Veilstride Privacy Policy

Veilstride is a walking adventure: you explore the real world, and a fantasy world appears around you. To make that work, the game uses your location, counts your steps, and keeps your heroes safe in the cloud. This page explains what the game collects, why, who else handles it, and how to have it deleted.

1. What the game collects, and why

Your location

• What: your phone's GPS position, while the game is open. The game doesn't use location in the background and doesn't ask for background location.
• Why: to put your hero on the map, spawn foes and finds nearby, work out the terrain around you (parks, water, towns), plan dungeon walks along real streets, and check your progress along a walk.
• Where it goes:
  • Mapbox (our map provider) receives your position, or the map area around it, to send back map imagery, the places near you, and walking routes. See section 3.
  • Our game server (hosted by Supabase) receives the map square you're in (about 470 m across), not your exact position, to share map data between players. These requests aren't linked to your account.
  • OpenStreetMap's Overpass service: the first time anyone plays in a map square, your phone may ask a public OpenStreetMap server for that square's map features. It receives the square (about 470 m across) and your phone's internet address, not your account.
  • Your home base, if you set one (Settings → Map & walks → Here), is stored as an exact position in your cloud backup, so it comes back on a new phone. Only you can read your backup. It's never shown to friends.
  • A dungeon walk in progress (its route along real streets) is part of your cloud backup too.

Your steps

• What: the step count from your phone's built-in step counter (Android's "Physical activity" permission).
• Why: steps heal your hero, recharge abilities, and count toward quests and walks.
• Where it goes: steps are counted on your phone. Your running total (in the Journal) is part of your cloud backup. Nothing else about your activity is read or sent.

Your game account

• Automatic account: the first time you open the game, it quietly creates an anonymous account for you. There's no sign-up form. The account has a random ID, and your progress backs up to it.
• Email and password (optional): if you choose Save my progress (Settings → Account → Cloud save), you add an email address and password so you can sign in on another phone. We use your email only to sign you in. We don't send newsletters or marketing. The game sends no email at all today.
• Your cloud backup: a copy of your game progress: your heroes, their gear and stash, the Journal (including your step total), quests, bounties, cosmetics, your home base, and any dungeon walk in progress. Device settings, map caches and developer settings aren't included. The game backs up at most once a minute while you play, and when you leave the app.

Friends and social features (all optional)

These only happen if you pick a screen name and add friends.

• Screen name and friend code: your chosen screen name (3–20 characters, run through a word filter) and an 8-character friend code. There's no search by name: people can find you only by the code you give them.
• Hero card: after each backup, your profile shows your best hero ("Lyra · Lv 3 Arcanist") and the look, level and weapons of the hero you're playing. Your friends can see these.
• Friend list: who you've asked, who's asked you, and who your friends are.
• Gifts: when you gift an item, the server records the item, who sent it and who it's for, until it's claimed (or taken back after 14 days). It also keeps a log of which items you've sent, so the same item can't be gifted twice.
• Adventure together (Friends → Adventure, or Settings): this is off every time the game starts, and you switch it on for that session only. While it's on:
  • your position is rounded to about 200 m on your phone, and again by the server, then stored at most once a minute. A friend can see it only if they've switched Adventure together on too, and only for 15 minutes after your last update. Switching off removes it (and the game tries to remove it when you quit).
  • if you start a dungeon walk, the walk is offered to friends who are adventuring together, so they can walk it with you. That includes its exact route along real streets (not rounded), which starts where you planned it and, if you chose a walk that ends at home, finishes at your home. Friends can read it for up to 3 hours, and only while you're both adventuring together. It's withdrawn when the walk ends or you switch off.
  • tears (shared battles) record only the shared foe's health, not who struck it.

Feedback you send (optional)

The game has a small bug button that floats over the screen (you can hide it in Settings → Account), and a Send feedback button in Settings → Account. Nothing is sent until you write something and press Send.

• Always sent with a report: what kind it is (bug, suggestion or other), what you wrote, the game's version and platform, and your game account's ID, so we can tell reports apart and stop floods.
• Diagnostics (ticked unless you untick it): your phone's model, system version, memory, graphics chip, screen size, language and free storage; your hero's class, race and level (not its name) and where you are in the story; what you were doing (the map, a fight and the foe, a dungeon walk, or a menu); the game's developer settings; and short excerpts of the game's logs: the last 50 lines of the settings log and the latest fight from the battle log (these name your hero), and the last few errors the game ran into (crash logs). "What's included?" in the reporter shows exactly this list. No location: no coordinates or map squares are included, and the game blanks out anything in the logs that looks like one.
• A screenshot (ticked for bug reports, unticked otherwise): a picture of the game's screen at the moment you tapped the button. It may show the map around you (and so roughly where you are), and in an AR battle, the camera's view of your room. Untick it if you'd rather not send it.
• Why: to find and fix bugs, and to hear what you'd like in the game. Only the developer reads it. Other players can't, and you can't read it back either.
• If you're offline, the report waits on your phone (up to 10, for up to 30 days) and sends itself when you're back online. You can send at most 20 reports a day.

Things that stay on your phone

• Camera (experimental AR battles only): if you turn on AR battles, the game explains why, then asks for camera permission, and shows the camera's picture with the foe standing in your room. Google's ARCore tracks the floor on your phone. The game doesn't save, upload or share any picture or video, except a screenshot you choose to attach to feedback (see Feedback you send). AR battles use Google Play Services for AR (ARCore), which is provided by Google and covered by the Google Privacy Policy.
• Motion sensors: for optional swing and shake gestures in battle. Read on the phone, never sent.
• Developer logs: the game keeps battle, spawn and settings logs on your phone for 14 days, to help with testing. They record fights, finds and distances, not your coordinates. They leave your phone only if you copy them yourself and send them to someone, or as the short excerpt in feedback you send with diagnostics ticked.
• Map caches: map data is cached on the phone for up to 12 hours.

Things the game does not collect

No contacts, photos or files from your phone, microphone, phone calls, SMS, calendar, browsing history, payment details or advertising ID. There's no in-game chat.

2. How we use it

• To run the game: the map, spawns, dungeons, walks, battles, saves and friends.
• To keep your progress safe and let you move it to a new phone.
• To keep the social features fair and friendly: the screen-name filter, and the gift checks against cheating.
• To count active users for our map provider's billing (see Mapbox below).
• To fix bugs and improve the game, from the feedback you choose to send.

We don't sell your data, use it for advertising, build advertising profiles, or share it with data brokers.

3. Who else handles your data

We use a few service providers to run the game. They handle data for us, under their own privacy terms:

Other players see only what's described under Friends and social features.

We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect players' safety.

4. How long we keep it

• Your account and cloud backup: until you delete your account in the game (or ask us to). An anonymous account that's never linked to an email can't be recovered once the app is removed. It stays until you delete it. If you've already removed the app, email us your screen name or friend code and we'll delete it for you.
• Adventure together position: replaced at each update; visible for 15 minutes; removed when you switch off.
• Shared dungeon walk: visible for 3 hours at most; removed when the walk ends or you switch off.
• Gifts: until claimed or taken back. The record of items you've sent stays until the item comes back to you or your account is deleted.
• Feedback you send: until we've dealt with it, and at most 12 months, then it's deleted with its screenshot. Deleting your account doesn't delete it, but unlinks it: the link to your account is removed, and the old account ID its screenshot is filed under no longer belongs to anyone. A report still waiting on your phone is deleted with the account.
• Shared map data: map squares are built from OpenStreetMap and contain no personal data. Each is refreshed after 30 days.
• Server request logs (internet addresses) are kept by Supabase for its standard log period. These logs are short-lived: Supabase keeps them for about a day to a week, depending on the plan, for security and fixing faults.
• On your phone: game data stays until you uninstall the app or clear its data. Developer logs are deleted after 14 days.

5. Deleting your data

• In the game (recommended): Settings → Account → Delete account…, then type DELETE to confirm. It's done straight away: our server deletes your account, and then the game clears your progress from the phone and starts afresh. You need an internet connection; if the game can't reach the server, it says so and deletes nothing.
• If you can't use the game (a lost phone, say), email clarkcreative27@gmail.com with the subject "Delete my Veilstride account". Include your screen name and friend code (Settings → Account), or the email you signed up with. We'll confirm by replying, then delete within 30 days.
• Either way, this is deleted:
  • your account, and your email and password if you added them;
  • your cloud backup: every hero, their progress, items and stash, the Journal, your home base and any walk in progress;
  • your profile, screen name, friend code and hero card;
  • your friendships and friend requests, gifts you've sent or that are waiting for you, and the gift log;
  • any shared position or shared walk.
  Supabase's server request logs (internet addresses) expire on their own schedule (see section 4). Feedback you've sent is kept, unlinked from you, for at most 12 months (see section 4). If you'd like it deleted too, say so in your email, or email us before deleting the account in the game. Deleting can't be undone. The same steps are on the delete your account page.
• Without deleting the account, you can always:
  • switch Adventure together off (or just restart the game);
  • remove friends (Friends → your list → Remove);
  • move your home base somewhere else (Settings → Map & walks → Here). It can't be cleared on its own; deleting the account removes it;
  • turn location, Physical activity or the camera off in your phone's settings (Settings → Account → Phone permissions opens them);
  • uninstall the game, which removes everything stored on your phone (but not your cloud account: delete that in the game first).

6. Children

Veilstride is meant for players 13 and older. It isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, contact us and we'll delete it.

Because the game uses your location, please play somewhere safe. Keep to sidewalks and paths, mind traffic, and never trespass to reach something in the game.

7. Security

• Everything the game sends goes over encrypted connections (HTTPS).
• Each account can read and change only its own backup. The server enforces this (row-level security), not just the app.
• Your password goes only to the account service, which stores it hashed, never in plain text.
• On your phone, the game keeps a sign-in token so you stay signed in.
• No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects you, we'll tell you as the law requires.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your personal data, or to object to how it's used. To ask, email clarkcreative27@gmail.com. We'll answer within 30 days. You can also complain to your local data-protection authority.

9. Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top and, for important changes, tell you in the game or on the store listing.

10. Contact

Questions about privacy: clarkcreative27@gmail.com