Privacy notice
The short version: we keep only what the game needs to run, stay secure and stay fair. We never sell your data, show no ads and use no tracking cookies. You can ask us to delete your account at any time.
1. Who is responsible
Aetherchord is run by Max & Jonas in Sweden, who are the data controller for Aetherchord under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Contact: contact@aetherchord.com, or the in-game forum (F9).
2. What we store, why, and for how long
| What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Account: name, password hash, login sessions, sign-up facts | To let you log in and keep your characters yours. Your password itself is never stored: only a salted scrypt hash; session tokens and email codes only as hashes. We also note when you signed up and last logged in, that you accepted the Terms and confirmed you are 16 or older, any ban or mute (and why), and on which days since signing up you played (for counting how many players come back). | Until you delete your account, or a wipe deletes it. Sessions expire after 30 days unused. |
| Email address | To verify your account, send login and password-reset codes, and answer you when you write to us. | Until you delete your account. |
| IP addresses | Security and rate limiting: limiting connections, login attempts, new accounts, emails, forum posts and requests per address, and keeping banned players from coming straight back. | Raw addresses: only in the server's memory for the length of each limit (minutes to hours), gone on every restart, and in the hosting provider's logs for a short time. With your account and your forum posts we keep only a salted hash of the address (not the address itself); a banned account's address hash blocks new sign-ups for 7 days. |
| Chat | To deliver it to the players who should see it, and to handle reports: when someone reports a player, that player's last few chat lines are attached to the report. Chat you saw or wrote is also part of the gameplay recordings (below), with every name replaced. | Chat is not archived on its own. Reports (with those lines) are kept while we handle them, at most 90 days. Recordings: 30 days. |
| Forum posts | What you post, screenshots you attach, and for bug reports the game context (map, position, class, level, game version, screen size and browser), so we can find the bug. Posts show your character or account name. | Until you or a moderator delete them, or a wipe. |
| Gameplay data | Your characters, items, gold, progress, friends, guilds, trades and their logs, deaths and highscores - to run the game, keep the economy fair and find cheating. Highscores are public. | Until a wipe, or until you delete your account. |
| Error reports | When the game hits an error, your browser sends the error message, where in the code it happened, the game version and your browser and operating system family - cleaned of email addresses, IP addresses and tokens - to find and fix bugs. We count identical errors per game version. | In the server log, kept by the hosting provider for a short time; the counts and one cleaned example of each error are part of the game statistics (below). |
| Game statistics | To learn what works in the game and what does not, the server notes game events: when a play session starts and ends (and why: logged out, connection lost, idle), sign-up and email verification, new characters, level-ups and time played, deaths (where, at which level, killed by what), quests, mysteries, bosses and dungeons tried and finished, areas entered, tutorial prompts shown and answered, settings changed, panels opened, forum posts (only the board), errors, and your browser family, screen size, whether it is a touch screen, and the movement setting. Every event carries a pseudonym instead of your account or character name: a code computed from your account name with a secret key only we hold. No names, email or IP addresses are stored with them. We use them only for statistics (how many players come back, where new players get stuck or give up, which fights are too hard) - never to make decisions about you. | Up to 12 months, then deleted. If you delete your account, the pseudonym can no longer be linked to you. |
| Gameplay recordings | To see how the game is really played and to find bugs and frustrating moments, we record play sessions: what the game showed you on screen (the world around your character, your health, items and quests, the messages you received, the chat you saw and wrote - whispers, party and guild chat included), a few times per second, plus the game events above. When the recording is made, every character and account name - also inside chat messages - is replaced by a nickname such as "Wanderer-7f3a", and email addresses, links, phone numbers and IP addresses are removed from chat. Only the game team can watch them. You can object: write to us and we stop recording your account and delete its existing recordings (your character and what you say can still appear, under a nickname, in the recordings of other players who were near you). | 30 days, then deleted automatically. |
| Backups | Copies of the account, character, world and forum data, to recover from crashes and mistakes. | At most 30 days. |
Our legal bases (GDPR article 6): running the game you signed up for (6.1.b), and our legitimate interest in keeping it secure, fair and working - rate limits, abuse prevention, moderation and bug fixing - and in improving it with pseudonymised game statistics and gameplay recordings (6.1.f). You have the right to object to the processing based on our legitimate interest (article 21); write to us and we will stop recording your account.
3. What we never do
- We never sell or rent your data, and do not share it except with the services in section 5.
- No advertising, no third-party analytics, no tracking cookies, no profiling. Our own game statistics and recordings (section 2) are pseudonymised and used only to improve the game.
4. Cookies and local storage
Aetherchord sets no tracking cookies. The game keeps a few things in your browser's local storage, on your own device: your settings (controls, sound), your login session, single-player saves, and which tips and notices you have already seen. You can clear them at any time in your browser.
5. Services that process data for us
- Fly.io (Fly.io, Inc., USA) hosts the game servers in its Stockholm region, so the live game's data is stored in Sweden. Where Fly.io handles data outside the EU (for example for support or logs), this happens under the safeguards the GDPR requires, such as the EU standard contractual clauses.
- Backups, game statistics and gameplay recordings are stored in Fly.io's object storage (Tigris Data, Inc., USA). Tigris spreads stored files over its regions and may keep copies outside the EU, including in the USA, under the same kind of safeguards.
- Our email provider (currently Resend, Inc., USA) sends verification, login and password-reset codes. It receives your email address and the message, under the same kind of safeguards.
6. Your rights
You can ask us to show you the data we hold about you, correct it, hand it over in a machine-readable form, restrict or object to how we use it, or delete it - including deleting your whole account, and your gameplay recordings (we can find your pseudonymised data from your account name). Write to contact@aetherchord.com or post in the in-game forum (F9; for privacy matters, preferably email). We may ask you to show that the account is yours, for example by writing from its email address. We answer within one month. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, imy.se) or the authority where you live.
7. Age
Aetherchord is for people aged 16 and older. We do not knowingly keep data about younger children; tell us and we will delete it.
8. Security
Passwords are stored only as salted scrypt hashes and session tokens only as hashes, connections to the hosted game are encrypted (HTTPS), save files are never served to the web, and logins, sign-ups and messages are rate limited. No system is perfectly secure; if something goes wrong with your data, we will tell you as the law requires.
9. Changes
We will update this page when what we store or why changes, and show a notice in the game for important changes.