Crown & Ballot

Terms of use and privacy. Last updated 4 October 2026.

Crown & Ballot is a private game in early testing. Only people who have been sent a passcode can play. By signing in you agree to the terms below.

Terms of use

The game

Crown & Ballot is a historical and geopolitical sandbox. An AI game master (Claude, made by Anthropic) writes what happens after each turn. Its stories are fiction: they are not news, predictions, or advice of any kind, and they may contain mistakes about real places, people and events.

Access

• Your passcode is for you. Please don't share it or post it publicly.
• Access is free during testing and can be changed, paused or withdrawn at any time, for example by changing the passcode.
• The game is offered as it is, with no promise that it will always be online, bug-free, or that your games will be kept forever. Save anything you care about with the game's download option.

What you may not do

• Try to get around the passcode, attack or overload the server, or use the game to run up AI costs on purpose.
• Use the game to write content that is illegal, that harasses a real person, or that breaks Anthropic's usage policy, since your orders are sent to Claude.

Your games

The orders you write and the games you make are yours. You let us store them and send them to the AI so the game can run. We don't claim ownership of them and don't publish them.

Liability

To the extent the law allows, we are not responsible for any loss that comes from using the game, including lost games or progress.

Privacy

What is stored

• Your games: each game, its turns and your orders are saved on the server, with backups taken at each turn.
• A sign-in cookie: after you type the passcode, your browser keeps one cookie for up to a year so you stay signed in. It holds no personal details and is not used for tracking or advertising.
• A sign-in note: the server log records that someone signed in and whether it was the owner or a guest. It does not record your name, email or IP address.

We don't ask for your name or email, and there are no ads, analytics or tracking scripts.

Who else sees it

• Anthropic: your orders and the game's current state are sent to Claude to write each turn. Anthropic handles that data under its own privacy policy.
• Hetzner: the server is rented from Hetzner Online in Finland (EU).
• Map and picture services: your browser loads map tiles from Esri (ArcGIS), flags from flagcdn.com, fonts from Google Fonts and pictures from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Like any website, these services see your IP address when your browser asks them for a file.

We don't sell or share your data with anyone else.

Deleting your data

You can delete your games in the game. To have anything else removed, or to ask what is stored about you, contact the person who sent you your passcode.

Changes

These terms may change as the game develops, especially before it opens to the public. The date at the top shows when they last changed.