Rules

How it works

• Every state and DC can be claimed. Unclaimed ones start at $5, $15 or $25 depending on how much people want them.
• To take a claimed state you pay 1.5× what the current owner paid, rounded up to the dollar. $87 becomes $131.
• You can pay more than the asking price. It raises the bar for whoever comes next, which is the only defence there is.
• The whole country can be bought at once for $999,999. Every state turns your colour and you hold the map for 30 days.
• During those days any state can still be taken, but it costs a flat $30,000, whatever it was worth before.
• $20,000 of every one of those goes back to the president it was taken from. Lose 50 states and the million comes back; lose all 51 and it is a profit. Payouts are settled by hand, not automatically.
• Buying America back from a sitting president costs 1.5× what they paid, and is the only thing that ends a reign early.
• When a reign ends, every state sits at 5× its opening price and the ordinary rules resume from there.
• Everyone who has ever bought America is listed on Presidents, permanently.
• The ceiling on any single claim is $999,999.

Your money

• The previous owner gets nothing. Not a share, not a refund, not a partial. When you are outbid you have lost what you paid. This is the entire game and it is the first thing you should be sure you understand.
• No refunds, no exceptions, with exactly one exception, below.
• If you lose a race, you are refunded automatically. If somebody takes the state while you are on the payment page, your payment bought nothing, and we send all of it back without being asked. It reaches your card in 5–10 days. You will see this explained on the confirmation page, not discovered later.
• Changing your mind is not a refund event. Neither is being outbid one second after you paid.

What you can put on a state

A flag, a name, a short war cry and a link. The name is free text and nothing is verified, if it says a famous person, that means nothing at all.

Not allowed:

• Nudity or sexual content.
• Personal information about anyone, addresses, phone numbers, workplaces.
• Slurs, and content attacking people for what they are rather than what they think.
• Threats, or anything encouraging violence against a person or a group.
• Pretending to be a real person or organisation.
• Links to malware, scams, or anything that charges people by surprise.

Every claimed state has a report button. Enough reports and the image is hidden pending review, the claim, the price and the ownership are untouched, because you paid for the state and hiding a picture is not a refund. Repeat offenders lose the ability to upload.

The politics

The flags span the American spectrum on purpose, and the site does not have a side. The copy makes fun of losing money, never of what anybody believes, that is a rule for the writing, not a slogan. Movements organised around racial hatred are not on the list and will not be added.

Takedowns and contact

If something here is yours and you would rather it were not, hello@culturewar.lol. That includes flag imagery: see credits for what came from where.