Competition Terms & Conditions

Last Updated: November 4, 2026

These terms apply to every paid tournament and prize on Tournament Runner, together with the Terms of Service. How the game itself is played is explained in the Game Rules.

1. Eligibility

You may enter a paid tournament only if:

  • You are 19 years of age or older, and at least the age of majority where you live.
  • You pay with a PayPal account in your own name.
  • You are physically located in an Accepted Jurisdiction.
  • You enter only once in that tournament, for yourself.

Before paying, you confirm all of this with a written certification on the payment page. We do not ask for identity documents at checkout; PayPal carries out its own identity and anti-money-laundering checks on its account holders. We may ask for government-issued photo ID before a prize is sent.

2. Accepted Jurisdictions

Paid tournaments are limited to the following territories. Payment from anywhere else is refused.

  • North America: Canada (excluding Quebec); United States (excluding Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Montana, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee).
  • Europe: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden.
  • Asia-Pacific: Australia (excluding South Australia), New Zealand.

3. Location Checks; No Circumvention

We check location on our servers at every payment step, using the country and region our network provider (Cloudflare) reports for your IP address. We do not guarantee a verified physical location. Using a VPN, proxy or other tool to appear to be somewhere else is prohibited. If we detect it, we may void the result, withhold the prize and refuse future entries.

4. Entry Fee, Prize and Start

  • Fixed prize: each tournament has a fixed entry fee and a fixed Skill Tournament Prize, both shown before you pay. The prize does not depend on how many players join or on the entry fees collected. We fund the prize and assume that financial risk: a match that starts with the minimum of three players can pay out more than the entry fees it collected, and we bear that cost.
  • Entering: you pay first. You authorize the entry fee through PayPal, and only then are you placed in that tournament’s lobby.
  • Starting: a match needs a minimum of three (3) players. When three players are in, a 60-second grace period lets more players join, followed by a 10-second countdown. If the lobby fills during the grace period, the 10-second countdown starts at once. The lobby locks when that countdown starts: nobody can join or leave.
  • Leaving: until the final countdown starts, you may leave the lobby; your hold is released and you are not charged.
  • Hold now, charge at start: when you enter, PayPal places a hold for the entry fee on your account; nothing is charged. When the countdown ends, every player’s hold is charged and the match starts with the players whose charge went through. If your charge is declined, your hold is released, you are not charged, and the match starts without you. If fewer than the minimum number of players were charged, the match does not start and the lobby reopens.
  • Unfilled tournaments: if a tournament has not started within 24 hours of its first entry, it is cancelled and every hold is released, so nobody is charged. If you were already charged (for example, the lobby reopened after other players’ charges were declined), your entry fee is refunded in full to the PayPal account that paid it. You do not need to ask.
  • One winner receives the prize. There are no other prizes.

5. Connection, Hardware and Disconnects

You are responsible for your own internet connection and device. Matches are not paused, restarted or refunded because of problems on your side, such as lag, frame drops, a weak signal or a device failure. If your connection drops, your character stays in the match without your input; you may reconnect and carry on if you have not been eliminated.

6. Server-Side Faults and the Recovery Email Protocol

If a fault on our own servers ends a match unfairly (a “Server-Side Fault”), no cash refund is issued. Instead, each affected player who gave a Recovery Email at entry is emailed a single-use, non-transferable link for a free entry into the same type of tournament. The link expires 24 hours after it is sent. The full rules are in the Refund Policy.

Active Forfeiture

The Recovery Email is optional. If you choose not to give one, you agree that you will not receive a free entry or other compensation for a Server-Side Fault, because we have no way to send it to you.

7. Results

Every result is decided by our servers. Each match produces a tamper-evident record: every game event is chained with a cryptographic hash, so any later change to the record can be detected. Verified results are final. We may void a result or withhold a prize if we find cheating, collusion, location masking or other prohibited conduct.

8. Prize Payment

  • Prizes are paid automatically through PayPal, to the same PayPal account that paid the winner’s entry fee, in the tournament’s currency. They usually arrive within minutes of the match ending.
  • This is a closed loop: we do not hold balances or wallets, and a prize cannot be sent to any other account.
  • A prize may be held for review before it is sent, for example when several entries in the same tournament came from one network, when a payout limit is reached, or when PayPal does not confirm the payment. Held prizes are reviewed and, if valid, sent.
  • If PayPal cannot deliver a prize to your account, contact us at support@thetournamentrunner.com and we will resolve it.

9. Taxes

You are responsible for declaring and paying any taxes that apply to your prizes where you live.