The short version. Signing in needs an email address and a nickname. The site records how you played so the game can be balanced. There are no passwords, no payment details, no adverts on the site and no third-party tracking, and your details are never sold or passed to anybody else. Empty Cities is a commercial project, so if you tick the box for it, we will email you about how the game develops, including about a published edition. One button in your profile deletes everything. The server is in France.
Cez Krol is the data controller, as an individual rather than a company. Contact: [email protected]. A postal address is available on request.
| What | Why | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Your email address | To send your six digit sign-in code, and to recognise your account next time | Performing our agreement with you |
| Your nickname | So other players can see who they are playing; on the list of open tables, if you open a public one, so somebody can decide whether to join you; and on the public ranking. None of those show an email address, a private table is never listed, and you can switch yourself off the ranking in your profile | Performing our agreement with you, and our legitimate interest in a competitive game having a scoreboard |
| Sign-in codes | To sign you in. Stored hashed, never in plain text, and they expire after ten minutes | Performing our agreement with you |
| A session token | To keep you signed in without a password | Performing our agreement with you |
| Game records: when a game ran, how long it took, how many rounds, who sat where, who won | To balance the game. This is the point of the whole exercise: play length and win rates are how the design gets fixed | Legitimate interest in developing the game |
| Move records: the actions taken in a game | To analyse balance, and to let a game recover if the server restarts | Legitimate interest in developing the game |
| Activity events, including which table-talk phrase you used, and how long you spent on the story page | To see which parts of the site are used and which are ignored. The story page counts seconds so we can tell whether it is read or bounced off; nothing else on the site is timed, and no scrolling, no mouse movement and no keystrokes are recorded anywhere | Legitimate interest in developing the game |
| Ratings and feedback you choose to send | To improve the game | Your consent, given by sending it |
| Whether you agreed to be written to about the game | To know whether we may send you the email described in section 6, and to respect the answer either way | Your consent |
| Which site the link came from, once, on your browser's first visit | To know whether anybody is finding the game, and where from. The
name of the site only, never the full address, because a full address can
carry a search you typed or a page you were reading. The game's own share
buttons add utm_source, utm_medium and
utm_campaign tags to the link they hand you, naming the app you
chose and which screen you shared from, and those are noted instead of the
referrer. That is the only reason a link sent through WhatsApp can be counted
at all: messaging apps pass on no referrer, so without the tag an arrival from
one is indistinguishable from somebody typing the address | Legitimate interest in knowing whether the playtest is reaching anybody |
| Your IP address | Used in memory to rate-limit requests and stop abuse. It is not stored in the database, though it may appear briefly in server logs | Legitimate interest in security |
Signed-in players can see a ranking of nicknames: most wins against people, most wins against the AI, win rate, fastest victory, most games played. It shows a nickname and a number, and nothing else. No email addresses, no counts of games you lost, nothing that is not already visible to somebody who plays you.
You are on it by default, because a nickname exists to be seen by the people you play and a competitive game is poorer without a scoreboard. If you would rather not appear, untick "Show my nickname on the ranking" in your profile and you are removed from it at once, including from the totals.
Not cookies, but the same idea: a small amount of local storage holds your sign-in token so you stay signed in, plus your email address and nickname so you do not have to retype them, plus your sound and display preferences. All of it stays on your device, and clearing your browser data removes it. None of it is used for tracking.
That is the whole list. Your details are never sold, rented, or handed to anybody else for their own marketing, ever.
Empty Cities is not a hobby that happens to have a website. It is an unpublished game being built to be published and sold, and the online version exists partly to sharpen the design and partly to find the people who will want a copy. You should know that, because it is the reason we would like to be able to write to you.
Two different kinds of email.
The box is not ticked for you, and leaving it unticked costs you nothing: the game plays exactly the same. You can change your mind at any time in your profile, or by replying to any such email and saying so, or by using the unsubscribe link it carries. Withdrawing is immediate and needs no reason.
The lawful basis is your consent. If you never gave it, you will not get this email. If you gave it and then withdraw it, it stops.
Open Profile and use delete my account. It happens at once and it is not reversible. Your account row, your email, your nickname and your sessions are erased. Every game, move, event, rating and piece of feedback is unlinked from you in the same operation: your seat in past games becomes "a player", and your name and email are removed from anything you sent.
You can also just email [email protected] and ask.
Under the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation you have the right to ask for a copy of your data, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how it is used, and to have it sent to you in a portable form. To exercise any of them, email [email protected]. There is no charge and the answer will come within 30 days.
Where the basis is consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Where the basis is legitimate interest, you can object and it will be weighed honestly.
If you are unhappy with the response you may complain to a data protection authority. In Poland that is the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO), and you may also complain to the authority in the country you live in.
An account is for ages 13 and over. Everything except the tutorial needs one, so that is the age for the online game. The tutorial is the part that needs no account, and playing it collects no personal data beyond an anonymous browser identifier used to count games. The printed game suits players from about age 10 and needs nothing from anybody.
Promotional email is for ages 16 and over, and it is the one thing here that runs on consent rather than on the agreement to play. Where the law sets an age at which a person may give that consent themselves it is commonly 16, and in Poland it is. Nothing else on this list is affected by it, and an account with the box unticked is a completely ordinary account.
If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email [email protected] and it will be deleted.
This policy carries a version, shown at the top. If it changes in a way that matters, players with accounts are asked to read and accept it at the next sign-in.