Terms of Service

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old (or older where a higher minimum age applies in your country, such as 16 in some parts of the European Economic Area) to use the Services. If you are under the age of legal majority where you live, you may use the Services only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.

You may not use the Services if you are barred from doing so under applicable law, including trade sanctions and export control laws.

2. Your account

Some features require an account. You agree to provide accurate information, keep it up to date, and keep your device and sign-in credentials secure. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account. Tell us promptly through our contact form if you believe your account has been used without permission.

Display names and profile photos must not impersonate another person or organization, infringe anyone’s rights, or be offensive. We may change or remove a display name or photo that breaks these Terms.

3. Not medical advice; health and safety

The Services are for general fitness, wellness, and entertainment purposes only. StepWorld is not a medical device and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, monitor, or prevent any disease or medical condition. Nothing in the Services, including step counts, distance, active energy, goals, streaks, rankings, or other content, is medical, health, nutritional, or professional advice, and it is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare professional.

• Talk to a doctor first. Consult a physician or other qualified healthcare provider before starting or changing any exercise program, especially if you are pregnant, have a medical condition or injury, take medication, or have not exercised in some time.
• Listen to your body. Stop activity immediately and seek medical attention if you feel pain, faintness, dizziness, shortness of breath, or other discomfort.
• Never ignore or delay professional advice because of something you saw in StepWorld. In an emergency, contact your local emergency services.
• Stay safe while walking. Pay attention to your surroundings, traffic, and weather. Do not use your phone in ways that distract you while walking, running, cycling, or driving, and do not enter unsafe or private places to earn steps.
• Challenges are optional. Leaderboards, goals, and friendly competition are meant to be motivating, not pressure. You decide how much activity is right for you.

You participate in physical activity voluntarily and at your own risk. To the extent permitted by law, you are responsible for your own health and safety decisions.

4. HealthKit and activity data

StepWorld can read step count, walking and running distance, and active energy from Apple HealthKit (the Health app) on your device, including data recorded by your iPhone or Apple Watch. This happens only after you grant permission in iOS. You can change or revoke access at any time in the Health app or iOS Settings; some features will stop working without it.

• We use HealthKit data only to provide fitness features of the Services, such as showing your activity, history, goals, and the leaderboards and social features you choose to use.
• We do not use HealthKit data for advertising or marketing, we do not sell it, and we do not disclose it to third parties for advertising, data brokering, or any purpose prohibited by Apple’s HealthKit rules.
• When you use social features, a summary of your activity (for example, a daily or monthly step total) is shown to other users as described in section 7.

Details about how we handle this data are in our Privacy Policy.

5. Accuracy of step and activity data

Step counts, distance, and energy estimates come from your device’s sensors, Apple HealthKit, and other apps or devices you connect to Health. These readings are estimates. They can be affected by how and where you carry your device, sensor limitations, third-party data, time zones, connectivity, and delays in syncing.

We do not guarantee that any count, total, ranking, or leaderboard position is accurate, complete, or up to date. We may correct, recalculate, or remove activity data or rankings that appear inaccurate, duplicated, or manipulated.

6. Analytics

To understand how the Services are used and to improve them, the StepWorld app uses Google Analytics for Firebase, provided by Google LLC, and our website may use Google Analytics or similar tools. These tools collect usage and device information, such as screens viewed, features used, app version, device type, approximate region, and app or advertising identifiers where your device settings allow.

• We do not send HealthKit data to Google Analytics or any other analytics provider.
• Google processes this information under its own terms and privacy policy. You can learn more at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
• You can limit tracking in your device’s privacy settings, and on the web you can block cookies in your browser or use the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and your choices in more detail.

7. Social features and leaderboards

StepWorld lets you connect with friends and family and appear on daily, monthly, and country leaderboards. When you use these features, other users can see information such as your display name, profile photo, country, and step totals. Only add people you are comfortable sharing this information with.

Leaderboards and rankings are for fun. They have no cash value, and we may change how they are calculated, reset them, or remove entries, including entries we believe were produced by cheating or automation.

8. Your content

“Your content” means anything you submit through the Services, such as your display name, profile photo, and any posts, reactions, or messages. You keep ownership of your content.

You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, display, adapt (for example, resize or crop), and distribute your content only as needed to operate, provide, and improve the Services. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies kept in backups for a limited time, copies other users have already shared, or where we must keep it by law.

You confirm that you have the rights needed to share your content and that it does not break these Terms or the law. We do not endorse user content and are not responsible for it, but we may review, hide, or remove any content at our discretion, including in response to reports.

9. Acceptable use

We have zero tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users. When using the Services, you agree not to:

• harass, bully, threaten, stalk, or intimidate anyone;
• post content that is hateful, sexually explicit, violent, defamatory, misleading, or otherwise objectionable, or that involves minors in any inappropriate way;
• impersonate anyone or misrepresent your identity or affiliation;
• falsify activity data, for example with step-shaking devices, scripts, emulators, or editing Health data, to manipulate leaderboards or rankings;
• spam, advertise, or solicit other users without our permission;
• collect other users’ information, or scrape, crawl, or harvest the Services without permission;
• interfere with, disrupt, overload, or gain unauthorized access to the Services, our servers, or other accounts, or bypass any security or access controls;
• copy, modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or create derivative works of the app, except where the law allows it;
• use the Services for any illegal purpose or in violation of others’ rights.

If you see content or behavior that breaks these rules, report it through our contact form or through any reporting tools in the app. We aim to review reports promptly, and we may remove content and suspend or ban users who break these rules.

10. StepWorld Pro, subscriptions, and payments

Some features may be offered for a fee, including through StepWorld Pro. Purchases are made through the Apple App Store and are subject to Apple’s terms, payment methods, and refund policies. Prices are shown in the app before you buy and may include applicable taxes.

• Auto-renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period at the then-current price unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your Apple account is charged within 24 hours before renewal.
• Managing and cancelling. You can manage or cancel subscriptions in your Apple account settings (Settings → your name → Subscriptions). Deleting the app or your StepWorld account does not cancel a subscription.
• Free trials. If a free trial is offered, any unused portion ends when you purchase a subscription, and the subscription starts charging when the trial ends unless you cancel beforehand.
• Refunds. Apple handles all billing and refunds. To request a refund, visit reportaproblem.apple.com. Except where required by law, we cannot issue refunds directly.
• Price and feature changes. We may change prices or what is included in paid features. Apple will notify you of subscription price changes as required, and you can cancel if you do not agree.

11. License to use the app

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to download and use the StepWorld app on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in Apple’s Media Services Terms and Conditions. You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute, or sublicense the app.

12. Our intellectual property and feedback

The Services, including the app, website, design, text, graphics, logos, and the StepWorld name, are owned by Skydea K.K. or its licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. These Terms do not give you any rights in our trademarks or other intellectual property except the limited license above.

If you send us ideas, suggestions, or feedback, we may use them without restriction or payment to you.

13. Copyright complaints

We respect intellectual property rights. If you believe content in the Services infringes your copyright, contact us through our contact form with the subject “Copyright Complaint” and include: your contact details; a description of the copyrighted work; where the material appears in the Services; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner; and your physical or electronic signature. We may remove infringing material and terminate accounts of repeat infringers.

14. Third-party services

The Services rely on or link to third-party services, including Apple (App Store, HealthKit, Sign in with Apple, and push notifications), Google (analytics), and cloud hosting providers. Your use of those services is governed by their own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for third-party services, and their availability may change.

15. Apple App Store terms

If you downloaded the app from the Apple App Store, you and we also agree that:

• These Terms are between you and Skydea K.K. only, not with Apple Inc. (“Apple”). We, not Apple, are solely responsible for the app and its content.
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app. Support questions should be sent to us through our contact form.
• If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any) for the app. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claims relating to the app or your use of it, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to conform to legal or regulatory requirements, and claims under consumer protection, privacy, or similar laws.
• If a third party claims that the app or your use of it infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, and discharge of that claim.
• You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You must comply with any third-party terms that apply when using the app.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms. Once you accept these Terms, Apple has the right (and is deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

If anything in these Terms conflicts with Apple’s Licensed Application End User License Agreement in a way that would make these Terms less protective of you, the Apple terms apply to that extent.

16. Changes to the Services

We are always improving StepWorld. We may add, change, or remove features, require updates, or suspend or stop the Services (in whole or in part) at any time. If we discontinue a paid feature you have an active subscription for, we will give reasonable notice where we can and you may be eligible for a refund through Apple.

17. Termination and account deletion

You can stop using the Services at any time. You can delete your account in the app (Settings → Delete Account) or by contacting us through our contact form with the subject “Delete My Account.” Deleting your account removes your profile and activity from StepWorld as described in our Privacy Policy. It does not cancel an App Store subscription.

We may suspend or terminate your access, or remove your content, if you break these Terms, if required by law, or if your use creates risk or possible legal exposure for us or others. Where reasonable, we will tell you why. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including content licenses already granted, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and governing law) will survive.

18. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Services are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that data will never be lost.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranties to be excluded. In those places, the exclusions above apply only to the extent permitted, and nothing in these Terms affects rights you have as a consumer that cannot be waived by contract.

19. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• Skydea K.K. and its affiliates, officers, employees, and partners will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, data, or goodwill, arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms.
• Our total liability for any claim arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for the Services in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) JPY 10,000 (or the equivalent in your local currency).

These limitations do not apply to damages caused by our intentional misconduct or gross negligence, to liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or to any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law, including under Japan’s Consumer Contract Act. Where a consumer protection law only allows us to limit liability for slight negligence, these limitations apply only to slight negligence.

20. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Skydea K.K. and its affiliates from claims, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your content, your misuse of the Services, or your violation of these Terms or of anyone else’s rights. This section does not apply to consumers where such an obligation is not permitted by law.

21. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Japan, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. The Tokyo District Court has exclusive jurisdiction as the court of first instance for any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Services.

If you are a consumer, this does not take away the protection of mandatory laws of the country where you live, or your right to bring a claim in the courts of that country where the law gives you that right. Before starting a formal dispute, please contact us through our contact form so we can try to resolve the issue informally.

22. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time, for example to reflect new features or changes in law. We will update the “Last updated” date above and, for material changes, give reasonable advance notice (for example, in the app or on our website) before they take effect. If you keep using the Services after the changes take effect, you accept the revised Terms. If you do not agree, stop using the Services and delete your account.

23. General terms

• Entire agreement. These Terms and our Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the Services.
• Severability. If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, it will be limited to the minimum extent necessary, and the rest will stay in effect.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of our right to do so later.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, or to an affiliate.
• Force majeure. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Language. These Terms are written in English. If we provide a translation and there is a conflict, the English version controls, unless the law requires otherwise.

24. Contact us

StepWorld is provided by Skydea K.K., Win Aoyama Building UCF635, 2-2-15 Minamiaoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062, Japan.

For questions, support requests, or legal notices, use our contact form, or the channels listed on skydea.co.