Terms of Service — Hay Bales Heat

Last updated October 15, 2026

1. Who operates the Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your use of Hay Bales Heat, including its mobile apps, game services, websites, and related features (the “Service”). The Service is operated by Aether Technologies LLC (“Aether,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), and these Terms are between you and Aether.

Our business address is 1313 E 610 N, Provo, UT 84606, United States. Contact Aether Support at aethertechnologiesut@gmail.com.

Hay Bales Heat is a HOKA-branded game. HOKA branding and other HOKA materials are used with written permission. Nothing in these Terms changes the separate agreements between Aether and HOKA.

By downloading, accessing, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please don’t use the Service.

2. Age requirement

The full online Service, including public profiles and social features, is for players age 13 and older. If you are under the age of legal majority where you live, a parent or guardian must review these Terms with you and permit your use. A higher local minimum age or parental-consent requirement still applies.

If the app provides a limited child privacy mode after an under-13 age selection, that mode does not grant access to the full online Service. Do not enter a false age to unlock public profiles, social features, purchases, or other restricted features. Our Privacy Policy explains the limited information used in that mode and how a parent can contact us.

A parent or guardian who allows a minor to use the Service is responsible for supervising that use and for any purchases they authorize, subject to applicable law and app-store rules.

3. Profiles and progress protection

Your game starts with an anonymous profile. You don’t need an Apple account, Google account, email address, or any other sign-in to play or to make a purchase.

Uninstalling the app does not delete your game account. Progress saved to our servers stays associated with that account until you explicitly reset your progress or delete the account; we do not apply a one-year inactivity cutoff to saved progress. Restoring saved progress requires access to the same account. Changes that have not reached the server may be lost when local app data is removed.

Where Protect Progress and Restore Progress are available in your build and on your platform, you can optionally link your profile to Sign in with Apple (iOS) or Google Sign-In (Android) for later recovery. Availability depends on supported account-provider setup and the released version; an app-store account alone is not a game-profile backup.

If you stay a guest, your progress, inventory, and purchases are tied to that anonymous profile. Losing your device, clearing app data, or otherwise losing access to the anonymous profile may make it impossible to recover. Signing into the same App Store or Google Play account, or showing a receipt, does not by itself reconnect a lost anonymous profile. We recommend protecting your progress before reinstalling, clearing data, or switching devices.

Restore Progress signs into an existing protected profile. If a new temporary guest profile was created first, restoring replaces it; the two profiles are not merged, and the abandoned guest profile may be deleted. The app warns you before switching.

Some features remain device-local. In this release, Music Disc shards, song unlocks, and related local preferences are not promised to restore after reinstalling or on another device. Retaining a server account does not preserve data that was only stored on a device.

Keep your Apple or Google account secure, and don’t share, sell, or transfer your game profile. Contact support before creating a replacement profile if you think protected progress is missing.

5. Your license to play

Subject to these Terms, Aether grants you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to install and use the Service for your own non-commercial entertainment on devices you own or control, consistent with the rules of the app store you got it from. The Service is licensed, not sold.

6. Virtual items and purchases

The Service may offer gems, coins, passes, shoes, cosmetics, shoe boxes, and other in-game items (“Virtual Items”). Virtual Items:

are a limited license to use digital content inside the Service;
have no cash value and can’t be exchanged for money, transferred, sold, or used outside the Service;
are not a deposit, stored-value account, investment, or ownership interest; and
do not include, reserve, or entitle you to physical HOKA footwear, apparel, event entry, or any real-world goods. In-game shoes and HOKA-themed items exist only for Sunny.

Apple or Google processes your payment under its own terms; we never receive your full card details. Prices, taxes, cancellation, and refunds follow applicable law and the rules of the store that processed the purchase.

Purchases are recorded against the game profile that made them. Protecting progress later links that same profile; it doesn’t move a purchase to a different profile.

Gems and gold. Gold may also be called coins. Gems can be earned or bought and spent on the exchanges and items shown in the game. When a gold-priced purchase needs more gold, the game may offer a separate gem-to-gold confirmation identifying the item, missing gold, and gem cost. The current basic rate is 500 gold per gem, rounded up to whole gems; any gold left after the purchase stays in your wallet. Confirming authorizes that displayed exchange and item purchase together. Cancelling does not spend that currency. Buying more gems with real money requires a separate app-store purchase.

Random shoe boxes. Paid or earned shoe boxes can contain random digital rewards. Spending gems or gold on a box does not guarantee a particular shoe, rarity, or new item unless the offer expressly says so; duplicates may occur. The highest-level common shop box has ordinary common-box outcomes and does not guarantee a racing shoe. Review the current contents and probability information linked from the relevant offer before confirming a purchase. Probabilities and eligible rewards can depend on the box and the player’s eligible inventory; a higher box level alone is not a guarantee.

The Champion’s Pass is a one-time purchase that unlocks one monthly Rewards track. The game checks whether you already own the current pass before purchase. If two separate store transactions for the same month complete at the same time, one unlocks the pass and the other grants the 60-gem compensation shown on the purchase screen.

The pass is not an automatically renewing subscription. It applies to the current month’s track, which resets at the start of the next month; it does not buy future monthly tracks or instantly complete their gameplay requirements. Check the in-game season end time and reward-claim conditions before buying.

We may verify a transaction with Apple or Google before granting or restoring items. If a purchase is refunded, revoked, or charged back, we may remove the related items or correct your balance, and later grants may first cover any balance owed.

Request refunds through Apple or Google when their rules require it, and contact us about missing or incorrect purchases. Nothing in these Terms limits any consumer right that can’t lawfully be limited.

EU and UK consumers. Any applicable statutory withdrawal or cancellation right, and remedies for digital content or services that do not conform to the contract, remain available. Immediate supply of digital content can affect a withdrawal right only when the legal conditions are met, including any required separate express consent, acknowledgement of the effect on that right, and purchase confirmation. Accepting these Terms, spending virtual currency, or simply using the game is not a blanket waiver of those rights. Use the relevant store’s purchase or refund process where applicable, or contact us for help; the store’s process does not remove rights you have under mandatory law.

7. Gameplay, rankings, and real-world activity

Hay Bales Heat is entertainment. It is not an official race timer, certified athletic measurement, health or training service, proof of event attendance, or a substitute for medical or coaching advice. In-game shoe stats are game mechanics, not claims about how real footwear performs.

Rankings use server-issued run sessions, plausibility checks, and other safeguards, but parts of each result come from your device, so rankings may contain errors. We may reject, adjust, or reset results, rewards, or rankings to fix errors, enforce these Terms, or protect fair play. Don’t rely on a Hay Bales Heat score for an award, team selection, admission decision, or official record. No score, ranking, or Virtual Item has real-world prize value unless separate official rules say otherwise.

8. Fair play and acceptable use

You must not, or help anyone else to:

cheat, automate play, falsify results, exploit bugs, manipulate device time or network behavior, or get around integrity, purchase, or account controls;
access another person’s profile or any non-public system, data, credential, or receipt without permission;
tamper with, disrupt, overload, scrape, or reverse engineer the Service, except where the law expressly allows it;
use a name or message to share private information, impersonate someone, or post unlawful or exploitative content;
harass, threaten, defraud, stalk, or endanger anyone;
infringe anyone’s intellectual-property, privacy, or publicity rights;
sell, rent, transfer, or commercially exploit a profile, Virtual Item, or game result; or
use the Service unlawfully or in a way that could harm the Service, players, Aether, HOKA, or others.

Please report abuse, security issues, lost purchases, or account problems through our support page.

9. Privacy and account deletion

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have.

You can delete your account in the app (Profile → Clear My Data) or by following our account deletion steps. Uninstalling the app does not delete your account. Deletion removes your profile and associated game and social data, subject to processing time and lawful retention of purchase, accounting, refund, fraud-prevention, security, or legal records. Deletion is permanent and removes progress, rankings, names, team messages, and Virtual Items without recovery.

10. Third-party services and links

The Service relies on or links to third-party services, including Apple, Google Play, Firebase and Google Cloud, and an optional Athletic.net connection. Their terms and privacy practices also apply when you use them, and we don’t control their availability. Links to HOKA product pages don’t turn a Virtual Item into a physical product or make the game a store for HOKA goods.

11. Ownership and brands

The Service contains software, art, audio, designs, text, and trademarks owned by Aether, the applicable HOKA/Deckers party, or other rights holders. HOKA names and logos are trademarks of their owner and are used with permission. These Terms don’t give you any right to use any brand or logo outside ordinary use of the Service. Some software and fonts are provided under open-source licenses, which govern those components.

12. Feedback

We love hearing ideas. If you send us feedback, don’t include anything you don’t have the right to share. Sending feedback doesn’t transfer ownership of your personal information or unrelated content.

13. Changes and availability

We may patch, update, rebalance, add, remove, suspend, or discontinue parts of the Service for security, legal, technical, business, store, or gameplay reasons, and we don’t guarantee uninterrupted availability. Where the law requires notice, consent, or a remedy for a material change, we will provide it.

We may update these Terms; the date at the top shows the current version. For material changes we will give reasonable notice before they take effect when required. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms, to the extent the law allows.

14. Suspension and termination

You can stop using the Service at any time and delete your account as described above. We may restrict, suspend, or terminate access if we reasonably believe you violated these Terms, created legal or security risk, or misused a purchase or feature, or if required by law, an app store, or a service provider. Where appropriate and required, we will give notice or an opportunity to appeal. Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive.

15. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” and Aether disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We don’t warrant that the Service, rankings, third-party services, or Virtual Items will be uninterrupted, secure, accurate, or error-free.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Aether and its officers, employees, contractors, and agents will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, goodwill, or opportunities, arising from the Service.

Some places don’t allow these exclusions, so they apply only as far as the law allows. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any right that can’t lawfully be limited.

16. Governing law

Subject to mandatory consumer protections where you live, these Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Utah, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Disputes not resolved informally may be brought in a state or federal court with jurisdiction in Utah, unless the law gives you the right to bring them elsewhere. These Terms do not require arbitration or waive class actions.

17. General

These Terms, the Privacy Policy, any feature-specific rules, and the mandatory terms of your app store make up the agreement for your use of the Service. If any provision is unenforceable, it will be enforced as far as possible and the rest stays in effect. Not enforcing a provision isn’t a waiver.

18. Contact

For support, purchase questions, account deletion, privacy questions, or to report abuse or a security issue, visit our support page or email aethertechnologiesut@gmail.com. Refunds for Apple- or Google-processed purchases may need to be requested from that store.