Arcade Rules

Last updated 16 August 2026

The short version. The arcade is free. There is nothing to buy, nothing to deposit, and no way to spend money on it. Arcade coins are earned by playing, have no cash value, cannot be purchased, sold, traded or cashed out, and exist only inside these games. Each month the top of the wall gets a free studio hour — you must be 18 or over to win. This is a free skill contest, not gambling.

Who is running this

Zach Tory Studios, Tempe, Arizona — Inthemixmesa@gmail.com, (480) 788-1014. The arcade and its prize are a promotion run by the studio. Any prize comes from us, and it is not a bet placed against us or against another player.

No purchase, no payment, no entry fee

There is no way to pay for anything in the arcade, and no advantage that money can buy:

Coins cannot be bought. There is no store, no top-up, no bundle, no subscription. The server has no endpoint that turns money into coins, and no endpoint that turns coins into money.
Playing is free. Every cabinet is free to play, as many times as you like, signed in or not.
Booking a session buys you nothing here. Studio clients get no coins, no head start and no better standing. A paying customer and a stranger enter on exactly the same terms.
There is no paid entry and therefore no free alternate entry to publish. Everyone is on the free route because it is the only route.

How you win

The prize goes to whoever is top of the wall when the month ends.

The wall ranks on coins earned by playing — every run on every cabinet, added together, for the current month.
You must be signed in when a run finishes or it banks to nobody.
Coins won or lost in a head-to-head match do not count toward the wall. See the next section — this one matters.
The wall is reset at the start of each month's competition.
You must be 18 or over to be awarded the prize — see below.
The winner is contacted at the tag and details on their account. If we cannot reach a winner within 14 days, the prize passes to the next player down.

Head-to-head matches do not affect the prize

This is the rule the whole thing rests on. Players can put coins on the line against each other in an online match. Those coins move between accounts — but the wall does not count them. Winning every match in the arcade will not move you up a single place, and losing every match will not move you down one.

Your standing is what you earned by playing, and nothing else. A coin put on a match cannot buy a better shot at the studio hour, which is precisely why putting one there is not a wager on anything of value.

In the code this is one function — standingOf counts earnings and ignores the wallet, and it is what the board is sorted on. It is covered by the test suite so it cannot quietly stop being true.

What a coin is

Question	Answer
Can I buy coins?	No. There is no mechanism to.
Can I cash coins out?	No. They have no cash value and cannot be exchanged for money, credit, merchandise or studio time.
Can I sell or transfer them?	Only by putting them on a match against another player. There is no other transfer, and no route out of the arcade.
Do coins buy the prize?	No. The prize is decided by the monthly wall, which counts coins earned by playing.
Do they expire?	The wall resets monthly. Coins are a score inside a game and we may reset, correct or remove them at any time.
Are they property?	No. They are a number in a game, licensed to you for play, with no value outside it.

Who can win

You must be 18 or over to win a prize. Anyone can play the arcade — it is free and there is nothing to buy — but the monthly studio hour can only be awarded to a player aged 18 or over who is a legal resident of the United States. If the top of the wall is under 18 or otherwise not eligible, the prize passes to the next eligible player down.

The prize is studio time in Tempe, Arizona and must be used in person, so you need to be able to get here. It is not transferable and has no cash alternative.
We may ask a winner to confirm their age and identity before the prize is awarded.
The prize must be booked within 60 days of winning, subject to studio availability.
Employees of Zach Tory Studios and their immediate families are not eligible.
Void where prohibited or restricted by law.

Fair play

One account per person. Do not use scripts, modified clients, replayed network requests or any other method of posting a score you did not actually play. We can remove scores, reset a standing, or disqualify an account, and we will do that rather than hand a prize to a run that did not happen. Decisions on this are ours and are final.

The odds, stated plainly

This is a contest of skill, not a draw. There is no random selection and no element of luck in who wins: the top of the wall wins, and the wall is a public ranking you can see at any time. Odds of winning depend on how many people play and how well you do.

Changes

We may change the prize, the length of a competition or these rules, and we may end the arcade competition entirely. Changes are posted here with the date at the top and take effect from posting. If a competition is cancelled mid-month, no prize is owed.

What the arcade stores about you, and why, is in the Privacy Policy. Questions about any of this — Inthemixmesa@gmail.com.