Yes. Every mode can be played for free, with no download and no wallet. Playing for $ADA, $SNEK or $NIGHT is always optional: paid Head-to-Head, paid tournaments, paid private rooms and paid events are kept separate from free play.

No. Guests can play every free mode, including Head-to-Head and public tournaments. A free account keeps your Ping Points, rating, stats and cosmetics, and lets you sign in on any device.

Any modern browser on a phone, tablet or computer. Drag on a touch screen, move the mouse, or use W / S or the arrow keys. On a phone, turn it sideways for the biggest court, and use Add to Home Screen to launch it like an app.

PING’s in-game currency. You earn them from matches, daily and weekly challenges, achievements and the season track, and spend them in the Shop on paddle skins, trails, emotes and arenas. New accounts start with 1,000 Ping Points. Where available, the Shop also sells them for $ADA, $SNEK or $NIGHT, one way: they never turn back into any of them. Official events pay prizes in them too.

No. Everything in the Shop is cosmetic. Nothing you can earn or buy changes paddle size, speed, matchmaking or how the ball plays.

Head-to-Head pairs you with someone close to your rating and widens the search the longer you wait. Beating a stronger player moves your rating more. Private matches and solo modes never change it.

Yes. Create a private room for a 1v1 or a 4, 8 or 16-player bracket and share its code, or invite online friends straight from a room, a tournament lobby or the Head-to-Head screen. Rooms can be free or paid, and never change your rating. The host starts once every player has pressed Ready; in a paid room, locking in the entry is the ready step.

Free tournaments with a start time. Anyone signed in can host one from the Tournament screen: a name, 4, 8 or 16 players, and a time up to two weeks ahead. Anyone signed in can sign up there or from a shared link. Check-in opens ten minutes before the start. At the start the bracket takes 4, 8 or 16 of the players signed up: those who checked in first, then the earliest sign-ups, and a player who is away forfeits their match. With fewer than 4 signed up, or fewer than 2 on PING, it is canceled. Official events are hosted by PING. A free Official event pays its top four in Ping Points once at least 8 eligible players finish: one prize per account with a verified email or wallet, and per device and network.

Yes, where paid play is available. The host picks $5, $10 or $25 per player (a 10%, 7.5% or 5% fee) in $ADA, $SNEK or $NIGHT, up to 48 hours ahead, and the entry is priced when the event is published. Signing up is paying the entry, and sign-ups stop when every seat is taken. You can withdraw for free until ten minutes before the start. If it is not full at the start, every entry goes back. A player who is away at the start forfeits, and their entry stays in the prize. When it finishes, the contract pays the host a quarter of the fee, from the fee and never the prize, and the host may play in it too. A 16-player event can also be $1 per player (10% fee), so the winner takes $14.40.

Signed-in players can chat during online matches and while they wait in a room or a tournament lobby. Links, contact details and abusive language are blocked, and you can block anyone.

In Head-to-Head, yes, unless nobody else is in the queue. Then PING may offer a practice bot, and it always tells you so: on the court, before the match and on the results screen.

Online matches are run by the server. It simulates the ball 60 times a second and only accepts where you want your paddle to go, at the same speed cap for everyone. Your screen predicts ahead so play feels instant, and the server has the final word.

You have a short window to reconnect and carry on from the same score. If you don’t make it back, your opponent takes the match. If both players drop, the match is void.

Yes. Settings has colorblind paddles (blue and orange) and Play from the right, and PING follows your device’s reduced-motion setting. It is also available in nine languages.

Use the recovery code you saved when you set your password. Each code works once, and you get a fresh one after every reset. Without it the password can’t be recovered, so keep it somewhere safe.

Yes, from your profile. Your username, password, email, friends and messages are removed, and the username is freed for someone else.

On X at @pingthegame, for new modes, tournaments and updates.

Only to play for $ADA, $SNEK or $NIGHT (paid Head-to-Head, tournaments, private rooms and events), to host a paid event, whose share of the fee is paid to your wallet, or to top up Ping Points or use Swap in the Shop. Free play never asks for one.

Any CIP-30 browser wallet, including Begin, Eternl, Gero, Lace, MetaMask, NuFi, Typhon and VESPR. MetaMask works on desktop, through NuFi’s Cardano Snap.

Most Cardano wallets have a Buy button that sells $ADA by card, straight to you. If you already hold other Cardano tokens, Swap in the Shop trades them for $ADA through Minswap, inside a sealed frame that cannot see your PING account. PING never sells $ADA and never sees your card.

The entry fee shown before you sign, plus about 0.2 $ADA for the network fee. Keep about 1.2 $ADA spare and the leftover comes back to you as change. Paying in $SNEK or $NIGHT, you need the tokens shown plus about 4 $ADA: the 2 $ADA deposit, which comes back to you, the network fee and room for change.

Where $SNEK or $NIGHT entries are open, every paid mode lets you pick $ADA, $SNEK or $NIGHT: Head-to-Head, tournaments, events, and private rooms, where the host picks. The entry is the same dollar amount at every tier, priced live in that token from two price sources that must agree. With a token you also put up a 2 $ADA deposit that the contract returns to you however the match ends, plus the network fee. The prize and the platform fee are both paid in the coin the entries were paid in, and players of different coins are never matched against each other.

No. Your entry fee goes from your wallet into a Cardano smart contract, never into a PING account. The contract alone decides where it can go.

Head-to-Head, paid private matches, paid private tournaments and paid events have three: $5, $10 and $25 (public paid tournaments are $5). The platform fee falls as the entry rises: 10% at $5, 7.5% at $10 and 5% at $25, so the winner of a 1v1 takes $9.00, $18.50 or $47.50. Everyone in a match or tournament pays the same entry, and the rate is written into the contract when you lock in, so it can never change after you sign. Paid events add a fourth, $1 per player, for 16-player events only (10% fee). If $ADA’s price ever leaves a tier’s fee too small for the network to pay out, the entry rises just enough (never past twice the tier), and you see the real amount before you sign.

When the match ends, PING’s server signs the result. The contract checks that signature, then pays the prize to the winner and the platform fee (10%, 7.5% or 5%, by entry tier) to a fixed address. Both addresses are written into the contract when you lock in, so the result can say who won but can never send the entries anywhere else.

Your entry fee is never stuck. If no result arrives before the contract’s deadline, a refund returns each player’s own entry fee to their own wallet, in Head-to-Head and tournaments alike. It needs no one’s signature, not even PING’s.

Two things at most: a message proving you own the address, which moves no funds and costs nothing, and the transaction that locks your entry fee into the contract. PING will never ask for your seed phrase, and nobody from PING ever will.

Where available. They are new, and their contract has not been independently audited yet. Each player pays the same entry fee, in $ADA, $SNEK or $NIGHT, into a Cardano smart contract, and the draw starts once every entry is confirmed. Each coin has its own draws. The champion takes the whole prize pool less its entry tier’s platform fee (10%, 7.5% or 5%). If the draw does not fill in time, or anything goes wrong, every entry goes back to its own wallet automatically.

Where available. The host of a free event or private room can put up a prize for the winner in $ADA, $SNEK or $NIGHT (or $SOL where it is open), and may play for it too. It is held by an on-chain contract, never by PING, and PING takes no fee. A winner with a wallet on that chain linked to their account is paid the moment the final ends; a winner without one has 14 days to sign in, link a wallet and claim it, or it goes back to the host. If the event is canceled, never starts or no match is played, the prize goes back to the host automatically. The host can take it back before check-in opens, or while a room has no match on; after that it stays up for the winner. The prize contract has not been independently audited yet.

It waits for you for 14 days. Sign in on any device, link a wallet on the prize’s chain from the claim card on the home screen or your profile, and press Claim; if your account has an email, we send a code to confirm it is you. It is paid to that wallet at once, by the contract. Not claimed in 14 days, it goes back to the host.

Not yet. An independent audit of both contracts (Head-to-Head and tournaments) is in progress. Until it is complete, paid play runs as a pilot with a cap on the total value the contracts can hold.

Paid play needs an account with a password and a verified email. It is how we reach you if a prize or a refund ever needs attention, since the game otherwise knows only your username and wallet. Free play never asks for it, and your email is never shown to other players. Add, verify or change it any time in your profile, under Edit profile.

Paid matches are for adults (18+), only where they are legal. Some countries and regions are blocked. Free play is open everywhere.

No. Ping Points live in your PING account, not on chain. They can’t be turned into $ADA or sent to another player.

Yes. Every lock, payout and refund is an ordinary Cardano transaction you can look up on any explorer, such as Cardanoscan. Before you sign, the signing screen shows the exact terms the contract will enforce.

Its eUTxO model lets a contract check every input and output before a transaction is valid, so the rules for your entry fee are enforced by the chain rather than by trust. Fees are low and predictable, and PING’s contracts are written in Aiken.

Your username, crest, stats, match history and Ping Points. An email and wallet address only if you add them for paid play, and neither is ever shown publicly. Product analytics are anonymous.