Terms of Service

Last updated 27 August 2026

Gaffer is a football management game that runs in your browser. Playing is free and needs no account. A subscription buys four things, and this page says what they are, what they are not, and what happens when one ends.

By using Gaffer you agree to these terms. If you do not, please do not use it. They apply to this website and to the game at /play/.

1. What you get for nothing

You can play a career at any club in the world without an account, without paying, and without telling us who you are. That is the game, not a demo of it: the football, the squad, the transfers and the seasons are the same ones a subscriber plays.

2. What a subscription buys

Four capabilities, and this is the whole list:

• Continuing a career past its first season — the first season is free in full, and the paid tier carries every season after it;
• Keeping more than one career at a time — the free game keeps one on the shelf;
• Managing a national side; and
• Beginning a career in a world you made or were given.

Saving a career is free at every tier, in both directions: the autosave, and exporting and importing a save file. Importing and exporting a world file is free too, because passing worlds around is how the game travels.

3. Reading stays free, for ever

A subscription that ends does not lock your careers away. Every career already on your device stays loadable, readable and saveable — every season of it, the tables, the honours. What stops is the next kick-off, which is what was being paid for. We will not hold a career you have played hostage because you stopped paying.

4. Your careers are yours, and they are on your device

Careers live in your browser's storage and nowhere else (see the Privacy Policy). There is no cloud backup, and we cannot recover a career for you. Clearing your browser's site data deletes them. If a career matters to you, export it to a file.

Browser storage is also not infinite and not permanent: a browser may evict site data under pressure, and a private window keeps nothing. Exporting is the only guarantee.

5. Billing, renewal and cancelling

A subscription is sold and billed by a third-party payment provider acting as the seller of record. It renews automatically for the period you chose until you cancel it, and you cancel it with that provider. Prices, taxes, invoices and refunds are theirs, and their terms apply to the transaction alongside these.

Where a statutory right of withdrawal applies to you — including the EU's fourteen days for digital services — it applies, whatever a provider's own policy says.

6. An account, and what you must not do with it

An account is one email address you control, and signing in is a link sent to it. Please do not use an address that is not yours, and do not share the sign-in link — anybody holding it can sign in as you. Tell us at the address above if you think somebody has.

Do not attempt to break the game for other people: no attacking the servers, no automated hammering of the endpoints, no reselling access.

7. The paywall is a price list, not a lock

Stated plainly because it is true and pretending otherwise would be worse: every paid capability runs entirely inside your own browser, and somebody determined has all four with the developer tools open. That is not a licence to circumvent it — doing so is a breach of these terms — but it is not a security boundary either, and it is not described here as one.

8. Real clubs, competitions and names

Gaffer names real clubs, divisions and competitions so that a football game is about football. Those names, badges and marks belong to their owners, and are used here descriptively and nominatively. Gaffer is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or licensed by any club, league, federation or competition it names.

The footballers are not real people. Every player in the game is generated — his name drawn from his country's own name pools — and any resemblance to a real footballer is coincidence.

9. The game itself

The game, its code, its text and its artwork are ours, and are licensed to you to play, not to redistribute or resell. A world file or a save file you make is yours to keep and to hand to whoever you like.

10. No warranty

Gaffer is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. It is a simulation built by one person and it has bugs; a season may not play out the way real football would, and a release may change how it behaves. We do not promise that it is available at any particular time, that it is free of errors, or that a career will survive every future version — though breaking a save is treated as a bug rather than a decision.

11. Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost careers, lost saves or lost data. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to what you paid in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability for death, personal injury, fraud, or anything else that cannot lawfully be limited — including your statutory consumer rights, which these terms do not affect.

12. Ending it

You may stop using Gaffer at any time, and delete your account by writing to the address above. We may suspend an account that is breaking section 6, and will say why. If Gaffer is ever shut down, notice will be given to subscribers' addresses in time to export what they have.

13. Changes, and the law that applies

If these terms change, the date at the top changes with them, and a change that materially affects a subscription will be sent to the address on that account.

These terms are governed by the substantive law of Switzerland, and the ordinary courts at the operator's seat in Montlingen, canton of St. Gallen, have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, that does not take away the protection of the mandatory consumer-protection law of the country you live in, nor your right to bring proceedings there — and nothing in these terms is meant to.