Mission statement · pinned by the time clock

Games for everyone

Plain-English draft, not legal advice. We wrote this ourselves to say clearly what we do. It wasn't written by a lawyer, and it should be reviewed by one before anyone relies on it. Last updated 4 October 2026.

Critical Gaming Hub makes original games that are free for everyone, because money shouldn't decide who gets to be part of gaming.

Plenty of people grow up without the console, the card, or the spare twenty. They still have friends, a cheap phone or a library computer, and an evening to fill. We want them in the same rooms as everyone else, playing the same version, with nothing held back for people who paid.

What “free” means here

Free to play, all of it. No paid version, no "premium", no season pass.
Nothing to buy. No store, no in-game money for sale, no loot boxes, no pay-to-skip.
No ads, no tracking. You aren't the product either. We don't collect personal data at all (privacy policy).
No guilt mechanics. No daily streaks, no countdown timers, no "come back or lose it".
Unlocks are earned by playing, never bought.

Donations might come someday if the site takes off; if they do, they'd be a tip and would never unlock anything.

Ours to give away: the public domain

All our original work is dedicated to the public domain:

Content (art drawn in code, writing, level data, sound recipes, music patterns, the trailer, this site's words and pictures): CC0 1.0.
Code (games, servers, this website): 0BSD, a no-strings permission licence.

So you can play it, share it, mod it, teach with it, remix it, even sell your own version. The one thing that isn't free is the name and logo, so nobody gets confused about which version is ours. Third-party pieces (fonts, a few libraries, the dispatcher voice model) keep their own licences; they're listed on the licenses page.

Free should mean legally free: we're against piracy

Our games are free because they're ours to give away. That's the opposite of piracy, and we want to be clear about it:

We don't host, link to, or point people towards pirated games, cracks, ROM dumps, "unblocked" mirrors or key resellers.
We don't make "free version of [someone's paid game]" pages, and we won't use other people's art, music or characters.
We won't accept community submissions that contain other people's work.
If anything on our site infringes someone's rights, we take it down. Use the contact form (pick "Copyright / DMCA / takedown").

If you love a paid game, please buy it, or wishlist it, or tell a friend about it. The people who made it need to eat. We just happen to have chosen a different deal for our own stuff.

What we don't claim

We're not the first to give games away and we won't pretend to be. Free and open games have a long, proud history, and we're happy to add a few to the pile.

Signed, the night desk