Created: 21st April 2021, 21:38:55 CEST
Last updated: 17 June 2023, 21:06:00 CEST
Contents of update: Update of Resale Terms
The following document outlines the Sprite Festival website Terms of Service. Before using this website, you must read, understand, and agree to these terms.
Please note that these terms extend to all official platforms for Chowlings and Sprite Festival, including the Toyhouse world, the Sprite Festival Discord, and any Sprite Festival or Chowling-related social media and its posts. By accessing the site or Discord, viewing any content, or using any services available on the site, you are agreeing to be bound by these terms. Failure to abide by these terms may result in a warning, a ban from the Sprite Festival group, and/or termination of the account on the Sprite Festival website, depending on the severity of the situation. If you do not accept all of the Sprite Festival group’s rules, refrain from interacting with the Chowling species and participating in any events.
Chowlings and all other Sprite Festival characters are a closed species concept belonging to Shrimp; you cannot make personal characters or species adoptables of them (free, paid, or otherwise) without permission.
The base framework of the Sprite Festival website is based on the openly available Lorekeeper ARPG Masterlist. We do not claim ownership of this framework, nor claim creatorship. All other content found on this website, including artwork, writing, etc. belongs to the Sprite Festival group, unless stated otherwise.
These terms are subject to updates and changes, so it is important to check them often.
Membership & User Conduct
User Behaviour
Users are expected to be kind and respectful to other members and staff. The Sprite Festival community is not a place for venting, ranting, or overt negativity. Please do not bring up any topics that may be harmful or upsetting to others.
Participation in our official Discord group is a privilege not a right. Discord participation is also not required in order to obtain or own any Sprite Festival characters.
The following conduct violates our guidelines and would be subject to warnings, strikes, or bans, depending on the severity of the situation:
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Perpetuating pedophillia, zoophilia, racism, nazism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and any other hateful remarks inside or outside of the group. Bigots are not welcome in our community.
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Being rude to, bullying, or harassing anyone for any reason. If a user is problematic or causing issues, please contact a staff member and allow us to deal with it rather than harassing them.
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Name-dropping or publicly gossiping about an individual, even if not present, to stir up drama.
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Guilt tripping, whining, or complaining about adoptable or artwork prices. Do not beg, guilt, or harass people to try and gain characters, items, currency, or artwork. Sprite Festival characters are an artist-made luxury item, not a necessity.
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Harassing another user to sell or trade their Sprite Festival character(s) to you when they are not explicitly put up for sale or trade offers. If a character is not listed for sale or trade, please do not contact the owner to ask if you can purchase or trade to obtain them.
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Creating off-brand Sprite Festival characters to sell, or copying an existing Sprite Festival character’s design & selling it as a different species.
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Scamming another user by attempting to sell or trade a character that does not belong to you, or accepting money but not transferring the design to the buyer.
When moderators make a decision or announce a new feature, the issue is open for further discussion in mod DM’s or the feedback form. It can be overwhelming and difficult for individual mods to handle when large amounts of people all question a decision at once, and we much prefer concerns to be addressed one-on-one. This allows us to take our time formulating our replies without getting buried in other messages or overrun by an overwhelming response. Please know that we consult with the entire team for all major decisions and think about our members’ happiness first. No decision is pushed forward without heavy discussion beforehand.
While we encourage members to voice their opinions and highly appreciate suggestions, we also have to consider the wellbeing of our moderators and other members. When topics are often and excessively discussed, our small moderator team might not always be ready to fully divert their attention to the discussion at hand and quickly form a comprehensive and accurate response. Therefore, we might ask members to temporarily drop a topic if we feel like the discussion is getting out of hand, is too much for the available mod(s) to handle, or is overtly nitpicky or inconsiderate. In this case, the moderators will always discuss the topic as soon as possible with the full team and make a public announcement in response. Once a moderator asks for a topic to be dropped and discussed later, it must be dropped immediately without any ‘last words’ added in. Ignoring this will result in a warning.
Suggestions and critique are welcome, as long as it’s constructive and civil - we will not tolerate hateful or cruel messages directed towards members or the mod team. If suggestions or criticism devolve into name-calling or bad faith arguments towards the mods, especially if the Obsidian emote is ignored, warnings will be given out to all involved.
Website & Species Content
The Sprite Festival group as a whole is PG-13, and therefore may feature some NSFW themes and topics such as gore, body horror, alcohol and drug mentions, and other possibly triggering content. We will always add a censor/spoiler and tag content with appropriate content warnings to make sure members are aware of their subject matter. This includes the website, our Discord, and our social media, when applicable. If a user decides to engage with any NSFW content put out by the official group or a member of the group, they are doing so at their own discretion. We will never force anyone to produce, engage in, or discuss any NSFW topics, as these will mainly be included in individual character designs, lore, and some in-game assets.
Members are allowed to create NSFW content with their own Chowlings, as long as it adheres to our rules, is properly censored/spoilered, and is posted to the appropriate areas for said content. This NSFW content may include: gore, body horror, drug and alcohol mentions, trauma, injuries, sexual content, and other possible triggers. However, it is strictly forbidden to create sexual content of Chowlings in their feral animal form, and doing so will result in a ban.
NSFW content must be posted with any applicable content warnings, as well as a spoiler/censor. Before publicly posting any NSFW creations in our Discord, it is important to evaluate the extent of the NSFW topics in the piece. If your piece only includes minor NSFW topics like a small amount of blood, cartoonish depictions of organs, minor body horror, or drug/alcohol use, the image may be posted in public art areas as long as there is an accompanying message that describes the specific content warning, and a spoiler applied to the image. Any creations that are more severely NSFW than previously mentioned may only be posted to our NSFW channel. For more information, refer to our visual guide below for examples.
Members are allowed to have Sprite Festival characters whose lore incorporates NSFW topics, themes, or traits, so long as they follow our rules and such content is properly tagged, spoilered, and censored when posted in our public spaces. Members are fully responsible for deciding what content they wish to engage with when clicking on tagged and spoilered artwork. Neither the staff team nor other members are accountable for what you might see, or if the art might affect you, once you decide to view an appropriately tagged image. Do not contact the owners of spoilered/censored Sprite Festival characters with the intent of bullying, guilting them for the NSFW elements, or overall dogpiling on them to change their character, design, or art. Members found guilty of this will receive a strike for harassment.
Our Discord server allows PG jokes and topics that are commonly found in children’s cartoons, such as crude humor or bathroom humor. As long as these topics and jokes do not venture into fetish or major NSFW territory, they are allowed to be discussed and made publicly. Jokes that are specifically sexual or fetish-related may only be posted in the NSFW channel. Moderators should be alerted if jokes or content get too out-of-hand.
PG-FRIENDLY
This is community-friendly content that can be posted anywhere without warnings.
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Scars
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Bones
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Amputated limbs
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Stuffing spills
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Robotic
Content Warning: Simplified organs, blood, & trypophobia - Only click the bar below if you are OK with seeing this content!
CONTENT WARNING: Simplified organs, blood, & trypophobia
LIGHT CONTENT WARNING
This content can be posted in regular chats by spoilering and adding a content warning. If you aren’t sure if your art or character falls under soft gore, ask a mod to judge.
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Biology book grade organs
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Non-detailed organs
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Cartoony organs
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Blood splotches
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Phobia content
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Minor body horror
Content Warning: Detailed organs, gore, & death - Only click the bar below if you are OK with seeing this content!
CONTENT WARNING: Detailed organs, gore, & death
HEAVY CONTENT WARNING
This content can only be posted in our 18+ NSFW channel. Spoilers and content warnings are appreciated but not mandatory, as this is an enter-at-your-own-risk chat accessible only to adults.
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Detailed graphic organs
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Organ spill
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Open flesh wounds
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Dead characters
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Major body horror
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Any other NSFW content
NOT ALLOWED
This content is not tolerated within our community and is prohibited by our guidelines. We understand that some character backstories may feature trauma linked to some of the topics below. While we do not forbid people from creating stories related to trauma, we ask you to keep any such artwork or writing out of the official community chats. Art, stories, and other content shared in our server relating to these topics will be removed. The creator or poster will receive a warning or be removed from our server, depending on the severity of the situation.
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Assault / rape
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Pedophilia
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Suicide / self harm
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Bestiality
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Using other’s characters without consent
Age
Users of the website and Discord must be at least 13 years of age. If you are below the age of 13, we encourage you to not interact with the website or Discord at all. By creating an account on this website, you agree that you are of the legal age in your local area to view the content listed.
Sprite Festival may feature some NSFW themes and topics (gore, body horror, alcohol and drug mentions, and other possibly triggering content). We always will spoiler and tag content with their appropriate warnings to make sure that members are aware of such subject matter. See Website & Species Content for more information.
While it is required by users, moderators, and artists to always tag and spoiler their art accordingly with appropriate content warnings, neither the moderator nor the artist are accountable for what you might see and if the art might affect you once you decide to view the appropriately tagged image. If a spoilered image does not include any content warnings, consult the artist/poster of said image before engaging with it.
Swearing is permitted, but please try to avoid excessive foul language.
We do not tolerate adults bothering minors or vice versa—one report can be an instant ban if the situation is suspicious. Inappropriate talk between minors and adults will immediately result in an investigation and removal from the server if needed.
Saunt does not seek friendships with minors. Generally, please don’t engage with her unless you are already friends or if you have Sprite Festival-related questions.
Members under the age of 18 cannot create, request, or share adult content. Similarly, adults are not allowed to create, request, or share adult content with minors. Both parties may be given a ban in this situation.
Account and User Uploads
In order to own a Sprite Festival character, you are required to make an on-site account which needs to be linked to one of your social media accounts.
Your account name must be unique and cannot include any vulgar, sexual, suggestive, NSFW, hateful, or otherwise disrespectful words or phrases.
It is forbidden to make multiple accounts in order to gain extra in-game materials, bypass bans, troll, cheat, etc. These accounts are called 'Sockpuppets' and include the following:
- any second, third, etc account made by the same User
- any second, third, etc account made by the same User with the main intend to send all achieved items, characters, etc to other user(s)
- any accounts made by a Users acquaintance with the main intend to send all achieved items, characters, etc to other user(s)
This also includes using an acquaintances Account status (e.g. Owner status, not having participated in a raffle/prompt, etc) to gain access to items and content forbidden to you.
If you find yourself unable to log back into your account, try resetting your password or contact a moderator as a last resort. If you would like to change your username, please contact a member of the staff team instead of creating a new account; we can change your username for you. In the event of a ban, the banned user cannot create or use another account. Your account and access to your account is non-transferrable and cannot be given away, traded to, or sold to another user or person for any reason.
The sale or trade of in-game items and/or currency for "real life" currency is prohibited, and will result in a warning. In-game items from Sprite Festival can only be exchanged for other Sprite Festival in-game items, Sprite Festival virtual currency, or other intangible goods such as artwork or characters. This is to avoid value inflation and keep our currencies and items free. The only exception to this rule is Gold Coins, which are purchased with euros and may be resold for their monetary worth.
All writing and art pieces that you upload to the website gallery or user profiles need to be either created by you or, if created by another artist, require that artist’s permission to be uploaded. Additionally, art and writing may not include any hateful, excessively vulgar, or sexual themes/depictions.
Links in a user’s personal profile are not verified by the moderator team. As such, please treat them with caution. However, users are forbidden from linking to any harmful, hateful, or otherwise disrespectful websites, and may be banned from the site if this is discovered.
The personal accounts and posts of Guest Artists, Moderators, and other staff are not connected to the Sprite Festival group. They may post, repost, like, or follow whatever is to their liking. While they are also obliged to follow the Sprite Festival rules on official platforms, they are allowed to post whatever else is legal and not harmful on their personal social media. This might include swearing, NSFW content, gore, political discussion, or other content. Discretion is advised when interacting with these accounts.
The Sprite Festival group is strongly against NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and will never interact with or condone them. Every instance of the acronym NFT used within our group is the shortened version of ‘not for trade.’ This acronym has been used for character trades for years and we will not change its in-group meaning to stand for Non-Fungible-Token, as we do not associate with them. The staff team and Guest Artists are against Non-Fungible Tokens.
Warnings, Strikes and Bans
All warnings, strikes, bans, and other personal matters will only be discussed privately with the individual involved. We will not give out any personal information to other users or disclose who has how many warnings, strikes, etc.
For small and/or clearly unintentional rule breaks, a warning will be given out to the user in question. Once 3 separate warnings have been sent to the same user, said user will receive a strike. Strikes may also be directly given, without prior warning, for larger and more intentional rule breaks. Once a user has received a total of 3 strikes, they will be temporarily or permanently banned from participating in the Sprite Festival group, depending on the severity of the situation.
A temporary ban means that the user is banned from participating in any group-specific games, events, sales, giveaways, and any other group-specific activities for a set period of time. Once the given timeframe has passed, the user may be allowed back into the group unless the moderators receive proof of continued malicious intent and/or non-changed behavior.
A permanent ban means that the user will be banned from all group-related social media, the Sprite Festival Discord, and the official website. The user may no longer participate in any games, events, sales, trades, giveaways, and other group-hosted events. The user will be given a specific timeframe in which they can sell, trade or gift away their in-game items/currency, as well as any Sprite Festival characters logged on the website. After the given timeframe has passed, all characters, items, and currency still on the user’s on-site account will be permanently voided and deleted.
To read more about voided characters, refer to the relevant section, ‘Voiding.’ Users may keep their characters after they have been voided, but can no longer call them a Chowling or claim them to be a part of the Sprite Festival group.
Upon termination of your account and this agreement:
You will immediately cease all use of the site, our Discord group, or interaction with our social media pages; you will have no further access to your Sprite Festival account.
A user may be prevented from entering the Sprite Festival group as a whole if we have serious proof of illegal behavior/actions made either within or outside of our community.
If you feel like you have been banned unfairly, you may appeal your ban by replying to the message sent by the Admin account, or by contacting us through Discord or email. You will need to provide a reason and proof of your claim, and we may discuss your case further.
Staff, Moderators, and Guest Artists are free to have private and personal ban lists both for their personal accounts as well as for their community sales and services. If you find yourself unable to participate in events or games because of this, you may seek out another moderator to help you enter or participate. This does not include sale blacklists; do not contact another moderator to try to get around an artist’s sale blacklist.
Art
Shrimp / Sauntproof retains the right to use any Sprite Festival-related art that she has created for any material; this includes, but is not limited to, site art and promotional posts.
Users are not permitted to trace Saunt’s art or claim Saunt’s art as their own.
You cannot edit existing official art done by Saunt or any of our official or guest artists. If you want to change your character's design, you will need to redraw the character yourself or commission another artist, and submit a redesign request on the Sprite Festival website.
You may not sell merchandise of NPCs/Saunt’s characters/the Sprite Festival brand as a whole, or profit off of Saunt’s art in any way. This includes creating prints or merchandise of her art, the species, etc.
NSFW suggestive or sexual art of Chowlings is only allowed when they are in human, anthropomorphic, or therianthropic form and may only be posted in the NSFW Discord channel, or in other areas that do not include minors. Sexually suggestive art of feral animal-form Chowlings is strongly prohibited and may result in a ban. Other types of art that would fall into the NSFW category such as gore, body horror, etc. can be drawn, but must be posted to appropriate areas and must be properly censored or spoilered, and clearly marked as such. See our NSFW content guidelines and visual guide for more information.
Masterlist images may include NSFW elements such as gore, body horror, or other dark themes, but the thumbnail image will be spoilered with a content warning.
Character & Ownership Terms
Species Specific
The species found within Sprite Festival are a closed species concept belonging to Sauntproof, and as such you are not allowed to make one without permission. You also cannot make species adoptables of them [free, paid, or otherwise] without permission. These rules pertain to the ownership, resale, and trade of Sprite Festival designs. You may not claim ownership of the species or claim any rights to any art and content made for this group.
While Chowlings are a Closed Species, we are in no way gatekeeping the concepts behind these critters. If you want to make characters that are similar, go ahead! We only ask that you do not call them Chowlings, or mention Sprite Festival or Saunt’s name in association with these ‘fan-made' characters. Also, while personal use is fine, please do not make 'fan-made' Sprite Festival-inspired characters to sell for profit.
Ownership
When you own a Sprite Festival character, you own the personal and non-commercial rights to that character. Sprite Festival retains the commercial rights to the character species, but does not claim any personal or commercial rights to any unique and individual character you may own. We will never claim to own or revoke any characters owned by any user.
Commercial use of your Sprite Festival character requires specific approval and set rules by Sauntproof. Commercial use is prohibited without specific approval.
Sprite Festival character ownership is handled and tracked strictly through the official website via the Masterlist.
The only way to be certain that a Sprite Festival character purchase is legitimate is to receive an on-site transfer from the current owner. In order to reduce the possibility of a scam, users are encouraged to only initiate a character transfer after full payment has been made.
If a user is experiencing difficulty verifying the legitimacy or worth of a Sprite Festival character they are purchasing off-site, they may reach out to a moderator for assistance.
Every Sprite Festival character may only have one official owner. Off-site ‘co-owning’ is allowed, but it will not be maintained or recognised on the Sprite Festival website. The Masterlist will only recognize one official owner per character. We do not and will not take any responsibility for co-ownership disputes nor the terms that co-owners set between themselves. You are completely responsible for keeping up and navigating your own co-ownership contract.
You may change your Sprite Festival character’s appearance or design according to the rules in our redesign guide. Other changes [gender, ethnicity, name, age, size, personality, scars, disabilities, body types, missing limbs, etc]. may be changed at any time, to the owner's liking, without mod approval.
While we host all Sprite Festival characters on our website, we have no direct connection to, or say in, how a user decides to develop their character’s personality and actions. We do not condone any inappropriate character development, but cannot and will not interfere with a user’s personal choices unless they directly violate our rules. It is against the Sprite Festival terms of service to make characters that perpetuate harmful stereotypes of race, gender, sex, mental health status, lifestyle, etc.
Design and Redesigns
Specific rules on how much you can alter your Sprite Festival character’s design can be found on our redesign page. Large design edits, specific items, accessories, traits, and colors might require an in-game item in order to update the design. Please see our redesign guide linked above, as well as our list of all currently available traits.
If you decide to transfer an existing character of yours into a Sprite Festival character, you must credit the original designer of that character on the Masterlist.
Any and all redesigns/design alterations are permanently bound to the original character. Detaching single or multiple redesigns (or the original Sprite Festival character design) from is not possible and cannot be granted by the mods. When making a redesign for your Sprite Festival character, be sure you are okay with the fact that this redesign will stay with the character permanently. This includes all other forms that have been created for the respective character, including AU versions, human versions, shapeshifter forms, etc.
When uploading a new image to your character’s Masterlist page, be aware that only two images can be uploaded on one character’s Masterlist at a time. This is to reduce our memory usage for the website. The original image that was made and uploaded first to the character’s Masterlist entry will never be deleted, and always takes up one of the two image slots. You can use the second image slot to upload a rebase or an updated design. Once a third image is uploaded, the previous image in this second slot will be deleted! Make sure to save any images of your character, as it is not our responsibility to provide you with any secondary images that have been deleted over time. Exceptions for a third image are only made if characters include a second form (Berserker form, glowing reference, etc.) from the very beginning.
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A Note on Character Transfers: If you are designing a Chowling (either using a MYO or a redesign) and that Chowling’s design is based off an OC or design that you own, then the new Chowling is considered to be a character transfer. What does this mean? In the case of a character transfer, the old character and design are “bound” to the Chowling. If you later decide to trade or sell this Chowling, then the old character and its design will also be traded/sold along with it. These rules are in place to make sure that new owners of a Chowling always receive all of the Chow's previous designs. It also prevents owners from selectively detaching designs they like, keeping them, and then selling the Chowling again.
For clarity’s sake, we’ll provide an example. Let’s say that Person A owns a hypothetical character design—we’ll call him Maple the maple leaf cat. Person A either obtains a MYO slot or redesigns a pre-existing Chowling. They either base the design off of Maple’s design, or intend this new Chowling to be a “Chow version” of Maple. The original character of Maple is therefore bound to this new Chowling. Later, Person A wants to sell this Chowling to Person B. If they do so, Person B would receive both the Chowling and Maple the maple leaf cat, as the two are considered to be bound together.
If you do not wish for the original character to be traded or sold along with its associated Chowling, your only option is to void the Chowling. For this reason, we encourage you to think very carefully before converting your previously owned characters or designs into Chowlings. Please also note that this term only applies to Chowlings made from a design that you own—for example, if you made a Chowling whose design was loosely inspired by Pikachu, that would not count as a character transfer, as you did not own or create the original design.
Voiding
Individuals who purchase a Sprite Festival character may decide to remove them from the species. This process is called voiding. Once voided, the character’s entry on the Masterlist, including its claimed theme and artwork, will be permanently removed and the species name can no longer be applied to the character. It will be considered a regular themed character design only.
The voiding of a character listed on this site is only possible if said character is under your possession. You cannot void any characters not directly owned by you.
To void your character you need to contact an available moderator and ask them to permanently void the specific character(s). A user may void their characters without any questions by the moderator but will need to agree to the character voiding terms again.
If a user is in possession of a voided character and wishes to add them back into the Sprite Festival group, they may do so only by obtaining and using a MYO slot to recreate the character. This can only be done if the voided character’s theme is available. If the theme has since then been re-used, a different but similar theme may be selected.
The removal of your characters from the species by staff will only occur if a user is permanently banned from the species. In this case the user will be given a specific timeframe in which they can sell, trade, or gift away their Chowlings (as well as other site-logged characters and items). After the given timeframe has passed, all characters still on their account on site will be permanently voided and deleted from the site. Users may keep their characters as one-offs after they have been forcefully voided, but can no longer claim them to be a Chowling or belong to the species.
Sales & Trades
General Rules
- The sale or trade of in-game items or currency for "real life" currency is prohibited, and will result in a warning. In-game items from Sprite Festival can only be exchanged for other Sprite Festival in-game items, Sprite Festival virtual currency, or other intangible goods such as artwork or characters. This is to avoid value inflation and keep our currencies and items free. The only exception to this rule is Gold Coins, which are purchased with euros and may be resold for their monetary worth.
- Sprite Festival characters are an artist-made luxury item, not a necessity. Guilt-tripping, whining, and complaining about prices are not tolerated within the group. Do not pester any member of the staff to try to find out when new characters will be released for sale.
- MYO Chowling slots are sold by staff members only. Staff members receive MYO slots only as payment for their work. When these sales occur, members are given 24 hours notice in the Discord chat before the sale, with the post also providing information on the type and number of slots. Once a MYO slot has been purchased by a user, it cannot be resold—only traded, gifted, or vouchered with mod approval.
- Payment must be made within 24 hours of confirmation of the winning bid/claim, unless a payment plan has been discussed. Recurring failure to pay may result in removal from the group and termination of the user’s account on the Sprite Festival website.
- Refunds and chargebacks are not accepted. In the case of an unresolved chargeback, the character will be voided and you will be banned from the species permanently.
- Designers retain partial rights to their design. This includes all copyrights, rights to the intellectual property, and the rights to distribute, reproduce, and display in their online galleries. Artists will not reuse or resell the design for personal and commercial projects, unless the design has been traded back to them.
- Artists reserve the right to refuse sale or service to anyone at their own discretion: this includes the sale of adopts or Guest Artist commissions. [Example: Users with brand-new / unverified accounts or repeat rule-breakers.]
- We will not sell Sprite Festival characters to anyone under 18 unless they can prove they have a parent or legal guardian who watches over and approves of their online purchases.
- We will not allow sprite festival accounts younger than 24 hours before a sale was announced to participate in sales, raffles, etc. This is to avoid sockpuppeting
- Not all Sprite Festival Official Artists will accept customs, commissions, or other purchases from individuals under the age of 18. If you are a minor and are looking to purchase a character from a Guest Artist, please contact them beforehand to discuss.
- We are not responsible for any unofficial or stolen Sprite Festival characters you may purchase or trade for outside of our official Discord group, social media, or website. It is your responsibility to resolve the situation and get your money back if you are scammed outside of our community. You may report the incident to us but we cannot guarantee compensation. We only have control over the sales occurring within our community.
Auction rules
- False bids are not tolerated. Users are prohibited from making bids in an attempt to increase the price without intent to purchase.
- The currency should not be changed from one bid onto another. All official Sprite Festival sales are handled in euros [€].
- It is forbidden for users to block other bidders to prevent them from making further bids.
Custom Rules
- Shrimp / Sauntproof may deny a custom commission request for any reason.
- Payment for customs is paid with PayPal, and is sent once Saunt finishes the base sketch. Please wait until Saunt sends you an invoice or asks you to send the payment. Refrain from sending any payments before your purchase has been confirmed.
- Users may back out from a custom commission at any time as long as Saunt has not completed the sketch. Chowling custom slots cannot be sold, traded, or gifted to another user if they are no longer desired, only canceled.
- Once the sketch is approved, Saunt will begin to work on the color design. If the user wants any specific changes, they may color over the art that Saunt sends to specify the changes they want to make.
- Accessories, traits, and appearance features being added to the custom must be purchased with the correct items from the in-game shops. If the desired item is not in the shop, the user may contact Saunt to inform her and request the item. If accepted, the item may incur a fee based on its complexity.
- Saunt does not work with deadlines for customs. Individuals who are not comfortable with waiting for a custom are encouraged to purchase a pre-made Chowling instead.
- Saunt retains the right to modify and sell any custom design sketches that are fully rejected by the commissioner in situations in which the commissioner requests a new sketch for their custom design commission.
Resale Terms
- You may only put your character up for sale or trade once it has been uploaded to the Masterlist.
- Each Sprite Festival character’s Masterlist entry lists their original sale price in euros; this is called the sale value. Free or unpaid characters are given a €0 sale value.
- A Sprite Festival character’s sale value can be increased by adding on the cost of commissioned artwork to it. Only paid commissioned artwork and physical items such as plushies, merchandise, etc. will add the price of the art onto the sale value of the character. Any commissioned art pieces need to be provided proof of payment to count towards the character’s worth. Users found to be lying about commission prices to inflate a character’s value will receive a strike.
- Gift art, trade art, and personal art does not add worth to the sale value. Pending art commissions cannot be added to the character’s worth. If you have any pending commissions, we recommend either waiting until the artwork is completed before listing your character for sale, or changing your commission to feature a different character.
- A character cannot be sold for more than the sale value listed on the Masterlist without first going through a moderator to appraise and confirm its total worth. This process is called 'appraising a character' or 'appraisal'. This is done by a question form, which you must fill out completely and send to a mod for approval before listing your character for sale. Attempting to sell your character for more than its base value without appraisal is strongly prohibited, and may result in a strike if found to be intentional. Please DM a mod for the form.
- Chowlings that are listed for swaps or trades may no longer ask for full resale + add ons. Partial resale + add-ons is still ok. We have seen members requesting full resale + swaps or other add-ons and see this as unfair as a trade. Selling/Trading chows away for higher value then they were purchased, without having added any additional art/value to them, is extremely unfair to the original designer.
- Vouchers of any kind are no longer allowed. This includes asking someone to buy an oc/item/etc for you. This is due to people having taken advantage of this system in the past and if you are in need of money selling a chow is the easiest and best option all around.
- Do NOT under any circumstances ask current Sprite Festival character owners if they plan to sell their character or if they would sell/trade to you. If a character is not actively listed for sale or trade, please do not contact the owner to ask if you can purchase or trade to obtain them. If we receive reports of this occurring, the offending user will receive a warning.
- Users are permitted to ask for pings if they would like to be notified of a character going up for sale/trade in the future, unless the character or owner’s profile states not to ask for pings. The mod team will give out warnings to users for requesting pings, if the other user’s page[s] clearly states that they are not comfortable with these inquiries. However, we will only do so if those notes are clearly there. If a user does not want others contacting them for pings, they should be sure to clearly state it on their profile.
- Once a MYO slot has been purchased by a user, it cannot be resold—only traded, gifted, or vouchered with mod approval. The Masterlist entry for MYO slots states they can be resold but this is only so its original sale value can be added to the Masterlist. You are forbidden from reselling your MYO slot unless you have specifically been given Mod approval for a voucher, which is usually done in case of an emergency.
- Chowling custom slots cannot be sold, traded, or gifted. When Chowling customs are available, they are first-come-first-served or auctions—is it forbidden to contact our Official Artists or otherwise trying to seek out custom slots when none are available.
- There are no set rules on trading or gifting Sprite Festival characters.
- You may transfer your character through trading, reselling, and/or gifting. New owners must be made aware of these sale terms, and by accepting the Masterlist transfer are accepting these terms.
Failure to abide by resale rules may result in the user being banned from obtaining Sprite Festival characters and the termination of the user’s website account.
Term Meanings
Closed Species are an Original Species defined by the unique nature of the character’s appearances, anatomy, and lore to create the species concept as a whole. Characters within a Closed Species are not free to make, meaning only certain individuals can create official characters of said species. Usually there are MYO slots with which other users can make their own characters of the species.
MYO [Make Your Own] are slots sold, traded, or gifted to members to make their own character of a certain species.
GA [Guest Artist] These are individuals which were granted special permission to create Sprite Festival characters and accept rebase and familiar commissions. When and how many GAs are chosen is up to the staff team.
NFT [not for trade] Some Sprite Festival characters on Toyhouse might have the Tag ‘NFT’. This has always been a shortened version of ‘not for trade’ meaning that the character isn’t currently open for offers.
FTO [First Time Owner] are members which have never before owned a Chowling.
Non-Owners are members who have owned a Chowling in the past, but currently do not own any Chowlings.
FFA [free for all] is a term used to indicate that a specific sale, trade, etc, is available for anyone to enter. This includes members who currently own Chowlings, as well as FTOs and Non-Owners.
FCFS [first come first served] is a way to quickly sell characters or MYO slots. The person who replies fastest to the given advertisement will be the winner of said sale, giveaway, trade, etc.
Flat Sale Raffle - A flat sale raffle is a sale in which the character or MYO being sold has a predetermined price, such as €50, and the buyer is selected randomly from a raffle. It does not cost any money to enter into the raffle. Only the winner, once rolled from the raffle, will need to pay for the character. Do not enter any flat sale raffles if you cannot pay!
UFS [Up For Sale] indicates that a member is looking to sell their character! They sometimes have a set price tag, or may allow you to offer money with other things on top, such as art.
UFT [Up For Trade] indicates that a member is looking to trade their Chowling for characters, such as one offs or other closed species! They may mention what sort of characters they are looking for in their post.
SWAPS [Up For Swap] indicates that a member is looking to swap their Chowling for another Chowling only! If they are only looking for swaps, please do not try to bribe them with money or non-Chow characters.
ENTERTAINING OFFERS indicates that a member is accepting offers on their Chowling out of curiosity, but is not certain if they would let the character in question go. Entertaining means that it’s mostly to see what sort of trade offers they will get, so the people who offer shouldn’t get too excited about receiving said character.
VOUCHERS indicate that a member is looking for money voucher offers. A money voucher means that a person can put their Chowling up for sale for more money than the Chowling is worth, as long as the money is for a particular emergency related goal [such as bills, emergencies, etc.] For example, if a Chowling’s base value is 50 euros, and they get vouchered off for 400, the base value of that Chowling will not change, so please be cautious because you WILL lose money over it. Please ask for permission from a mod before taking a voucher for your Chowling! We do not tolerate this being mistreated.
Please respect these terms and only offer what people ask for! Repeatedly ignoring sale or trade requirements will result in a strike.
