You are tuned to a signal that was never meant for you, which is the only kind worth watching.
A little over a century ago your species concluded its long argument with itself. The lights went
down. The Commission — an athletics bureau of considerable reach and questionable taste — was, at
the time, scanning your quadrant for nothing in particular. What it found instead was weather:
a planet gone feral, its animals rebuilt by fallout and spite into something magnificent, and a
scattering of survivors who had decided that the correct response to the end of the world was to
pick a team and settle it in the ring.
The Commission has seen a great many worlds end. Very few of them did it with brackets.
A charter was drawn up that afternoon. Earth was declared an Invitational. The broadcast has not
stopped since.
What reaches you here is the preview feed — the qualifiers, the practice channels, the stands, the
gauntlet. The picture is bad on purpose; the Commission runs everything through the oldest tube in
the fleet because it decided, correctly, that spectacle is information and that a clean image would
only get in the way of the die.
§ 02 — HOW THE CONTEST IS RUN
The Invitational
Two survivors face off. Each fields one survivor and a line of three creatures —
mutated regional fauna, drafted from the survivor's own corner of a broken continent. They take
turns. They roll. They watch the roll. The first to knock out all three of the other's creatures
takes the channel, and the loser's fallen go where all the fallen go (see §04).
The Commission's editorial position is that variance is a mercy. A creature marked
JACKPOT will, on its best day, do something no scriptwriter would allow — and on
its worst, whiff so completely the stands feel it. Both are content. The bureau does not offer a
skip button. It never has. It considers the request rude.
The current charter covers the North America Qualifiers only. Other regions are
pending their own review — the Commission does not air a continent it has not properly consulted.
§ 03 — ON THE CONTESTANTS
The Fauna
Every creature in this Invitational is a real animal of Earth, entered under its
real natural history and then left alone with a hundred years of consequences. The moose that drags
a fused bus stop was, first, a moose that regrows forty pounds of antler a year. The goose that
counterattacks was, first and always, a goose. The Commission finds the true facts funnier than
anything it could invent, and prints them on every file card. Read them. That is half the point.
Because these are real places and real creatures, the bureau maintains a standing rule: no
region airs without a voice from that region in the room. The people of Earth are collaborators
here, not scenery. Where the Commission gets a detail wrong, it wants to be told, and it corrects the
record.
§ 04 — THE SHARED KO ZONE
The Pit
When a creature falls, it does not go to a discard pile. It goes to The Pit — a
single shared hollow that belongs to both sides at once. The Commission collects departed contestants;
it always has; it is, if pressed, the whole reason it stopped here. In one shared Pit, everyone's
dead are just the dead, and a clever survivor with the right marigolds can call one back up for an
encore. Borrow carefully. The Pit keeps its own books.
§ 05 — CREDITS OF THE EARTH PRODUCTION UNIT
The Earth Unit
The Commission does not operate on Earth directly — it finds the local labor too strange and too
good. This signal is assembled by a small human crew working out of kitchen tables, and by a
network of regional advisors without whom no card would be allowed to air.
AshlynVFX & motion — the creative heart; the reason spectacle carries the information.
JohnEngine & compositing — makes the tube run.
TylerProduction, design, and the one holding the camera since day one.
Regional advisorsAsh (Hawaiʻi), Manny (Mexico), Tommy, Sam & Bucci (Canada) — the room that keeps every region honest.
The Commission thanks the Earth Unit for its continued cooperation and its refusal to add a skip button.
§ 06 — STANDARDS & PRACTICES
The Fine Print, As Read By The Commission
A word before the theatrics: the Commission enjoys a costume, but the following is real and
it binds. However grandly it is phrased, everything below is the actual agreement between you and
the humans who run cupqualifier.app — what they collect, what they promise, and what you can
demand back. When in doubt, read it straight. It was written to be honest, not just entertaining.
Reception Terms the terms of service
By receiving this signal you accept its terms. If you do not, adjust your dial elsewhere — no hard
feelings; the door is a door.
The service is free to play and provided as-is. The Cup is an in-development game.
Cards, rules, features, and the very existence of a channel may change or break at any hour.
What may be sold is paint, never advantage. The broadcast may offer optional
cosmetic items — alternate card art, nameplate flair, broadcast styles — that change
only how things look, never how the game plays. No gameplay edge is ever for sale.
In-game points and any cosmetic unlocks are a licence to use virtual items, not property;
they carry no cash value, cannot be sold, traded, or redeemed for money, and may be
adjusted or reset. Where purchases are offered they are handled by a third-party payment processor and
are final except where the law requires otherwise.
You must be 13 or older to receive this broadcast (see Age of Admittance).
Your callsign is yours to wear, not to counterfeit. You sign in through Discord or
a shared access code and are responsible for what happens under your name. The Commission may reclaim
callsigns that impersonate, mislead, squat on reserved names, or read as slurs or harassment.
Conduct in the ring and the stands. Do not cheat, exploit, or tamper with a
match or another receiver's session; do not spam, flood, or attack the signal; do not harass,
threaten, or transmit hateful, sexual, or illegal content in chat or in a name; do not scrape or
overload the service. The Commission may rate-limit, mute, remove, suspend, or ban
at its discretion.
What you transmit, you still own — your chat and bug reports remain yours — but
you grant the crew a license to display and process that content to run the service (relaying chat,
posting results to the community Discord). Do not send what you have no right to send.
What the Commission broadcasts, the Commission owns. The game's design, cards,
art, characters, code, and branding belong to the crew and its collaborators and are licensed to
you only to play the game as intended. No copies, no resale, no knock-offs from these assets.
Records are kept in good faith. Leaderboards, tournaments, and match records may
be corrected, removed, or reset where cheating, abuse, or error is found. Officiating calls are the
Commission's to make.
No warranty; limited liability. A free, in-development signal comes with no
warranties of any kind. To the fullest extent the law allows, the crew is not liable for lost data,
downtime, or indirect or incidental damages from your use of it.
The charter can change. The service or these terms may be modified or discontinued
at any time; material changes update the date stamp below. Access may be suspended or ended for
violations or to protect the signal.
The Watchers' Ledger the privacy policy
The Commission watches everything — it is a broadcast bureau, that is the job — but it keeps a short
ledger and an honest one. It takes only what a match, a leaderboard, and a working defense
against cheats require. It does not sell you. It runs no advertising. You may have your
account and data erased whenever you like.
What is entered in the ledger:
If you sign in with Discord: your Discord user ID,
username, and avatar, used as your identity and to protect your callsign. Your Discord password
is never received; your email is not received unless you explicitly grant it.
When you play: your callsign and match results (wins/losses, survivors and
creatures fielded, match length), which feed the public leaderboard and your history; the
move-by-move match log, kept so bouts can be reviewed, replayed, and balanced (tied to
callsigns, not real names); and chat you send, which is fleeting in the client but may pass
through the server to reach other receivers.
Anonymous audience metrics. To learn how people find and get to know the game, the
bureau keeps a plain, aggregate count of traffic: a random per-visit tab number, which screens get
reached, the name of the site that referred you, and a device-local marker that only tells a
first-time browser from a returning one. There is no cookie, no account, and no IP address
in these metrics, and nothing in them identifies you.
If you ever buy a cosmetic: a third-party payment processor handles your
card details — the Commission never sees or stores your full card number. It keeps only a record that
a purchase happened and what it unlocked.
Automatically, for defense: your IP address and basic connection
metadata, used transiently for rate-limiting, abuse prevention, and debugging — never to build an
advertising profile; and a small amount of browser local storage (your callsign, a session
token, and any points or cosmetics you own) so you stay tuned in and keep your shelf. This is not an
advertising cookie.
Never entered: your full payment card details (a processor handles those), precise
location, or any special-category personal data. The Commission does not knowingly log receivers under 13.
Who else can see the ledger: other players see your callsign, results, live and
replayed matches, and the chat you send. Completed-match summaries and highlight clips may be posted
to the community Discord via webhooks; a bug report carries the recent match context you chose to
attach. Service providers — hosting (Hetzner), and, where enabled, backup, error-tracking, and a payment
processor for any cosmetic purchases — process data on the crew's behalf under their own terms.
Your personal data is never sold or shared for third-party advertising.
How long it is kept: identity data while your account is active; match logs and
leaderboard entries to preserve history and stats (pruned or aggregated over time); security logs
(IP/connection) only briefly, then discarded.
Your rights, plainly: you can ask the crew to delete your account and personal data at
any time — write to the address in §07 (or use the in-app control once it ships) and it will be
removed, subject to any records that must be kept; aggregate, anonymized stats may remain. If you are
in the EU, UK, or California, you also have rights to access, correct, delete, and object to
certain processing — same address to exercise them. You can stop watching and clear your browser's
local storage whenever you wish.
Security: traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS); the game engine is
server-authoritative and secrets stay server-side. No system is perfectly secure, but the crew takes
reasonable measures. Material changes to this ledger update the date stamp below.
Age of Admittance 13+
This Invitational is cleared for receivers 13 and older. The Commission does not
knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13; if you believe a younger receiver has provided
data, write to §07 and it will be removed.
Reach the Commission contact
To exercise a right, report a wrong, or raise a grievance with an official's call, hail the Earth Unit:
Standards & Practices — v1.0 · last updated 2026-07-17 · written to be honest and
to bind. Independent legal review is advised before large-scale paid features launch.
◉ END OF FILE · THE COMMISSION THANKS YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION · PLEASE STAND BY