Challenge rules
Text version: 2026-09-07
NO PRIZE IS AWARDED DURING THE TEST PHASE
Sakalm is in a test phase. The ranking, the leagues, the Race Numbers and the Goldies all work normally, but NO PRIZE IS AT STAKE and no award is given, to anyone, in any form.
As of today there is therefore no contest, no draw, and no game with any prize whatsoever.
These rules describe what will apply on the day prizes start. They are published in advance so that nobody discovers them at the moment of playing. On that day, the version of this text will change and the app will ask for your agreement again before letting you continue.
Taking part in the test phase is entirely free. No subscription exists yet, and nothing can be bought in the app.
WHAT THIS IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT
A challenge is won on performance. The winner is whoever finishes top of their group’s ranking, on the greatest distance or the greatest area depending on the mode played, not whoever a draw picks out. Chance plays no part at any moment in awarding the prize.
This point is not cosmetic: under French law, a game whose outcome depends on a performance is a contest, not a lottery. These are two very different regimes, and it is the contest regime that applies here.
ORGANISER
Sakalm, 10 place Souham, Hall 3, 75013 Paris, France. Contact: hello@sakalm.com.
Apple is neither organiser, nor sponsor, nor partner of these challenges, and takes no part in them in any way. The same goes for Google.
WHO CAN TAKE PART
Anyone aged 16 or over with a Sakalm account, living in metropolitan France, and entered in the challenge for the week concerned.
BEING FREE
Taking part is entirely free. Nothing can be bought in the app, in any form.
A paid subscription will exist at public launch. It will give no advantage in the ranking, no priority on the prize, and no reserved access to the challenge. A subscriber and a non-subscriber will compete on exactly equal terms.
HOW YOUR GROUP IS FORMED
Your group is not drawn at random. Chance plays no part at any moment in how it is made up.
Every Monday at midnight, everyone entered in the same sport and the same mode is brought together. Those still within their two placement weeks are set apart from the others. Each of the two sets is then ranked by level, from highest to lowest, and the list thus ordered is cut into successive slices. Each slice forms a group. So you play against the people whose level is closest to yours, and during your placement against people who are in placement too.
Your level is an index worked out from your activities over the last eight rolling weeks: what you were running more than two months ago no longer counts. Your first two weeks are the starting point. Nothing else goes into that calculation: not the subscription, not the Goldies, not the items you own, not how long you have had the account.
Groups hold up to ten people, and up to six during the placement weeks, because a set of beginners nobody can yet place is better separated at six. When the number of entries does not fill them, the list is spread evenly between the groups rather than leaving one full and one nearly empty.
Where indexes are strictly equal, a stable internal order separates them. It is the same from one week to the next and depends on no draw.
If there are fewer than six entries for a given sport and mode, no group is formed that week. The entries concerned are recorded as such rather than staging a head-to-head dressed up as a challenge.
This rule is published because it can be checked, and it can be checked because it is deterministic: the same entries always produce the same groups. That is what makes the Challenge + prize an award for a sporting performance in a group formed by level, with no element of chance anywhere in the chain that leads to handing it over.
HOW YOU WIN
The ranking runs from Monday 00:00 to Sunday 20:00, Paris time.
The ranking is settled on cumulative DISTANCE. A second mode, on the AREA your loops enclose, is written and ready: it is not open yet, and the entry screen shows it greyed out. On the day it opens, the mode will be chosen at the moment of entry, for the whole week, and all the members of one group will play the same mode.
On the day prizes start, the prize will go to whoever finishes FIRST in the group that week, on the measure of the mode played: the greatest distance, or the greatest area. One winner per group and per week, barring a tie to the metre.
Only activities that carry a track and that the automatic check has validated are counted. An activity recorded in the app counts. An activity imported from a connected watch counts too, provided it brings its track: an import reduced to a summary, with no track to verify, joins your history but leaves the ranking.
Activities imported from a file do not count towards the challenge ranking. They join your personal history, but a file can be written by hand, so it cannot decide a prize.
In the event of a perfect tie to the metre, the people concerned are level and share the same rank. The ranking does not separate them: separating them at random would mean giving one what is taken from the other for no reason.
LEAGUES, MOVING UP AND MOVING DOWN
There are six leagues, from the lowest to the highest: IRON, BRONZE, SILVER, GOLD, PLATINUM, DIAMOND.
At the Sunday close, and ONLY in a full group of ten people, the TOP TWO move up one notch and the BOTTOM TWO move down one. Every other place keeps theirs.
In a group of fewer than ten people, nobody moves up and nobody moves down. The week counts as usual for the ranking, for the Goldies and for the chests, but it does not touch your league. An incomplete group does not gather enough people for a place in it to mean what it means in a full one, and a league is not lost over a week where there was nobody to play against.
Each league is crossed in three notches. So it takes finishing in the top two of a group of ten three times to go from Iron to Bronze, and in the bottom two three times to drop from Bronze back to Iron. That is what stops a single week, good or bad, from changing your league. These notches are not numbered: the app shows the name of your league, and nothing else.
One notch at a time, never two. You do not go above Diamond, and you do not fall below Iron.
During your two placement weeks you neither move up nor down: those weeks are there to measure your level, not to penalise you. At the end of the second, you are placed according to the index measured over those two weeks, somewhere between the Iron league and the Gold league. Neither Platinum nor Diamond is handed out at placement: they are earned.
RACE NUMBERS, GOLDIES AND CHESTS
Goldies and Race Numbers are counters internal to the game. Goldies are earned by moving, at 2 Goldies per 1,000 steps and 1 Goldi per kilometre on a bike, up to a limit of 50,000 steps paid per day. They are also earned by opening chests, by keeping your streak day after day, by unlocking an achievement, and once only through the referral welcome gift when the person referred chooses it in that form. Challenges and the week’s ranking do not pay Goldies directly: they give chests, and it is the chests that contain them. Goldies build up without limit.
The Race Number no longer forms on its own: it is bought with Goldies, in the shop, at the price shown on screen (1,000 Goldies as of today, or 500 for a Half Race Number, two halves making one whole Race Number). It is also obtained by levelling up: a Half Race Number at levels 5 and 10, a whole Race Number at levels 15 and 20. These four steps are the only ones, they are announced in advance on the level page, and they are reached by playing, never by a draw.
Referral gives a fifth way: a welcome Half Race Number, once only per account, to the person referred once they have recorded their first activity. This gift is not paid for and cannot be improved with money. No subscription, no purchase and no spending conditions it, and it can be swapped for its equivalent in Goldies. The detail is in the referral rules, a separate document, readable in the app and on the site.
NO RACE NUMBER IS OBTAINED BY A DRAW. Chests contain neither Race Numbers nor Half Race Numbers: a chest gives Goldies, OR a piece of decoration, OR a title, and only one of those three at a time. A Race Number is bought with Goldies earned by moving, won in the ranking, obtained at one of the four level steps that give them, or comes from the referral welcome gift: in all four cases on a result obtained by playing, never on a draw and never for money. This rule is held by the code itself: the function that opens a chest contains no Race Number draw.
CHEST ODDS
A chest is not bought and not sold. It is picked up on the map during an activity, or won by finishing your challenges, in Sunday’s ranking, and by levelling up. No purchase, in any form, gives one more chest or a better chest, and the Premium account changes nothing there.
What a chest can give is limited to three things, and it gives only one: Goldies, a piece of decoration, or a title. Never a Race Number, never a prize, never a place in the ranking, never a sporting advantage.
The odds of each reward are published in the app, on the chests screen, where the full table is read from the server at the moment of opening: those are the values the draw actually uses, not a copy kept up to date by hand. This page queries no server and therefore cannot show them here.
When the draw picks an item already owned and there is no other left to give, its value is paid in Goldies instead. The same item is never given twice.
Goldies are also used to buy pieces of decoration: photo frames, looks for the start button, route colours, banners and themes. These items change nothing but the appearance of the app. None of them gives the slightest advantage in the ranking, and this rule is held by a technical constraint in the database, not only by this text.
Goldies cannot be bought, in any form, and there is no way to obtain them for money: they are earned by moving, and by no other path.
They give NO advantage in the ranking, and they play NO part in awarding the week’s prize, which depends on the sporting ranking of your group alone.
Nothing drawn at random, chests included, plays any part in awarding the prize: what is won by chance cannot decide an award.
WHAT MONEY BUYS, AND WHAT IT NEVER BUYS
Nothing is bought with money in the app today. The rules below describe what will hold on the day the shop accepts the euro, and they are published in advance so that nobody discovers them that day.
Money buys two things, and nothing else.
DECORATIVE ITEMS: themes, photo frames, route styles, banners, looks for the start button, titles and achievements. They do nothing but be seen.
COMFORT FEATURES, through the Premium subscription: a longer history, deeper statistics and heart analysis, watch syncing, a richer map, a fuller feed, and private groups in greater number, one hundred instead of two.
NONE OF THESE FEATURES TOUCHES THE GAME. A private group credits no Goldi, no chest, no Race Number and no experience point: its ranking is a matter among friends and it does not leave the group. Having a hundred rather than two therefore earns nothing more, and brings nobody closer to a prize.
NO EURO BUYS A GOLDI. The shop does not sell in-game currency, and it will not. How many Goldies someone has depends only on how far they have gone: no sum of money creates a single one.
NO EURO BUYS A RACE NUMBER, nor an entry to Challenge +, nor a chance at a prize. It is the rule that matters most in all of these terms.
NO EURO BUYS A CHEST, nor improves what a chest can give. An account that pays and an account that does not open exactly the same chests, with exactly the same odds.
NO PAID ITEM AND NO PAID FEATURE GIVES A SPORTING ADVANTAGE: no kilometre, no experience point, no level, no place in the ranking, no area, no streak day saved. The subscription is no exception: it gives you things to see and to organise, never things to win. This rule is not only written here, it is held by a database constraint that refuses to put on sale any item having the slightest effect on the game.
The same decorative item may, depending on the case, be obtained in euros or in Goldies, as you prefer. Both lead to the same item, and that item does nothing but be seen.
ACCESS TO CHALLENGE + IS COMPLETE WITHOUT SPENDING A EURO. The Race Number is obtained with Goldies earned by moving, by finishing in the top third of the week’s ranking, at one of the four level steps that give them, or through the referral welcome gift. None of these four paths asks for money, and none is reserved for subscribers.
The subscription, when it exists, will follow the same rule: it will sell depth and items, never an advantage, never a priority on a prize, never reserved access to the challenge.
CHALLENGE +
The week’s challenge is played in two ways. The ordinary way is free: you enter, you run, you are ranked, and nothing is asked in return.
Challenge + is the other. You enter it by spending ONE RACE NUMBER, and it is the only mode where a prize is at stake. The Race Number is debited at entry, whatever the result of the week: it pays for the entry, not for the win.
A Race Number cannot be bought with money. It is earned by moving, or swapped for Goldies, themselves earned by moving. No euro opens that door, and a subscription would open it no wider.
If no group forms for want of entries, the Race Number is given back. Nobody pays an entry for a week that did not happen.
The Challenge + ranking follows the same rules as the ordinary challenge, and the top of the group takes the prize. The places below earn Race Numbers and Half Race Numbers according to their position in the group. Beyond that, the stake is not returned.
This mode gives NO sporting advantage. It does not make anyone run faster, nor count double: it opens access to an award, and nothing else. Two people of the same level, one in Challenge + and one not, run exactly the same challenge.
THE PRIZE
No prize is at stake during the test phase, and no award is owed to anyone for a week played during that phase.
At public launch, a prize will be at stake in the groups entered in Challenge +, every week. What it is will be announced on the Challenge screen at the start of the week. It will not be exchangeable, transferable, or replaceable by its value in money.
The winner will be told by email within seven days of the close, and will have thirty days to reply and give a delivery address. Delivery costs within metropolitan France will be borne by the organiser.
WHO ORGANISES, AND WHO DOES NOT
This challenge is run by Sakalm, and by Sakalm alone. Apple and Google are neither organisers, nor sponsors, nor parties to it, and are in no way associated with how it runs, with its rules or with the awarding of prizes. No claim about a challenge can be addressed to them.
EXCLUSION
Any attempt to distort a measurement leads to exclusion from the challenge, without notice and without compensation.
The organiser reserves the right to cancel, postpone or change a challenge week in the event of force majeure or technical failure, without this giving rise to any right to compensation.
COMPLAINTS
By email to hello@sakalm.com, within thirty days of the close of the week concerned.
This is a translation, provided for convenience. Sakalm is published in France and its obligations are written in French. Where the two versions differ, the French version prevails.