Terms of Service

Who we are

AFK Hours is operated by Alexandre M., Marseille, France (the "operator", "we"). You can reach us at legal@afkhours.com or through the contact page.

The site is hosted by Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany.

AFK Hours is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Valve Corporation. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks of Valve Corporation.

What the service does

AFK Hours keeps games from your Steam library marked as “playing” on our servers, so that playtime accumulates on your Steam account while you are away. You choose which linked Steam account and which games; we open a Steam session on your behalf and report those games as running.

We do not play games for you and do not interact with game servers. The achievement tool (Ultra plan) only sets, at your request, the achievement flags a game exposes to Steam, the same ones the game would set itself. What Steam or a game does with accumulated playtime or achievements (for example, card drops) is entirely up to them and may change at any time.

The service is offered as it is described on the site at the time you use it. We may change, add or remove features. Material changes to a paid plan are announced on the site before they apply.

Your Steam account and Steam's rules

You may only link Steam accounts that belong to you. Linking is done by scanning a QR code with the Steam mobile app, or, for accounts without the mobile app, by signing in once with your password and the code Steam emails you; in that case the password is used for that single sign-in and never stored. The session token Steam gives us is encrypted before it is stored, and you can revoke it at any time from Steam's “authorized devices” page or by removing the account from AFK Hours.

Using an idling service may not be compatible with the Steam Subscriber Agreement or with the rules of specific games. You are responsible for checking whether you are allowed to use AFK Hours with your account and with the games you select. You use the service at your own risk.

We are not responsible for any action Valve or a game publisher takes on your account, including restrictions, playtime resets, trade holds or bans, and we do not refund on that basis.

A Steam account can be linked to one AFK Hours account only. This is enforced on the Steam identifier and cannot be bypassed by creating another AFK Hours account.

Your AFK Hours account

You must be at least 16 years old to use AFK Hours. If you are under the age at which you can accept these terms in your country, a parent or guardian must accept them for you.

Your account is identified by your email address (or the email of the Discord or Google account you sign in with). Keep it current: it is how we send sign-in links and, for paid plans, expiry reminders.

Sign-in links are personal and expire after a few minutes. Do not share them. You are responsible for what happens on your account until you tell us it has been compromised.

One person, one account. Additional accounts created to get around the limits of the Free plan may be closed without notice.

Plans, prices and subscriptions

AFK Hours has a Free plan with fixed limits (currently one Steam account, one game and eight hours of idling per day, shown on Steam under a name of ours such as “afkhours.com” while it idles) and paid plans sold as subscriptions billed monthly, every six months or yearly, or as a one-time lifetime purchase. Prices are shown on the site and on the billing page in US dollars, all taxes included where applicable.

A subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period, for the same period, at the price in force for your plan, until you turn renewal off. You can do that at any time from the billing page: your plan then stays active until the end of the period already paid and nothing more is charged.

Upgrades (a bigger plan, or the same plan on a longer period) apply immediately; you are charged only the prorated difference for the days left in your current period, and your renewal date does not change. Downgrades take effect at the next renewal; nothing is refunded for the current period.

Lifetime plans are bought once and give access to the plan, without renewal, for as long as we operate AFK Hours: "lifetime" means the life of the service, not yours. If you already own a lifetime plan, a bigger one costs the difference between the two lifetime prices. A subscription running when you buy a lifetime plan is stopped at once and nothing more is charged for it; the days it had left are not refunded, the lifetime plan replaces them.

Card payments are processed by Stripe, PayPal payments by PayPal. We never see your card number. A PayPal subscription that has been stopped cannot be resumed: you would subscribe again. Other methods (cryptocurrency, game keys) are handled by hand through a support ticket or the contact page, as prepaid periods credited once we have received them.

If a renewal payment fails, your access stays open for 48 hours from the renewal date while the provider retries; after that it pauses until a payment goes through, and if it keeps failing the subscription ends and your account returns to the Free plan. A refund is always available by asking us first: the 72-hour promise and the right of withdrawal of section 6 cover every case. A chargeback or a dispute opened with your bank or PayPal without asking us first, for a period you have already used, is treated as fraud: the access it paid for is removed and the account is closed permanently, along with any other account of yours.

We may change prices. A price change applies from the renewal that follows a notice of at least 30 days by email; you can turn renewal off before then.

Right of withdrawal and refunds

Beyond what the law gives you: the first payment on an account is refunded in full if you ask within 72 hours of it, no questions asked, whatever the plan (the first period of a subscription or a lifetime plan) and whatever your country. This applies once per account. The refund ends the access that payment bought.

Payments made by hand in crypto, keys or skins sit outside the 72-hour promise. Your legal right of withdrawal is untouched: within 14 days, ask by ticket and the unused part is refunded by a means agreed with you, bank transfer or crypto, on the amount that actually reached us. Network fees paid on the way in are not refunded, and the fees of the return transfer are deducted from it: you pay $1.49, $1.35 reaches us, we send $1.35 back, and you receive $1.35 minus the network fee.

If you are a consumer in the European Union you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a distance purchase. Because your access starts immediately, you expressly ask us to begin the service at once when you subscribe and acknowledge that you lose your right of withdrawal once the service has been fully performed, and that if you withdraw before the end of the first period you owe us the part already used, in proportion to the days elapsed.

Apart from that right, billing periods already started are not refunded; turning renewal off is always free and takes effect at the end of the period. We will refund the unused part of a period, in proportion, if we close the service, if we cannot provide it for more than seven consecutive days for reasons within our control, or if we terminate your account for a reason other than a breach of these terms.

For a lifetime plan, if we close the service for good within 24 months of your purchase, we refund the price in proportion to the months missing out of those 24; after 24 months nothing is owed. The right of withdrawal applies to a lifetime plan as to a first period: your access starts at once and you owe the part already used, counted as if the plan were a monthly subscription.

To exercise your right of withdrawal or ask for a refund, open a ticket from your account or write to us at the email address above, with the address you signed up with and the date of the payment.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• link a Steam account you do not own, or one that is shared, purchased, stolen or subject to a dispute;
• use the service to manipulate the Steam Community Market, to farm items for resale at scale, or in any way that harms other Steam users;
• combine AFK Hours with cheats, bots, exploits or software that violates the rules of a game;
• probe, overload, reverse-engineer or interfere with the service, its worker infrastructure or its API;
• create several accounts to multiply the limits of the Free plan;
• choose, or later change, a username that is pornographic, insulting, discriminatory, that impersonates someone or advertises another service: we change such names ourselves, and serious or repeated cases are banned for good;
• resell, sublicense or share your access.

We may suspend or close accounts that break these rules, with or without notice depending on the severity, and without refund.

Availability

We run AFK Hours with care but we cannot promise it will be available at all times. Steam itself has outages and maintenance windows during which idling stops; our own deployments cause short reconnections. Live status and 24-hour history are published on the status page.

Idling sessions are automatically paused while you play on the same Steam account and resume when you stop, so that we never interrupt your own play.

Daily limits on the Free plan are counted per Steam account in UTC and reset at midnight UTC.

Ending the agreement

You can stop using AFK Hours at any time: unlink your Steam accounts from the dashboard and ask us to delete your account by email. Deleting your account removes your linked Steam accounts, their tokens and your idle history (see the privacy policy for what we keep and why).

We can end this agreement and close your account if you breach these terms, if we are required to by law, or if we discontinue the service. In the last case we give at least 30 days' notice and refund the unused part of any period already paid.

Liability

AFK Hours is provided as a convenience for accumulating playtime. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect losses, for loss of virtual items, achievements or playtime, or for any action a third party (including Valve or a game publisher) takes on your account as a result of using an idling service.

Our total liability towards you for any claim related to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under the law that applies to you, including for death, personal injury, fraud or gross negligence.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top tells you when they last changed. For changes that reduce your rights or add obligations we notify you by email or on the site at least 15 days before they apply; continuing to use AFK Hours after that date means you accept the new version. If you do not, you can close your account and, for a paid period, ask for a refund of the unused part.

Law and disputes

These terms are governed by French law. If you are a consumer in another EU country, you also keep the protections of the mandatory rules of your own country.

Before going to court, consumers can use a free mediation service: TBD. The European Commission also provides an online dispute resolution platform at https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

The English version of these terms is the reference version; translations are provided for convenience.

Contact

Questions about these terms: legal@afkhours.com, or the contact page on the site.