---
title: "Rules – Gamesdle"
description: "How the Gamesdle board works: what a rank costs, the $5 rule for taking #1, how ties break, what can be listed, and what happens after you pay."
url: "https://gamesdle.bid/rules"
lang: "en-US"
---

# Rules

Gamesdle is a public board of daily games. No ads, no algorithm, no reviews. Rank is what a game's maker pays, nothing else.

## The boards

- One payment ranks a game on every board that includes that spend. The boards look at different windows of time.
- **All-time** is the main board. Rank is everything ever paid for that game. It never expires.
- **Today** is the current UTC calendar day, midnight to midnight. Rank is what a game spent since midnight UTC. The board resets when the next day starts.
- **Daily** keeps every UTC day as its own board. The current day stays live until it closes; past days freeze as an archive.
- **Categories** rank games within each of the 18 categories by their all-time total.

## How ranking works

- New listings are whole US dollars, $10 minimum, $999,999 maximum.
- Taking #1 costs at least $5 more than the current #1\. Paying less still puts a game on the board at whatever rank that amount takes.
- Equal amounts stay in the order they were reached: the older listing keeps the higher rank.
- Taking today's #1 costs at least $5 more than the most any other game spent since midnight UTC.
- Already on the board? Enter the same URL again and raise its rank. The new total must be at least $1 above the current one, and checkout only charges the difference.
- A listing is its web address without query strings: different games on one platform (an itch.io page, an app store link) keep separate ranks by their path.

## What can be listed

- A daily game: something people come back to play each day, on its own website.
- Chat and invite links (Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Messenger, Signal and similar) are not allowed.
- Sexual or adult content is not allowed.
- Link shorteners are not allowed. Query parameters are stripped, so affiliate, referral and tracking links don't work.
- We remove listings that break these rules or the law. Removal is not refunded.

## Playing here

- Games open inside Gamesdle when their site allows it. Sites that block framing open in a new tab instead, and their listing says so.
- Makers who want their game playable here can allow it with the header Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors https://gamesdle.bid.

## After you pay

- The listing is public straight away. Visitors who open it go to the URL you entered.
- The title, description and icon come from the game's own page. The receipt email has a private link to change the title, description and category, and to turn outbid alerts on or off.
- A completed payment is what claims the rank. Payments are not refundable.