Terms of Service

Last Updated: 3/31/2024

General

*Note that in this terms of service, we use the terms "Sushi Dogs" and "character" interchangeably. Please assume that any mention of "Sushi Dog's" also applies to the Sushi Cats subspecies as well!

  • By joining this site, you, the user, agree to these terms of service and our privacy policy.
  • This site is intended for users aged 13 and older.
  • Users are limited to one site account per person.
  • Plagiarism and impersonation are strictly prohibited in the Sushi Dogs community. If you feel that you have been plagiarized or impersonated on our site, discord server, or DeviantArt group, please contact us for assistance.
  • You agree to let us display your user-submitted content (images and writing) on our site. We respect our users' rights to their own work and agree to not use user-submitted content for profit, and will happily remove user-submitted content from our site by request.
  • Abusing site exploits for personal benefit is a bannable offense. If you find an exploit on-site, we ask that you report it immediately with the steps necessary to replicate the exploit. Members who find an exploit accidentally will not be punished.
  • Punishments for rulebreaking are made at the sole discretion of Sushi Dogs staff, and may include (but are not limited to):
    • Banning of the user's site account.
    • Limiting the user's access to certain site features or activities.
    • The forced retirement of the user's characters without monetary compensation.
    • Confiscation of site items or currency from the user's account without monetary compensation.
    • Editing or deletion of text or images submitted by the user.
  • For comments, questions, or concerns regarding our terms of service, please contact us via one of the following methods:
    • On-site via a report
    • Official Discord Server by DMing Mod Mail bot
    • Official Email: hello@sushidogs.com
Social Etiquette 
  • This is a PG-13 community, and therefore sexual content, violence, and profanity are not allowed on this site.
  • Harassment and abuse towards other users and moderators are strictly prohibited, and bigotry of any kind is not tolerated anywhere within the site, DeviantArt group, or discord server. Please report any harassment, abuse, or bigotry to Sushi Dog's moderators by noting the DeviantArt group.
  • Harassment and abuse towards others on behalf of the Sushi Dog's species or community is also prohibited. If you find a trademark or copyright infringement anywhere, do not contact anyone on our behalf. Please contact us, and we will respond if need be. We understand that you may have good intentions, but we do not approve of or encourage users to police others' behavior for our sake, and doing so may result in punishment up to and including banning/blacklisting.
  • Please refrain from contacting users to offer on Sushi Dog's that they do not have publicly listed as up for trade. Unwelcome trade offers can be uncomfortable or stressful for others, and we consider repeated offering or begging to be a form of harassment.
  • We strongly discourage users from contacting Staryon or any other moderator directly with Sushi Dog's-related questions, unless expressly prompted to. Please contact us using the methods listed in the previous section if you have any questions about the species, community, or these terms of service. We do consider privately contacting mods about Sushi Dog's, excessively, and after being asked politely to stop, to be a form of harassment.
Character Ownership Rights
  • Sushi Dog's characters are intended for personal, noncommercial use only. If you have any questions about whether your use of a character is allowed, please contact us for clarification.
  • In concurrence with the above, any activity involving Sushi Dogs and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) or anything in relation to blockchains, is strictly prohibited. Due to the nature of these items and the unregulated approach to them we demand that you keep anything involving this practice away from the Sushi Dog name and community in any way.
  • Any artwork created for your Sushi Dog's characters may not be edited without express permission from the creator (this includes editing artwork for use in design updates). You are more than welcome to display the artwork of your Sushi Dog's in portfolios and online art galleries (such as DeviantArt, Toyhou.se, etc.).
  • We reserve the right to revoke your characters' eligibility for group participation in the event of rulebreaking. Please see "retiring characters" for more details.
  • Co-owning, the act of sharing a character between two or more people, is allowed. However, we are only able to officially recognize one user as the owner of a character. We are not responsible for any mishaps that occur while co-owning a Sushi Dog.
Auctions & Payment Plans
  • Payment plans are available for all official Sushi Dogs sales exceeding $100 in value unless otherwise stated. This includes official Staryon auctions, guest auctions, flat sales, etc. All payment plans require a nonrefundable 25% deposit due upfront. Terms regarding payment schedule should be negotiated between buyer and seller (either Staryon or an official guest artist).
  • If a buyer backs out of a payment plan, the character may be resold (either via auction or flat sale) at the seller's discretion. Alternatively, buyers may ask that their existing payment plan be transferred to another buyer (with the new buyer paying the remaining amount due), at the seller's discretion.
  • Buyers with an active payment plan may not bid on Sushi Dog's auctions until their payment plan is either completed or canceled.
  • All auctions have a snipe guard policy that extends the auction time limit to prevent auctions from being won unfairly. If bids are placed within the last 30 minutes of the auction, the auction will continue until 30 minutes after the final bid is placed.
  • Auctions may or may not have an auto-buy (or "buyout") price set. The auto-buy price allows a bidder to automatically win the auction at a higher price if they don't want to risk losing to other bidders. Bidders planning to auto-buy an auction should discuss a payment plan with the seller first.
Gifting, Trading, & Selling Characters
  • Characters listed under your ownership may be gifted, traded, or sold to other users only if that character is eligible for gifting, trading, and selling. You can find this information on your character's masterlist entry.
  • All trades must be processed through the official Sushi Dogs website. Any trades happening on DeviantArt, Toyhouse, Discord, Twitter, etc. are not eligible until both users are registered on the site and transferred through the appropriate means.
    • We are not responsible for any disputes that happen through offsite transactions, as this goes against our terms as stated above. Please trade safely.
  • Sometimes, your Sushi Dog may have a trading cooldown attached. This means your character cannot be transferred until after a specified date. You can find this information on your character's masterlist entry. When the cooldown period is over, your character's status will be updated automatically.
  • When transferring your Sushi Dog's character to another user, please include all artwork depicting the character in the trade. You relinquish all rights to use artwork created of that character unless it is your own (you have the right to distribute your own artwork only as you see fit). We do not archive character artwork (only those displayed in the masterlist), and we cannot reproduce any artwork that is lost or excluded from character transfers.
  • When transferring a Sushi Dog, you are trading its current character design. All previous designs are archived and may be made current with the purchase of a site item.
  • You are solely responsible for using discretion when participating in the transfer of a Sushi Dog's character. We are unable to compensate victims of scams.
  • Gifting and trading Sushi Dogs:
    • When trading a Sushi Dog's character, you may trade for other characters or artwork (digital or physical). 
    • The "adding on" of Sushi Dog's not eligible for resale to other character sales is not allowed.
  • Selling Sushi Dogs:
    • All Sushi Dogs obtained through trade or resell are eligible for resale, excluding Sushi Dogs obtained through contests and events run by the group. These soosh's will always have a base value of $0.
    • All characters eligible for resale will have a sale value listed on the masterlist. This should be considered the "resale limit" of the character. If your character's sale value is inaccurate, or if it is listed as $0, please submit a claim requesting a new appraisal.
    • The price of commissioned artwork may be added to your Sushi Dog's sale value. Artwork created for free (gifts, or your own personal artwork of the character) will not increase your Sushi Dog's sale value. Buying a Sushi Dog for more than its listed sale value will not increase your Sushi Dog's sale value.
 
Make-Your-Own (MYO) Slots
  • MYO slots may be gifted, traded, or resold if eligible. This information is viewable on your MYO slot's masterlist entry.
  • When designing a MYO Sushi Dog, it is not necessary for you, the MYO slot owner, to create the character design or artwork used. You may commission someone to create the design and/or artwork, and the price of the design commission may be added onto the sale value of the soosh when appraised, just like commissioned artwork.
  • By designing a MYO Sushi Dog, you grant us permission to use and distribute your character design and artwork per these terms of service. You may revoke this permission, at any time, by "retiring" your Sushi Dog's character or design (see "retiring & revoking").
  • We reserve the right to reject a MYO theme if deemed inappropriate, harmful, illegal, or breaching another's registered intellectual property.
  • In the event of group blacklisting, any unused MYO slots under your ownership may be made void and removed from the site, without compensation.
  • Your MYO Sushi Dog may not be a copy or bootleg of an existing design, either within the community or not. We take plagiarism very seriously, and if we come to the decision that your MYO Sushi Dog is uncomfortably similar to another character design, you will be given the option of either a.) changing your MYO Sushi Dog's design or b.) retiring your MYO Sushi Dog, without compensation. During this time, your MYO Sushi Dog will be "frozen" (unable to be transferred or used for any community activities). If we find that there was an oversight in approval that was our own fault, we are happy to offer compensation in the form of site items, currency, or a complimentary custom design (by Staryon, or a moderator), at our sole discretion.
Character Design Alterations
  • We allow Sushi Dogs character designs to be edited, either for free or with the purchase of in-game items (whichever is necessary). Guidelines for design alterations can be found at this [link].
  • You agree that when creating a Sushi Dog's character design, you are allowing us to use and distribute your character design and artwork per these terms of service. You acknowledge that the Sushi Dog's character design may be changed in the future, and that, if it is changed, the character design you created will be archived for reference and potential future reuse. You may revoke this permission, at any time, by "retiring" the character design you created (see "retiring & revoking").
  • "Alternate universe" versions of Sushi Dog's are permitted with proper permissions from the original designer. If any alternate forms are made of your Sushi Dogs, they must be traded together.
Retiring Characters
  • Retirement is a process by which a Sushi Dog is stripped of its eligibility for site and group participation. Retiring a Sushi Dog is permanent, and while you can still use your retired character for whatever you'd like outside the site and group, it will never be usable in the site or group ever again, regardless of who it belongs to.
  • Retiring is voluntary and only applicable to MYO Sushi Dogs. Official Sushi Dogs characters created by Staryon, kayy, Chital, @SpikedPeach, or any guest artist may not be retired by users (they may, however, be forcibly retired by staff).
  • If you would like to retire a character that you own, you must have written permission from its original creator.
  • An alternate version of retiring Sushi Dog's applies to archived designs (previous versions of a soosh not currently in use). Normally, when a Sushi Dog's design is altered, the previous design is archived for reference and potential future reuse. By retiring an archived design, that design will be removed from the Sushi Dog's design history, and will not be viable for reuse on that character or any other. To retire an archived design, you must be the current owner of the Sushi Dog in question AND have written permission from the creator of the archived design.
    • Note that the original design, if archived, cannot be retired. You would need to retire the Sushi Dog entirely (if eligible).
  • The forced retirement of a Sushi Dog may occur as a punishment for rulebreaking. The same rules for retirement apply: the character can be used freely outside the site and group, but it is no longer eligible for site or group participation.
 
Trademark Information
 
Sushi Dog/Sushi Dogs® is a registered trademark. No person or entity may reproduce or use the Sushi Dogs brand, trademark, or logo in any manner other than expressly authorized by the trademark holder. Unauthorized use of the Sushi Dogs trademark is strictly prohibited. If you see any potential unauthorized use of the trademark by any third party or see any name, logo, design, or appellation for any product/service of a third party that may be confusingly similar to Sushi Dog/Sushi Dogs, please report the unauthorized use/confusing marks to http://deviantart.com/SushiDog's.
 
All rights not expressly granted are reserved.