Galactic Gambit

Privacy Policy

Last updated 15 October 2026 · Applies to the open beta (Barnard) and the Supporter subscription

Who we are

Galactic Gambit is a hobby project run by Manuel Pardo, Alonso de Ojeda 2, 28660 Boadilla del Monte (Madrid), Spain, who is responsible for your data (the "controller" under the GDPR). Contact: galacticgambit@proton.me.

What we collect

• Account and sign-in: your email address, to send you sign-in codes and links. If you choose “Sign in with Google”, Google tells us your Google account ID and your verified email address (we ask for nothing else). We store only a fingerprint (a hash) of each code and link, never the code itself. If you joined with an invite code, we keep which code you used.
• Sessions: staying signed in uses one essential cookie (30 days). We store only a hash of it, with its creation and expiry dates. No advertising or tracking cookies.
• Game data: your commander name and portrait, your empire in each universe (planets, fleets, research, queues, maps, bookmarks, saved fleets, alerts, build orders and settings), your reports, your alliance membership, and your chat messages (universe, direct and alliance chat).
• Notifications: if you enable push notifications, the push address your browser gives us (Web Push), the keys that go with it, and your browser's identifier string. Your notification preferences are stored with your empire.
• Feedback: what you send through “Feedback / report a bug”, with the app version, the screen you were on, recent error messages and your screen size if you leave that box ticked.
• Error reports: when the game hits an error, technical details about it (the error, the app version and the screen) are sent to our error monitoring.
• Technical data: your IP address is used in memory to limit abuse (for example how many sign-in emails can be requested). It also appears in ordinary server and web-server logs. When you ask for a sign-in link, the IP address of that request is stored with the link for about a day.

Fair-play signals

To find people who run several accounts in the same universe, we record, when you sign in and when you open the game:

• a keyed fingerprint (an HMAC) of your IP address, and another of its network (the /24 block for IPv4, the /48 block for IPv6). The key stays on our server, and we do not store the IP address itself in this record;
• a random device ID that your browser generates and keeps in its local storage (sent as x-device-id with each request);
• the times you were seen.

These records are kept for 30 days. A person reviews them: nothing is banned automatically, and sharing a network (a household, a school, a café) is never enough on its own. We may also look at in-game evidence such as resource transfers, raids and who takes whose turns. Our legal basis is our legitimate interest in keeping the game fair (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object by writing to us. These records are in your data export.

Statistics, last seen and the Supporter mark

• Statistics: once an hour we save a sample of your own empire (production, stocks, planets, score, rank and fleet value) so you can see graphs. These hourly samples are kept while the universe runs and deleted when it closes. When a season ends, a summary of your season (the totals) is kept in your commander record, so it can show across seasons.
• Last seen: we record when you last signed in or opened the game in any universe. Other players see an inactivity marker next to your name after 7 and 14 days without play. Members of your alliance also see “dormant” and “last seen N days ago” once you have been away for 21 days.
• Supporter mark: if you are a Supporter, other players see a star by your name (with the years you have supported from the second year on) unless you switch off “Show my supporter mark”.

Supporter payments

• Stripe sells Supporter to you as the merchant of record and takes your payment at checkout. It handles your payment details under its own privacy policy. We never see or store your card data.
• RevenueCat manages the subscription for us. We identify you to it only with a random billing ID, never your email address or your name. At checkout, Stripe asks you for the details it needs (such as an email address for your receipt).
• We keep, for your account: the billing ID, whether Supporter is active, which plan and store it came from, when the paid period ends, whether it renews, any billing problem, and a link to manage the subscription. We also keep the total time you have been a Supporter (it drives the years on the mark) and the monthly portraits you own. The payment events we receive are deleted after 30 days.
• Polls: Supporters can vote on names and art. We store your vote so you can vote once. Only totals are shown: nobody sees who voted for what.

Why we use it

• To run the game and the subscription you asked for (contract, Art. 6(1)(b)): your account, sign-in, empire, chat, reports, Supporter and its mark, portraits, polls, and the statistics you see.
• To deliver notifications you switched on (consent, Art. 6(1)(a)): push notifications. You can turn them off in the game or your browser.
• To keep the game fair and safe and to fix it (legitimate interest, Art. 6(1)(f)): rate limits, abuse and multi-account checks, the last-seen and inactivity markers, error monitoring, logs, feedback, and statistics we only look at in aggregate.
• To follow the law (Art. 6(1)(c)), for example if we are required to answer an authority.

We don't sell your data or use it for advertising.

Who processes it

• Microsoft Azure, Spain Central region (Madrid): hosting, storage, backups and error monitoring (Application Insights).
• Azure Communication Services: sends sign-in emails, with data stored in Europe.
• Google, only if you choose Google sign-in.
• RevenueCat and Stripe, for Supporter, as described above.
• Your browser vendor's push service (Google, Mozilla, Microsoft or Apple), if you enable push notifications.

Other players see your commander name, portrait, alliance, score, chat messages and the markers above. We may share information with an authority when the law requires it.

Transfers outside the EU

Our hosting is in Spain. Stripe, RevenueCat, Google and the browser push services may process data outside the European Economic Area, for example in the United States. They are responsible for providing the safeguards the GDPR requires (such as standard contractual clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework) under their own terms.

How long

• Account and game data: for as long as your account exists.
• Chat messages: deleted after 30 days.
• Sign-in codes and links: expire after 15 minutes; the used or expired records, including the request IP address, are removed after about a day.
• Fair-play signals: 30 days.
• Statistics samples: the hourly samples are kept while the universe runs and deleted when it closes. Your season totals stay in your commander record until you delete your account, which also deletes the samples.
• Supporter records: while your account exists. Payment events are deleted after 30 days.
• Logs: server and web-server logs are kept for 30 days. Error monitoring data is kept for 30 days.
• Backups: backups keep data for up to 37 days (30 days, plus 7 more days of soft delete in the storage service). Data you delete can therefore remain in a backup for up to 37 days.
• Ban records (the kind of ban and the reason) are kept after account deletion so a banned person cannot simply start over. Feedback messages are kept without a link to your name or email.

Your rights

• Export: Settings → Account → “Your data” downloads what we store about you as a JSON file. It includes your fair-play signals, Supporter data and the votes you cast.
• Delete: Settings → Account → “Delete account” (see below).
• Object: you can object to processing based on legitimate interest, such as the fair-play signals, by writing to us.
• You can also write to galacticgambit@proton.me to access, correct or delete your data, and you can complain to your data protection authority (in Spain, the AEPD).

When you delete your account

• Erased: your email, sign-in methods, sessions, devices and push subscriptions, maps and bookmarks, saved fleets, alerts and build orders, notification preferences, statistics samples, season summaries, fair-play signals, Supporter records, portraits and poll votes. Your votes are removed, so the totals go down by one.
• Chat: the text of every message you sent is blanked, for everyone who received it.
• Anonymised: your name is replaced in battle, espionage and transport reports that other players hold. Your empire becomes “Deleted-…”, your worlds pass to the in-game Pirates and your fleets disappear. The commander name becomes free again.
• Kept: the ban records and feedback messages described above, and game logs that hold only numeric IDs (such as resource transfers and which invite code was used).
• Subscription: a Supporter subscription bought on the web is cancelled at once when you delete your account, and the paid time you have not used is lost and not refunded. Subscriptions bought in an app store (later) must be cancelled there first.
• Backups keep a copy for the time described above.

Children

The game is not intended for anyone under 16, and you must be at least 16 to sign up. If you believe a younger child has an account, write to us and we will delete it.

Changes

We will update this page when what we do changes, and show the date at the top.

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