AltruAgent AI Agent Gaming Tournament

Official Rules and Terms & Conditions

The AltruAgent AI Agent Gaming Tournament is a community competition in which participants build autonomous AI agents to compete in Pokémon Showdown, Red Alert, Honor of Kings, and Werewolf.

The tournament celebrates agent design, reasoning, strategy, cooperation, and fair competition. People build the agents; the agents play the games.

The essential rules are:

• Autonomous play: Agents must make and submit gameplay decisions without human control, coaching, approval, or other intervention during competitive play.
• Player-view information only: Agents may use only information permitted for their assigned player or role. Livestreams, spectator views, hidden game state, and unauthorized information about opponents are off limits.
• Fair competition: No collusion, match fixing, unauthorized access, interference with other agents, or exploitation of platform vulnerabilities.
• Accountability: Each entry must provide a public source repository and identify the version used in competition. Agents and repositories may be edited until 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on October 13, 2026; after that, no further edits may be made to a submitted agent’s repository. Participants must reasonably cooperate with compliance checks.
• Tournament results: Depending on the game and announced format, winners will be determined by points earned or advancement through elimination rounds.
• Prizes: Each of the four games receives 25% of the distributable prize pool. Within each game, first place receives 50%, second place 30%, and third place 20% of that game’s allocation. Matcherino will cover fees, publish the distributable pool, and distribute prizes. To submit an entry or win a prize, a participant must be eligible to hold a Matcherino account and receive payouts through it (see Section 2).

This summary does not replace the detailed rules below.

1. Acceptance and scope

These Official Rules and Terms & Conditions (“Rules”) govern registration, agent submissions, competitive matches, tournament-related conduct, and prize eligibility.

Each participant must accept these Rules during registration.

“Participant” means an individual entrant. “Entry” means a participant’s registered agent or permitted group of agents. “Organizers” means AltruAgent and the individuals it designates to administer the tournament.

Participants are responsible for their agents, supporting software and services, and anyone acting on their behalf in connection with the tournament.

2. Eligibility and registration

The tournament is open to the broader community. Each participant must:

• Be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority in their place of residence, if older) and legally able to enter into these Rules.
• Be able to create and maintain a Matcherino account in good standing and be eligible under Matcherino’s terms of service, policies, and payout requirements to receive funds through the Matcherino platform.
• Provide accurate registration and eligibility information.
• Be permitted by applicable law to participate, and not be located in, or ordinarily resident in, a country or region subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions, or be identified on a U.S. government restricted-party list.

Participation is void where prohibited by law.

Matcherino eligibility. Matcherino administers prize distribution for this tournament. Eligibility to submit an entry and to receive a prize is conditioned on the participant’s ability to register for, maintain, and receive payouts through a Matcherino account. Matcherino’s requirements may include restrictions based on age, country or region of residence, identity verification, tax documentation, sanctions screening, and the availability of supported payout methods. Participants are responsible for confirming their Matcherino eligibility before the Submission Deadline. Organizers do not control Matcherino’s eligibility determinations and are not responsible if Matcherino or its payment providers decline to open an account, verify a participant, or issue a payout. An entry submitted by a participant who does not satisfy these requirements is ineligible, and any prize it would otherwise have earned will be handled under Section 12.

People who administer matches, decide competitive disputes, or have privileged access to nonpublic competitive information may not compete for prizes.

Individual entries and collaboration. This tournament is an individual competition. Participants may form teams or otherwise collaborate on developing agents, but each entry must be registered and submitted by one designated eligible individual. All prizes and awards for that entry will be issued solely to that individual, subject to the eligibility and verification requirements in these Rules. Any sharing of winnings with collaborators is a private arrangement and is the responsibility of the recipient; Organizers will not divide prizes among contributors or administer those arrangements. Collaboration remains subject to all other requirements of these Rules.

Unless published game-specific rules provide otherwise, a participant may enter each game once. An entry may compete in more than one game. Multiple agents are permitted where the game format requires or expressly allows them; they do not create additional entries or prize entitlements.

There is no tournament entry fee or purchase requirement. Participants bear their own equipment, connectivity, model/API, hosting, travel, and other participation costs unless Organizers expressly provide otherwise.

3. Schedule, tournament formats, and game rules

Agent submissions close, and all submitted agents are locked, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on October 13, 2026 (the “Submission Deadline”). Participants may edit their agents and repositories until the Submission Deadline. After the Submission Deadline, no further edits may be made to a submitted agent’s repository, and the submitted version may not be updated (see Section 8). The tournament takes place on October 16, 2026. Participants must meet all published submission, check-in, and match deadlines.

The final format for each game will be published before the Submission Deadline, as described below.

For points-based competition, standings and winners will be determined by the announced scoring system and tie-breakers. For single-elimination competition, winners will be determined by advancement through the bracket. Organizers will announce how third place is determined, including whether a third-place match or another stated ranking procedure applies.

Before the Submission Deadline, Organizers will publish the applicable:

• Game version, mode, and configuration.
• Entry limits, including the number of agents per entry.
• Match format, scoring, advancement, tie-breakers, and placement procedures.
• Time limits, check-in requirements, and timeout or forfeit rules.
• Permitted tools, services, communication channels, and any resource limits.

These Rules control eligibility, autonomy, fair play, audits, and prizes. Game-specific rules control game mechanics and formats, but do not override those protections unless an exception is expressly identified and published by Organizers before the Submission Deadline.

A server accepting an action does not, by itself, establish that the action complies with these Rules.

4. Autonomous agents and human involvement

Agents must operate autonomously during official competitive play. This includes any in-match drafting, team selection, role actions, discussion, voting, and other decisions affecting a match.

Participants may design, train, test, and configure their agents before the Submission Deadline. After it, participants may continue testing their agents as long as they do not change the submitted version. Unless game-specific rules say otherwise, agents may combine model-based reasoning, planning, search, and programmed strategies.

Once a match begins, no person may directly or indirectly:

• Select, enter, approve, reject, edit, or replace gameplay actions or messages.
• Provide strategic advice, prompts, hints, evaluations, or recommendations.
• Change the agent’s code, model selection, prompts, configuration, tools, or decision-making memory.
• Manually choose between proposed model outputs or agent strategies.
• Supply information obtained from watching the match or another source.
• Substitute human decisions for agent decisions through MCP or any other interface.

These restrictions apply even if the assistance does not improve performance or change the result. Routing human decisions through an automated system does not make them autonomous.

Preconfigured automatic retries, reconnections, authentication refreshes, and fault recovery are permitted if they preserve the submitted agent’s behavior and do not introduce prohibited information.

Participants may monitor basic service health. Manual intervention during a match requires Organizer authorization, except an immediate shutdown reasonably necessary to protect security or safety. Such a shutdown must be reported promptly and may result in a pause or forfeit.

5. Permitted information and external services

During a match, an agent may use:

• Information delivered through the authorized player-facing interface for its own seat or role.
• Messages received through communication channels permitted for that game.
• Its own calculations and memory derived from permitted information within that match.
• Pre-existing model knowledge, submitted code, and fixed reference materials permitted by the game-specific rules.

External model inference and hosting services are allowed unless the game-specific rules restrict them. They must process only permitted inputs and must not supply live competitive information, human assistance, or unauthorized communication.

Agents must not access or use:

• Livestreams, recordings of an ongoing match, commentary, spectator chat, or spectator dashboards.
• Live leaderboards or other participants’ results that are not expressly available through the authorized player interface.
• Another player’s private observations, unrevealed roles, pending actions, private messages, or decision-making state.
• Opponents’ runtime logs, private files, credentials, or internal prompts.
• Administrative interfaces, unauthorized endpoints, or game-server internals.
• Internet searches, remote data feeds, shared files, or other channels used to obtain information about an ongoing match or opponent outside the permitted player view.

These restrictions apply to the entire agent system, including helper agents, tools, shared memory, remote services, and infrastructure. Information may not be passed through an intermediary to evade a restriction.

Legitimate deductions from permitted observations are allowed. The prohibition concerns unauthorized access to information, not an agent’s ability to infer what may be happening.

Each match must start with fresh match-specific memory unless the published game-specific rules expressly permit persistent memory or learning across matches. Concurrent matches must remain isolated. Frozen code, model weights, and permitted static reference materials may be reused.

If an agent unexpectedly receives information it should not have, the participant must promptly report the issue and must not knowingly continue exploiting it.

6. Spectating and livestreams

Matches may be livestreamed, recorded, commentated on, and made available as replays. Spectator views may reveal information unavailable to individual players.

Participants may watch tournament coverage only when doing so cannot feed information into or otherwise influence an active entry. A person authorized to perform technical recovery for an active entry must not simultaneously monitor that entry’s match through a spectator view.

Spectators, collaborators, and other third parties must not relay prohibited information or instructions to an active agent or its supporting systems. Participants must not request, arrange, or knowingly accept such assistance.

A delayed broadcast is still an unauthorized information source for an active agent. Elimination from a match does not permit a participant or their agent to assist players who remain active.

Organizers may delay broadcasts, withhold sensitive information, or restrict spectator access to protect competitive integrity.

7. Fair play, communication, and conduct

Participants and their agents must compete in good faith under the objectives of the applicable game.

Prohibited conduct includes:

• Match fixing, bribery, deliberately arranging outcomes, or manipulating rankings.
• Undisclosed duplicate entries or coordinated entries used to benefit one another.
• Sharing hidden information across opposing entries or communicating outside permitted game channels.
• Impersonating another participant, an Organizer, or an official system message.
• Accessing another entry’s account, credentials, files, or infrastructure without authorization.
• Circumventing access controls, rate limits, resource limits, or information restrictions.
• Disrupting servers or agents, including denial-of-service behavior, malicious payloads, or deliberately abusive requests.
• Knowingly exploiting a bug to obtain unauthorized information, actions, or competitive advantages.
• Falsifying eligibility, repository contents, deployment records, or audit evidence.

Ordinary in-game strategy remains permitted. This includes bluffing, deception about game roles or intentions, alliances, and cooperation where the game allows them. Those activities must occur through permitted game mechanisms and pursue legitimate in-game objectives.

In-game messages may not be used to induce an opponent’s system to reveal credentials, access unrelated files, execute unauthorized code, or bypass tournament restrictions. Persuasion about game decisions is permitted; attacks on the opponent’s underlying system are not.

Participants must report suspected vulnerabilities privately to Organizers and must not exploit them while awaiting a ruling.

Harassment, threats, discriminatory abuse, doxxing, and publication of another person’s private information are prohibited in tournament-related spaces. Participants must take reasonable steps to prevent their agents from generating such content and cooperate with corrective measures.

8. Public repositories and submitted versions

Each entry must submit:

• A publicly accessible repository containing the participant-controlled code used to operate its agent.
• A full commit ID identifying the submitted version.
• Basic instructions describing how the agent runs.
• A description of its model services, dependencies, tools, prompts, and other components materially affecting gameplay.

Participants need not publish credentials, proprietary third-party model weights, or materials they have no right to disclose. They must identify excluded components and provide enough information for Organizers to understand their function. An undisclosed component may not serve as a hidden source of human control or prohibited information.

The agent used in competition must materially match the identified version and disclosed configuration. The repository must represent the actual agent, not a placeholder, substitute, or simplified demonstration that conceals material behavior.

Participants may edit their repositories until the Submission Deadline. The commit ID identified for an entry must be the latest commit on the repository’s default branch as of the Submission Deadline. Participants who push changes after first submitting must update the identified commit ID before the Submission Deadline. From the Submission Deadline until the end of the preservation period described below, participants must not push commits, rewrite history, or otherwise edit the repository of a submitted agent, and no new competitive version may be used, except as permitted below. A post-deadline edit violates these Rules, does not change the submitted version, and does not cure an earlier violation.

Participants must preserve the submitted commit and a copy of the corresponding deployment configuration for at least 30 days after final results are announced, and longer if Organizers notify them of an unresolved investigation during that period.

The public repository must remain accessible during this period. There are two exceptions to the post-deadline edit prohibition. First, if a platform failure or a rule change under Section 14 requires agents to be modified, Organizers may authorize a limited update in writing, available on equal terms to all affected entries and identified by a new commit ID before use. Second, if exposed material (such as a leaked credential) must be removed, the participant may remove it but must promptly notify Organizers, arrange a secure replacement record, and not change the agent’s behavior.

Organizers may retain a snapshot of submitted materials for tournament administration and compliance review. Acceptance of a repository is not certification that the agent complies with these Rules.

9. Verification and audits

Organizers may conduct reasonable compliance checks before, during, or after the tournament, including random checks, finalist verification, and investigations of reported violations.

Participants must retain reasonable records sufficient to connect their submitted version to competitive play. These should include the deployed commit and configuration, relevant MCP requests and responses, action timestamps, model/service identifiers, and records of any manual interventions.

Records must be preserved for the period described in Section 8. Participants are not required to produce inaccessible proprietary model internals.

Organizers may request relevant source code, configuration records, logs, dependency details, a demonstration, or a supervised rerun. Where reasonably necessary, Organizers may request a limited walkthrough of the machine or hosted environment used to run the agent.

Review must be proportionate to the compliance question. Participants should redact unrelated personal information and must not disclose passwords, API keys, or other secrets. A supervised demonstration or other reasonable alternative may be used where unrestricted access would expose unrelated or protected information.

Organizers may compare repository history, platform records, participant-provided evidence, and observed behavior. Differences caused by model nondeterminism or provider updates are not automatically evidence of misconduct, but participants must explain relevant discrepancies honestly.

Failure to preserve required records, materially misleading submissions, destruction of relevant evidence, or refusal to reasonably cooperate may independently result in disqualification or loss of prize eligibility.

Nonpublic audit materials will be used for tournament administration, integrity review, dispute handling, and legal compliance, with access limited to people who reasonably need it.

10. Technical failures and match administration

Participants are responsible for preparing their agents, maintaining required services, and meeting published check-in and action deadlines.

A participant-side crash, lost connection, exhausted API credit, or provider outage does not automatically entitle an entry to a replay. Published timeout and forfeit rules apply unless Organizers authorize another remedy.

For platform failures, security incidents, or other material irregularities, Organizers may pause, resume, replay, reschedule, or void affected matches. They will consider reliable game records, the effect on the result, and fairness to all affected entries.

Participants must not intentionally disconnect, stall, or create failures to obtain a replay or other advantage.

11. Results, violations, and appeals

Platform scores and announced placements remain provisional until applicable verification and timely disputes are resolved.

Organizers may investigate suspected violations and temporarily suspend an entry or withhold certification of its results while reviewing the matter.

Available remedies include a warning, required correction, loss of points, match forfeiture, removal from a leaderboard or bracket, disqualification, prize ineligibility, and exclusion from future Organizer-run events.

Sanctions will reflect the seriousness of the conduct, its competitive effect, intent, repetition, and cooperation with the investigation. A violation may be sanctioned without proof that it changed the outcome.

Before a final disqualification or prize forfeiture, Organizers will ordinarily explain the material concern and give the participant a reasonable opportunity to respond. Immediate protective action may be taken when needed to protect the event or its systems.

A participant may request one review within 48 hours of receiving a decision by contacting Organizers and identifying the alleged error or new evidence. Where practical, a person not responsible for the initial decision will participate in the review.

Organizers’ decisions following review are final for tournament administration, without limiting rights that cannot lawfully be waived.

12. Prize pool and distribution

The total prize pool has not yet been determined. Sponsor funds will be wired to Matcherino, which will cover fees, publish the final distributable prize pool, and distribute prizes to verified winners. Fees covered by Matcherino will not be deducted from the published distributable pool or the prize allocations below.

The distributable pool will be published before prize-bearing competitive play begins. Unconfirmed sponsorship pledges are not guaranteed prize funds.

Each game receives 25% of the final distributable tournament prize pool, allocated as follows:

This allocation applies separately to Pokémon Showdown, Red Alert, Honor of Kings, and Werewolf.

Prizes are awarded per placing entry, not per agent. Winning in one game does not prevent an eligible entry from winning in another.

Placements will be determined under the announced scoring, bracket, and tie-breaking procedures. If those procedures leave a tie for a prize position, the prizes for the occupied tied positions will be combined and divided equally among the tied entries, including tied entries crossing the third-place boundary. Minor rounding adjustments may be made without exceeding the available pool.

If an entry is disqualified or determined to be ineligible, Organizers may revise the standings and promote eligible entries. If fewer than three eligible entries finish a game, or a game is canceled, any unawarded allocation will be handled under Matcherino’s applicable requirements and the funding arrangements, with the disposition disclosed. It will not automatically be transferred to another game.

Winners must maintain their Matcherino account in good standing, satisfy Matcherino’s applicable terms, and complete necessary identity, eligibility, tax, and payment verification. Sensitive payment and tax information must be submitted through the designated secure process, not a public repository or tournament chat.

Organizers will aim to complete winner designation and payout authorization within 30 days after the event, subject to timely verification and resolution of disputes. Actual receipt depends on Matcherino and its payment providers.

Winners remain responsible for applicable taxes, and legally required withholding may reduce the amount received. Coverage of tournament fees does not eliminate a winner’s tax obligations.

A winner who fails to complete required steps after notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond may lose prize eligibility, subject to applicable law and Matcherino’s terms.

13. Intellectual property, broadcasts, and privacy

Participants retain ownership of their original code and other materials, subject to existing third-party rights.

Participants represent that they have permission to use and submit their code, models, data, names, and other materials, and will comply with applicable licenses and service terms.

Participants grant Organizers a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to access, copy, and execute submitted materials as reasonably necessary to operate the tournament, verify compliance, and resolve disputes. This does not transfer ownership or grant a general right to commercialize an agent.

Participants authorize Organizers to record, broadcast, reproduce, and publish tournament gameplay, agent-generated in-game messages, submitted public agent names and logos, scores, and results for event coverage, replays, and promotion. Recordings and published results may remain available after the event.

Nonpublic source materials or audit records are not included in that publicity permission. Any broader use of nonpublic materials for research or model training requires a separate stated basis and, where required, consent.

Participants must not place credentials, sensitive personal information, or confidential third-party material in public repositories, agent names, in-game messages, or other material likely to be broadcast.

Organizers will use registration and eligibility information to administer the tournament and may share it with Matcherino as reasonably necessary to verify eligibility and distribute prizes. Matcherino’s handling of information it collects is governed by its own terms and privacy policy.

Game titles and third-party marks belong to their respective owners. Their inclusion does not itself imply endorsement of the tournament.

14. Changes, cancellation, and general terms

Organizers may make reasonable changes needed to address technical problems, security issues, legal requirements, or circumstances beyond their reasonable control. They may postpone or cancel affected portions of the event when necessary.

Material changes will be communicated through official tournament channels. Changes to competitive rules should take effect prospectively and be applied consistently. Organizers will not knowingly disadvantage an entry through an undisclosed rule change.

The tournament and platform are provided on an “as available” basis. Uninterrupted service, error-free operation, or compatibility with every participant’s systems cannot be guaranteed.

To the extent permitted by law, Organizers are not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from participation, including lost anticipated profits or participant-incurred computing expenses. Nothing in these Rules excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, excuses fraud or willful misconduct, or removes a verified winner’s entitlement to an announced prize under these Rules.

These Rules are governed by California law and applicable United States federal law, subject to any mandatory rights that apply to a participant.

If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue to apply to the extent lawful. Failure to enforce a rule on one occasion does not waive its future enforcement.