Terms of Service

These terms cover your use of animalcrossingonline.com (the "site"). The site is a hobby project, a community-built emulator that lets you play your own copy of Animal Crossing for the GameCube in a browser, with optional cloud-save backup tied to a free account.

Using the site means you agree to these terms. If you don't, please don't use the site.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account (16 in the European Economic Area). If you're under the relevant age in your jurisdiction, you can still play without an account, just no cloud saves.

2. Your account

• One account per person. Don't share login credentials.
• Use a real email so you can recover your account if you forget your password.
• Pick a display name that isn't impersonating someone else, isn't hate speech, and isn't intended to deceive other players.
• You're responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us if you think it's been compromised.

3. Bring your own game

We do not host or distribute Animal Crossing. The game is copyrighted Nintendo material; you must supply your own copy of the disc image (an "ISO") that you legally obtained, typically by dumping it from a GameCube disc you own. The site stores your ISO locally in your browser and, if you've signed in and enabled cloud saves, your save data on our servers, never the ISO itself.

You're solely responsible for ensuring you have the right to use any disc image you load. If your local laws don't permit ISO dumping, please don't use the site.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Reverse-engineer, scrape, or hammer the site beyond what a normal player would do.
• Try to break into other users' accounts, save files, or any part of the infrastructure.
• Use the cloud-save endpoints as general object storage. The 5 MB per-snapshot cap exists for a reason.
• Upload or distribute any content you don't have the right to.
• Harass other players via in-game multiplayer features (when those ship).
• Use the site for any illegal purpose.

5. Service availability

This is a hobby project. We do our best to keep it running, but we make no guarantees about uptime, performance, or compatibility with any specific browser or device. The site, your saves, your account, and any other features are provided "as is", without warranty of any kind.

We may add, change, or remove features at any time. We'll try to give reasonable notice for breaking changes (deleting cloud saves, requiring re-registration, etc.) but can't always, since sometimes a thing needs to go.

6. Account termination

You can delete your account at any time by contacting us (see below). When you do, we'll remove your account row, your cloud saves, and any associated session tokens. Some data may persist briefly in S3 versioned backups (see the Privacy Policy); those expire on a 30-day rolling lifecycle.

We can suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms (especially the "acceptable use" section above). We'll try to email you before doing so unless your behavior is actively harming other users or the service.

7. Intellectual property

Animal Crossing, the GameCube, all character names, music, artwork, and trademarks belong to Nintendo and the original rights-holders. This site is a fan project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Nintendo.

The original-source code that powers the site (the WebAssembly port + frontend + backend) builds on the open-source ACreTeam decompilation and the flyngmt PC port and is itself released under the licenses of those projects. See the GitHub repository for full attribution.

8. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent allowed by law, the operators of the site are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the site, including (but not limited to) lost saves, lost playtime, lost towns, hardware damage, or anything else. Make backups; don't trust a hobby project with anything irreplaceable.

9. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms occasionally. The "Effective" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent change. If the change materially affects your rights, we'll try to notify you via the email address on your account.

10. Governing law

Disputes about these terms are governed by the laws of your jurisdiction or ours, whichever is reasonable. We're a small project; we'd rather talk through any issue in Discord than litigate.

11. Contact

Questions, account-deletion requests, or DMCA notices: join the Discord and message a moderator. We'll publish an email contact once volume justifies one.

These terms are not legal advice. They reflect what we think is fair for a community-run emulator; if anything here materially affects you, consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.