Terms of use

1. Provider and scope

The provider of the Franchise World app is Christian Hermann & Martina Hermann GbR, An Rainen 3, 72525 Münsingen, Germany, email support@franchiseworld.app.

These terms apply to the use of the app and to the purchases in it: the Franchise Club as a monthly or a yearly subscription, gold packs and the Starter Pack. A season pass (section 8) is not offered at the moment; its terms will be added before it is offered. Download and billing run through Apple’s App Store or Google Play; their terms apply in addition. For purchases in the App Store, Apple’s Standard End User License Agreement applies.

2. The game and the Franchise Club

The whole game can be played without a purchase. The Franchise Club adds a second build team for shop upgrades of up to 6 hours, a cash box that holds 8 hours of sales from shop level 1 and 250 gold for each paid Club month. The Club contains no other items. Apart from the Club, only gold packs and the Starter Pack are sold for real money (section 7), and bought gold never speeds up the game.

Club gold. For each paid month of the Club subscription, in the yearly plan too (month by month), 250 gold goes into the Club chest in the game, once our server has confirmed the payment with Apple or Google. It stays in the chest until you open it and has no expiry date within the game. A trial period brings no gold; the first gold comes with the first paid month. Club gold counts as bought gold (section 7): it is booked into your game save when you open the chest, never speeds anything up and cannot be transferred, paid out or exchanged for real money. It belongs to the game save that first connects to our server after the purchase. If you continue with another save, that save receives the gold of later months only once the previous save has not connected for 30 days and the purchase data from Apple or Google show that the subscription was bought with the random purchase identifier of the game installation that now connects (privacy policy, part 2, section 8). If Apple or Google refund a Club month, its gold is removed like refunded bought gold (section 7).

The Club needs no account and no sign-in. The game is meant for players aged 16 and older; the store shows its age rating. If you are under 18, ask a parent or guardian before you buy anything; a subscription needs their consent. We keep developing the game; there is no entitlement to particular new content or to a release schedule.

3. Subscription, trial, price and cancellation

There is a monthly and a yearly subscription. The price shown by Apple or Google before the purchase always applies. If the store offers a trial period for a plan, the purchase page shows it together with the price that applies after it; the subscription continues as a paid subscription unless you cancel it in the store before the trial ends; the store shows the relevant date.

A subscription renews automatically for the chosen period unless you cancel it in the store before the next renewal; the store shows the relevant date. Payment is charged to the store account when the purchase is confirmed and on each renewal. A subscription can only be canceled and managed in the subscription settings of the Apple or Google account; we cannot cancel it for you. After cancellation the Club stays active until the end of the paid period. Then the game continues without the Club: builds already running finish, and nothing you have built is taken away.

Apple and Google handle refunds of a purchase under their own rules; our own refunds under section 6 remain unaffected. If a store confirms a refund, the Club ends with the next check.

4. Right of withdrawal

Where consumers have a statutory right of withdrawal (sections 355 et seq. of the German Civil Code, BGB), the withdrawal information that the respective seller provides before the purchase applies; the store shows who the seller is. Where the store acts as the seller, address the withdrawal to Apple or Google, otherwise by email to support@franchiseworld.app. Your statutory rights remain unaffected.

5. Changes to and discontinuation of the service

We may change or discontinue the game or the Club in whole or in part for good cause, for instance if operation becomes economically unreasonable, third-party providers we rely on discontinue their services or substantially change their prices, the law changes or security reasons require it. We announce a discontinuation in good time in advance in the app and in the store description.

For as long as we offer the app, we provide the updates needed to use it as agreed (section 327f BGB). If a change impairs your use more than insignificantly, we inform you in advance on a durable medium (for example with a notice in the app that you can save) about the nature and timing of the change and about your rights; you then have the statutory rights, in particular under section 327r BGB (ending the contract and a proportionate refund).

6. Consequences of a discontinuation

Running subscriptions end when the paid period expires and no longer renew. If a paid subscription period extends beyond the end of the service, we refund on request the share of the price attributable to the remaining time. An email to support@franchiseworld.app with the order number from Apple’s or Google’s purchase confirmation is enough; we refund directly. Further statutory rights remain unaffected.

Bought gold. If we discontinue the game, we refund on request the value of the bought gold you have not used by the end of the service, as the game shows it (section 7); gold of paid Club months still waiting in the Club chest counts as unused bought gold. Each unused bought gold is worth its share of the price you paid for the purchase it came from, as Apple’s or Google’s record of that order shows it; the gold you bought most recently counts as unused first, and the bonus gold of a pack counts as part of the pack. Gold that came with a Club month or the Starter Pack is worth the price per gold of the 60-gold pack in your store country when we announce the discontinuation, but never more in total, together with any refund of remaining subscription time, than you paid for that purchase. Refunds already made by Apple or Google are deducted. Write to support@franchiseworld.app with the order numbers from Apple’s or Google’s purchase confirmations; we refund directly. Earned gold has no money value and is not refunded.

7. Gold packs and Starter Pack

Gold is the game’s second currency: your company’s gold reserve for making your stores look good. You earn gold by playing, and you can also buy it: as gold packs of 60, 130, 350, 780 or 1,800 gold (larger packs include a fixed bonus), and once as the Starter Pack with 300 gold and the Opening Day sign (festive decor for the street signs of your stores, matching each store type and shown in the language of the app; for looks only, it changes no sales). The price shown by Apple or Google before the purchase always applies. The game shows earned gold and bought gold separately; both pay for the same items, but only earned gold can speed up a build.

Gold pays for signs, decorations, outfits, floors, your brand and pieces from the season archive (cosmetic rewards of past seasons that are available there and can be bought with gold), and for switching a store’s style you picked earlier. Bought gold never speeds anything up: it does not shorten building times and does not buy cash, the Club or anything in the Franchise Exchange. Only gold earned in the game can speed up a build.

Bought gold is added to the game save on the device on which you bought it, after our server has confirmed the purchase with Apple or Google. If the confirmation is delayed (for example without a connection), the purchase stays open and the gold is added automatically later, once the confirmation arrives. The store purchase of a gold pack is completed once its gold is added, so the store’s restore function does not bring it back; the gold itself stays in your game save until you spend it. The Starter Pack can be bought once per store account; restoring it brings back the purchase and the Opening Day sign, but not the gold again (only if the gold of a paid Starter Pack was never added to any save is it added once). Gold comes only with a purchase made in the app with your own store account: promotional or offer codes that cost nothing and gold packs or Starter Packs that Apple reports as shared through Family Sharing include no gold, and the game then says plainly that no gold was added; a Starter Pack without gold still brings the Opening Day sign. The purchases in the game are not offered for Family Sharing; a Club subscription that Apple nevertheless reports as shared through Family Sharing brings no Club gold either. A paid offer code that the store reports without the random purchase identifier of your game installation (privacy policy, part 2, section 8), for example one redeemed in the App Store, cannot be assigned to a game save; in these cases a refund can be requested from Apple or Google. Bought gold cannot be transferred, paid out or exchanged for real money.

Bought gold has no expiry date within the game. It is recorded in your game save. If the cloud backup is switched on, a copy of the save is also kept on our service (privacy policy, part 2, section 13); you can find and load that copy on another device or after reinstalling if you linked it to the optional sign-in with Apple or Google before. Without such a link or another backup of your device, a deleted game save, and the gold in it, may not be recoverable. You can use bought gold for as long as we offer the app; if we discontinue the game, we announce this in good time in advance (section 5) and refund the value of unused bought gold (section 6). Further statutory rights, in particular under section 327r BGB, remain unaffected.

If Apple or Google refund a gold purchase, the refunded gold is removed from your bought gold, down to zero at most; gold you have already spent and items you have bought stay. If the Starter Pack is refunded, the Opening Day sign is no longer shown either.

8. Season pass

The season pass is not offered at the moment and cannot be bought in the app. These terms do not cover it. Before it is offered, its terms will be added to this section.

9. Franchise Exchange

The Franchise Exchange is an optional part of the game in which players offer their brand to other players or run a partner branch for another player’s brand. It needs no account: your participation belongs to the installation on your device (section 10 of the app part of the privacy policy). You can stop at any time.

A franchise contract between two players runs for 30 calendar days (UTC). The partner pays the entry fee once when the owner accepts, and a royalty on the reported daily sales of the partner branch; our server settles every completed day, and both games book the result. Either side can terminate a contract at any time; the contract then ends no later than three days after the termination. The partner has to keep the agreed standards: the first breach of an agreed standard leads to a warning; a second breach leads to the termination of the contract, which then also ends no later than three days later. Reported values are checked for plausibility and capped, and impossible values are rejected.

All fees, royalties and sales in the exchange are play money. Real money, the Franchise Club and gold have no effect on the exchange, its contracts, rankings or chambers, and play money cannot be paid out or exchanged for real money.

In the exchange you put your brand name together from a name kit of words we have checked; every player sees it in their own language. Players cannot write any text of their own to each other; they can send each other only ready-made messages. A listing must not pretend to be another brand or our team and must not be used to flood or disturb other players. There is no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive players: we remove offensive or hateful names, impersonation, harassment and spam, and suspend the players responsible. Before you take part in the exchange or in Players in your city for the first time, the app asks you to accept these rules. You can report a listing and block a player; a report alone hides nothing. We review reports and may hide or remove listings, take a name out of the name kit, end the contracts concerned and suspend installations that break these rules or manipulate the game. If we take a name out of the name kit, for example because it comes too close to a protected trademark, you pick another name from the kit without any waiting time; this does not count as a breach on your part. If a brand name matches our word list of terms that are not allowed in brand names (for example insults or protected brands), it is hidden automatically; you then pick a new name from the name kit without any waiting time, and you can appeal as described below. Example brands run by us are marked as such.

Players in your city is optional and uses the same installation: if you switch it on in the market race, up to five places on your ranking go to other players of your group in that city, mixed anew every week. Your device works out places and shares with the same rules as for the made-up chains; they change no money, prizes or purchases, and there is no claim to a group or to particular players. Your brand name appears there only if you switch it on, always from the name kit; the rules above apply to it in the same way. You can report a shown name and block a player at their row; we may hide a shown name, with reasons and appeals as below. You can switch it off at any time; your participation in this feature and the group and ranking data that belong to it are then deleted the next time the app is online. This does not affect reports about shown names, whether made by you or about your name: they are kept until we have decided on them and then for the storage period for decided reports given in the privacy policy (part 2, section 10).

Contact point and reports. Our single point of contact under the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065), for authorities, players and anyone else, is support@franchiseworld.app; we answer in German or English. Anyone, also without playing, can report content in the exchange that they consider illegal, for example a brand name that infringes their trademark, by email to this address, with the brand name concerned and, if that brand has several listings, details that identify the listing, an explanation of why the content is illegal, their name and email address (not required for reports about suspected offences under Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU) and a statement that they make the report in good faith and that its information is accurate and complete. We decide on reports diligently and objectively. If an email address is given, we confirm receipt to it and send our decision with its reasons, whether automated means were used, and the ways to challenge it.

Reasons and appeals. When we hide or remove a listing, require a new brand name, block a brand name, warn you or suspend your participation, the app shows you the reasons in the exchange: what was done, its scope and duration, the facts with the concrete ground, how we became aware of it, whether it was decided automatically, and that it is based on this section 9. You can appeal in the app within 6 months of the measure, or write to support@franchiseworld.app. We review every appeal again, usually within 14 days, and we lift the measure if it was not justified (contracts that already ended stay ended); the answer appears in the app. As a small business we do not take part in out-of-court dispute resolution; you can always go to the competent courts.

The exchange needs a connection and may be unavailable at times; there is no claim to a particular partner or contract. You can delete your participation in the app settings; running contracts then end the same day, and the other side keeps its record of the ended contract, without your brand name. After 365 days without any use, we delete a participation automatically.

10. Rights of use

You receive a simple, non-transferable right to use the app privately on the devices of your store account. The game, its texts, pictures and design are protected by copyright. Manipulating the game or its purchase checks, circumventing technical protection measures and reverse engineering are not permitted unless allowed by law.

11. Liability

We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, for fraudulently concealed defects and under the German Product Liability Act.

In the case of simple negligence, we are only liable for the breach of essential contractual obligations, meaning obligations whose fulfillment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely; in this case, liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for the contract. Any further liability is excluded.

Statutory rights in case of defects remain unaffected.

12. Changes to these terms, governing law and contact

Changes to these terms apply to purchases and contracts made after the updated terms take effect; the version in force is always on this page, with its date. A contract you already have, such as a running subscription, changes only if you expressly agree; we never treat silence or continued play as agreement. If you do not agree, the terms in force at your purchase continue to apply to it, and you can end a subscription in the store at the end of its period. We keep every earlier version and send it to you on request. Changes to the game itself are governed by section 5 and the law, in particular section 327r BGB.

German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Mandatory consumer protection provisions of the country in which you have your habitual residence remain unaffected.

We answer questions about these terms at support@franchiseworld.app. We are neither willing nor obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board. The privacy policy is on the privacy page.