What Gnomedale promises you, what it expects from you, and what it does with your data. Watching is free, purchases are for adults only, and today nothing is paid for: the first 200 gnomes are free. Written to be read, not scrolled.
This English text is a courtesy translation. Only the French version, at valgnome.fr, is binding.
Version of 13 September 2026. Publisher: Emeric Termoz-Bajat, sole trader (legal notice). Contact: [email protected].
These terms form the contract between you and the publisher as soon as you visit Gnomedale, and all the more so once you create a gnome there. If anything bothers you, write to us before creating your account: we prefer a question to a misunderstanding.
Gnomedale is an online service: a colony of garden gnomes simulated continuously on our servers, which you reach through your browser. Nothing is installed. It runs whether you are there or not: the gnomes build, marry, vote, fall ill and die without asking your opinion.
Gnomedale is in alpha: places are limited (200 to begin with, one per account) and the game changes often. The first 200 gnomes are free, and today no money is asked of you: no payment, no card, no subscription.
Gnomedale simulates whole lives, and therefore their end too. Gnomes die there of old age, of illness, under a cat’s paw or a giant’s foot: there is a little blood, bodies in the grass, graves, funerals, and a dark humour that runs all the way into the work songs. There is, however, no sexual content and no gambling.
We advise against Gnomedale for children under 12.
Players talk to each other in Gnomedale (chapter 5). We moderate, but we do not read every sentence before it appears: a parent letting a child play should know this.
You enter with an email address and a password, with a code received by email, or with a Google account. One account per person, one living gnome per account.
The rule fits in one sentence: write what a 12-year-old could read over your shoulder. In concrete terms, the following are forbidden in speech, gnome names and family names:
Also forbidden towards the service itself: automating an account, creating several accounts (in particular to get several free gnomes), exploiting a flaw instead of reporting it, getting around rate or payment limits, selling or buying coins, items or an inhabitant for real money, and anything that puts the server in difficulty (overload, mass scraping).
A flaw found and reported to [email protected] will never be held against you. Exploited in silence, it means the account is closed.
Sanctions range from the lightest to the heaviest depending on severity and repetition: removal of a message, muting, suspension, account closure. You can always contest a sanction by replying to [email protected]; we review it and explain ourselves.
You can make your gnome speak: 120 characters, one sentence every five seconds, above their head and in the Chat tab. It is public, like your gnome’s name and your family name. The latest words stay visible for a while in the tab, then fade away.
What you write remains yours. You simply grant us the right to display it in the game and to keep it for as long as moderation requires, free of charge and non-exclusively. We do not resell it, do not publish it elsewhere, and do not use it for advertising.
We may remove a message or a name that breaches chapter 4, without notice, and on a report from anyone (see Report content).
Gnomedale can sculpt a gnome from a photo of you. This photo never leaves your device. Everything is measured in your browser, with an engine we serve ourselves; only body settings go to the server: nose length, face width, tints. No image, no biometric template, no facial recognition, nothing that could identify you from a gnome.
Today, Gnomedale sells nothing. No payment, no card, no subscription. The first 200 gnomes are free.
The first 200 gnomes are free: one per account, and only one per connection (the same internet address receives only one free gnome). To check this without keeping your address, we store only an encrypted fingerprint of it (chapter 9).
The following gnomes will cost 10 €, to create one or, once it becomes possible, to adopt an inhabitant who has no player. This sale is not open yet: once the free gnomes are gone, and as long as it is not open, you can watch the valley without entering it.
Buying is for adults only. A minor can receive a free gnome and earn everything by playing, but cannot pay for anything: neither a gnome nor a coin purse.
A gnome, free or bought, founds a lineage: when it dies, its heir takes over the account and keeps everything it had (see below).
Coins are the game's currency. Your gnome earns them by working, by selling its materials at the shop or to other players, and through its adventures. They buy cosmetic items (a hat, an outfit, a cape, a lantern), tools (pickaxes and axes), the forge fee and repairs. A good tool makes your gnome work faster; no purchase makes a gnome more fertile, changes its genes or decides a vote.
The forge is not a game of money: its fee is fixed, and paying more never improves what comes out. A tool's rarity depends on the smith's skill, the material and the gem set in it.
Coins have no value outside Gnomedale: they cannot be bought today, are never converted into money and are not won by betting. Coin purses may be sold in euros once sales open; they will remain a game currency, never refundable in money.
At the market hall, players sell each other materials and forged tools, for coins only. What is put up for sale, or the coins of a buy order, stay in escrow until the trade or until the listing expires (three days), then return to their owner. The seller pays 3% of the price, removed from the game. Tools bought at the shop are bound to the account and cannot be sold. Trading coins, items or an inhabitant for real money, outside Gnomedale, is forbidden (chapter 4).
When your gnome dies, its heir takes over your account and everything it owned: its purse, its materials, its tools and its wardrobe. Its open listings at the market hall go to the heir as well.
The day the sale of gnomes and purses opens, these terms will be completed and published before the first payment: checking that the payer is an adult, prices including all taxes, the right of withdrawal and the terms for waiving it for digital content supplied immediately, legal guarantees, payment provider and the contact details of a consumer mediator. You will be notified by email, and free to refuse by closing your account.
Gnomedale is a service under construction, served as best we can. We promise neither permanent availability, nor an absence of bugs, nor the eternal preservation of a world: there will be interruptions, updates and restarts.
We are liable for direct damage caused by our faults. We are not liable for what the simulation does to your gnome, nor for outages of your internet provider, nor for what other players say, nor for our providers’ services when they go down.
Data controller: Emeric Termoz-Bajat, 254 rue Vendôme, 69003 Lyon, France, [email protected].
No advertising, no resale, no profiling, no automated decision about you. A single cookie, your session’s; your display settings (quality, sound) stay in your browser.
Our processors, each for its part: OVH (hosting, France), Cloudflare (site delivery and protection), Resend (sign-in and alert emails), Twilio (text messages, WhatsApp and calls if you turn them on), Telegram (if you link this channel), Google (if you sign in with a Google account). No payment provider today: there is no payment yet. Some are based outside the European Union; their transfers are governed by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
You have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability, as well as the right to give instructions about what happens to your data after your death. Write to [email protected]: we reply within a month. If our reply does not satisfy you, you may contact the CNIL, 3 place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07, France (cnil.fr).
If you are a parent and discover an account created by your child without your consent, write to us: we close it and erase their data.
A complaint always starts with an email to [email protected]. We reply within 15 days.
Gnomedale sells nothing today: no consumer dispute related to a purchase can arise, so no consumer mediator needs to be appointed for now. A mediator will be appointed, and their contact details will appear here, before the first payment.
These terms are governed by French law. In the event of a dispute, the French courts have jurisdiction, and a consumer may always bring the matter before the court of the place where they live.
If any clause of this text proved void, the others would remain in force.