Refund Policy

This policy covers purchases made in the Starfire store. Purchases are processed by our payment provider, who is the merchant of record - they are the seller for the transaction, and refunds are ultimately issued by them. We will help you at every step.

Your statutory rights come first

Nothing in this policy limits rights you have under consumer law. If your local law gives you a stronger right to a refund than what is described here, that law wins.

UK and EU: the 14-day right of withdrawal

If you are a consumer in the UK or the EU, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a distance purchase and get your money back.

Digital content is a specific case. When you buy Embers and immediately spend them, you are asking for the content to be supplied at once, and at checkout you consent to that supply beginning immediately and acknowledge that you lose the right of withdrawal once it has been fully supplied. In practice:

• Unspent Embers - the content has not been supplied, so the 14-day right still applies. We will refund them.
• Embers you have already spent - the content has been supplied, so the withdrawal right no longer applies to that part. We may still refund at our discretion, and often do.

UK and EU: subscriptions

The 14-day withdrawal right applies to a subscription too. Because a subscription starts supplying the moment you subscribe, you consent at checkout to it beginning immediately - and if you withdraw within 14 days you pay only for the part already supplied, pro rata, and we refund the rest. That is a different calculation from the all-or-nothing one that applies to Embers, and it is deliberately more generous than our own policy below.

Subscriptions

A subscription is a recurring monthly charge. It is neither spent nor unspent in the way Embers are, so it has its own rules.

• Cancelling is free and immediate, and it is not a refund. Cancel any time and the next charge simply does not happen. Your tier stays active to the end of the month you have paid for.
• We do not refund part of a month. If you cancel halfway through, you keep the rest of the month rather than getting half your money back - including full access to every character, whatever its level.
• A renewal you did not notice and have not used, we will refund. If a month renewed, you did not mean it to, and you have not played since, tell us within 30 days and we will refund it and cancel the subscription. No argument. This is the single most common reason people start a chargeback, and we would much rather just give the money back.
• A failed payment costs you nothing. If the provider cannot take a payment, your tier continues briefly while it retries and then lapses. You are never billed for a lapsed month.
• A child's subscription, we cancel and refund. Where the account holder is under 18 and a parent did not agree to it, contact us: we will cancel the subscription and refund the renewals, not only the first charge. A recurring charge can go unnoticed for months, which is exactly why this says renewals.

Cancelling never deletes anything. No character is removed, no level is taken back and no item is destroyed - see the Terms of Service. What cancelling does do is lock characters above level 10 once the paid month runs out: they cannot be played, and their belongings and vaults cannot be reached, until you subscribe again. Everything is still there and comes back untouched the moment you do.

If you are letting a subscription end and there is something you want to hand to a character you will keep playing, do it before the month runs out - while the subscription is still active, every character is reachable as normal.

Our own policy, beyond that

We will refund

• Unspent Embers, within 30 days. No reason needed. The Embers are removed from your account.
• Anything you did not receive. If a payment succeeded and the Embers or item never arrived, that is our problem to fix - tell us and we will either deliver it or refund it.
• Duplicate charges for the same purchase, always.
• Purchases you did not authorise. Contact us immediately and change your password. We will investigate and work with the payment provider.
• Purchases made by a child without a parent's permission, where the account holder is under 18. Contact us.

We generally will not refund

• Embers you have already spent, or the items and services they bought. A character rename that has been applied has been supplied.
• Purchases on an account closed for breaking the Rules of Conduct. This is deliberate: refunding purchases to accounts closed for cheating or abuse would make enforcement meaningless.
• Regret about a game balance change. We may rebalance the game, and that is part of playing a live game rather than a defect.
• Purchases older than 30 days, other than where the law requires it.

If we close the game

If we discontinue Starfire, we will stop selling Embers, cancel every active subscription so nothing renews, and give reasonable notice before we do - so nobody buys something they cannot use, and nobody is charged for a month they cannot play. See the Terms of Service.

How to request a refund

1. Email support@starfiremud.com from the address on your account.
2. Include the approximate date, the amount, and the transaction reference from your receipt if you have it.
3. Tell us briefly what went wrong.

We aim to reply within three business days. Approved refunds go back to the original payment method and typically appear within 5 to 10 business days, depending on your bank.

You can also contact the payment provider directly using the details on your receipt - they are the merchant of record and can process a refund without us.

Please do not start a chargeback first

A chargeback is slower for you than asking us, and it automatically closes the account it relates to while the dispute runs - which means losing access to characters over something we would very likely have just refunded. Ask us first. If we get it wrong, the chargeback is still available to you.

Contact

Starfire MUD LLC, Arizona, United States · support@starfiremud.com