Terms of Service for Mechanica

Last updated: 12 October 2026

These terms are the agreement between you and Cito Studio about playing Mechanica. They cover the Mechanica mobile game on iOS and Android, and the pages on mechanicathegame.com that belong to it.

By starting to play, you accept them. If you do not accept them, please do not use the game.

1. Who we are

Mechanica is made by Cito Studio, registered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number 42136766.

You can reach us about anything in these terms at contact@citostudio.nl.

What we collect and why is a separate document, our privacy policy. It forms part of this agreement.

2. The short version

You can start playing straight away as a guest, and link an Apple or Google account whenever you like so your workshop survives a new phone. The game is licensed to you, not sold. Coins and everything else inside the game stay ours, and they are not money. You buy coins and memberships through the App Store or Google Play, so the payment and any refund are theirs. Do not cheat and do not take the game apart. You can delete your account at any time, and we can close it if you break these terms.

The rest of this page is the detail. Where the short version and the detail disagree, the detail wins.

3. Who can play

You must be at least 13 years old, or older where the law of your country sets a higher age at which we may handle your information without a parent's permission. When you start playing, you confirm that you are at least the age we show you for your country.

If you are under 18, a parent or guardian has to read these terms and agree to them on your behalf. By accepting these terms when you start playing, you confirm that this has happened.

Mechanica is not aimed at children. If you believe a child has an account they should not have, write to contact@citostudio.nl and we will remove it.

4. Your account

When you start playing, we create an account for you without asking you to sign in to anything. Until you link it, you are playing as a guest.

You can link an Apple account (on iPhone and iPad) or a Google account from your profile at any time, and the game will offer it after your first finished job and after a purchase. Linking keeps the same workshop. An account that already has its own workshop cannot be linked to a second one, and the two are never merged.

A guest workshop lives on this one device. Your progress is kept on our servers, but without a linked account nothing lets you reach it from a new phone or a reset one, and we cannot hand it over to you. That includes any coins you bought and have not spent. If you want to keep what you have, link an account. Once you have, you can sign out and sign back in on any device.

One account per player. Keep your sign-in to yourself. Anything done from your account is treated as done by you, so tell us at contact@citostudio.nl if you think somebody else is using it.

You do not own the account. You cannot sell it, rent it, give it away or transfer it to anybody.

If you are signed in to Game Center or Play Games, the game reports your achievements to that service so your badges appear where you expect them. That is Apple's or Google's service, under their terms rather than ours.

5. The game is licensed to you, not sold

We give you a personal licence to install Mechanica on devices you control and to play it for your own enjoyment. The licence is not exclusive, it cannot be transferred, and we can withdraw it if you break these terms.

Everything else stays ours or our licensors': the game, its code, its artwork, its sound, its name and its logo. Nothing in these terms hands you any of it.

The third-party software we ship inside the game carries its own licences. You can read them in the game, under Profile, then Licenses.

6. What you may not do

Do not:

• Cheat, or use anything that plays the game for you.
• Modify the game, take it apart, or try to read or change how it talks to our servers.
• Send our servers anything other than what the game itself sends.
• Use a bug to get something you were not meant to have. Tell us about it instead.
• Get around the ads, the purchase flow, or any limit the game applies.
• Create accounts, or use devices, to farm referral rewards.
• Sell, buy or trade accounts, coins, or anything else from the game.
• Use the game to break the law or to harass anybody.

If you find a bug that hands you an advantage, write to contact@citostudio.nl. We would much rather hear it from you.

7. Your username

You choose a username when you create your account. It is the only thing you write that we keep, and no other player ever sees it, because nothing in Mechanica names one player to another.

Choose something that is not offensive, does not pretend to be somebody else, and is not somebody else's trademark. We can change or remove a username that is, and where it is part of a wider pattern we can close the account.

There is no way to change your username afterwards, so pick one you are happy to keep.

8. Coins, cash and everything else in the game

Coins are the premium currency. Cash, parts, tools, crew, skills and everything else in the workshop are game content.

None of it is money. It has no value outside the game. It cannot be cashed out, exchanged for anything real, or moved to another account. What you have is a limited, personal permission to use it inside Mechanica, for as long as your account and the game exist, and we can withdraw that permission under these terms.

Coins you have bought and not spent do not expire while your account is open.

We balance the game as we go. What things cost in coins, what they do, how much you earn and how the economy behaves can all change. We will not take coins out of your balance to do it.

Your workshop has insurance, premiums and loans in it. Those are game mechanics borrowing familiar names. None of them is real insurance, real credit, or any kind of financial product, and none of them involves real money.

9. Buying things

Coin packs, the starter pack and memberships are sold through the App Store and Google Play. The price is shown to you in the store before you confirm, in your own currency.

The store takes your payment, not us. We never see your card details. The purchase is also subject to that store's own terms.

What you bought is granted by our servers once the store confirms the purchase is real, which normally takes seconds. If it does not arrive, write to contact@citostudio.nl with the receipt from the store.

Refunds follow the store's rules, not ours. Ask Apple or Google, because we cannot reverse a payment they took. Where the law gives you a right to withdraw from a purchase of digital content, that right is yours to use against the store you bought from.

If you ask a store for a refund, we may be asked how the purchase was used. Apple and Google can ask us, before they decide, whether what you bought was delivered and used. We answer through RevenueCat with facts about the purchase only: that it was delivered, how much of it was used, how long you have been playing, and what you have bought and been refunded before. We do not argue for or against your request. By buying in the game you agree to those facts being shared with the store when you ask it for a refund.

The starter pack is offered during your first week, once per player, and whether you are eligible is decided by our servers. Coins already granted for a purchase are not taken back if that purchase is later refunded, because by then they have been spent into the game's economy.

10. Memberships

A membership is a subscription that renews every month until you cancel it. There is no free trial.

Your store account is charged when you confirm, and again on each renewal. Cancel in your store account, in the App Store or in Google Play. Cancelling stops the next renewal, and you keep what the membership gives you until the period you have already paid for runs out.

What a membership gives you is shown on the Membership screen before you buy. Any monthly coin grant is paid once per paid period. Changing tier in the middle of a period is handled by the store, and we pay the difference upwards only, never a refund downwards.

If a membership lapses, expires or is refunded, you keep the coins already granted. We do not claw them back.

Deleting your Mechanica account does not cancel your membership. The store bills it, so cancel it there or it will keep charging you.

11. Ads

Mechanica shows ads. Some appear on their own between things you do, and some you choose to watch in exchange for coins.

A membership removes the ads that appear on their own. It does not remove the ones you choose to watch, because those are how coins are earned, and taking them away from a paying player would be a punishment rather than a benefit.

Coins from watching an ad are granted by our servers after the ad network confirms you watched it. If that confirmation never arrives, no coins are granted.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland you are asked about ad consent when you first play, and you can change your answer at any time under Profile, then Ad Consent. What that choice covers is in the privacy policy.

12. Inviting a friend

Every player gets a referral code, and you may share yours with people you know.

Both of you are paid coins when the friend you invited reaches Silver reputation, not when they install. A code can be redeemed once per player and once per device, you cannot redeem your own, and there is a limit to how many invitations one player is paid for.

Do not buy, sell or spam your code, and do not create accounts or use devices to pay yourself. We can withhold a reward we have reason to believe was farmed, and close the accounts involved.

We never tie a reward to leaving a rating or a review, and we never will.

13. The game runs on our servers

Mechanica is played against our servers. Your workshop, your timers and every result are worked out there rather than on your phone, which is why the game needs a connection to run.

We may change the game, add to it, take things out of it, or stop offering it altogether, in one country or everywhere. Where we can, we will tell you in the game before it happens.

If we stop offering Mechanica, unspent coins and other game content are not refunded, except where the law says otherwise.

We do not promise the game is always available. Maintenance, an outage at a provider we depend on, or your own connection can each interrupt it.

14. Deleting your account

Open the game, tap your profile, and choose Delete Account. If you are playing as a guest, the same button is called Restart Game, because deleting a guest account is how you start a new workshop. You are asked to confirm twice, and the second step asks you to type a word, so it cannot happen by accident.

Deletion runs immediately and cannot be undone. Your workshop, your progress and any unspent coins go with it, and none of it is refunded.

If you cannot open the game, there is a page at mechanicathegame.com/delete-account explaining both routes.

What is erased and what we have to keep is set out in the privacy policy.

Remember that deleting your account does not cancel a membership, and that deleting the app is not the same as deleting your account.

15. When we suspend or close an account

We can suspend or close your account, or take back something it was given, if you break these terms, if you cheat, or if the law requires us to.

Where it is reasonable to do so we will tell you why. Serious cases, such as cheating or anything unlawful, can be immediate.

If we close your account you do not get a refund for coins or for the rest of a membership, except where the law says otherwise. Cancel the membership in your store account, because a closure on our side does not stop the store billing you.

You can still ask us to delete your personal information while your account is blocked. That right does not depend on our goodwill and we do not switch it off.

If you think we have got it wrong, write to contact@citostudio.nl.

16. The game is provided as it is

We put real care into Mechanica, but we do not promise that it is free of bugs, that it will always be available, or that it will suit any particular purpose of yours.

Nothing here takes away the rights the law gives you as a consumer. Those rights come first, and where these terms and your consumer rights disagree, your consumer rights win.

17. What we are responsible for

We are responsible for loss we cause you by breaking these terms, where that loss was a foreseeable result of the breach.

We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable, for loss caused by your own breach of these terms, or for things outside our reasonable control.

Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not let us limit. Where a limit is allowed, our total responsibility to you is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the problem arose.

18. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms we will update the date at the top. If the change matters, we will tell you in the game before it takes effect.

If you keep playing after a change takes effect, you accept it. If you do not accept it, delete your account.

19. The law, and where a disagreement goes

These terms are governed by the law of the Netherlands.

If we cannot settle a disagreement between us, it goes to the courts of Amsterdam.

If you are a consumer in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, none of that takes anything away from you. You keep the protections your own country's law gives you that cannot be contracted out of, and you can bring a case in the courts where you live.

20. Contact

Write to contact@citostudio.nl.

Cito Studio, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. KvK 42136766.