Legal
CK Spatial Fabric is billed on two dimensions, the same way network connectivity is billed:
Each is a reservation — CK keeps capacity in service for you, and you pay for it, whether or not you use it. A reservation is a floor, not a ceiling: it guarantees a minimum that is yours, and does not limit how much of the Service you may use. Reserving one dimension does not reserve the other.
A reservation buys capacity, not volume. The reservation fee is charged in addition to metered usage and includes no data volume of its own: every byte and operation is metered on the same terms whether or not you hold a reservation, and the free allowances below apply identically either way. Reserving 5 MB/s does not make the first 5 MB/s free.
The Free Tier below sets a monthly Aggregate Data Volume allowance and requires no Reserved Throughput.
2.1 Billed Volume. For metered billing, Aggregate Data Volume means the total data the Service delivers to your clients (egress / "data downloaded") during the billing period, aggregated across all your sessions and clients.
2.2 Included. Data the Service transmits to your clients — state, replication, and fan-out traffic delivered to subscribers — measured at the network interface. Billed Volume is therefore the size of the frames actually placed on the wire, which includes the transport and network headers each frame carries (Ethernet, IP, and UDP or TCP). This is the same basis on which network capacity is provisioned and billed to CK.
2.3 Excluded. (a) Ingress — data your clients send to the Service — is not part of Aggregate Data Volume; (b) retransmissions of frames already counted; and (c) control-plane and keepalive traffic.
Two clarifications on (a). Aggregate Data Volume is an egress measure, and nothing your clients upload is counted toward it or toward the Free Tier allowance. Separately, CK may meter and charge inbound data as its own Usage Metric under API ToS Section 4.3(c); where it does, that metric is published on the Rate Card with its own rate, and it is measured on the same network-interface basis as Section 2.2.
2.3.1 Where the payload differs from the frame. For traffic CK delivers over its own network interfaces, Billed Volume is the frame as described in Section 2.2. For traffic delivered through an intermediary CK does not measure at the interface — for example HTTPS responses served through a load balancer — CK measures the application payload and does not add an estimate for the framing beneath it. That measurement is lower than the wire figure, never higher.
2.4 Compression. Billed Volume is measured after any compression the Service applies — i.e., the bytes actually sent, not the pre-compression size.
2.5 Units. Volume is measured in decimal units, consistent with carrier and ISP billing: 1 GB = 1,000 MB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. (This is decimal GB, not binary GiB.)
2.6 Measurement Authority. CK's measurement of Billed Volume is final and binding absent manifest error, per API ToS Section 4.3.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Free app slots | 3 per Organization — each free app is a separate allowance |
| Included Aggregate Data Volume | 5 GB per reset interval (currently monthly), per free app |
| Data Transfer Rate | Best-effort on the Public (shared) Environment; no Reserved Capacity; soft-capped at ~1 MB/s per free app. The cap applies to the Free Tier only: once a Wallet is funded and metered usage is enabled, CK does not rate-limit your egress, and your spend is bounded by the caps you set rather than by a throughput ceiling |
| Intended use | A casually-played game of roughly 4 players per free app (sizing basis in Section 4); the enforced limit is the 5 GB volume, not a player count |
| App charges | None — CK does not charge for apps, free or paid; there is no per-app or per-seat fee |
| Environment | Public (shared), multi-tenant, no availability or capacity guarantee |
| Reset | Set by CK (currently monthly); unused volume does not roll over |
| Enforcement | Usage evaluated hourly; on exhaustion, the Service returns quota-exceeded errors until the next reset; you are notified as you approach and reach the limit |
| Wallet / First Day Reserve | Not required — the Free Tier carries no reservation |
3.1 What happens at the limit. The Free Tier is a hard allowance, not a trial that starts charging automatically. CK evaluates your usage on an hourly basis; once you exhaust the allowance for the current reset interval, the Service stops serving your traffic and returns quota-exceeded errors until the next reset. CK notifies you as you approach and when you reach the limit. The reset interval — hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly — is set by CK and may be adjusted; the current interval is published on this Rate Card. You can lift the limit at any time by funding a Wallet and opting into metered usage, in which case volume beyond the free allowance is drawn from your Wallet at the rates published elsewhere on the Rate Card. Free stays free unless you choose to pay.
3.2 No Reserved Capacity on the Free Tier. The Free Tier runs on shared best-effort capacity. To have capacity provisioned and held for you, fund a Wallet and buy a reservation in either dimension under API ToS Section 4.3(a). Reserved Capacity is available on the shared (Public) Environment and does not require a Private Environment.
3.3 Apps, Environments, and Paid Apps. An App is your product or project; an Environment is the isolated Game API, replication, and database stack an App runs on. They are distinct, and an Organization may create an unlimited number of Apps. Each Organization includes three free app slots. A free App runs on a shared (Public) Environment with its own 5 GB allowance, independent of your other Apps. CK does not charge for Apps themselves. A paid App provisions one or more Private (dedicated) Environments and incurs only capacity (Reserved Throughput) and usage (Aggregate Data Volume) Fees under API ToS Section 4.3; there is no separate app or seat fee. Promoting a free App to a paid App returns the free slot, so an Organization always has up to three free apps available in addition to any number of paid apps. The number of paid apps is unlimited. Custom (Private) Environments may not yet be available to all customers; until they are, Apps run on the shared Public Environment — contact hello@crowdedkingdoms.com for current availability.
The Free Tier is sized to cover a 4-player game played casually. For a full-mesh session where every player sees every other player, egress scales as N × (N−1) × f × b bytes/sec, where N = players, f = state updates/sec, b = payload bytes per update. For N = 4 that is 12 × f × b.
| Profile | f (Hz) | b (bytes) | Egress / hour | ~30 hr/mo | ~60 hr/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | 10 | 40 | ~17 MB | ~0.5 GB | ~1.0 GB |
| Typical | 15 | 60 | ~39 MB | ~1.2 GB | ~2.3 GB |
| Busy | 20 | 100 | ~86 MB | ~2.6 GB | ~5.2 GB |
A casually-played 4-player game lands in the low single-digit GB/month range, so 5 GB covers typical-to-busy play with headroom. Delta compression (sending only what changed) stretches this substantially; higher tick rates shrink it.
*These figures assume egress-only billing per Section 2. Real values depend on your actual tick rate, snapshot/delta size, and compression. This sizing is illustrative only and is not a performance or cost guarantee.*
Usage beyond the Free Tier is billed at CK's then-current paid rates for Reserved Throughput and Aggregate Data Volume, available in your account and subject to change under the API ToS. Funding a Wallet and opting into metered usage is required before any paid usage begins. If your applicable rates are unclear, contact hello@crowdedkingdoms.com.
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