Hi, i want to create a small contract for people who join my online community. As i am a non-native english speaker and have no clue of laws my mockup may be completely wrong. It would be nice if people could help me by showing mistakes in what I have written down or point out some pages to read abou this topic. here is my first attempt:

Quote: (1) Avatar Name The name of your character musn't be racist, desriminating, sexist or inapropriate in any other sense. It has to consist of one word staring with an uppercase letter. It isn't permitted to use numbers or symbols like '?' or '*' in the name. You also should encourage having a name that fits into the games environment. (2) Cheating It may occur that players will detect leaks in the Games Flow or possibilities to benifit of features of the application not intended by the developers. However it is not allowed to do so as it damages the Games Community. (3) Ingame Behaviour Players must not to hurt other people by using inappropriate words or gestures and are obliged to obey the Game Authorities orders. (4) Sellment of ingame goods The games policy forbids the trading with ingame goods outside the game on online communites like eBay. (5) Punishment Breaking any of these terms may result in exclusion of the game for a period of time and/or deletion of the players account.

namaste, DrHalan

Never write your own contracts, unless you are an attorney.


It is very inexpensive to hire a business lawyer for an hour or two. They can put together a terms of use document very quickly, and probably have a few existing ToS templates lying around.

Yeah thats what i thought too but on the other hand i hoped some people on the boards here had some knowledge on this topic.

Quote: Original post by DrHalan
Yeah thats what i thought too but on the other hand i hoped some people on the boards here had some knowledge on this topic.

Several of us do, but I don't think any of us have experience with German law.

If you decide not to see an attorney, you should try to avoid any language that sounds like legal terms. Just state plainly what you want people to do, and what the consequences are for breaking the rules.