Terms of Service

Sketchlingo is a multiplayer drawing game for learning vocabulary. One player draws a word in the target language and everyone else races to type it. It runs in seven languages: Dutch, Spanish, French, German, Italian, English and Georgian.

The game is free to play and needs no account. Sketchlingo Pro is a paid subscription that adds rooms you configure yourself and your own word lists. See Sketchlingo Pro.

What we do with data is a separate document: the Privacy Policy.

Sketchlingo is provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not promise it will be up, that it will be free of bugs, or that a game will finish. Concretely:

• Live games run in the memory of one server process. A restart or a new deployment ends the games that are running.
• Drawings, chat and scores are deleted 90 seconds after a room empties. There is no archive and no way to get a finished game back.
• If you play without an account, your progress lives in your browser. Clearing site data, using private browsing, or switching device loses it. Sign in if you want it kept.
• Word lists, features and prices can change. Translations and hints are written by people and can contain mistakes — this is a game, not a certified course.

• An account is optional. You sign in with Google or with a one-time link sent to your email address. There is no password to lose.
• Anyone who can read your inbox or use your Google account can sign in as you, so keep those secure. Everything done on your account is treated as done by you.
• One account per person. Do not use an account that is not yours, and do not sign up with someone else's email address.
• If you are not old enough to agree to terms on your own where you live, ask a parent or guardian to agree for you. You can play the whole game without an account.
• Your display name is limited to 18 characters and goes through the same name filter as every other player's.

Play the game, learn some words, be someone other people want in their room. The rules below are the ones that matter.

Don't

• Draw, write or name yourself anything abusive, hateful, harassing, sexual, or illegal. That applies to chat, drawings, display names, custom words and room names alike.
• Post links or advertising in rooms. In public rooms anything that looks like a link is stripped out automatically.
• Spam. There are hard limits: 5 chat messages per 10 seconds, 25 actions per second, one undo per second, and 5 new rooms per minute from one connection. Going over gets your messages dropped.
• Work around the filters — spaced-out letters, number substitutions and the like. The filter already folds those, and doing it deliberately is still a breach of these terms.
• Try to act as another player, script the game's API, scrape it, or attack it. Every action is tied to a token issued to your own connection; using someone else's is not allowed.
• Give away the answer while you are drawing or after you have guessed it. The game blocks the obvious cases; do not go looking for the rest.
• Put anything private, personal or confidential into a custom word list. Everyone in the room sees those words, and anyone with the room code can join.

• Automatic filtering. In public rooms — Play now and the language Lounges — chat runs through a profanity filter and a link filter before anyone sees it. In private custom rooms only the link filter runs.
• Name filtering.Every player name in every room type goes through the name filter. A name that is a banned word becomes “Player”.
• Host controls.The host of a room can mute a player, so they cannot chat or guess, and kick a player out. Kicks apply to that room while it is alive; the host's call is final in their own room.
• Us. We can remove content, block access to the game, or close an account that breaks these rules. For anything serious we act straight away; for anything ambiguous we will tell you first where we can.

Filters are blunt instruments. They mask words on a fixed list and they will both miss things and occasionally hit an innocent word. They are not a promise that every room is safe.

You keep everything you make. Your drawings, your chat messages and your custom word lists stay yours. We claim no ownership of them.

To run the game we need one narrow permission from you: while a room is live, you let us receive your drawings, messages, nickname, avatar and country flag, hold them in the server's memory, and show them to the other players in that room. Custom word lists are stored in our database for as long as the room exists so the room can use them. That is the whole licence. It is free, it is not exclusive, and it ends when the content does — 90 seconds after the room empties for a game, and when you delete the room for a word list.

We do not sell your content, publish it elsewhere, or use it to train anything. If you save a drawing, the image is made by your own browser and downloaded to your device.

Only post content you have the right to post. If you upload a word list you copied from somewhere with a licence that forbids it, that is on you.

The game itself — the word packs, the artwork, Stompie, the name and the code — is ours. Play with it, screenshot it, share your drawings. Do not copy the product.

Price

• $4.99 a month, or $49.99 a year. Prices are in US dollars. Tax may be added at checkout depending on where you are.
• Both plans renew automatically — every month or every year — until you cancel.
• Payment is handled by Stripe on Stripe's own checkout page. We never see your card number.

What you get

• Rooms you configure: 2 to 24 players, 1 to 10 rounds, 30 to 180 seconds of drawing time.
• Your own word lists: up to 200 words per room, each word up to 40 characters with a meaning up to 60 characters.
• Avatar extras: accessories, backgrounds and an avatar you draw yourself.
• Only the person who makes the room needs Pro. Everyone they invite plays free.

If making rooms is currently open to everyone on this site, you do not need Pro for it and we will not bill you for something the game is giving away.

Cancelling, and when Pro turns off

• Cancel any time from the billing portal, reachable from your profile page. There is no cancellation fee and you do not have to email anyone.
• Cancelling stops the next renewal. Pro keeps working until the end of the period you already paid for.
• Pro is on while your subscription is active, in a trial, or marked past due — that last one gives you room to fix a failed card without losing access mid-game.
• After your period ends there is a 24-hour grace window; once that passes, Pro turns off. Rooms you already made stay in your account, but you will need Pro again to edit them.
• If a payment keeps failing, Stripe will eventually cancel the subscription and Pro turns off.

Price changes

If we change the price, we will tell you before it applies to you, and you can cancel before the next renewal.

Here is the honest position, rather than a policy we invented: there is no automatic refund button in the app. Cancelling stops the next payment and leaves Pro running to the end of the period you already paid for, so as a default we do not refund the unused part of a period.

We will refund you if you were charged by mistake, charged twice, charged after cancelling, or if Pro did not actually work for you. Email hello@sketchlingo.com with the email address you paid with and we will sort it out. Refunds go back through Stripe to the card you paid with.

If the law where you live gives you a refund or withdrawal right — a cooling-off period, for example — that right applies and nothing on this page removes it.

• You: stop playing any time. Cancel Pro from the billing portal. To have your account and its data deleted, email hello@sketchlingo.com — see the Privacy Policy.
• Us: we can suspend or close an account, remove a room, or block access if these terms are broken, if the account is being used to harm other players, or if we are required to.
• If we close your account for breaking these rules, an active Pro subscription is cancelled and not refunded for the remaining period.
• We could also stop running Sketchlingo entirely. If that happens we will give notice on the site and refund any Pro period paid for but not used.

Sketchlingo is a free game with an optional $4.99-a-month subscription. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for lost progress, lost drawings, interrupted games, or anything another player says or draws in a room. If we are found liable anyway, our total liability is capped at what you actually paid us in the 12 months before the claim — which is nothing at all if you never bought Pro.

Nothing here limits liability that the law does not let us limit, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence. Consumer rights where you live still apply.

We update this page when the product changes, and the “Last updated” date at the top moves with it. For a change that materially affects you — the price, what Pro includes, or the rules you have to follow — we will say so on the site rather than editing quietly. Carrying on playing after a change means you accept it.

Sketchlingo is operated by Hatchable (hatchable.io). Email hello@sketchlingo.com for billing questions, bug reports, refunds, or to report another player.