Barking Kennels — Terms of Service

Version: 1.0 Last updated: 1 November 2026 Effective date: 1 November 2026

1. Who we are and what this document is

Barking Kennels (the "Game") is an online dog breeding and management simulation operated by Francisco Antonio Freire Cortes, an individual sole trader (persona natural) established in Chile, RUT 20.084.080-1, with address at Augusto Villanueva 395, Ñuñoa, Chile, contact email [email protected] ("we", "us", "our").

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") form a binding agreement between you and us. They govern your access to and use of the Game, the website at https://barkingkennels.com, and everything you can do inside it, including buying and spending virtual currency.

By creating an account, accessing the Game, or making a purchase, you confirm that you have read and accepted these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with them, do not create an account and do not use the Game.

We keep a record of the version of the Terms you accepted and the date on which you accepted it.

2. Definitions

• Account — the personal profile you create to play, identified by a username and an email address.
• Content — everything that makes up the Game: code, artwork, text, dog breeds and genetics, sounds, layouts, names and logos.
• Game Coins — the free in-game currency you earn by playing. Game Coins cannot be bought with money.
• Premium Coins — the paid virtual currency, shown in the Game as Golden Kennies, that you may buy with real money and spend inside the Game.
• Event Coins — a limited-time currency granted during specific in-game events. Event Coins cannot be bought with money and may expire when the event they belong to ends, as announced in the Game.
• Virtual Currency — Game Coins, Premium Coins and Event Coins, together.
• Virtual Items — dogs, kennels, facilities, items, titles, achievements, cosmetic elements and any other digital object that exists only inside the Game.
• Premium Membership — an optional, time-limited status that unlocks additional features, described in section 9.
• Player Market — the in-Game area where players list Virtual Items and place bids using Virtual Currency.

3. Who may play

Minimum age. You must be at least 13 years old to create an Account. If you are in a country where a higher minimum age applies to consent to the processing of your personal data, that higher age applies to you instead. In the European Economic Area this may be up to 16 years old, depending on your country.

Players under 18. If you are under 18 (or under the age of majority where you live), you may only use the Game with the permission of a parent or legal guardian, who accepts these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use of the Game.

Purchases require adulthood. Only a person aged 18 or over, with a valid payment method in their own name, may buy Premium Coins or a Premium Membership. If you are under 18, you may not make a purchase, and you may not use a payment method belonging to another person, even with their permission.

Parents and guardians. If you believe a purchase was made from your payment method by a minor without your authorisation, contact us at [email protected]. Section 8 explains how we handle these cases.

Accuracy. You must give us a real date of birth and country when registering. Providing false information to bypass an age restriction is a breach of these Terms and may result in the closure of your Account.

4. Your Account

You are responsible for your Account and for everything that happens under it. Specifically:

• Keep your password confidential. Do not share it, and do not let anyone else use your Account.
• Give us an email address you actually control. We use it for security notices, purchase receipts and account recovery. If you lose access to it, we may be unable to restore your Account.
• Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you believe someone else has accessed your Account.
• One person, one Account, unless we have given you written permission otherwise. Creating additional Accounts to gain an in-Game advantage (for example, to feed resources to a main Account, or to manipulate the Player Market) is prohibited. To enforce this we record, in a protected form, the IP addresses and devices from which each Account signs in (see section 2.5 of the Privacy Policy). Accounts that have been used on the same device cannot buy from each other in the Item Market or trade with each other, and new Accounts can use the Item Market and trades only 7 days after they are created. If we conclude that several Accounts belong to the same person, we may reverse what they moved between them and ban the Accounts involved, as section 11.1 explains.
• You may not sell, rent, lend, gift or transfer your Account, and you may not buy an Account from another player. Accounts are personal and non-transferable.

You may close your Account at any time by writing to us. Section 15 explains what happens when an Account is closed.

5. Your licence to play

We grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and play the Game for your own private, non-commercial entertainment, for as long as these Terms are in force.

This licence is all you receive. You do not acquire ownership of the Game, of the Content, or of any Virtual Item or Virtual Currency.

Unless mandatory law in your country gives you the right to do otherwise, you may not:

• copy, modify, translate, adapt, decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer the Game or any part of it;
• create, distribute or use bots, scripts, macros, modified clients, automation tools, or any software that interacts with the Game other than a standard web browser;
• access the Game through automated means, scrape it, or harvest data from it;
• circumvent, disable or interfere with security features, rate limits, or systems that protect the Game or restrict access to any part of it;
• use the Game or any Content for commercial purposes, including advertising, paid services, or reselling access;
• remove or obscure any copyright, trade mark or other proprietary notice.

All rights not expressly granted to you are reserved by us and our licensors.

6. Virtual Currency and Virtual Items

This section is important. Please read it carefully.

6.1 You license them, you do not own them

Virtual Currency and Virtual Items are not your property. When you buy, earn or receive them, what you receive is a limited, personal, revocable licence to use them inside the Game, subject to these Terms. This is true whether you obtained them for free or paid money for them.

6.2 They have no monetary value outside the Game

Virtual Currency and Virtual Items:

• have no value in the real world, and cannot be redeemed for money, goods or anything of value outside the Game;
• are not money, electronic money, a deposit, a payment instrument, a security, a financial product, a token or a cryptocurrency, and are not backed by anything;
• cannot be exchanged, sold, transferred or given away outside the Game;
• do not accrue interest and do not represent a credit balance against us;
• cannot be inherited or transferred to another person, including on death of the Account holder.

6.3 Real-money trading is prohibited

You may not buy, sell, offer, advertise, auction or exchange Accounts, Virtual Currency or Virtual Items for real money, cryptocurrency, or for anything of value outside the Game, whether on external websites, social media, private messages, or anywhere else.

We may delete Virtual Items and Virtual Currency involved in such a transaction, and suspend or close the Accounts involved, without compensation. If you buy something from another player outside the Game, you do so entirely at your own risk: we do not recognise those transactions, we will not enforce them, and we will not compensate you if you are defrauded.

6.4 Balancing and changes to the Game

Barking Kennels is a live simulation, and we may change it. We may add, modify, rebalance, reprice, restrict or remove Virtual Items, Virtual Currency, features, prices, earn rates, costs, breeding mechanics, competition rules and any other part of the Game, in order to keep the Game balanced, fair, sustainable or lawful, or to improve it.

Where a change materially and negatively affects Virtual Items you bought with real money, we will give you reasonable prior notice through the Game or by email, and, where reasonably possible, offer an equivalent alternative.

6.5 Bugs, exploits and errors

If you obtain Virtual Currency or Virtual Items through a bug, an exploit, an error in the Game, a duplication glitch, or a mistake on our part, they do not belong to you. We may remove them, and reverse any in-Game transaction that resulted from them, without compensation.

If you notice such a bug, report it to [email protected]. Deliberately using it, or sharing it with others so they can use it, is a serious breach of these Terms.

6.6 Chance-based outcomes

Some in-Game activities have random outcomes. Breeding produces puppies whose genetics are determined partly at random; competitions are resolved partly at random. These outcomes are final and cannot be repeated, reversed or refunded on the grounds that you did not obtain the result you wanted.

Premium Coins are never converted into a chance to win money or anything of real-world value, and nothing in the Game may be cashed out. The Game is not gambling and does not offer prizes with monetary value.

7. Buying Premium Coins

7.1 How a purchase works

Premium Coins are sold in packs. Before you confirm a purchase, the Game shows you the number of Premium Coins in the pack, the total price you will pay, and the currency. The purchase is concluded when your payment is authorised, and the Premium Coins are credited to your Account immediately.

The Payment Provider sends your receipt to the email address you use at checkout. Keep it: you will need it if you contact us about a payment.

7.2 Prices, currency and taxes

Prices are shown in US dollars (USD). Depending on where you live, consumption taxes such as VAT, GST or IVA may apply. The checkout page shows you the tax and the total before you confirm.

Your bank or payment provider may apply currency conversion or international transaction fees. Those are between you and them, and we do not receive them.

7.3 Payment

Purchases are sold through Lemon Squeezy (Sold through Link, LLC), which acts as our reseller and merchant of record (the "Payment Provider"): it takes the payment, charges the applicable taxes and issues your receipt. When you pay, you also accept the Payment Provider's own terms. We never receive or store your full card number: it is handled by the Payment Provider.

You confirm that you are entitled to use the payment method you provide, and that there are sufficient funds or credit available.

We may refuse or cancel a purchase if we suspect fraud, an unauthorised payment method, a breach of these Terms, or if we are required to do so by law. If we cancel a completed purchase for one of these reasons and the Premium Coins have not been spent, we will refund the amount paid, unless section 11.2 applies.

7.4 Chargebacks

If you dispute a charge with your bank instead of contacting us first, we may suspend your Account while the dispute is resolved. If the payment is reversed, by your bank or by the Payment Provider, we remove the Premium Coins and anything bought with them. We would much rather you write to [email protected] first — most problems are faster to solve directly.

8. Right of withdrawal and refunds

8.1 Immediate delivery and what you agree to at checkout

Premium Coins and Premium Membership are digital content delivered immediately. When you confirm a purchase, you expressly request that we begin performance right away, and you acknowledge that, once the Premium Coins have been credited to your Account, you lose any statutory right of withdrawal or cancellation that would otherwise apply to distance and online contracts.

You give this consent by ticking the confirmation box shown at checkout. If you do not tick it, we cannot complete the purchase.

8.2 Consumers in the European Union, the EEA and the United Kingdom

You normally have 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract, without giving a reason. For digital content that is supplied immediately, that right is lost once supply has begun with your prior express consent and your acknowledgement that you lose the right — which is what section 8.1 describes.

This does not affect your legal rights if the digital content we supplied is faulty, does not match its description, or does not work as it should. In that case you may be entitled to have it fixed, or to a price reduction or a refund.

8.3 Consumers in Chile

Under article 3 bis, letter b) of Law 19.496, the ten-day right of withdrawal (derecho de retracto) for contracts concluded by electronic means does not apply to purchases of Premium Coins or Premium Membership, because we expressly exclude it here and state it before you buy. This exclusion is brought to your attention at checkout.

Your rights under Law 19.496 in respect of a service that is not delivered or is defective are not affected, and cannot be waived.

8.4 Our voluntary refund policy

Beyond what the law requires, we will consider a refund if you contact us within 14 days of the purchase and:

• the Premium Coins were not credited to your Account, or were credited incorrectly;
• you were charged more than once for the same purchase;
• a technical fault on our side prevented you from receiving or using what you bought;
• the purchase was made from your payment method by a minor in your household without your authorisation (see section 3).

We will normally decline a refund where the Premium Coins have already been spent, where the request is based on a change of mind about how you spent them, or where we have reasonable grounds to believe the request is fraudulent or part of a repeated pattern. If your Account was suspended or banned for breaking these Terms, section 11.2 applies.

Approved refunds are paid through the Payment Provider, which has its own refund terms and takes the final decision on the payment, and are returned to the original payment method. We will deduct any Premium Coins refunded from your balance; if your balance is insufficient because you have already spent them, we may refund only the unspent part.

To request a refund, write to [email protected] from the email address registered on your Account, with the date of the purchase and the receipt.

9. Premium Membership

A Premium Membership gives you access to the additional features described on the Premium page in the Game for a fixed period, starting when your payment is confirmed and ending on the date shown on your Account.

It does not renew automatically. When the period ends, your Account returns to its standard state and you keep everything you earned while the Membership was active, except for benefits that by their nature only work while the Membership is running. To continue, you buy another period.

The benefits included in a Premium Membership may change over time, as described in section 6.4. Buying a Membership does not guarantee that a specific benefit will exist for the whole period, although we will not remove a benefit that was the main reason the Membership was advertised without offering you a fair alternative.

Sections 7 and 8 apply to Premium Membership purchases in the same way as to Premium Coins.

10. The Player Market and player-to-player trading

The Player Market lets you list Virtual Items and place bids using Virtual Currency. It exists entirely inside the Game.

• Listings and bids are made with Virtual Currency only. Real money is never involved.
• A bid you place is binding inside the Game and may be committed, held or spent as the Game rules describe. We are not obliged to reverse a bid you regret.
• We are not a party to trades between players, we do not guarantee that any Virtual Item is worth what you paid for it, and we do not act as an escrow or a broker.
• Prices in the Player Market are set by players and fluctuate. We do not guarantee liquidity, demand, or that you will be able to sell anything.
• We may cancel listings, reverse trades, and adjust balances where a trade results from a bug, an exploit, market manipulation, coordinated multi-Account activity, a compromised Account, or a breach of these Terms.

11. Rules of conduct

While using the Game, including its messaging, kennel names, dog names, usernames and any other text you can write, you must not:

• harass, bully, threaten, stalk, defame or impersonate anyone, including us;
• post content that is unlawful, hateful, discriminatory, violent, sexually explicit, or that sexualises minors in any way;
• post advertising, spam, chain messages, referral links or solicitations;
• share another person's private information without their consent;
• cheat, use bots or automation, exploit bugs, or manipulate the Game economy;
• use multiple Accounts to gain an advantage, or trade between Accounts you control;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to another player's Account, to our systems, or to any data you are not entitled to;
• interfere with the operation of the Game, including by overloading it, attacking it, or disrupting other players' experience;
• do anything unlawful, or encourage anyone else to do any of the above.

We may moderate, edit or remove any content, and rename any Account, dog, kennel or item, where it breaches these rules.

11.1 Sanctions and bans

If you break these rules we may warn you, mute you, freeze your trading, suspend your Account for a period, or ban it permanently. We choose according to how serious the breach is, whether it was deliberate, and whether it has happened before.

The following are serious breaches. They normally lead to a permanent ban, and we may ban you for them without a prior warning:

• running more than one Account to gain an advantage (section 4), in which case every Account involved may be banned, including your main one;
• deliberately using or spreading a bug or exploit (section 6.5);
• using bots, scripts or automation (section 5);
• trading Accounts, Virtual Currency or Virtual Items for real money (section 6.3);
• harassing, threatening or stalking another player, or repeating abusive behaviour after a warning;
• posting content that sexualises minors, or other seriously unlawful content;
• paying with a stolen or unauthorised payment method;
• creating a new Account to get around a sanction.

A suspension or a ban is decided by a person who has reviewed the evidence, never by an automatic signal alone. A shared IP address is not, on its own, proof of multiple Accounts, because families and schools share one. We will tell you the reason, unless the law or the safety of others prevents it, and you can appeal as section 15 explains.

11.2 No refund when you are sanctioned for a breach

Please read this before you buy anything.

If we suspend or ban your Account because you broke these Terms, you lose access to everything on it during the suspension, or permanently if it is a ban. That includes Virtual Currency, Virtual Items and any Premium Membership time, even if you paid real money for them. We will not refund what you paid, and we will not compensate you for what you lost, including for the time a suspension lasts.

This does not apply:

• if the sanction is reversed on appeal or turns out to be our mistake: we restore your Account and what was on it, and if we cannot, we refund what you paid for what could not be restored;
• to refunds that the law requires, or to your rights if what we supplied was faulty. Nothing in this section removes rights that mandatory consumer law gives you and that cannot be waived;
• to a decision the Payment Provider or your bank takes under their own rules. If they reverse a payment, section 7.4 applies.

12. Content you create

You keep ownership of the text and other content you create in the Game ("Player Content"). By submitting Player Content you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable and sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, display, adapt and distribute it for the purposes of operating, promoting and improving the Game.

You confirm that you have the right to grant this licence, and that your Player Content does not infringe anyone else's rights.

We are not obliged to monitor Player Content, but we may review, moderate and remove it, and we may retain copies where we need them to comply with a legal obligation, resolve a dispute, or enforce these Terms. When a private message is reported, a moderator may read it together with the surrounding letters between the same two players, as described in the Privacy Policy.

Feedback. If you send us suggestions or ideas about the Game, we may use them freely, without obligation or payment to you. Do not send us ideas you consider confidential.

13. Privacy and data protection

We process personal data — including your username, email address, date of birth, country, gameplay data and purchase history — as described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction and portability over your personal data. The Privacy Policy explains how to exercise them and how to contact us or the relevant supervisory authority.

14. Availability, changes and closure of the Game

Availability. We aim to keep the Game available, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free service. The Game may be unavailable for maintenance, updates, technical failures, or events outside our control. Daily processing cycles (the "rollover") may be delayed or re-run when something goes wrong.

Changes. We may change, add or remove features, and we may reset, correct or adjust in-Game data where necessary to fix an error or protect the integrity of the Game.

Closure of the Game. If we decide to shut Barking Kennels down permanently, we will:

1. announce it in the Game and by email at least 60 days before the closing date;
2. stop selling Premium Coins and Premium Memberships immediately upon that announcement; and
3. keep the Game running until the closing date so that you can spend the Premium Coins you have already bought.

After the closing date, all licences granted under these Terms end, and Virtual Currency and Virtual Items cease to exist. Except as set out above, and except where mandatory consumer law requires otherwise, no refund is due for Virtual Currency or Virtual Items that remain unspent at closure.

15. Suspension, termination and inactivity

By you. You may stop playing and close your Account at any time. Closing your Account forfeits any unspent Virtual Currency and all Virtual Items, and this cannot be undone. If you have an unspent balance of Premium Coins you paid for, consider spending it before closing, or contact us first.

By us. We may suspend or ban your Account, remove Virtual Items or Virtual Currency, or restrict your access to parts of the Game, if:

• you seriously or repeatedly breach these Terms, including the serious breaches listed in section 11.1;
• we conclude, on the evidence, that you are cheating, exploiting, running several Accounts, manipulating the economy, or trading outside the Game;
• your payment is reversed, charged back, or found to be fraudulent;
• we are required to do so by law, or by an order of a court or authority.

Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will tell you why, and give you an opportunity to respond before we act. For serious cases — fraud, attacks on the Game, content involving minors — we may act immediately. Section 11.2 explains what happens to what you paid for.

Appeals. If you believe a suspension or closure was a mistake, write to [email protected] within 30 days. We will review it and reply.

Inactivity. If your Account has not been used for 24 months, we may notify you by email and, if you do not log in within 30 days of that notice, close and delete it, together with all Virtual Currency and Virtual Items on it.

Effect of termination. When your Account ends for any reason, your licence under section 5 ends with it. Sections 6.2, 12, 16, 17, 19 and 20 survive.

16. Warranties and what we do not promise

The Game is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, and except for the guarantees that mandatory consumer law gives you and that cannot be excluded, we do not warrant that:

• the Game will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free;
• defects will be corrected;
• the Game will meet your particular expectations; or
• any specific Virtual Item, feature or outcome will remain available.

Nothing in this section removes rights you have as a consumer under the law of your country of residence — including, for consumers in Chile, the rights granted by Law 19.496, which cannot be waived in advance.

17. Our liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you.

Subject to that:

• We are liable for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or our failure to use reasonable care. Loss is foreseeable if it is obvious that it will happen, or if it was contemplated by both of us when you accepted these Terms.
• We are not liable for loss of profits, loss of business or opportunity, or for the loss of Virtual Currency or Virtual Items in circumstances described in these Terms (rebalancing, bug correction, closure of the Game, or termination for breach).
• We are not liable for the acts of other players, including trades, messages, or anything you agree with them outside the Game.
• Our total liability to you for all claims arising in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of (i) the total amount you paid us in that period, and (ii) USD 100.

We supply the Game for private use. If you use it for any commercial purpose, we have no liability to you for business losses.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms — for example to reflect changes to the Game, to our prices or payment methods, or to comply with the law.

If a change is material, we will tell you at least 30 days in advance, by email or through a notice in the Game, and we will show you the updated version before you next play. If you do not accept the new Terms, you may close your Account before they take effect; if you have an unspent balance of Premium Coins that you paid for and you close your Account for this reason, contact us and we will consider a refund of the unspent portion.

Continuing to use the Game after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms. We will always publish the version number and date at the top of this document.

19. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Chile.

If you are a consumer, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer rules of the country where you habitually reside, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country. Consumers in Chile may also bring the matter before SERNAC or the competent Juzgado de Policía Local.

Talk to us first. Before starting any formal proceedings, please write to [email protected] describing the problem. We will reply within 30 days and try to resolve it directly. Most disputes end here.

Subject to the consumer protections above, the courts of Santiago, Chile, with jurisdiction over Ñuñoa have jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of these Terms.

20. General

Whole agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any rules published inside the Game, are the entire agreement between us about the Game.

Severability. If a court finds any provision invalid or unenforceable, the rest remains in force, and the invalid provision is replaced by a valid one that comes closest to its purpose.

No waiver. If we do not enforce a right immediately, that does not mean we give it up.

Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours to another entity — in particular, to the Chilean company we may incorporate to operate the Game — provided your rights under these Terms are not reduced. We will tell you if this happens.

Force majeure. We are not liable for failure to perform caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including natural disasters, war, industrial action, failures of internet or hosting providers, or acts of government.

Language. These Terms are written in English, and the English version governs. Any translation is provided for convenience only.

Contact. Francisco Antonio Freire Cortes — RUT 20.084.080-1 Augusto Villanueva 395, Ñuñoa, Chile [email protected]