The short version
- You never need an account to play. If you choose to save your fighter with Apple or Google, we keep the ID they give us and the email address they share, only to bring the fighter back and to answer you. We never ask for your name, phone number or a password.
- Your fighter is linked to a random ID and a secret key kept on your device.
- Other players can see your fighter’s name, look, gear and fight results. That is how the game works.
- We use your data to run the game and keep it fair. When an ad plays in the apps, the ad network gets the data described below.
- You can delete your account at any time from Settings in the game. Here is how.
Who we are
Grudgeon. For anything about this policy or your data, write to privacy@grudgeon.com.
What we collect and why
This is everything Grudgeon stores about you, what it is for, the legal basis we rely on under the GDPR, and how long we keep it.
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Your player ID and session key
- What
- When you first open the game we create a random player ID and a secret session key. The key stays on your device, in the browser’s local storage or the app’s storage. We keep only a hashed copy of it, and the time it was last used, to the nearest hour.
- Why
- To know which fighter is yours without an account.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you (the terms of use).
- How long
- Until you delete your account.
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An Apple or Google account, if you save your fighter
- What
- Saving your fighter is optional. If you do it with Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google, you sign in on their screen and they send us the account ID they use for Grudgeon and, when they have verified it, your email address. With Apple you can hide your real address, and we then get a private relay address instead. For Apple we also keep the token Apple issues for this sign-in. We never see your password, and we do not keep your name or photo.
- Why
- So you can sign back in to your fighter on a new phone, after a reinstall or when your browser has been cleared, and so we can answer you about it. We never use the email address for marketing.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you, at your request.
- How long
- Until you delete your account. Deleting it also revokes Grudgeon’s access to Sign in with Apple.
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Your fighter
- What
- The name you choose, your animal and its look, level, gear (with any gems, enchants and engraved title), gold, training, talents and progress; your materials, companions, daily contracts, season pass progress and cosmetics; your Grudges inbox; your settings (language, time zone and auto-salvage); and the players you have blocked.
- Why
- This is the game.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you.
- How long
- Until you delete your account.
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What other players see
- What
- Your fighter’s name, animal, look, level, record and build are shown to other players: as a ghost they can fight in the arena, on your challenge link, in fight replays and share cards, and on the Daily Pit rivals board. Anyone who has a challenge link or a replay link can open it without an account, and link previews in chat apps show the fighter’s name and portrait.
- Why
- Fighting other people’s fighters is the point of the game.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you.
- How long
- Until you delete your account. Replays are covered in the next row.
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Fights and replays
- What
- Every fight is stored with both fighters’ names, looks and builds as they were at the time, the result, and a short recap line, so it can be replayed from its link.
- Why
- Replays, the Rivalry Ledger, recap lines and the “What decided it” analysis.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in keeping other players’ replays working.
- How long
- For as long as the game runs. When you delete your account, your player ID is removed from your fights, but the fighter name and look shown in replays and recap lines that other players can still open stay as they were.
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Guilds and raids
- What
- If you found or join a guild: its name and tag, who is in it and who leads it, and the raid lobbies its members open (who took each slot, and the result). Your guildmates see the roster. Anyone with a guild invite link sees the guild’s name and size, and anyone with a raid link sees the slots: each fighter’s name, look and level.
- Why
- Guilds and guild raids.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you.
- How long
- Until you leave the guild or delete your account. Raid fights are kept like other fights (see “Fights and replays”).
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Names in the world
- What
- Each season, the first player to beat each named boss has their fighter’s name shown on every copy of that boss’s Legendary item, for everyone, with the season. Past seasons stay in the item’s history.
- Why
- It is a game feature: a public honour for being first.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you.
- How long
- For as long as the game runs. When you delete your account, your name there is replaced with “A Mysterious Stranger”.
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Fight clips
- What
- If you make a clip of a fight and choose to upload it, we store the video (made on your device from the fight) and give it a link that anyone who has it can watch.
- Why
- Sharing clips.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you.
- How long
- Until you delete your account, which deletes the videos too.
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Notifications
- What
- If you turn on grudge notifications, your browser or phone gives us an address at its push service: in the browser, a push subscription (an address at Apple, Google, Mozilla or Microsoft, depending on your device) and two encryption keys; in the apps, a device token from Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging, which delivers to iPhones through Apple. A notification says what happened, for example who beat your ghost and how much gold they took. In the browser it is encrypted so that only your device can read it; in the apps, Firebase and Apple carry the text to your phone. Your time zone setting keeps them out of the night (22:00 to 08:00).
- Legal basis
- Your consent, given when you turn notifications on. Turn them off to withdraw it.
- How long
- Until you turn notifications off or delete your account, or the push service tells us the subscription no longer works.
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Claim codes
- What
- When you move a fighter to another device, we create a six-character code linked to your player ID.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you.
- How long
- 24 hours, then it is deleted automatically.
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Reports and blocks
- What
- If you report or block a player, we store who reported or blocked whom, the reason you picked, the reported fighter’s name at the time, and when. When three players report the same name, the game changes it to a neutral one and asks its owner for a new name.
- Why
- To keep names clean and players safe.
- Legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in moderating the game.
- How long
- Blocks: until either account is deleted. Reports: as long as we need them to deal with the report and spot repeat problems, including after an account is deleted.
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Game statistics
- What
- We record a few events: a session or a fighter was created (and which animal), a challenge link was opened, a fight finished (its type, result and length, and whether an ad break followed), the free upgrade was taken, a claim code was shown or used, a fighter was saved to an account or signed back in to, notifications were turned on, a contract or pass reward was claimed, a companion was tamed, a guild was founded or joined, a raid was fought, a clip was uploaded, a purchase or an ad reward was completed, a subscription renewed, lapsed or was refunded, a bot check failed, an account was deleted. Each event has a time and a few details about it, but not your player ID. They are stored with our hosting provider, Cloudflare (Workers Analytics Engine). We use no third-party analytics.
- Why
- To see whether the game works, for example how many people who open a challenge link finish their first fight, and to balance it.
- Legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in improving the game. You can object by writing to us.
- How long
- Three months, then Cloudflare deletes them.
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Days you played
- What
- The dates on which you used the game (the day only, not the time), and whether your session started on the website, the iPhone app or the Android app.
- Why
- To count how many people play each day and how many come back, without third-party analytics.
- Legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in improving the game. You can object by writing to us.
- How long
- Until you delete your account.
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Changes made by our team
- What
- When someone on our team changes your fighter (to fix a problem, give back something lost or act on a report), we log what changed, when, why and who made the change.
- Why
- So that every change to a player’s data can be checked and undone.
- Legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in running the game fairly and keeping our own team accountable.
- How long
- One year.
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Language
- What
- The language your device prefers, so the game and its commentary come in English or French. It is saved with your fighter and on your device.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you.
- How long
- Until you delete your account.
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Bot check
- What
- When a new session starts, the game may run Cloudflare Turnstile, which looks at signals from your browser or app (such as how it behaves and your IP address) to tell people from bots. We only receive whether the check passed.
- Why
- To keep bots from farming fighters and challenge links.
- Legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in keeping the game fair and secure.
- How long
- We keep nothing from it. Cloudflare’s handling is covered by its own terms.
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IP address and service logs
- What
- Like any website, our servers see your IP address when your device connects. We use it only in memory, for a short time, to limit how fast one address can create new sessions, and we do not store it. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes IP addresses and request details to deliver the game and protect it from attacks. Our service logs, which can include your player ID, are kept for a few days so we can fix problems.
- Legal basis
- Our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and running.
- How long
- A few days for service logs. We do not keep IP addresses.
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Purchases in the apps
- What
- If you buy something in the iPhone or Android app, Apple or Google takes the payment, and we never see your card details. We receive a receipt (what you bought, when, its transaction IDs and, for a subscription, when it renews or ends), which our servers check with Apple or Google before giving you the item.
- Legal basis
- Performing our contract with you, and our legal obligation to keep accounting records.
- How long
- As long as accounting and tax law requires. When you delete your account, the record stays without your player ID.
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Ads in the apps
- What
- Rewarded ads play when you choose to watch one for a reward. Without the season pass, a short ad also plays every 7 fights, as you leave a fight’s result. They are served by Google AdMob, which receives your device’s advertising ID (if your device allows it), IP address and device details to show the ad, measure it and prevent fraud. Where the law requires it, the app asks for your consent before ads are personalised, and on iPhone ads are personalised only if you allow tracking when asked. Players under the age of digital consent get non-personalised ads only. You can change your choice in Settings. See Google AdMob’s privacy policy. When you finish a rewarded ad, Google AdMob tells our servers so we can give you the reward: a transaction ID, the reward and your player ID.
- Legal basis
- Your consent for personalised ads; our legitimate interest for non-personalised ads and fraud prevention.
- How long
- What Google AdMob keeps is set by its policy. Our record of each reward stays without your player ID when you delete your account.
What we don’t do
- We don’t ask for your real name, phone number, contacts, photos or location. We only get an email address if you save your fighter with Apple or Google.
- We don’t sell or rent your data, and we don’t give it to data brokers.
- We don’t use your data to make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.
Where your data is processed
Cloudflare runs a global network, so your data may be processed outside your country, including outside the European Economic Area and the UK. When it is, we rely on the safeguards in Cloudflare’s data processing terms, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- give you a copy of your data, or send it to you in a machine-readable format;
- correct something that is wrong;
- delete your data (you can also do it yourself, see below);
- stop processing based on our legitimate interests, such as game statistics;
- restrict processing while we look into a complaint.
You can withdraw your consent to notifications at any time by turning them off. If you are in the EEA or the UK, you can also complain to your data protection authority, though we would like the chance to put things right first.
How to ask
Write to privacy@grudgeon.com. Include your fighter’s name or challenge link. We will ask you to show the fighter is yours: with a claim code from Settings, under “Move this fighter”, or, if the fighter is saved to an account, from the email address of that Apple or Google account. We answer within one month.
Deleting your account
In the game, open Settings, find “Delete account”, type “delete” and confirm. It happens straight away. Deleting your account lists exactly what goes and what stays.
Uninstalling the app or clearing your browser does not delete your account: it only removes the key from that device. Delete the account first.
Children
Grudgeon is not meant for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you are under the age at which you can agree to data processing where you live (between 13 and 16 in the EU), ask a parent or guardian before you play. If you think a child under 13 is playing, write to us and we will delete the fighter.
Security
Everything travels over HTTPS. Session keys are stored only as hashes. The server decides every fight result, so a modified client cannot change one. Only the people who run Grudgeon can access the data. No system is perfectly secure: if a breach puts your data at risk, we will report it as the law requires and post a notice in the game.
What is stored on your device
The browser game keeps three things in local storage: your session key, your language and your replay speed. It registers a service worker only to receive notifications. It sets no cookies. The apps keep the same things, plus their notification token if you turn notifications on.
This website stores nothing on your device, sets no cookies and uses no analytics. Cloudflare sees your IP address when you load a page, as described above.
Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. If a change matters, such as a new kind of data or a new company that handles it, we tell you in the game before it takes effect.
Contact
Grudgeon
privacy@grudgeon.com