01 About these terms
These Terms & Conditions (“Terms”) form a legally binding agreement between you (“you”, “your”) and GinsengLabs LTD (“we”, “us”, “our”) governing your access to and use of GinsengLabs products, currently the Symptoms mobile application (the “App”), and the website at ginsenglabs.dev (together, the “Service”). We'll update these Terms when we publish additional products.
By downloading, installing, or using the Service you confirm you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
02 Who we are
The Service is operated by:
- GinsengLabs LTD
- Registered in England & Wales · Company No. 17230581
- Registered office: 124 City Road, London EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom
- Contact: hello@ginsenglabs.dev
03 The service
Symptoms is a puzzle game. Like a daily crossword or sudoku, it has rules, a score, and a fresh puzzle each day at midnight in your account's time zone. Each puzzle reveals up to six clues; you attempt to identify the answer from a curated bank of options. You may also access previous puzzles via the archive, and statistics about your play.
Puzzles are written and reviewed by people with clinical backgrounds, so that the scenarios are internally consistent and the answer key holds together as a game. They are themed around clinical reasoning and are intended for entertainment and general educational interest. They are not formal medical education, accredited training (such as CME/CPD), decision-support output, or anything that should inform real-world clinical work.
Achievements and Apple Game Center
The App awards achievement badges as you play, and mirrors those badges to Apple Game Center. This is on by default: if you are already signed in to Game Center on your device, the App connects to it automatically, and there is a toggle in the App's Settings that turns it off or on at any time. Game Center is an optional extra rather than part of the game. Symptoms is fully playable without it, no puzzle or feature is locked behind it, and switching it off changes nothing about how you play.
Achievements are cosmetic. They have no monetary value, they cannot be bought, sold, transferred, or exchanged, and they are not property. We may add, change, or retire achievements as the App develops. Apple does not allow an achievement to be deleted once it has been released, so an achievement we retire is hidden rather than removed.
Whether Game Center is available at all is up to Apple. If Apple changes or withdraws the service, or your device or Apple Account settings make it unavailable, that is outside our control and is not a failure of the Service. Your Game Center achievements are held by Apple rather than by us, which matters if you delete your account: see section 12.
04 Medical disclaimer
All puzzles are fictional. The cases are constructed scenarios; any resemblance to a specific patient, presentation, or clinical episode is coincidental. The "answer" you submit to the App is your guess at a puzzle — it is not a diagnosis, a clinical opinion, or a recommendation about any real person.
Nothing in the Service constitutes medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendation. Do not use Symptoms to inform any decision about any real patient, including yourself. If you are a clinician, you remain solely responsible for any decision you make about a real patient in accordance with your registration body, employer, training, and local guidelines — Symptoms plays no part in that responsibility.
Health concerns are real and the App cannot help with them. For any actual medical issue, contact a qualified healthcare professional, your GP, NHS 111 (UK), or emergency services as appropriate.
05 Your account
Using the Service requires an account. You create one by signing in with Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google — we do not offer an email-and-password sign-up. The email address associated with your Apple or Google identity (including Apple's private-relay address, if you choose to hide your email) becomes your account email. You agree to:
- keep your underlying Apple or Google account secure;
- notify us promptly at hello@ginsenglabs.dev if you suspect unauthorised use of your account; and
- be responsible for all activity that occurs under your account.
Apple Game Center (see section 3) is a separate Apple service, tied to the Apple Account signed in on your device rather than to your Symptoms account. Connecting it or disconnecting it does not change your Symptoms account, your subscription, or your game-play data. Game Center is not a way to sign in to Symptoms and cannot be used to recover an account: sign-in remains Apple or Google, as above.
You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. The Service is intended for adults — typically clinicians and medical students — and is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.
06 Subscriptions & payment
The Service has three tiers. Free is supported by in-app advertising. The two paid tiers are each available as a monthly or an annual subscription:
- Ad-free: removes in-app advertising.
- Symptoms+: removes in-app advertising, and unlocks unlimited cases, the full archive, speciality filters, and detailed case write-ups.
We do not list prices here. The App Store sets pricing per storefront and per currency across every country it serves, and prices change from time to time. The current price for your storefront is shown in the App and in Apple's purchase flow before you are charged.
Promotions and introductory pricing
We may offer promotional or introductory pricing from time to time. The terms of any offer are shown at the point of purchase in the App Store or in the app. We may modify or withdraw promotions at any time.
Billing through Apple
All payments are processed by Apple via the App Store. We do not see or store your payment-card details. By subscribing you also agree to Apple's Standard EULA and Apple Media Services Terms. Subscriptions auto-renew at the end of each billing period at the then-current price unless cancelled at least 24 hours before renewal in your Apple ID account settings.
Before you subscribe
Before any charge, Apple's purchase flow shows you the price, the billing cadence (monthly or annual), the renewal terms, and asks you to confirm with Face ID, Touch ID, or your Apple ID password. By confirming, you authorise the initial charge and the auto-renewal at the then-current price until you cancel. You can cancel at any time in Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions; cancellation takes effect at the end of your current paid period.
Price changes
We may change subscription prices from time to time. Apple manages price-change notifications on our behalf in line with App Store policy. For modest price increases, Apple will notify you at least 30 days in advance by email, push, and in-app — if you take no action, your subscription renews at the new price; if you do not want to continue, you can cancel before the change takes effect. For larger price increases (above Apple's published thresholds), Apple requires your affirmative opt-in; if you do not opt in, your subscription will be cancelled at the next renewal at the previous price. Any change will not affect the current billing period.
07 Cancellation & refunds
You can cancel a subscription at any time via Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions on your device. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; you retain paid access until then.
Refunds for App Store purchases are handled by Apple — contact Apple Support at reportaproblem.apple.com. Nothing in these Terms restricts your statutory rights against us as the trader. If Apple declines a refund you are otherwise entitled to under the 2013 Regulations or the Consumer Rights Act 2015, contact us at hello@ginsenglabs.dev and we will resolve it.
Outside the statutory cooling-off period, all subscription fees are non-refundable except where required by law. We do not provide pro-rata refunds for partial periods.
08 Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in breach of applicable law;
- copy, scrape, mirror, or republish case content without our written permission;
- reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code of the App except as permitted by law;
- circumvent advertising, paywalls, or rate limits;
- use automated means (bots, scripts) to interact with the Service;
- share account credentials with others;
- upload or transmit any content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, or infringes another person's rights; or
- interfere with the proper working of the Service or attempt to compromise its security.
No AI, ML, or LLM training on App content
You may not, and you may not authorise or permit any third party to, use the App or any content delivered through it — the puzzles, the case text, the answer keys, the illustrations, and any other in-App material (together, the “App Content”) — in whole or in part, for: (a) training, fine-tuning, evaluation, benchmarking, or development of any artificial-intelligence, machine-learning, large-language, or generative model; (b) populating any dataset, corpus, retrieval index, vector database, or knowledge base intended for any such purpose; (c) any automated extraction, ingestion, scraping, or mirroring of the App Content; or (d) generating synthetic or derivative versions of the App Content. This restriction applies whether the model is general-purpose or domain-specific, whether the training is performed by you or a third party on your behalf, and regardless of whether the resulting model is commercial or non-commercial. For the avoidance of doubt, it applies to the App Content only: the marketing pages of this website are deliberately open to crawling and AI use, as declared in our robots.txt.
Usernames, profiles, and community conduct
The App has social features. You choose a username, you may set a profile emoji from the standard emoji keyboard and a banner from a set we provide, and you can add other players as friends and compare your daily results. You are responsible for what you choose, and you agree not to use a username, emoji, or profile that is offensive, abusive, hateful, harassing, obscene, sexually explicit, deceptive, that impersonates someone else, or that infringes anyone's rights.
We give you tools to report and to block other players. Reporting a player also blocks them for you. We may act on a report at our discretion, which can include suspending or terminating an account under section 12 and replacing an offensive username with a randomly generated one. If we replace your username this way the change is permanent: you will not be able to change it afterwards, your previous username will stop working as a friend link, and you will need to share the new one to add friends. We are under no obligation to tell you what action, if any, we took in response to a report you made.
We have no tolerance for abusive players. We review every report within 24 hours of receiving it and can suspend or close an account under section 12.
Restrictions set by Apple
Some of the App's social features follow settings held by Apple rather than by us. Where Apple indicates through Game Center that the signed-in player is underage, or that multiplayer or personalised communication is restricted, the App switches off friend requests, pokes, and custom-case authoring for that player. We do this to honour the setting Apple reports. It is not a penalty, it is not a finding that you have broken these Terms, and it is not a fault in the Service. The rest of the game is unaffected, and these settings are changed in Apple's own account and device settings, not in Symptoms.
09 Intellectual property
The case content, illustrations, and software that make up the Service (the “Content”) are original works protected by copyright under UK and international law. Custom cases published by players are not part of the Content: they belong to the players who wrote them, and section 10 governs them.
We grant you a personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the Content for your own non-commercial use through the App and the website. All other rights are reserved.
You may share your daily result card (the small score graphic generated by the App) on social media without restriction.
10 User submissions & custom cases
If you send us feedback, bug reports, case ideas, or other submissions (“Submissions”) by email or otherwise, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual licence to use, reproduce, modify, and incorporate the Submissions into the Service without obligation or compensation to you. You confirm that any Submission is original to you and does not infringe any third-party rights. Cases you publish inside the App are not Submissions: they are custom cases, and the rest of this section governs them.
Custom cases
Symptoms lets you create and publish your own cases (“custom cases”). A custom case you publish is visible to your in-app friends and to anyone who has its link, together with your username. Custom cases are created by players, not by us; we do not verify them, they may be inaccurate, and like everything in Symptoms they are study material, never medical advice (see section 4).
What you may not publish
When you create a custom case you agree not to publish content that is offensive, sexual, hateful, harassing or discriminatory; that contains real patient information or any other person's personal data; that makes dangerous or misleading medical claims; that infringes anyone else's rights; or that is spam or advertising. You are responsible for the content you publish and you confirm you have the right to publish it.
The licence you grant us
By publishing a custom case you grant GinsengLabs LTD a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, adapt, edit, publish and make available that content within Symptoms and in connection with the Service, with no obligation to attribute the content to you and no obligation to compensate you. This licence survives deletion of the custom case and deletion of your account.
Deleting a custom case
Deleting a custom case permanently disables its link. We keep a copy of the content, which we may continue to use under the licence above. If you delete your account, retained cases are disconnected from your username and your account. Our Privacy Policy explains what this means for your data.
Reporting, suspension, and removal
We have no tolerance for objectionable content. Players can report any custom case from inside the App. We review every report within 24 hours of receiving it and remove content that breaks the rules above. A case that reaches our report threshold is suspended automatically as soon as it does, without waiting for that review.
Reporting a case removes it from your view for good. It leaves your feed and its link stops opening for you, and that stays true even if we later decide the case did not break these rules. Reporting a case does not block its author, and their other cases remain available to you. To stop seeing a player altogether, block them.
We may also suspend or remove any custom case at any time, with or without notice. Publishing content that breaks these rules can lead to a permanent ban from creating cases, and in serious instances to your account being closed under section 12.
11 Third-party services
The Service relies on third-party providers. Your use of the Service is also subject to their terms:
- Apple — distribution, billing, Sign in with Apple via the App Store, and Apple Game Center. Your use of Game Center is subject to Apple's own terms and its Privacy Policy.
- Google — Sign in with Google for account authentication.
- RevenueCat — subscription management and entitlement validation across Apple's billing system.
- Google AdMob — display of in-app advertising (free tier only).
- Google Firebase — crash reporting and analytics.
- PostHog — product analytics and session replay.
We are not responsible for the acts or omissions of these third parties. See our Privacy Policy for what data is shared and why.
Apple's End User License Agreement
Your installation and use of the App through the App Store is also governed by Apple's Licensed Application End User License Agreement, available at apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula. These Terms supplement, and do not replace, Apple's Standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement, which governs your download and use of the App from the App Store. In the event of conflict between Apple's EULA and these Terms in relation to the App itself, Apple's EULA prevails for matters within its scope (installation, App-level functionality, and Apple's role in delivery). These Terms govern the broader Service — the website, our subscription relationship with you, dispute resolution, intellectual property, and conduct. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms with the right to enforce these Terms against you as a user of the App.
Apple's role in the App
The following apply to the App as supplied through the App Store:
- Maintenance and support. We, not Apple, are solely responsible for providing any maintenance and support for the App. Apple has no obligation whatsoever to furnish any maintenance or support services in relation to it.
- Warranty. We, not Apple, are solely responsible for any product warranties, whether express or implied by law, to the extent they are not effectively disclaimed. If the App fails to conform to any warranty we give, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price of the App to you. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation of any kind in relation to the App, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, or expenses attributable to a failure to conform to a warranty are our sole responsibility.
- Product claims. We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the App or your possession or use of it, including product liability claims, any claim that the App fails to meet an applicable legal or regulatory requirement, and any claim arising under consumer protection, privacy, or similar legislation.
- Intellectual property claims. If a third party claims that the App, or your possession and use of it, infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are solely responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement, and discharge of that claim.
None of the above limits your non-excludable rights as a consumer, or our liability for the matters listed in section 14.
12 Suspension & termination
We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service if you materially breach these Terms, where required by law, or where we reasonably believe doing so is necessary to protect the Service or its users. Where reasonably possible, we will give you notice and an opportunity to remedy the breach.
You can stop using the Service at any time by deleting your account in the App (Settings → Delete account), which removes your account and its associated data, apart from two exceptions: the custom cases covered by section 10, and your Game Center achievements. If you cannot access the App, email us at hello@ginsenglabs.dev and we will help once we have confirmed the account is yours. Uninstalling the App on its own does not delete your account.
Game Center achievements are the second exception because they are not held on our systems. Apple keeps them on the Apple Account signed in on your device, so deleting your Symptoms account does not remove them, and we cannot remove them for you. You can clear them yourself: Settings → Reset achievements in the App resets the Symptoms achievements held for the Apple Account signed in on that device. The scope is that Apple Account, so it also clears any Symptoms achievements earned on the same device by a different Symptoms account.
13 Disclaimer of warranties
The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that any errors will be corrected. Our own case content, while peer-reviewed, may contain inaccuracies, and custom cases written by players are not reviewed by us before publication at all (see section 10). Both are covered by the Medical Disclaimer.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for matters that cannot be excluded or limited under English law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or fraudulent misrepresentation.
14 Limitation of liability
This section sets out our liability to you. Read it together with section 13 (disclaimer of warranties) and the medical disclaimer in section 4.
What we cannot exclude
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for matters that cannot be excluded or limited under English law. This includes:
- death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
- fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
- breach of your non-excludable statutory rights as a consumer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including those relating to the quality, fitness for purpose, and description of digital content;
- any other liability where exclusion or limitation would be void under applicable law.
The cap
Subject to the carve-outs above, our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with the Service — whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise — is limited to the greater of: (a) £100; or (b) the total fees you have paid us through the App Store in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.
Losses we don't cover
To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for:
- indirect, consequential, special, or punitive damages;
- loss of profits, revenue, business, opportunity, or anticipated savings;
- loss of goodwill or reputation;
- indirect or consequential loss of data, including data lost as a result of events we did not directly bring about. Direct loss of data caused by our breach (for example, where we negligently delete your game-play history) remains recoverable but counts against the cap above.
Reliance on puzzle content
You acknowledge that the Service is a puzzle game and is not a substitute for professional medical judgement, training, or clinical guidelines. Any reliance you place on puzzle content in any real-world setting is at your own risk and we accept no liability for any consequence of such reliance.
15 Changes to these terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. The “Effective” date at the top will change accordingly. For material changes we will provide reasonable advance notice in the App and by email. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms; if you do not agree, please stop using the Service.
16 Governing law
These Terms and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them are governed by the laws of England and Wales. You and we agree that the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any such dispute, except that if you are a consumer resident in another part of the United Kingdom, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts.
Nothing in this section deprives you of any mandatory consumer protection available to you under the law of the country in which you habitually reside.
17 General terms
Severability
If any provision of these Terms is held by a court of competent jurisdiction to be unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision is severed and the remaining provisions continue in full force.
No waiver
Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms does not constitute a waiver of that provision or any other. A waiver is effective only if given in writing.
Entire agreement
These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and (in relation to the App itself) Apple's Licensed Application End User License Agreement, constitute the entire agreement between you and us in respect of the Service. They supersede any prior agreement or understanding. Neither party has relied on any statement or representation not set out in these documents — but nothing in this clause excludes liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
Force majeure
Neither party is liable for any failure or delay in performance to the extent caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, war, terrorism, civil unrest, government action, epidemic, pandemic, fire, flood, earthquake, failure of utilities or third-party telecommunications, or failure of upstream service providers (including Apple, Google, and Cloudflare).
Assignment
We may assign or transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganisation, or sale of substantially all of our assets, on notice to you. You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent.
Third-party rights
Except for Apple Inc. and its subsidiaries in their capacity as a third-party beneficiary under section 11 and Apple's Licensed Application End User License Agreement, a person who is not a party to these Terms has no right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any term.
Export and sanctions compliance
You confirm that you are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or a national or resident of any country subject to comprehensive United Kingdom, European Union, or United States sanctions, and that you are not listed on any UK, EU, or US sanctions or denied-persons list. You will not use the Service in violation of any applicable export-control or sanctions law.
Notices
We will give you notice of material matters through the App, by email to the address associated with your account, or by posting on the website. You may give us notice by email to hello@ginsenglabs.dev or by post to the address in section 2.
18 Contact us
If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us at:
- Email — hello@ginsenglabs.dev
- Post — GinsengLabs LTD, 124 City Road, London EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom