This Acceptable Use Policy (the "AUP") forms part of the Hostd Terms of Service. It sets out what you may and may not do on the Services. We apply it consistently to protect our customers, our network, our upstream providers, and the wider internet. Breach of this AUP is a material breach of the Terms and may result in suspension or termination under section 9 of the Terms.
1. Prohibited Content
You must not host, store, transmit, or link to anything that is illegal where it is delivered (including child sexual abuse material and content inciting violence or terrorism), that infringes another person's intellectual-property rights, that is pirated or cracked, or that targets or harasses individuals on the basis of a protected characteristic.
2. Prohibited Conduct
You must not use the Services to, or attempt to:
- Run or distribute malware, ransomware, viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, keyloggers, rootkits, or any other malicious software.
- Run cryptocurrency miners, distributed-computing payloads, or any workload whose primary purpose is to consume CPU, GPU, memory, network, or storage outside the operation of a game server.
- Conduct denial-of-service attacks, amplification attacks, port scans, traffic floods, brute-force attacks, vulnerability scans against systems you do not own, botnet command-and-control, or any other activity that degrades the Services or third-party networks.
- Send unsolicited bulk email, SMS, or other messaging; operate open SMTP relays, open proxies, or anonymising relays; or engage in phishing, spoofing, smishing, or credential harvesting.
- Probe, attack, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to any system, including ours, our nodes, our staff accounts, or the accounts of other customers. Vulnerability research against our infrastructure is permitted only under our coordinated-disclosure process at support@hostdservers.com.
- Bypass or attempt to bypass resource limits, rate limits, authentication, two-factor authentication, IP blocks, or any other platform control.
- Resell, sub-license, or share a Game Server with third parties on a commercial basis in a way that exceeds the resources allocated to your plan. (You may of course let friends, community members, or paying members of your community play on a server you operate for them.)
- Use the Services in breach of UK, EU, or US export controls, or sanctions issued by the UK, the EU, the US Treasury (OFAC), or the United Nations Security Council.
- Run your own DNS resolver, mail server, exit node, or anonymising service on a Game Server unless we have agreed in writing.
3. Game-Publisher Terms
You must comply with the end-user licence agreement, terms of service, and community standards of any game whose dedicated-server software you host. If a publisher gives us a valid take-down notice based on a breach of their terms, we will act on reasonable notice and tell you what was removed and why.
4. Intellectual-Property Notices (DMCA and equivalent)
We respond to notices that comply with the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and to equivalent UK and EU intellectual-property notices. Send notices to abuse@hostdservers.com with the following information: identification of the work claimed to be infringed; the location on our Services of the allegedly infringing material (server identifier and path or URL); your contact details; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised; a statement under penalty of perjury that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are authorised to act for the rights-holder; your physical or electronic signature.
5. Fair Use of Shared Resources
Plans share underlying hardware. Workloads that sustain near-total resource use for long periods, that exhaust storage I/O budgets, or that materially degrade neighbours on the same host are a breach of this AUP. Where possible we will contact you before taking action and let you choose between reducing the workload, upgrading to a plan with more resources, or migrating to a dedicated node.
6. Rate Limits and Automation
The dashboard, the WebSocket console, and the public APIs are rate-limited per IP and per account. You must not deliberately attempt to exceed those limits. If you have a legitimate use-case that needs higher limits (for example a community-management bot or a status panel for your community), email support@hostdservers.com so we can authorise it.
7. Reporting Abuse
Email abuse reports to abuse@hostdservers.com. Please include: the affected resource (IP address, domain, or server identifier), a precise description of the issue, relevant timestamps in UTC, and any evidence such as log excerpts, packet captures, or message headers. We acknowledge reports within two business days and aim to triage them within five.
8. Enforcement
Depending on the severity of a breach we may, in any combination: (a) contact you to give you an opportunity to fix it; (b) apply rate limits or firewall rules at the network edge; (c) suspend the affected Game Server; (d) suspend the entire account; or (e) terminate your account in accordance with section 9 of the Terms. For an immediate threat to our network, our staff, our customers, or third parties (including active attacks, child sexual abuse material, or compromise indicators) we may act without prior notice and explain afterwards. Where we suspend a Game Server we keep its data in line with the retention rules in our Privacy Policy so it can be restored if the matter is resolved.
9. Law-Enforcement and Government Requests
We cooperate with valid legal process. Routine law-enforcement requests should be sent on official letterhead or from a verified government email domain to legal@hostdservers.com. Emergency-disclosure requests, where there is an imminent risk to life or safety, should be marked "EMERGENCY" in the subject line and will be prioritised. We require valid legal process for content disclosures and will, where lawful, notify the affected customer before producing data.
10. Changes
We may update this AUP from time to time. Material changes will be notified by email at least 14 days before they take effect, except where a change is required sooner by law or to address an active threat. The "Effective" date at the top of this page reflects the latest revision.