Terms of Use

Last changed: 13 October 2026

These terms apply when you use Midnight Cafe at midnightcafe.app. Please read them once. They are short on purpose. If a point is unclear, write to kontakt@philipp-schickling.de.

1. Who runs Midnight Cafe, and what it is

Midnight Cafe is run by Philipp Schickling, Berlin, Germany, as a private project. The address and contact details are on the imprint page. In these terms, "we" means him.

Midnight Cafe is a free browser game. You walk around rooms with a small character, chat with other players, furnish rooms, trade items and show your own projects. The other people in it are real players, and most of what you see in the rooms was written or placed by them.

2. Agreeing to these terms

By using the game you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it. The privacy page says what data the game keeps. It is part of how the service works but is not part of these terms.

3. Who may use it

Midnight Cafe is not meant for children under 16. Please do not use it if you are under 16. To create an account with email you confirm with a tick box that you are 16 or older and accept these terms and the privacy page; on the start page, guests and Google or GitHub sign-in confirm the same by playing. If you are under 18, use it only if a parent or guardian knows about it and is fine with it.

4. Accounts and guests

You can play in three ways:

As a guest. No email is needed. A guest account lives in your browser. If you clear your browser data, switch browser or device, or the guest account is removed, your guest room, beans and items can be lost for good. We cannot restore them. Guests cannot upload pictures.
With email and password. Use a real address you can read, and keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.
With Google. The same rules as for an email account.
With GitHub. The same rules as for an email account.

Give true information when you register. Do not create accounts to get around a block or a mute. One person should not run many accounts to farm beans or to push their own content.

5. House rules

Midnight Cafe is a cozy place. These rules apply to everything you write, upload, name or place: chat, private messages, character and room names, room descriptions and tags, project stands, pictures and videos on displays, sticky notes, guestbook entries, questions and answers, and the lines of a bot you set up.

Room chat and private messages are checked automatically against a list of forbidden words. A message with such a word is not sent. Room names, room descriptions and player names are checked against the same list: a room or player name with such a word is refused, and a new account that picks one gets a neutral guest name until it is changed.

Do not:

harass, bully, stalk or threaten anyone, or call for violence;
attack people for who they are: race, origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age or similar;
post sexual content, nudity, or anything sexual involving minors (this is reported to the police);
post violent or shocking content, or content that glorifies self-harm;
share other people's private information, such as real names, addresses, phone numbers, private photos or messages, without their consent;
pretend to be someone else, including us, a moderator or a well-known person, or use names that suggest an official role;
cheat people: scams, phishing, fake giveaways, links to malware, requests for passwords or payment details;
post illegal content, or content that infringes copyright, trademarks or other rights of others;
spam: the same message again and again, mass invitations, or links dropped into rooms that have nothing to do with them;
disturb the game: exploits, automated play, bulk account creation, or tools that overload the servers. If you find a security problem, tell us instead of using it.

Advertising. Project stands and picture displays exist so you can show your own project, product or service. That is allowed. Keep it honest: say what it is, and link to the real thing. Do not advertise gambling, adult services, weapons, drugs, get-rich-quick offers or anything else that is illegal. Do not promote other people's projects in a way that misleads visitors, and do not post your links over and over in rooms you do not own. Room owners may tell you to stop in their rooms.

YouTube videos. You may only link a YouTube video on a display if you are allowed to share it. YouTube's own terms of service apply to videos played from YouTube.

6. Your content

What you write, upload or create stays yours. You are responsible for it.

To run the game we need to show your content to other players. You therefore give us a free, non-exclusive right to store, copy, display and transmit it inside Midnight Cafe, and to make preview pictures of rooms for sharing links, for as long as the content is in the game and as far as needed to run the service. This right ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies that are still in backups for a short time, and except that other players may have taken screenshots or copies that we cannot control.

Only upload or link what you made or have the right to use. If someone claims a right to something you posted, we may remove it.

7. Moderation

What exists today:

You can mute a player. You then no longer see what they write, and they cannot send you private messages or trade requests, without being told.
Only a room's owner, and the moderators or builders the owner appoints, can furnish that room.
A list of banned words is checked on the text of bots that room owners set up.
Names are cleaned of formatting codes, and names that look like staff roles are reserved.
Reports from people, as described on the Report content page.
We can look at content and accounts in the game's database.

We do not read private messages as a routine. We may look at content when we receive a report, when we have a concrete suspicion of a breach of these terms or the law, or when the law requires it.

If content or behaviour breaks these terms or the law, we may, depending on how serious it is and whether it is repeated: remove or hide the content, remove an item or a room, warn you, limit what your account can do, suspend it for some time, or close it. We may also remove content that is illegal without warning first.

When we take such a step against your content or account, we tell you by email (or, for a guest, in the game if possible) which content or account was affected, what we did, and the reason, unless we are prevented by law or by a risk to others. You can answer or object by writing to kontakt@philipp-schickling.de. A person looks at your objection again, and we write back with the result and the reasons. This does not limit your right to go to a court or to a supervisory authority.

8. Reporting illegal content

Use the Report content page. It says how to send a report, what to include and what happens next.

9. Beans, items and trading

Beans are the game's play money. You earn them by playing. They have no monetary value, cannot be exchanged for money, and nobody owes you a payout. Today nothing in Midnight Cafe is sold for real money. If that ever changes, these terms and the page you buy on will say so before you pay.
Furniture, records, pets, badges and other items are virtual. You get the right to use them in the game as long as your account exists. They are not property in the legal sense.
We may change prices, rewards, items and the shop, take items out of the shop, run seasonal items for a limited time, and correct or reset balances and items when there is an error, a bug, or abuse. We try to keep such changes fair and rare.
You can trade furniture and beans with other players. A trade only happens when both sides accept it, and it cannot be undone afterwards. Trade at your own risk and check what you get. We are not a party to your trades.
Do not sell or buy beans, items, rooms or accounts for real money or outside the game, and do not trade items for the purpose of a scam. Such offers can lead to a block.
Invitation rewards are paid in beans when the person you invited reaches the conditions shown in the game. Inviting yourself or inventing accounts is abuse.

10. Bots and automated replies

Some characters are bots. When you write @ and a bot's name, an AI service may write the answer. Bot answers can be wrong, odd or out of date. Do not rely on them for anything important, and do not send them personal or confidential information (see the privacy page). A room owner can set up what a hired bot says; that text is the owner's content.

11. Availability and changes to the game

Midnight Cafe is free. We do not promise that it is always available, free of errors, or that it will continue. It may be down for updates or because of problems. We may change, limit or end features, rooms or the whole service. If we end the whole service, we will announce it in good time on the website and in the game, where we can.

The game is built for desktop browsers. Make your own copies of anything you do not want to lose, such as the text of your project pitch.

12. Liability

We are fully liable for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, and where the law makes us liable regardless of fault, such as under the Product Liability Act.

For slight negligence we are liable only if we breach an essential contractual duty, that is a duty whose fulfilment makes the proper use of the service possible at all and on which you can regularly rely. In that case our liability is limited to the damage that is typical and foreseeable.

Apart from that, we are not liable for slight negligence. This also applies to the personal liability of anyone working for us. Other mandatory law stays unaffected. We are not responsible for content that players post, for external websites that players link to, or for what players do to each other, but we act on reports as described above.

13. Ending your use, deleting your account

You can stop using the game at any time. To delete your account, open Settings (the gear button) in the game, scroll to the bottom and click "Delete account". You type DELETE to confirm. Your rooms, furniture, beans, friends, pictures and the rest of your data are then removed for good and the account cannot be restored. This works for guests and for registered accounts; admin accounts of the cafe cannot be deleted this way. What stays after deletion (for example finished trades in the other player's history, with your name replaced) is listed on the privacy page. You can also write to kontakt@philipp-schickling.de from the email address of your account, or tell us your cafe name. We answer within one month. Some data may have to be kept for a short time for legal reasons or to deal with abuse.

We can end your access or close your account for the reasons in section 7. We can also close a guest account that has not been used for a long time (see the privacy page).

14. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms, for example when the game or the law changes. The new version is published on this page with a new date. For changes that matter to you, we put a notice on the start page or in the game at least 14 days before they apply. If you do not agree with a change, stop using the game and ask us to delete your account before the change applies. If you keep using the game after that date, the new terms apply to you.

15. Governing law

German law applies, without its conflict-of-law rules. If you are a consumer, you also keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where you live.

16. Consumer dispute resolution

We are neither obliged nor willing to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (Verbraucherschlichtungsstelle). The EU's online dispute resolution platform was closed on 20 July 2025, so there is no link to it here. Please try to settle a problem with us first by email; we want to hear about it.

17. Contact

Philipp Schickling, Rheinsteinstr. 15A, 10318 Berlin, Germany. Email: kontakt@philipp-schickling.de. We read German and English.