Part of the agreement.
This is the fair play policy for the Blindspot app, operated by Launchpad Creative, LLC, a Tennessee limited liability company. It is incorporated into the agreement you accept when you create an account — both the iPhone and Android Terms of Use point here — and it applies to every account, every spot and every sticker.
Where this page and those Terms disagree, the Terms govern. Words defined there carry the same meaning here.
You were there, and so was the car.
That single sentence is the whole policy. Everything below is it, spelled out. A spot is:
- A real vehicle — sheet metal, in the world, not an image of one.
- In front of you, at the moment you take the photograph.
- Photographed by you, with your own camera, on your own account.
- Out in the world — a street, a kerb, a drive, a car park, a petrol station, a workshop, a show field. Somewhere a car turned up, rather than somewhere cars are kept.
A photograph of a photograph is not a spot.
None of the following count, however good the picture and however real the car in it once was:
- A screen — a phone, tablet, monitor, laptop, television or projection; a video frame, a livestream, a game, a listing, or another Blindspot player's sticker.
- A print — a poster, magazine, brochure, calendar, showroom banner, billboard, wrap or advertisement.
- A model — a scale model, die-cast, toy, kit, showroom miniature, or a display cutaway. The size of the thing in front of you matters.
- An image you did not make — a photo library shot, a screenshot, a picture someone sent you, or anything generated rather than photographed.
- A car you were not present for, whenever and by whatever route the picture reached you.
We also decline captures taken from inside a vehicle's cabin, and captures of the vehicle the camera is sitting in. That one is a safety rule before it is anything else, and it applies whether or not the vehicle is moving.
The wild, not the lot.
Blindspot is a game about what you find. A room arranged for you to walk through is not finding — it is a catalogue, and photographing every page of one is not spotting. Two kinds of room are out:
- A dealer's stock. Cars marked with a price, an offer, a finance board, a stock number or a window label; cars in marked bays on a showroom floor or a dealer forecourt; cars presented to you as available to buy. Working a lot for stickers, rather than passing through one, is the clearest misuse this policy exists to stop.
- A museum, exhibition or permanent collection. Cars kept and curated for display — behind rope, on a plinth, in a manufacturer's brand centre or heritage hall, or in any collection assembled to be looked at. The cars are real and often extraordinary, but they are not out in the world and they will be there again tomorrow, which is precisely what makes a room like that farmable.
A car show, a meet or a cruise-in is neither of those. Those cars were driven there that morning by the people who own them, and finding them is the game working exactly as intended. A show field is one of the best days out Blindspot has.
We may stop crediting captures at any venue or event we find being farmed, and may decline particular venues, at our discretion.
Welcome, as what they are.
Replicas, kit cars, tributes, continuations and heavily rebuilt one-offs are welcome. Some of them are the most interesting thing on the road, and they belong in a garage.
They are identified and valued as what they are, rather than as the original car they resemble. Presenting one as the genuine article — by staging it, editing it, or describing it as something it is not — is a breach of this policy, and we may correct the record on a card at any time after it was collected.
No shortcuts around the walk.
Whatever the method, the answer is the same. Do not:
- Automate it — scripts, bots, macros, emulators, virtual cameras, modified or re-signed copies of the app, or any tool that captures without a person doing the walking.
- Tamper with it — the app, the device it runs on, or the traffic between the app and our systems.
- Falsify what the app records — location, time, camera data, or the circumstances of a capture.
- Run second accounts to get around a limit, a suspension or a rule; or buy, sell, rent, share or transfer an account.
- Grind rather than play — the same car, the same row, the same lot, over and over, to work a number rather than to find something.
- Exploit a fault instead of reporting one. If something is behaving in a way that is obviously wrong in your favour, tell us; using it repeatedly is a breach.
None of these has to succeed to count. Attempting them, or helping somebody else attempt them, is enough.
Nothing here is worth a close call.
- Never use the app while driving. Not at a light, not in traffic, not for a second.
- Do not trespass. No car is worth going where you are not allowed, and being asked to leave means leave.
- Do not obstruct anyone — traffic, a pavement, a driveway, a business, or the owner of the car you are photographing.
- Respect people. Do not photograph people to identify them, do not publish anything that identifies a stranger, and do not harass an owner over a car.
- Keep what you make public clean. Handles, profile pictures, and anything else visible to other players must not be abusive, hateful, sexual, or impersonate anyone.
If someone is making the game worse for you, report them through the support page and a person will look at it.
Automatically, and by hand.
Captures are checked automatically, and cases those checks raise are reviewed by a person before anything serious happens to an account.
We do not publish how any of it works, and we will not describe which checks flagged a particular account or capture. Explaining it in detail would only assist the behaviour this page exists to prevent, and we do not accept that as a reason to weaken it.
Two things are worth saying plainly, because they surprise people:
- Being credited is not clearance. A capture going through at the time does not mean it went unnoticed.
- We look back. Reviews run over spots long after they were collected, so something credited weeks ago can still be removed.
What we may take back.
Where we find a breach, we may do any of the following, in any combination:
- remove a spot, a sticker, a photograph, a handle or anything else from an account;
- correct or withdraw a value, an identification or a placement obtained unfairly;
- recalculate everything that followed — when a spot is removed, progress, streaks, achievements and standings are restated as though it had never been credited;
- limit an account's ability to capture, for a period or indefinitely;
- suspend an account;
- close an account permanently.
We aim to fit the response to what happened. A one-off gets a lighter touch than a pattern, and a deliberate, repeated or automated attempt is treated as the most serious thing on this page. Where it is fair to do so we will tell you what we did and why, though we are not obliged to explain it in a way that helps the behaviour continue.
We are not required to warn you first, and choosing not to act on something once does not give up the right to act on it later.
VIP Pass does not buy an exemption.
A subscription gives you more room to play the same game. It is held to this policy exactly as a free account is, and paying does not soften anything above.
If we suspend or close an account for a breach of this policy:
- access ends with the account, including VIP Pass and everything it unlocked;
- amounts already paid are forfeited and are not refunded by us, to the fullest extent permitted by law;
- a refund from the store does not reverse the decision. Every purchase is made through the App Store or Google Play, and only the store can refund one — we cannot, and a refund granted there does not restore a closed account.
Losing an account does not cancel a subscription. Billing lives with the store, so an unwanted renewal has to be cancelled there. How to do that is set out on the support page.
Nothing in this section takes away rights you have under the consumer law of the country you live in that cannot be waived or limited by agreement.
We would rather correct it.
Automated checks are not perfect and neither are we. If you think a decision about your account or one of your spots was wrong, write to us through the contact form and choose Appeal a decision. Use the email address on the account, and tell us what you were photographing and where. A person reads it, and if we were wrong we will put it back.
Questions about billing or a refund go to the store that took the payment, not to us.
This page moves.
We update this policy as the game grows and as we see new ways of working it. The date at the top changes with it, and continuing to play after a change means accepting the current version.