Privacy Policy
Applies to the game "Swords and Coins" and the website swordsandcoins.com. For any question, write to [email protected].
Who is responsible for your data
The data controller is Swords and Coins, a Swiss sole proprietorship (see our Terms of Service). Contact for any privacy question: [email protected].
What data we store
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Login (username) | Signing in, and showing your name to opponents in a match. |
| Password hash (never the password itself) | Verifying sign-in. Only a salted hash is stored; the plaintext password is never written to disk or to any log. |
| Email address — if you provided one | Address confirmation and password reset. Also used for a "turn computed" notice, but only if you turn that on yourself — see below. |
| itch.io account ID and username — only if you log in with itch.io | Signing you in on the itch.io edition of the game. We only ask itch.io for your public profile; we never receive your itch.io password or email. |
| itch.io donation record — only for the itch.io edition | The ID, amount and currency of your donation to the game on itch.io, so we can unlock the full version for you. |
| Game saves (solo games and multiplayer lobby games) | So you can continue playing. |
| IP address | Written to the server's technical log on failed sign-ins and when a rate limit is hit, and to the web server's own access log for every request — both exist to slow down abuse (password guessing, spam registrations), not to track you. With each game we also store the IP address it was created from and the one it was last played from, plus whether that was a phone, a tablet or a computer (only this class, not your browser details), your browser's preferred language and the country our network provider (Cloudflare) derives from the IP address, so we can tell visitors apart and count how many different people actually play; only the administrator sees it, and it is deleted together with the game. |
| Server technical log | Diagnosing failures and abuse. Passwords, session cookies, access tokens, and save contents are stripped out programmatically before anything is written — see "Cookies" below for what the session cookie itself is. |
| In-game action log | A record of turns and commands for a given match (no email or password, only your seat number in that match) is kept for up to 60 days, so a match can be replayed to track down a bug. |
| Anonymous usage statistics | How many people play per day and what share return on day 1 and day 7, plus which channel brought a player in, so we can tell which marketing actually works. Details below. |
How long we keep it
Account data is kept for as long as the account exists; delete the account and your games are deleted with it. Games of players who have not bought the full version — guest games and games on free accounts — are deleted automatically after 30 days without play (this does not apply to multiplayer/lobby games), together with the IP addresses stored with them. Games of players who bought the full version are kept for as long as the account exists. The server's technical log rotates automatically by size (a handful of capped files; old entries fall off as new ones are written) — we don't keep it longer than that rotation allows. The web server's own access log (which is where request IP addresses also end up) follows the ordinary rotation of the hosting system, not a fixed number of days we can promise here.
Legal basis for processing (EU/Swiss visitors)
- Performance of a contract — account data, saves, and the game's own operation: we can't run your game without them.
- Legitimate interest — the technical log, rate limiting, the IP address stored with each game, and the anonymous day-1/day-7 statistics below: keeping the service working and abuse-free, and understanding whether it's used.
- Legal obligation — payment records kept by our payment processor, Paddle, for tax and accounting purposes.
- Consent — the optional "turn computed" email, which is off until you switch it on yourself.
Who processes it besides us
We do not sell your data. A handful of processors act on our behalf, each for a narrow purpose:
- Paddle — our payment processor and the Merchant of Record for the one-time "Full version" purchase. Paddle collects your payment details directly; we never see or store your card number. Paddle's own privacy policy covers what it does with billing data.
- itch.io — if you play the itch.io edition: itch.io hosts that copy of the game, signs you in and processes donations under its own terms and privacy policy; we read only your public profile and your donations to this game.
- Amazon SES (EU region) — sends the account emails described above; the recipient address and message text pass through it, as with any email service.
- Cloudflare — sits in front of our server as a reverse proxy/DNS provider, so it sees the same connection metadata (IP address, requested URL) any network intermediary would, before it reaches us.
Your rights
You can ask us, at [email protected], for a copy of the personal data we hold about your account (access), to correct it, or to have it deleted (see below). Where our processing relies on legitimate interest, you can object to it; where it relies on consent (the "turn computed" email), you can withdraw that consent at any time by turning it off.
Who we don't share it with
We do not sell or share your data with third parties beyond the processors listed above. Nobody else receives anything.
How to delete your account and data
Email [email protected] from the address on your account (or tell us your login) and ask for deletion. This is done by hand by an administrator, not automatically or instantly — we don't have a promised turnaround time to give you. It removes the account, its game saves (solo and multiplayer), and any mail/session data tied to it; if you're mid-game in a multiplayer lobby with other people, your seat is handed to the bot the same way it would be if you'd simply left, so the other players' game isn't broken.
Anonymous usage statistics
To understand how many people play and whether they come back, we count active players per day and the share who return on day 1 and day 7, plus which channel brought a player in — for example a search engine, Reddit, or a partner site, taken from the link's parameters or the Referer header. The identifier used for this is the same guest-game or account id described in the table above; no separate identifier, cookie, or browser fingerprint is created for it. To see how many different guests played over the last 1, 7 and 30 days, the administrator also counts the distinct IP addresses stored with games (see the table above). This data is kept for no more than 400 days and is never shared with any third-party analytics or advertising service.
Cookies
We use a single session cookie to keep you signed in. It's valid for up to 30 days and gets renewed while you're active, so it doesn't force a fresh login every month if you keep playing — but it isn't a permanent cookie either, and stops working if you don't return within that window. It's marked HttpOnly, meaning page scripts can't read it. There are no advertising, analytics, or tracking cookies on the site or in the game — we don't use Google Analytics or any other analytics or ad network. In the itch.io edition of the game, the login key is kept in the browser's local storage (localStorage) instead of a cookie — a third-party page inside itch.io cannot receive a cookie for our domain.
"Turn computed" email — off by default
For multiplayer games with a long turn timer, we can email you when a turn has been computed. This is off by default: you have to turn it on yourself, with a checkbox in your account or lobby settings, and every such email includes a one-click unsubscribe link.
Guest play
You can play without registering: a guest game is tied to a random access token, and the server only stores its hash — no email or login required. A guest game is deleted after 30 days without play.