of business or German jurisdiction over the operator.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the operator’s jurisdiction of establishment. To the maximum extent legally permissible, German law does not govern this agreement and German courts have no jurisdiction; any disputes are subject exclusively to the courts of the operator’s jurisdiction.

10. Changes

We may update these Terms; the date below reflects the latest version. Continued use after changes constitutes acceptance.