DIGITAL HORIZONSOFTWARE STUDIO

Terms of Service

Last updated: October 22, 2026

1. Acceptance of Terms

By downloading, installing, or using any application or game developed by Digital Horizon Software LLC ("we", "us", or "our"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms") and our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use our products.

These Terms apply to the following products:

  • Open Verdict — an AI-driven detective fiction mobile game
  • Laneworks — a mobile game
  • SC Ship Database — a mobile application, and its Hangar Exporter browser extension
  • Our websites, digitalhorizonsoftware.com and openverdict.app

These Terms are the single terms of service for all of the products above. They replace the separate Open Verdict terms previously published at openverdict.app/terms.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years of age to use our products. If you are under 18, you confirm that you have the consent of a parent or legal guardian.

3. User Accounts

Laneworks offers optional sign-in via Google. By signing in, you allow us to access your display name, email address, and profile photo through Firebase Authentication, and your progress and scores are saved to your account. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials.

SC Ship Database does not require or support user accounts. Its Hangar Connect feature lets you sign in to Roberts Space Industries' own website inside the app; that sign-in is with RSI, under RSI's terms, and we never receive your RSI credentials.

Open Verdict requires you to sign in using Sign in with Apple, Google Sign-In, or email and password. Your signed-in identity is used to associate game progress with your account across devices. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials.

4. In-App Purchases & Subscriptions

Laneworks offers an in-app purchase processed through Google Play or the Apple App Store. All purchases are subject to the store's terms and refund policies. We do not store your payment information. All sales are final unless otherwise required by applicable law or the store's refund policy.

Open Verdict is free to download through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Every account can play the free cases at no cost and replay them as often as it likes, using prepared questions that do not use AI. Every account also receives free questions it can use to ask the characters its own questions live, in any case. The Bureau Files cases are played with questions, which are sold through in-app purchases (processed through the Apple App Store, Google Play Billing, and RevenueCat).

What a question is. One question is one answer a suspect or staff character gives you live — whether you type the question, choose it from Suggestions, or present evidence. Opening a case is free; each live answer uses one question. A question is used only after the character's answer has been produced; if the AI service fails to answer, no question is used. Questions are not used on the tutorial or on prepared questions.

  • Quiet Desk — a one-time purchase that permanently turns off advertisements between cases and adds questions.
  • Starter Pack — a one-time purchase that adds questions.
  • Detective's Edition — a one-time purchase that adds questions.
  • Bureau Premium — an auto-renewing monthly subscription that includes a monthly allowance of questions. The monthly questions refresh on each renewal; questions you don't use in a month do not carry over. Your subscription will automatically renew unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current billing period. You can manage and cancel it through your Apple App Store or Google Play account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid term.

Prices and the number of questions in each pack are shown in the app and on the store listing at the time of purchase.

Every paid Open Verdict purchase also turns off advertisements between cases.

How questions work. Questions from one-time purchases and in-game rewards are added to your balance and do not expire. A Bureau Premium subscriber's monthly questions are used first, then their balance. If you run out partway through a case, your account receives up to 10 extra questions so you can finish it; these extra questions are restored whenever you next receive questions. Questions can be used on any Bureau Files case, including replays, and on cases added later. Questions have no cash value, cannot be transferred between accounts, and are not refundable except as required by law or through the platform store's refund process. If a purchase is refunded, the questions it added are removed from your balance (never below zero).

Free features. Every account receives some features at no cost, including the free cases, a starting balance of questions, and one free voiced case. Free features may be limited per day, for example the number of free voiced cases available each day, or live questions for accounts without a purchase during periods of very high demand. A free feature that is unavailable one day becomes available again the next. A free feature you have already received is never taken away, and nothing you have purchased is affected by these limits. We may change or end free features for new accounts at any time.

EU/UK/EEA 14-Day Right of Withdrawal. Under EU Directive 2011/83/EU and analogous UK consumer protection law, consumers in the EU, UK, and EEA have a 14-day right of withdrawal for distance purchases of digital goods. By initiating any in-app purchase in Open Verdict, Laneworks, or any other Digital Horizon Software product where the purchased digital content is made available to you immediately upon purchase, you expressly consent to the immediate delivery of the digital content and you acknowledge that you waive your 14-day right of withdrawal once the content has been delivered, as permitted under Article 16(m) of the Directive. Refunds for completed purchases remain subject to the platform store's refund policies (Apple App Store or Google Play) as described elsewhere in these Terms; we do not separately process refunds.

All Open Verdict purchases are subject to the platform store's terms and refund policies. We do not process or store payment information. Questions that have been used cannot be restored except through the platform store's refund process.

5. Game Data & Cloud Saves

Laneworks stores your progress on your device and, if you sign in, also in Google Firebase linked to your account. Its online features, including scores, leaderboards, daily challenges, and shared maps, also run on Google Firebase. We make reasonable efforts to maintain this data, but we do not guarantee that save data will be preserved indefinitely, and we are not responsible for progress lost from a device you never signed in on.

SC Ship Database stores your loadouts, favorites, and fleet locally on your device only. Ship ratings are stored on our server as described in the Privacy Policy.

Open Verdict stores account data, detective profile, game progress, accusation history, and active case session state on our backend (Railway with PostgreSQL) and links it to your signed-in account. We make reasonable efforts to maintain this data, but we do not guarantee that save data will be preserved indefinitely. We are not responsible for data lost due to service interruption, account deletion, or other circumstances outside our reasonable control.

6. Open Verdict — Fictional Content & AI Disclaimer

Open Verdict is an interactive detective fiction game. It is a work of fiction, intended solely for entertainment, and is not a source of legal, medical, financial, factual, or any other advice. You acknowledge and agree that:

  • All characters, crimes, events, and storylines depicted in Open Verdict are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, real events, real organizations, or real locations is coincidental and unintended. The game's content is not a representation of, nor a commentary on, any real-world person, event, or organization.
  • Significant portions of the game's content are generated by artificial intelligence. The in-game characters you interact with — including each suspect, Captain Reeves, the Coroner, and the Forensics specialist — are implemented as AI agents with role-locked personas and case-specific knowledge, running on Anthropic's Claude. Character portraits, evidence imagery, and other artwork are produced in advance by our team using third-party AI image models (fal.ai's FLUX models); no player data is sent to them. AI-generated content (dialogue and imagery) may be inaccurate, surprising, unexpected, internally inconsistent, or may repeat patterns; it may at times produce content that does not align with the authored case design.
  • The game incorporates content filtering and AI safety mechanisms, but no such system is perfect. We do not guarantee that AI-generated dialogue or imagery will always be appropriate, accurate, or in keeping with the intended tone of the game.
  • Nothing said by an in-game character — including the Captain, the Coroner, the Forensics specialist, suspects, witnesses, or any other AI-generated voice — constitutes legal, medical, psychological, financial, investigatory, or professional advice of any kind. Statements by in-game characters are scripted or AI-generated fiction and must not be relied upon for any real-world purpose.
  • The game depicts fictional crimes (including violent crimes) for narrative purposes. We make no claim that the depictions are accurate to real criminal investigation procedures, forensic science, legal process, or police practice in any jurisdiction.
  • The game may reference real historical eras, settings, or general cultural contexts; these references are for atmospheric and entertainment purposes and are not claims of historical accuracy.

AI Disclosure (jurisdictional notice): In compliance with applicable laws and platform policies, we disclose that Open Verdict makes substantial use of generative artificial intelligence to produce in-game content. This disclosure is also presented to players at first launch.

7. Intellectual Property

All content in our products — including but not limited to graphics, audio, text, code, and game mechanics — is the property of Digital Horizon Software LLC and is protected by applicable intellectual property laws. You may not reproduce, distribute, modify, or create derivative works from any of our content without prior written permission.

SC Ship Database uses publicly available data related to Star Citizen, a game developed by Cloud Imperium Games. Star Citizen and related trademarks are the property of Cloud Imperium Games. SC Ship Database is a fan-made tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cloud Imperium Games.

8. User-Shared Content

User-shared maps are generated by the game engine and shared voluntarily. By sharing a map, you grant Laneworks a perpetual, worldwide license to host and display it. Laneworks may remove shared maps at any time.

9. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

  • Reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble any of our products
  • Exploit bugs, glitches, or vulnerabilities to gain an unfair advantage or disrupt services
  • Use automated tools, bots, or cheats in our games
  • Interfere with the operation of our products or their underlying infrastructure
  • Use our products for any unlawful purpose
  • Use Open Verdict's in-game chat or interrogation features to attempt to elicit harmful, illegal, or personally identifying content from the AI; to attempt to manipulate the AI to break character or disclose system prompts; or to attempt to use the AI as a general-purpose chatbot outside of normal gameplay

10. Third-Party Services

Our products integrate with third-party services including Google Firebase, Google AdMob, Google Play Billing, the Apple App Store, RevenueCat, Anthropic, Expo, Ko-fi, Railway, Cloudflare, and, for SC Ship Database, the Star Citizen Wiki, FleetYards, and Roberts Space Industries. Your use of these services is governed by their respective terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for the practices of third-party services.

11. Disclaimers

Our products are provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that our products will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Digital Horizon Software LLC shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of or inability to use our products, including but not limited to loss of data, loss of profits, or interruption of service.

Our total liability for any claim arising from your use of Open Verdict shall not exceed the greater of fifty (50) U.S. dollars or the cumulative amount you paid for Open Verdict in-app purchases in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim. Our total liability for any claim arising from your use of any of our other products shall not exceed the greater of fifty (50) U.S. dollars or the amount you paid for that product in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law. Where the law does not permit a limitation in this section, that limitation applies only to the extent the law allows.

13. Termination

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to our products at any time, with or without notice, for conduct that we believe violates these Terms or is harmful to other users or our business.

You may stop using our products at any time. Open Verdict and Laneworks players can delete their account from inside the app (in Open Verdict: Profile → Delete account permanently). To delete your account data without the app, please visit our account deletion page or contact us.

14. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated revision date. If a change materially affects you, we will tell you in the product or by email before it takes effect. For other changes, continued use of our products after they are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. In Open Verdict, you must accept updated Terms in the app before you can keep playing. For Laneworks and SC Ship Database, we will tell you about material changes in the app or by email.

15. Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of North Carolina, United States, without regard to conflict of law provisions.

16. Dispute Resolution

Informal resolution first. Before either of us starts a court case, we agree to try to resolve the dispute informally for at least thirty (30) days after one of us sends the other written notice describing it. You can send notice to support (at) digitalhorizonsoftware.com; we will send notice to the email address on your account. Any deadline for bringing the dispute is paused during those thirty days. This step applies to every claim, including small claims, except where the law requires otherwise.

Courts. If we can't resolve a dispute informally, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of our products will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Wake County, North Carolina, and you and we consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Nothing in this section limits any right you have under the consumer-protection laws of the place where you live to bring a claim in your local courts.

Small claims. Either of us may instead bring an individual claim in small claims court, if it qualifies.

No arbitration. These Terms do not require arbitration. Earlier versions of our terms did. We will not enforce any arbitration provision in an earlier version of our terms against anyone, whether or not they have accepted these Terms; disputes are handled as described in this section.

17. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Digital Horizon Software LLC, its officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, or expenses (including reasonable attorney's fees) arising from your breach of these Terms or your misuse of our products.

18. Electronic Communications

Using our products, sending us emails, and completing online forms are electronic communications. You consent to receive electronic communications from us, and you agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures, and other communications we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing.

19. California Users and Residents

If a complaint with us is not satisfactorily resolved, you can contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, California 95834, or by telephone at (800) 952-5210 or (916) 445-1254.

20. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision shall be deemed severable and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of the remaining provisions.

21. Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and Digital Horizon Software LLC regarding your use of our products and supersede any prior agreements.

22. Contact Us

If you have questions about these Terms of Service, please contact us at support (at) digitalhorizonsoftware.com or by post:

Digital Horizon Software LLC
176 Mine Lake Ct
Raleigh, NC 27615
United States of America