Aequorea

Legal

Terms & Conditions

Last updated: 14 September 2026

Version 2026-09-14

Please read these Terms carefully. They are a legal agreement between you and Aequorea Victoria. By creating an account, submitting art, or using the Website, the App or the Museum, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the Services.

In short: you keep every right to the art you share. You give us permission to show it inside Aequorea (the Website, the App and the Museum) and to make the technical copies needed to do that. You promise the work is yours to share. We review everything before it goes live, and we can remove content or close accounts that break these rules. Nothing here limits the rights you have as a consumer under EU or Portuguese law.

Contents

1. Who we are and what these Terms cover

The Services are operated by Aequorea Victoria, an independent studio established in Portugal ("Aequorea", "we", "us", "our"). You can reach us at support@aequoreavictoria.com.

These Terms apply to all of the following (together, the "Services"):

  • the Website at aequoreavictoria.com, including the public artist and artwork pages and the art submission forms;
  • the App, our mobile application for iOS and Android;
  • the Museum, our shared 3D virtual space distributed through Steam; and
  • any related account, community space, feature or service we make available under the Aequorea name.

Where a specific feature has its own additional rules (for example the App store terms in Section 15, or the Museum rules in Section 8), those rules apply together with these Terms. If they conflict, the more specific rule wins for that feature.

2. Definitions

  • "Account" means the single Aequorea account that gives you access to the App and the Museum.
  • "Work" means any painting, drawing, image, photograph, song, recording, film, video, book, text or other creative content that you submit, upload, link to, hang or otherwise make available through the Services, together with its title, description, cover art, credits and other metadata.
  • "Community Content" means everything else you post that is not a Work: comments left on Museum walls, chat, room names, usernames, profile pictures and bios.
  • "Your Content" means your Works and your Community Content together.
  • "Classic Works" means historic works of art shown in the Museum or the App that are in the public domain or that we display under a separate licence, and which are not submitted by users.

3. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 16 years old to use the Services, or older if the law where you live requires a higher age for you to agree to terms like these without a parent or guardian. If you are under 18, you confirm that a parent or legal guardian has reviewed these Terms and consents to your use of the Services. We may ask for proof of age or parental consent at any time and may suspend an Account until it is provided.

One Aequorea Account opens both the App and the Museum. When you create an Account you agree to:

  • give accurate information and keep it up to date;
  • create only one Account for yourself and not use another person's Account;
  • keep your login details secret and tell us promptly at support@aequoreavictoria.com if you believe your Account has been compromised; and
  • accept responsibility for everything that happens through your Account, unless it results from our fault.

You may not choose a username that impersonates another person or artist, infringes someone else's rights, or is offensive. We may reclaim or change usernames that break these rules, that are inactive, or where a rights holder shows a better claim to the name.

You may use the Services for personal, non-commercial purposes, and, if you are an artist, to present and promote your own Works. Using the Services on behalf of a company, label, gallery or other organisation means you confirm you are authorised to bind that organisation to these Terms.

4. The Website, the App and the Museum

The Website presents Aequorea, lets you submit art for review, and publishes public pages for artists and their Works. Anyone on the internet can view those public pages without an Account.

The App is a pocket gallery: paintings, photography, music, film, books and text in a chronological feed. There are no likes, follower counts or ranking; the feed shows what people chose to share, in the order they shared it. You need an Account to post.

The Museum is a single, shared 3D space that you walk through together with other visitors. Classic Works hang beside Works submitted by users. You can talk to other visitors, leave comments on the walls, invite friends, explore rooms, and hang your own Works in a room of your own. The Museum is distributed through Steam and is subject to the Steam Subscriber Agreement in addition to these Terms (see Section 14).

A Work you share from one door appears on the other: something you upload on your phone can be shown in the Museum, and vice versa, unless a feature lets you choose otherwise.

Early access. Parts of the Services, and in particular the Museum, may be offered as pre-release, early access, beta or "coming soon". Those parts may be incomplete, may change substantially, may contain bugs, and may be withdrawn. Rooms, comments, layouts and other in-Museum state may be reset between versions. We will try to give reasonable notice of resets that affect your Works.

5. Submitting art

You can submit a Work through the forms on the Website (currently for images, music and film), through the App, or by hanging it in the Museum. When you submit, you provide details such as the title, a description, your artist name and bio, an email address, the year, country, the tools you used, and credits such as producers, writers, cast, composers or record label.

Review before publication. Every submission is reviewed by a person before it goes live. Review is not an endorsement, and it does not shift responsibility for the Work from you to us. We may accept, decline, ask for changes to, delay, or later remove any submission at our discretion and without having to give a reason, though we will usually tell you why. We will let you know by email when a Work is published or declined.

Externally hosted files. The Website forms ask you for links to files (for example an image URL, a song URL, a poster or trailer URL) rather than the files themselves. You are responsible for that hosting: the link must point to a file you are entitled to make available, and if the file moves, changes or disappears, the Work may stop displaying correctly or be removed. We may make and keep a copy of the linked file so that the Work continues to display inside the Services (see Section 6).

Accurate information. The details you give must be true and not misleading. In particular, you must credit everyone who should be credited, and the "tools used" you declare must honestly describe how the Work was made, including any generative or AI tools. Submitting someone else's work under your own name, or knowingly giving false credits, is a serious breach of these Terms.

Links to other platforms. You may add links to your Work on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or similar services. Those links must point to the same Work, and we do not control or endorse those services.

Limits. We may set and change reasonable limits on the number, size, format, duration or resolution of Works, and on the size of a Museum room, without notice.

6. Your rights in your work and the licence you give us

You keep your rights. You own, and continue to own, all copyright and other rights in your Works and your Community Content. We do not claim ownership of anything you create. Nothing in these Terms transfers any right in Your Content to us or to anyone else.

The licence. So that we can operate the Services, you grant Aequorea a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence, for as long as Your Content is on the Services (and afterwards only for the time reasonably needed to remove it from backups and caches), to:

  • host, store, copy, back up and transmit Your Content;
  • reproduce, display, perform and make Your Content available to the public within the Website, the App and the Museum, including on the public artist and artwork pages;
  • make the technical adaptations needed to show it well, such as resizing, cropping for thumbnails, transcoding audio and video, generating previews and waveforms, and mapping an image onto a wall, frame, screen or other surface in the 3D Museum;
  • show Your Content to other users, including in shared rooms and feeds, together with your artist name; and
  • allow the service providers we use (for example hosting, content delivery, storage, e-mail and app distribution providers) to do the above on our behalf.

Promotion. We would like to be able to show Your Works when we talk about Aequorea: for example in screenshots or trailers of the App or the Museum, on our social media, on the Website, or in store listings. This use is included in the licence above, is always accompanied by your artist name where the format allows, and is never a sale or separate licensing of your Work to a third party. If you would rather your Work were not used in promotion, e-mail support@aequoreavictoria.com and we will honour that for future materials.

What the licence does not allow. We will not sell your Work, license it to others outside the Services, mint it as an NFT, or use it to train a machine-learning model without your separate, explicit consent. We will not modify the artistic substance of your Work; the adaptations above are technical only.

Moral rights. You remain entitled to be identified as the author of your Work, and we will always credit you by the artist name you gave us. Nothing in these Terms asks you to waive moral rights that cannot be waived under the law that applies to you, including Portuguese law.

Other users. By sharing a Work on the Services you allow other users to view it, play it and experience it inside the Services, and to capture it incidentally in screenshots, recordings and live streams of the Museum or the App made for personal, non-commercial use or for commentary (see Section 8). You do not grant other users any right to download, copy, sell or reuse your Work outside the Services, and any other use requires your permission directly.

Feedback. If you send us ideas or suggestions about the Services, you agree we may use them without any obligation to you. This does not apply to your Works.

7. What you promise about your work

Each time you submit or share a Work you confirm that:

  • you created the Work yourself, or you hold all the rights and permissions needed to share it here and to grant the licence in Section 6;
  • where the Work has co-authors, performers, producers, writers, a record label, a publisher, a distributor or any other contributor or rights holder, every one of them has agreed to it being shared here on these terms;
  • where the Work depicts identifiable people, you have their permission (or that of a parent or guardian for minors) to show them, and the Work does not invade anyone's privacy;
  • the Work does not incorporate third-party material (samples, stock footage, fonts, photographs, text) beyond what your licence to that material, or the law, allows;
  • sharing the Work does not breach any exclusivity, publishing, label or distribution agreement you have with someone else;
  • the Work and its metadata are accurate and do not misrepresent who made it or how; and
  • the Work complies with Section 9 (Acceptable use) and with the law.

If any of the above stops being true, you must remove the Work or tell us at once at support@aequoreavictoria.com.

8. Museum rules

The Museum is a shared space. Everything you do there, say there, write on its walls or hang in your room can be seen and heard by other visitors, who may be anywhere in the world.

  • Your room. A room you are given is yours to curate within the limits we set. It stays part of the Museum: we may move, resize, temporarily close or remove rooms, and we may remove any Work from a room for the reasons in Section 11.
  • Comments and chat. Comments on walls, voice and text chat are Community Content. Be respectful. Comments may be moderated, hidden or deleted, and may be removed when the Museum is updated.
  • Other visitors. Treat others as you would in a physical museum. Harassment, stalking, blocking or trapping other visitors, spamming, or disrupting other people's experience is not allowed. Please do not record, transcribe or publish other visitors' voice chat without their consent.
  • Screenshots and streaming. You may take screenshots and record or live-stream your own visits for personal, non-commercial purposes or for commentary and review, provided you credit the artists whose Works appear and do not present their Works as your own. You may not extract, rip or redistribute Works, textures or Museum assets, or use recordings to create stock imagery, datasets or training material.
  • Classic Works. Historic works shown in the Museum or the App are in the public domain or displayed under licence. We do not claim ownership of them. Reproductions, photographs, frames, descriptions and 3D presentations of them are ours or our licensors', and Section 13 applies to those.
  • Secrets and experiences. Some rooms, experiences and content are hidden or unlockable. Exploiting bugs, using cheats, modified clients or automation to access, alter or copy them, or to gain an advantage over other visitors, is not allowed.
  • Steam. Your use of the Museum through Steam is also governed by Valve's Steam Subscriber Agreement and Steam rules of conduct. Valve is not a party to these Terms and is not responsible for the Museum.

9. Acceptable use

You may not submit, share or do any of the following on the Services:

  • content you do not have the right to share, including other people's art, music, film, text or photographs, or works that copy them so closely as to infringe;
  • content that is illegal where you are or where we are, or that promotes illegal activity;
  • sexually explicit or pornographic content, or any sexual content involving minors (which we will also report to the authorities). Artistic nudity may be accepted at our sole discretion and may be labelled, restricted or age-gated;
  • content that incites or glorifies violence, terrorism or self-harm, or that is gratuitously gory;
  • hate speech, harassment, threats, bullying, or content that demeans people because of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age or similar characteristics;
  • content that impersonates any person or organisation, or that misrepresents who made a Work;
  • other people's personal data (addresses, phone numbers, private messages, identity documents) without their consent;
  • advertising, spam, affiliate links, contests, or unsolicited promotion, other than presenting your own Works and linking to where they can be found;
  • malware, or links to malicious, deceptive or phishing sites;
  • attempts to bypass the review process, moderation, rate limits, captchas or age restrictions, or to create Accounts by automated means;
  • scraping, crawling, mass-downloading or otherwise extracting Works or user data from the Services other than through features we provide, including for the purpose of training machine-learning models;
  • reverse engineering, decompiling, modifying or creating derivative works of the App, the Museum or the Website except where the law expressly allows it despite this restriction;
  • interfering with the operation or security of the Services, or accessing them through any means other than the interfaces we provide.

We respect the rights of artists and other rights holders and we expect our users to do the same. If you believe a Work or other content on the Services infringes your copyright or other rights, please send a notice as described on our Copyright and DMCA page (which also explains how to file a counter-notice if your own work was removed) to dmca@aequoreavictoria.com. We handle notices under the EU Digital Services Act and, where applicable, the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

When we receive a sufficiently precise and substantiated notice, we will act promptly and diligently, which normally means disabling access to the content while we assess the notice, informing the user who shared it, and giving that user the chance to respond. We may restore content if we receive a valid counter-notice or if the complaint is withdrawn or appears unfounded. We are not able to referee ownership disputes; where the parties disagree, the matter is for them (or a court) to resolve.

Repeat infringers. We will terminate the Accounts of users who repeatedly infringe the rights of others, and we may terminate after a single clear and serious infringement. Knowingly sending false notices or counter-notices may make you liable for damages and may lead to the suspension of your Account.

11. Moderation, enforcement and appeals

We review submissions before publication and may review any content at any time afterwards. If Your Content or your conduct breaks these Terms or the law, or creates risk or legal exposure for us or for other users, we may, depending on how serious the matter is:

  • decline, hide, label, age-restrict, move or remove content;
  • limit features, for example the ability to submit, comment, chat or hang Works;
  • suspend your Account temporarily; or
  • terminate your Account and refuse future registration.

Where reasonably possible we will tell you what we did and why, and how you can appeal. You may appeal a decision about your content or Account by writing to support@aequoreavictoria.com within six months of the decision; a person will review the appeal. We may act without prior notice where the content is clearly illegal, where there is an urgent risk of harm, or where we are required to do so by law or by a court or authority.

We do not use algorithms to rank, promote or bury content. Automated tools may be used to detect spam, malware, known illegal material and abuse; decisions affecting your Account are reviewed by a person.

12. Removing your work and closing your account

Removing a Work. You may remove any of your Works at any time using the tools in the App or the Museum, or by e-mailing support@aequoreavictoria.com from the address you submitted with. We will remove it from public view within a reasonable time and, subject to Section 6, from our systems. Copies may persist for a limited period in backups, caches and in screenshots or recordings already made by other users, and promotional materials already produced may continue to exist.

Closing your Account. You may close your Account at any time. Closing it removes your Works and profile from public view and ends the licence in Section 6 except as described there. Community Content such as comments on Museum walls may be kept in anonymised form so that other people's conversations still make sense, unless you ask us to delete it.

Termination by us. We may close your Account for a serious or repeated breach of these Terms, if required by law, if we discontinue the Services, or after a prolonged period of inactivity (we will try to warn you by e-mail first). If we terminate without cause we will give you reasonable notice and a chance to save your details.

Sections that by their nature should survive (including 6 in respect of copies already made, 7, 10, 13, 19, 20, 21 and 22) continue to apply after removal or termination.

13. Our intellectual property

The Website, the App and the Museum, including their software, 3D environments, architecture, textures, models, animations, sounds, design, text, graphics, logos, the names "Aequorea", "Aequorea Victoria" and "Byound", and all Classic Works reproductions and their presentation, are owned by us or our licensors and protected by copyright, trade mark and other laws. Except for Your Content, and except as expressly allowed in these Terms, you may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, publicly perform or create derivative works from any part of the Services.

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the App on devices you own or control, and to use the Museum through your Steam account, in each case for personal, non-commercial purposes. Any open-source components included in the software are licensed under their own terms.

14. Third-party platforms and services

The Services depend on, and link to, services run by other companies. Their terms and privacy policies apply to your use of them, and we are not responsible for them:

  • Steam (Valve Corporation) distributes the Museum. Purchases, refunds, Steam accounts, friends lists, achievements and community features are governed by the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
  • Apple App Store and Google Play distribute the App. See Section 15.
  • Discord hosts our community server at https://discord.gg/bNHJtgVR2k. Discord's terms and community guidelines apply there, together with Section 9 of these Terms.
  • Google reCAPTCHA protects our forms from abuse and is subject to Google's privacy policy and terms.
  • Google Firebase provides our hosting, authentication, database, functions and analytics infrastructure.
  • External file hosts and music or video platforms you link to (for example Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you host your image and media files) are independent of us.

We do not endorse and are not responsible for third-party sites, content or services, including those linked from a Work, a profile or a comment.

15. Additional terms for the App

If you downloaded the App from the Apple App Store, the following also applies, as Apple requires. These Terms are between you and Aequorea only, not Apple. Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the App. In the event of any failure of the App to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any) to you; to the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation. Aequorea, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claims by you or a third party relating to the App, including product liability claims, claims that the App fails to conform to legal or regulatory requirements, consumer protection claims, and intellectual-property infringement claims. You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you in respect of the App.

If you downloaded the App from Google Play, Google's terms of service and the Google Play terms apply in addition to these Terms, and Google is not responsible for the App or for these Terms.

You are responsible for any data charges and for keeping your device and operating system supported. We may stop supporting older versions of the App or operating systems, and features may differ between platforms.

16. Privacy and your data

Our Privacy Policy explains in full what personal data we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it and the rights you have. It forms part of these Terms. We are a Portuguese company and process personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Portuguese law. In summary:

  • What we collect. Account details (e-mail, username, password credentials); the information you enter when submitting art (artist name, bio, e-mail, country, year, credits and any links); Your Content; Community Content; technical data such as device type, app version, IP address, crash reports and usage events collected through Firebase Analytics; and reCAPTCHA signals used to detect abuse.
  • Why. To run the Services and show your Works (performance of our contract with you); to review submissions, moderate, prevent abuse, keep the Services secure and improve them (our legitimate interests); to e-mail you about your submissions and important changes (contract and legitimate interests); and to meet legal obligations, for example handling copyright notices.
  • What is public. Your artist name, bio, country, the year and credits of a Work, your Works themselves, your username, and your comments in the Museum are visible to other users and, on the Website, to anyone on the internet. Your e-mail address is never shown publicly.
  • Who else sees it. The service providers listed in Section 14 process data on our behalf. Some of them are outside the EU; where that happens we rely on the safeguards the GDPR provides, such as adequacy decisions and standard contractual clauses.
  • How long. For as long as you have an Account or your Works are published, and afterwards for as long as we need it to meet legal obligations, resolve disputes and keep backups, after which it is deleted or anonymised.
  • Your rights. You can ask to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal data, to restrict or object to its processing, and to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent. Write to support@aequoreavictoria.com. You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority, in Portugal the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD).

If this summary and the Privacy Policy differ, the Privacy Policy prevails on questions of personal data.

17. Fees

The Website, the App and submitting art are currently free of charge. The Museum may be sold through Steam at a price shown on its store page, and Steam's purchase and refund rules apply to it. We may introduce optional paid features in future; we will tell you the price and terms before you pay for anything, and nothing you already have will become paid without your agreement. We do not pay artists for sharing their Works on the Services, and we do not charge them.

18. Changes to the Services and to these Terms

The Services. Aequorea is a small, evolving project. We may add, change, suspend or discontinue features, rooms or whole parts of the Services, and we may set limits on them. If we discontinue a part of the Services that holds your Works, we will give you reasonable notice by e-mail or in the app so that you can keep copies.

These Terms. We may update these Terms to reflect changes in the Services, the law, or how we operate. We will post the new version here with a new "last updated" date and version number. For material changes we will give at least 30 days' notice by e-mail or through the App or Museum before they take effect, unless a change is needed sooner to comply with the law or to address a security or abuse problem. If you do not agree with a change, you may close your Account before it takes effect; continuing to use the Services afterwards means you accept the new Terms.

19. Disclaimers

We work hard to keep Aequorea available and safe, but we are a small studio and the Services (in particular anything marked early access, beta or coming soon) are provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we make no promises that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that any Work will remain available or be displayed in any particular way, and we exclude implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

Works and Community Content are created by users. We review submissions, but we do not verify the ownership or accuracy of every Work and we are not responsible for what users share. Views expressed in Works and comments are those of their authors.

Consumers in the EU: nothing in this section limits the statutory guarantees you have under the law of the country where you live, including the rules on conformity of digital content and digital services.

20. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for wilful misconduct or gross negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you.

Subject to that paragraph, and to the extent permitted by law: (a) we are liable only for losses that are a foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or of our failure to use reasonable care and skill; (b) we are not liable for loss of profits, revenue, business, goodwill or data, or for indirect or consequential loss, except where you are a consumer and such loss was foreseeable; (c) we are not liable for the loss, corruption or unavailability of Works or other content, and you should always keep your own copies; and (d) our total liability to you for all claims arising out of the Services in any 12-month period will not exceed the greater of the amounts you paid us in that period and EUR 100.

We are not liable for the acts or omissions of other users, for Steam, Apple, Google, Discord or other third-party platforms, or for files you host elsewhere and link to.

21. Your responsibility for your content

You are responsible for Your Content and for the promises you make in Section 7. If a third party brings a claim against us because a Work or other content you shared infringes their rights, breaches Section 9 or breaks the law, and the claim results from your breach of these Terms, you agree to reimburse us for the reasonable costs, damages and legal fees we incur as a result, to the extent permitted by the law that applies to you. We will tell you promptly about any such claim, let you take part in the defence, and not settle it in a way that admits fault on your part without your consent. This clause does not apply to the extent the claim results from our own fault.

22. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Portugal. If you are a consumer living in another country of the European Union or the European Economic Area, you also benefit from any mandatory provisions of the law of that country, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country. Otherwise, the competent courts of Portugal have jurisdiction, without prejudice to any right you have to bring proceedings elsewhere under mandatory law.

Talk to us first. Most problems can be solved quickly and informally. Please write to support@aequoreavictoria.com before starting any formal proceedings, and we will try to resolve the matter within 30 days.

Alternative dispute resolution. If you are a consumer and we cannot resolve a dispute, you may refer it to a consumer dispute resolution body. In Portugal, a list of authorised entities is published by the Direção-Geral do Consumidor at consumidor.gov.pt. Consumers in Portugal may also use the electronic Complaints Book (Livro de Reclamações Eletrónico) at livroreclamacoes.pt.

23. General

  • Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Copyright and DMCA policy, our Privacy Policy and any feature-specific rules we present to you, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Services.
  • Severability. If any part of these Terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the rest continues to apply, and the invalid part will be replaced by a valid one that comes closest to its intent.
  • No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
  • Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms. We may transfer ours to a successor of our business, provided that your rights are not reduced and we tell you.
  • Language. These Terms are written in English. If we provide a translation and there is a conflict, the English version prevails to the extent the law allows.
  • Force majeure. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
  • No third-party rights. Except as set out in Section 15, no one other than you and us has any rights under these Terms.

24. Contact

Questions about these Terms, requests to remove a Work, appeals and privacy requests: support@aequoreavictoria.com. Copyright notices: dmca@aequoreavictoria.com.

Questions about these terms

support@aequoreavictoria.com