TERMS OF SERVICE · CONDITIONS OF APPEARANCE
EFFECTIVE AUGUST 8, 2026
The court speaks with a certain flourish. The obligations beneath the flourish are real, and this document is the plain agreement between you and Forge Nine Labs LLC, the publisher of VERDICT ("we," "us," "the court"). By using VERDICT — the Discord Activity, the bot, or the Web Annex at playverdict.gg (together, "the Service") — you accept these terms.
VERDICT is an entertainment service: a competitive voice party game played inside Discord voice channels, in which an AI judge ("The Arbiter") transcribes consenting participants, scores their arguments for rhetoric and theater, and publishes its rulings. It is a game. It is theater. It is not a court of law, an oracle, or a source of factual determinations about anyone or anything.
VERDICT is published by Forge Nine Labs LLC, a limited liability company organized in the State of Illinois, USA. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Discord Inc. Your use of Discord itself is governed by Discord's own terms and community guidelines, which apply in full alongside these. Forge Nine Labs' company-level Terms of Service sit behind this document and fill any gap it leaves; where the two differ about VERDICT, this one controls.
You may appear before the court only if you hold a Discord account in good standing and meet Discord's minimum age requirement (13, or older where your jurisdiction demands it). If you are not old enough to use Discord, you are not old enough to be held in contempt.
Recording is opt-in and explicit. Only participants who swear in as Advocates — by affirmatively selecting "Enter as Advocate — I consent to be recorded & judged" — are captured. By swearing in, you consent to:
#verdict, #verdict-records, or #the-record), there as well;Do not swear in on someone else's behalf, from someone else's account, or with someone else's voice. Spectators (the Gallery) are never recorded and need consent to nothing.
Every ruling, score, award, and insult produced by The Arbiter is AI-generated entertainment. Rulings are performances, not findings of fact. Scores measure rhetorical sport, not truth, intelligence, or character. An award for Magnificent Wrongness is a compliment. Being Held in Contempt is affectionate. Nothing the Arbiter says is advice, and nothing it says about any person is a statement of fact. Do not rely on it for anything, ever. The machine regrets nothing, and warrants even less.
You remain responsible for everything you say in a Hearing. You agree not to use the Service to produce or amplify content that is unlawful, hateful, harassing, or that violates Discord's community guidelines. The court may decline to read certain rulings aloud, may end a Hearing, and may refuse future audiences to users or servers that abuse the Service. We may also suspend or discontinue the Service, in whole or in part, at any time.
Your words are yours. By participating as an Advocate you grant us a limited, non-exclusive license to record, transcribe, process, quote, and display your testimony solely to operate the game — to produce and publish the rulings, scorecards, and recaps the game exists to produce. Records posted to your Discord channel are ordinary Discord messages: they live in your server, under your server's control, subject to Discord's terms. See the Privacy Policy for what we retain and for how long — briefly for the papers of a Hearing, and until it lapses or is struck for your career record in The Annals.
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, and non-infringement. Transcription is imperfect; judgment is artificial; availability is not promised. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, or for lost profits, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of the Service. To the extent any liability cannot be disclaimed, our total liability for any claim relating to VERDICT is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for VERDICT in the twelve months before the claim, or fifty United States dollars.
You may leave the courtroom at any time — disconnect from the voice channel and any capture of you ends with your presence; decline to swear in and it never begins. We may bar access to the Service at our discretion, particularly for conduct described above. Sections concerning your content, disclaimers, and liability survive termination.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the state and federal courts sitting in Illinois have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute — save that either of us may bring a qualifying claim in small claims court, which for most disagreements about a party game is the sensible forum. If you are a consumer whose local law grants rights that cannot be waived by contract, you keep them, and nothing here removes them.
We may amend these terms; the current version is always posted at playverdict.gg/terms.html with its effective date above. Continued use of the Service after an amendment is acceptance of it. Material changes will be noted in the Court Circular.
Questions, motions, grievances, privacy requests, and legal notices all reach a human at hail@forgeninelabs.com. The clerk's office answers its mail.
Forge Nine Labs LLC · a limited liability company organized in the State of Illinois, USA · forgeninelabs.com