Privacy Policy
Playvale Games LLC · Version 2026-10-30 · Effective 26 September 2026 · Last updated 30 October 2026
The short version
We try to keep this simple and honest, including where the honest answer is more complicated than we'd like.
You don't need an account to play, offline or online. Accounts are optional. They back up your stats and games and keep them the same on all your devices.
We don't sell your data as a product. But we should be straight with you: we are paid to show you ads, and personalized ads pay more than non-personalized ones. So we have a financial interest here, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.
You can switch personalized ads off for free, under Menu → Privacy → Personalized ads, and keep playing online. You'll still see ads, but they'll be chosen by context instead of by a profile of you. You never have to pay to opt out.
Offline games never show ads and never require a connection, and without an account the games you play offline stay on your device. Your Playvale ID and profile exist so you can play online, where a game is on our server by its nature. If you sign in to a Playvale account, the app also backs up your offline games to it — that's what the account is for.
Online play needs your IP address to connect you — that's how the internet works.
Ads appear only in online play: a banner over online games played over hours or days, a short ad break between the rounds of an online match, and videos you choose to watch to earn credits. Online games cost credits, and everyone gets free credits every day.
Premium is the same as free, with no ads. It's a subscription, monthly or yearly, that you buy in Google Play or the App Store. Premium players see no ads at all, and we request nothing from the ad provider for them.
Apple and Google handle payment for Premium. We never see your payment details.
We use no third-party analytics at all. We don't track your sessions or measure how you use the app. On Android, the app sends us crash reports through Google's Firebase Crashlytics, so we can fix what broke. A crash report doesn't say who you are, and you can switch them off under Menu → Privacy → Crash reports.
You can get a copy of your data. With an account, go to Menu → Account → Download my data, and we'll email it to you. Or write to privacy@playvale.games.
We never touch your contacts. You add friends by their Playvale ID or with a friend link you share, never by scanning your address book.
Some of the players you meet in online play are computer players that Playvale runs, so there's always someone to play.
When you report a player or send us feedback, it goes to our private issue tracker so a person on our team can read it.
We never send you marketing email or texts.
Playvale is for players 13 and older, and isn't made for or marketed to children. Where the app store tells us which age range you're in, we use it only to keep under-13s out and to keep teenagers' ads non-personalized — and we never store or share it.
The rest of this document is the detail behind those statements.
1. Who we are
Playvale Games LLC ("Playvale," "we," "us") is an independent game studio in Texas, USA. We make and operate the Playvale Games collection of card, dice, domino, tile, and board games (the "Games").
For users in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, Playvale Games LLC is the "controller" of the personal data described in this policy, except where we say otherwise.
Contact: privacy@playvale.games. Our address is on our legal notice.
2. What we collect, and when
We've organized this by what you're doing, because that determines what happens.
2.1 Playing offline
Offline games never show ads and never require an internet connection. Your play is never gated on being able to reach us.
Without a Playvale account, the games you play offline stay on your device: we receive none of them. What the app does send, in the background whenever your device can reach us, is what online play needs:
- your profile: the display name and avatar you chose, and the Playvale ID we gave you (such as @QuietOwl4242), which other players see when you play them online;
- your notification settings and your personalized-ads setting;
- your device's model name and platform (such as "Pixel 8, Android"), its operating system version, the app's version, and the language the app shows;
- how far your device's clock is from UTC, so reminders reach you at a sensible hour;
- whether your device lets the app show notifications and, if you allow them, the push token your phone gives the app (Section 2.8).
Without an account, your device is known to us only by a random key the app creates when it's installed. It isn't tied to your real name, your phone number, or your advertising ID.
With a Playvale account, the app also backs up each game you finish offline, so your history follows you to another device: the game, how it was played (solo, against the computer, pass-and-play, or on a shared table), the result, when it started and finished, how long it took, the number of moves, the scores, and the name at each seat — which includes any names you typed in for the people playing with you — and the figures that game adds to your statistics, so your statistics are the same on every device you sign in on. The statistics of online games your device saw finish are backed up the same way. That backup is what an account is for. If you don't want it, stay signed out, and your offline games stay on your device.
With a Playvale account, the app also backs up each offline game you haven't finished, so you can continue it on another device: the game's saved state, including the moves made so far and any names you typed in at its seats. We keep at most 50 per account; a game is removed from our server when it's finished, and we remember for 30 days that it was, so another device doesn't bring it back.
Without an account, your in-progress games, save data, and other settings stay on your device. With one, your other settings still do.
Two things to be clear about:
Syncing does not gate play. With no connection, the game works normally and syncs later.
Syncing has nothing to do with ads. No ad is requested or shown during offline play, whether you're signed in or not, and no advertising data is collected from offline sessions.
To erase your device's profile from our server, go to Menu → Delete this device's data. The app then starts again with a new profile. Every game remains fully playable offline.
2.2 Playing online — free tier
To connect you to online play, we necessarily process:
| Data | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| IP address | Required to route network traffic and connect you to a session; also used to detect abuse | Retained in server logs for 30 days |
| The random key your device was given when the app was installed, and the session tokens issued to it | Identifies your device to our server and keeps it signed in; not linked to your real identity | The key, until you delete your device's data or your account; each session token expires after an hour |
| Your profile as other players see it: display name, avatar, Playvale ID, and whether you're online | So other players know who they're playing | With your profile (Section 2.1) |
| Your device's model name, platform, operating system version, app version, and app language, and whether it lets the app show notifications | Listed on your account's Signed-in devices page, so you can recognize a device, see which devices get notifications, and sign one out. The versions tell us which devices need an update and help us answer support questions. The language is the one your notifications and emails are written in | Until the device is signed out or its data deleted |
| Gameplay events necessary to run the session (e.g. moves, scores, match results) | Operating the game | 1 year |
We do not ask for your real name, email address, phone number, precise location, contacts, photos, or microphone or camera access for online play.
2.3 Ads and credits (online play only)
Free online play is supported by advertising served through Google AdMob (the "Ad Provider"). Ads appear only in online play: a banner above the table during an extended-turn online game (one where players take their turns over hours or days), a short ad break between the rounds of an online match, at most one every five minutes, and a video you choose to watch to earn credits for online play. They never appear when you play offline, and Premium players never see them.
How we make money here, plainly stated: Google pays us for the ads shown in our games. Personalized ads earn more per impression than non-personalized ones, so we do have a financial interest in your seeing personalized ads. We're telling you that because a policy that says "we don't sell your data" while quietly profiting from it is the kind of thing we'd rather not write. What we don't do is package up information about you and sell it as a product to anyone.
We do not receive your personal information from Google. The one thing we hand Google ourselves is for a video you choose to watch for credits: your player number (a random identifier, not your name) and a one-time code, which Google passes back to our server to confirm you watched to the end. Beyond that, Google gets only what its software collects directly on your device.
Google's mobile ads software collects information directly from your device in order to select, deliver, and measure ads. According to Google's documentation, this includes:
- your device's advertising identifier (IDFA on iOS, Advertising ID on Android), unless you have reset, limited, or deleted it;
- your IP address, and the approximate region derived from it (typically city or country level);
- device model, operating system version, language, time zone, and screen characteristics;
- which ads were shown to you, whether you interacted with them, and basic performance and fraud-prevention information;
- app activity relevant to ad delivery, such as how long a session lasted.
These ads are personalized. That means the Ad Provider may combine the information above with information it holds about your activity in other apps and websites, in order to infer your likely interests and serve ads targeted to you.
What that means legally: personalized advertising is treated as "sharing" your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising under California law, and may be treated as a "sale" under some other state privacy laws — the definitions differ, and several of them turn on "monetary or other valuable consideration," which ad revenue plainly is. Rather than argue about which label applies, we treat your opt-out as covering all of it.
Your three options here. The first is free and changes how ads are chosen; only the second removes advertising:
- Switch personalized ads off in the game — free. Under Menu → Privacy → Personalized ads, turn them off. You will still see ads; they'll be selected from general context (the game you're playing, your coarse region) rather than from a profile of you. This is a control over how ads are targeted, not a way to remove them. It costs nothing, and you don't need Premium for it.
- Premium. It's the only option that removes advertising entirely (Section 2.4).
- Play offline, where no ads are ever shown.
Credits for online play. Starting an online game costs credits. You get them back if the table closes before the game starts. Everyone starts with some, a free daily top-up means you never run out entirely, and you can earn more by choosing to watch a video ad. Credits can't be bought and have no cash value. Premium players aren't charged credits, because Premium has no ads to earn them with. We keep your balance and a record of each change (how much, what for, and when). For each video, we also keep the transaction number Google sends us, so that one video can't be counted twice.
We also honor the following automatically:
- Apple's App Tracking Transparency. On iOS we ask for permission before accessing your advertising identifier for tracking. If you decline — or if you never answer — we serve non-personalized ads. Declining does not restrict your access to the game in any way.
- Global Privacy Control. Where we can detect a GPC signal, we treat it as a valid opt-out of sharing.
- Consent in the EEA and UK. We ask for consent before serving personalized ads, through Google's consent form, which the app checks for each time it starts and shows only where the law requires it. If you decline, you keep free online play with non-personalized ads. You can change your answer at any time under Menu → Privacy choices.
- Device-level controls. If you reset or delete your advertising ID in your device settings, the Ad Provider loses the identifier it was using.
- Teen-rated ads for everyone. For every player, we ask Google only for ads rated suitable for teens or younger audiences.
Google is an independent controller of the data it collects through AdMob and handles it under its own policies:
- Google Privacy Policy — https://policies.google.com/privacy
- How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services — https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
We don't control Google's practices and can't speak for them, which is part of why we've made the opt-out above free and easy.
When you opt out, we ask Google for non-personalized ads only, and we turn on Google's restricted data processing mode for you. In that mode Google limits how it uses the data, with interest-based and demographic targeting disabled.
2.4 Premium
Premium is the same as free, with no ads. It removes every ad, and we request nothing from the Ad Provider for a Premium player. It doesn't unlock any game, rule, look or feature. Every player gets all of those for free.
Premium is a subscription, monthly or yearly. You buy it in the app, and Google Play or the App Store takes the payment. We never see your card number, bank details, billing address or store password. You don't need a Playvale account to buy it.
What we receive is the store's signed record of your subscription, and we check it with the store. From it we keep:
- Which store it came from, the plan (monthly or yearly), and the store's purchase number.
- Its state: active, in a grace period, cancelled, expired or refunded, and the date the paid time ends.
- Whether it will renew, and when we last checked it with the store.
- The Playvale profile it belongs to, and a random token we give the store so it can tell us which profile that is.
- The messages the store sends our server when a subscription renews, ends or is refunded.
We use these only to switch the ads off for you, keep them off on your other devices, and switch them back on when the subscription ends. If you delete your account, we keep the purchase record for the tax period in Section 6, with nothing left on it that links it to you.
2.5 Playvale accounts — optional, and not required for anything essential
You can play every game, offline and online, without ever creating an account. Accounts exist for one reason: so your data can follow you to a new device or a second device.
A Playvale account is strictly opt-in. We will not nag you into one, and nothing is withheld from you for declining.
What an account is for:
- backing up and restoring game statistics and match history
- syncing preferences and settings across your devices
- resuming an in-progress game on a different device
- keeping your profile and history if you lose or replace your device
- seeing the devices signed in to your account, and signing any of them out
What we store if you create one:
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Your email address, and whether you've confirmed it | To identify your account and let you recover access |
| A securely hashed password | Authentication. We never store your password itself. |
| Your profile: display name, avatar, and Playvale ID | So other players can recognize you. It exists before you make an account, and the account keeps it (Section 2.1) |
| Game statistics and match history, including the games you play offline | The backup and sync you asked for |
| Your favorite games, and the preferences and game settings you keep the same on all your devices | Syncing them across devices |
| Friends list — the accounts you've added and who has added you | Operating the friends feature |
| The devices signed in to your account: each one's model name, platform, operating system and app versions, language, whether it gets notifications, and when it was last used | So you can see them, see which ones get notifications, and sign any of them out |
| Your credits balance and its history | Credits for online play (Section 2.3) |
| Codes we email you, stored only in scrambled form | Confirming your address, resetting your password, changing your address, or deleting your account; each code works for 15 minutes |
| Account creation date and last sign-in date | Security and abuse prevention |
How friends work, and what we don't do. You don't need an account to have friends. You add a friend by their Playvale ID, from their player card at a table, or with a friend link. A friend link is a web address you can share with anyone you like. Whoever opens it and taps Accept becomes your friend. The link holds a random code, not your name, and you can reset it at any time, which stops the old one working. We offer no name search and no player directory. We never ask for, upload, or scan your device contacts, phone number, or address book, and we never suggest friends based on them. Your friends list is visible only to you. People you have added can see your display name and your online play statistics — games played, won, and lost, your current win or loss streak, and game-specific figures such as a high score or best time. They cannot see anything about the games you play offline. Your friends can also see when you're online. You can remove a friend at any time, and you can block any player you can see in a lobby or a game.
Choose a display name you're comfortable with other players seeing. A first name and last initial works well, and it doesn't have to be your real name. Display names don't have to be unique; your Playvale ID is what tells players apart.
Deleting your account removes the data above. See Section 7.5.
We use your email address only to run your account: the codes that confirm your address, reset your password, change your address, or delete your account, and essential notices such as a security issue or a change to this policy. We send these emails through Resend (Section 5). We never send marketing email or texts, and we will never sell or rent your address.
Accounts use an email address. We don't offer sign-in with a phone number today; if we add it, this policy will say what it involves first.
2.6 If you contact us
If you email us for support, a bug report, or a privacy request, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to include. We use it to respond and keep it for 24 months so we can follow up on recurring issues. Please don't send us sensitive information — we don't need it.
2.7 Crash and diagnostic data
On Android, the app sends us a report when it crashes or hits an error, through Google's Firebase Crashlytics. A report holds where the app failed, the app's last 200 log lines, which screen, game and mode were open, and your device's model, system version and language. Before anything leaves your phone, the app takes out email addresses, Playvale IDs, sign-in tokens and other long codes that could point to you. A report carries a random installation ID that Firebase makes. It isn't linked to your Playvale ID or your advertising ID.
Crash reports are on unless you switch them off under Menu → Privacy → Crash reports. Switching them off also deletes any report the app hasn't sent yet. They're always off in test versions of the app. The iPhone app doesn't send them yet. If it starts, it will work the same way.
Apple and Google also give us the crash reports built into the App Store and Google Play. These are grouped and largely de-identified, and they come under Apple's and Google's own privacy policies and settings.
We don't use any analytics product. We don't measure your session lengths, funnel you through events, or track feature engagement. Beyond what the Ad Provider collects to serve ads (Section 2.3), no analytics SDK is present in our Games.
2.8 Notifications
If you let Playvale send you notifications, your phone gives the app a push token. It's an address for your device that means nothing outside the notification service. The app sends it to our server with your device's platform, and it belongs to that device alone. The app also tells our server whether your phone lets notifications through, so the Signed-in devices page can show which devices get them. We use it only to send the notifications you switched on under Menu → Notifications, such as your turn, a friend request or an invitation.
On Android, notifications go through Firebase Cloud Messaging, a Google service. On iPhone, they go straight to Apple's push service. Each one receives the push token and the words of the notification. We keep a push token until you turn notifications off on the device, sign the device out, or delete your device's data or your account, or until the notification service tells us it no longer works.
2.9 Chat at the table
Chat at a table uses only set phrases, such as "Good game" or "Your turn". You can't type your own words, so a chat message can't hold personal details. We store which phrase was sent, who sent it, at which table, and when. We delete each message 30 days after it was sent. The app can read chat aloud with your device's own voice. That's off unless you switch it on, and nothing is sent anywhere for it.
2.10 Drawings and descriptions
In It's a Draw and Telephone, the drawings you make and the descriptions you type are part of the online game, and the other players see them. We take them out of the game's record 60 days after anyone at the game last opened it. The rest of the record, such as the moves and the result, stays for the year in Section 6. Please don't draw or write anything personal.
2.11 Reports and blocks
You can report a player, or a drawing, from the app. A report holds the reason you chose, any note you add, where it happened, and the reported player's name and Playvale ID as they were then. We keep it for 1 year. We also file it as a private issue in our issue tracker, GitLab, so a person on our team can review it. We don't tell the player who reported them.
When you block a player, we keep a record of the block until you unblock them or one of you deletes your data.
2.12 Feedback
When you send feedback from Menu → Help and feedback → Send feedback, or report a problem at a table, we receive your words. So that we can answer you and fix things, we also receive your Playvale ID and player number, your nickname, your account's email address if you have one, whether you have Premium, the app's version, and your device's model, platform, operating system version and language. A short note of how the app closed the last few times is added after your words, and the app shows it to you before anything is sent. A problem reported at a table also says which game and match it was, and the last move the game refused.
We file your feedback as a private issue in GitLab, where only our team can read it. It isn't kept on our game server. We keep it as long as it's useful to us, and we'll delete it if you ask.
2.13 Daily challenges, trophies and friend streaks
When you play a daily challenge, we keep your result: your time, moves, points, streak and place. Each day's top 10 shows players' display names to everyone. We keep the moves of each try for 8 days and each result for about 400 days. The trophies you win, and the streaks you keep with friends, stay with your profile until you delete it.
2.14 Computer players
Some of the players you meet in online play are computer players that Playvale runs, so there's always someone to play. You can play, befriend, invite, block or report them like anyone else. We keep a record of what they do, such as the tables they join and the invitations they accept, and who it was about, for 90 days.
To give you a fair game, we keep a skill rating for each game you play online. Other players never see it.
2.15 Questions at the end of a game
At the end of some games, the app may ask you a short question, such as whether you liked the game. You can answer with a thumbs up or down and add a comment, or skip it. If you answer, we keep your answer and comment with the game it was about: the game and its rules, how it was played, the result, and your device's model, platform, app version and language. They're linked to your profile, and our team reads them to make the games better. We keep them until you delete your profile or your account.
2.16 A copy of your data
If your account has a confirmed email, you can ask for a copy of your data under Menu → Account → Download my data. We email you one file, in a format most computers can open (JSON). It holds everything our game server keeps about you, such as your profile, account, devices, games, friends, credits, daily challenges, trophies and Premium records. It leaves out secrets, like your password, and shows other players only by their name and Playvale ID. You can ask once a day. We keep a note of when you asked and when we sent it for 1 year, and we don't keep the file.
Without an account, or if you'd rather, write to privacy@playvale.games. We'll check that the data is yours and send it within one month.
3. What we do not do
We think it's as important to be clear about what we don't do. We do not:
- package up or sell information about you as a product to data brokers or anyone else;
- collect your name, phone number, precise GPS location, contacts, photos, calendar, health data, or biometric data;
- access your microphone or camera;
- require an account to play, offline or online;
- show any advertising to Premium players;
- show any advertising during offline play;
- run our own analytics on your gameplay behavior, or build our own advertising profiles of you;
- use any third-party analytics or attribution SDK;
- read, upload, or scan your device contacts, address book, or phone number;
- require an account for any feature other than cross-device backup;
- send you marketing email or texts, ever;
- charge you anything to opt out of personalized ads;
- restrict your gameplay, features, or content because you opted out, declined tracking, or declined consent;
- knowingly collect information from children under 13;
- use dark patterns to push you toward sharing more than you intend.
The one thing we do that we'd rather not have to: personalized advertising funds free online play, it involves Google collecting device information, and we are paid for it. Section 2.3 explains exactly what that means and how to switch it off for free — while still playing online, still free.
4. Why we're allowed to process your data (EEA and UK users)
If you're in the EEA or UK, the GDPR requires us to identify a lawful basis for each purpose:
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Running online play, matchmaking, connectivity | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — you asked to play online |
| Running your account, your credits, and checking that a reward video was watched | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Keeping your profile for online play, with or without an account (Section 2.1) | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — you asked to play online |
| Backing up the games you play offline to your account | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — it is what the account is for |
| Reading the app store's age range for your account, where the law requires it | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
| Delivering Premium, and checking your subscription with the store | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Sending the notifications you switched on | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Chat, drawings, friends and friend links, and daily challenge results | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)). You asked to play with other people |
| Reviewing reports about players | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). Keeping the game safe for everyone |
| Reading and answering the feedback you send | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). Answering you and fixing the app |
| Computer players at online tables, their record, and skill ratings | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). Making sure there's someone to play, at about your level |
| Security, fraud and cheat prevention, abuse handling | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — keeping the game fair and available |
| Crash reports, and fixing crashes and improving stability | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). Finding and fixing what breaks. You can switch crash reports off at any time |
| Questions at the end of a game | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). Making the games better. Answering is up to you |
| Sending you a copy of your data | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
| Serving personalized ads, and storing or reading information on your device for that purpose | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), collected through Google's consent form when the app starts |
| Serving non-personalized ads if you decline consent | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) for the ad delivery itself; consent where device storage requires it |
| Responding to your support or privacy requests | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) and legitimate interests |
| Complying with valid legal process | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time under Menu → Privacy choices without affecting the lawfulness of what came before. Withdrawing consent for personalized ads does not take away free online play — you'll keep playing and simply receive non-personalized, context-based ads instead. We don't make you pay to say no.
Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object; see Section 7.1.
5. Who we share data with
We share personal information only in these situations:
Service providers. Companies that run infrastructure for us, under contract, only on our instructions:
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Platform | Provides the infrastructure our own game servers run on | United States |
| Google (AdMob) | Serves ads (independent controller — see §2.3) | Global |
| Google Cloud Platform | Provides the infrastructure for the account server we operate ourselves | United States |
| Resend | Sends the emails that confirm your address, reset your password, change your address, or delete your account, and the copy of your data you ask for. It receives your email address and the email itself | United States |
| Google (Firebase Crashlytics) | Receives the Android app's crash and error reports, with personal details taken out (Section 2.7) | Global |
| Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) | Delivers notifications to Android phones. It receives the push token and the words of each notification (Section 2.8) | Global |
| Apple (Apple Push Notification service) | Delivers notifications to iPhones. It receives the push token and the words of each notification (Section 2.8) | Global |
| GitLab | Hosts our private issue tracker, where reports about players and your feedback go (Sections 2.11 and 2.12) | United States |
| Google Fonts | Serves the fonts our website uses. It sees your IP address when a page loads | Global |
| Apple, Google | App distribution, selling and billing Premium (Section 2.4), and, where the law requires it, telling the app your age range (Section 9) | Global |
Legal requests. We will disclose information if we're required to by valid legal process — a subpoena, court order, warrant, or equivalent binding demand — or where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm.
Our commitments when this happens:
- We review each request and reject requests that are overbroad, defective, or not legally binding. An informal email from an agency is not a court order.
- We disclose the narrowest set of data that responds to the request.
- We will notify you if your data is requested, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so or there's a genuine risk of harm to someone. Where we're placed under a gag order, we will seek to notify you as soon as it lifts.
Honestly, we hold very little. If you play without an account, there is often nothing meaningful to produce beyond time-limited server logs.
Business transfer. If Playvale is acquired or merges, your information may transfer to the successor. We will give notice in the app or on our website before that happens, and the successor remains bound by this policy until it provides notice of any change.
With your direction. If you ask us to share something, we will.
That's the complete list. We don't share data with data brokers, advertising exchanges beyond the Ad Provider described above, analytics aggregators, or "partners" of any other kind.
6. How long we keep things
Our rule is: keep it only as long as we need it to do the thing you asked for, then delete it.
It's worth correcting a common misconception here, because we'd rather explain our reasoning than recite a number. Almost nothing in this policy has a legally mandated retention period. Privacy law pushes in the opposite direction — it requires us to minimize what we keep and delete it when the purpose is done. The only real retention floors we face are financial: tax and accounting records. Everything else is a choice, and we've chosen short.
| Data | How long | Why that period |
|---|---|---|
| Offline games played without an account, their save data, and their in-progress games | We never receive them | — |
| With an account, your offline games in progress | Until the game is finished (then a note that it was, for 30 days), or until you delete your account | So you can continue a game on another device, and no device brings back a game already finished |
| Your profile, without an account | Until you delete your device's data, or after 24 months without the app reaching us unless it holds a purchase, plus up to 30 days in routine backups | It exists for online play; a profile nobody has used in two years is one nobody will |
| Server logs containing IP addresses | 30 days | Long enough to investigate abuse and outages; no law requires us to keep them at all |
| Session tokens | Expire after an hour | No ongoing purpose |
| Push tokens | Until you turn notifications off on the device or sign the device out, until the notification service says a token no longer works, or until you delete your device's data or your account | Needed for as long as you want notifications |
| Chat messages at a table | 30 days after each was sent | Long enough to look into a report |
| Drawings and descriptions in It's a Draw and Telephone | 60 days after anyone at the game last opened it | The game needs them only while people still look at it |
| Reports about players | 1 year | Long enough to see that someone keeps being reported |
| Feedback you send | In our issue tracker for as long as it's useful, or until you ask us to delete it | So we can answer you and fix what you found |
| Daily challenges | The moves of a try, 8 days. Its result, about 400 days | The day's top 10 needs the tries for a week, and your history needs a year |
| Records of what computer players did | 90 days | Long enough to answer a question about one |
| Codes we email you | Stop working after 15 minutes; deleted a day later at the latest | No ongoing purpose |
| Online gameplay events — moves, scores, match results | 1 year | Long enough to investigate cheating and disputed results, and to keep matchmaking working |
| Our server's event log — what happened in lobbies and games, by player number, with no IP addresses | 400 days | A turn-based game can run for weeks, and a question about one can arrive after it ends |
| Playvale account data — email address, password, stats, preferences, credits, signed-in devices, friends list | Until you delete your account, plus up to 30 days in routine backups | This is the service you asked for; it exists as long as you want it |
| Inactive Playvale accounts | Deleted after 24 months of no sign-in, after we email you a warning first | We shouldn't hold data for people who've moved on |
| Records of reward videos (Google's transaction number and our one-time code) | 1 year; if you delete your account first, what's left has nothing linking it to you | So one video can't be counted twice |
| Support correspondence | 24 months | Long enough to spot recurring issues |
| Crash reports, from Firebase Crashlytics and from Apple and Google | 90 days | Long enough to fix the bug |
| Answers to the questions at the end of a game | Until you delete your profile or your account | So we can see what players think of each game over time |
| Notes of when you asked for a copy of your data | 1 year | Long enough to show we answered |
| Premium purchase records (the store's purchase number, the plan, dates and status, and the store's messages about it) | 7 years after the subscription ends | This is the one genuine legal floor, see below |
Nobody has to remember to do this for what our game server holds: it deletes each kind of data on its own once its time is up, checking every hour it runs.
About that 7 years. Purchase records are business financial records, and they're subject to tax recordkeeping rules rather than to our preferences:
- The IRS period of limitations for assessing most returns is 3 years, extending to 6 years where more than 25% of gross income was omitted, and 7 years for records supporting a bad-debt deduction. Employment tax records must be kept 4 years.
- The Texas Comptroller requires records relating to sales and use tax to be kept 4 years, and longer if an audit, appeal, or refund claim is open.
We keep 7 years to cover the longest of these without having to guess which applies. These records are the store's purchase number, the plan, dates and status. They are not your payment details, which we never receive at all.
Legal holds. If we receive a valid preservation request from law enforcement, or we're on notice of litigation, we must suspend deletion of the specific data covered for as long as the hold lasts. This is narrow and rare, and it doesn't change our normal practice.
7. Your rights and choices
7.1 Everyone
Switch personalized ads off — free. Under Menu → Privacy → Personalized ads, turn them off. To be clear about what this does and doesn't do: you will still see ads during free online play. They'll be chosen by general context — the game you're playing, your coarse region — instead of by a profile of your interests. It is not a way to remove advertising. You don't need Premium for it, and nothing else about the game changes.
Device-level ad controls. You can reset or delete your advertising identifier at any time: iOS — Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking, and Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising. Android — Settings → Privacy → Ads, where you can delete the advertising ID entirely.
Decline tracking on iOS. When the App Tracking Transparency prompt appears, choosing "Ask App Not to Track" switches you to non-personalized ads (again — ads still appear, they're just not personalized). You can change this later in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
Premium is the only way to remove advertising entirely.
Get a copy of your data. With an account that has a confirmed email, go to Menu → Account → Download my data (Section 2.16). Anyone can also write to privacy@playvale.games.
Play offline, which never shows ads at all.
Contact us at privacy@playvale.games with any request or question. We respond to every message, not just the ones we're legally required to answer.
7.2 If you're in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland
You have the right to access your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to processing, receive it in a portable format, and withdraw consent. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your national supervisory authority — though we'd appreciate the chance to fix the problem first.
You can get a portable copy of your data yourself from the app (Section 2.16), or by writing to privacy@playvale.games.
We will respond within one month, extendable by two further months for complex requests, and we'll tell you if we need the extension.
7.3 If you're in California
Under the CCPA/CPRA you may request to know what we collect and disclose, request deletion, request correction, and opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of your personal information. You have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights — and you won't be: your gameplay, features, and content are identical either way.
We do not sell information about you as a product. But we are paid for the ads we show, and because those ads are personalized, we share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising as California defines it. Some state laws may characterize the same activity as a "sale." We don't think the label should determine your rights, so we treat an opt-out as covering both.
To opt out, at no cost:
- In the app: the switch under Menu → Privacy → Personalized ads — the same control described in Section 7.1, which is the mechanism for both. This is the primary mechanism, and it takes effect immediately.
- By email: privacy@playvale.games. Say you want to opt out; we don't require an account or any verification to honor it.
- Automatically: we honor Global Privacy Control signals where we can detect them, without requiring anything further from you.
When you opt out, we turn on Google's restricted data processing for you, which limits Google's use of the data and serves non-personalized ads only.
Opting out does not require Premium, does not limit your access to the game, and does not change your gameplay. You will still see ads during free online play — they'll be chosen by context rather than by a profile of you.
Our website is a set of static pages: our store links, invitation and friend links, the legal documents, and the delete-account and email confirmation pages. It has no accounts, no cookies and no ads, so there is nothing there to opt out of. It loads its fonts from Google Fonts, which sees your IP address. Your browser remembers the language you chose for the site, and that stays on your device. The delete-account and email confirmation pages send what you enter to our server, only to do what the page says. The in-app control and the email address above are the mechanisms, and the website points to them.
We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16 years of age.
Categories of personal information collected in the past 12 months: identifiers (advertising ID, IP address, a random device key and session tokens, push tokens, Playvale ID, and your email address if you created a Playvale account); commercial information (credits, and Premium subscriptions); internet or other electronic network activity (gameplay and match history, chat, drawings, daily challenge results, ad interactions, crash reports, answers to the questions at the end of a game, device model, operating system version, app version and app language); coarse geolocation (region derived from IP address); profile information you choose (display name and avatar); and what you choose to send us (reports and feedback). Sources, purposes, and recipients are described in Sections 2 and 5.
Categories shared for cross-context behavioral advertising: identifiers (advertising ID, IP address); internet or other electronic network activity (ad interactions); coarse geolocation. Recipient: the Ad Provider named in Section 2.3.
Sensitive personal information: we do not collect it, and therefore do not use or disclose it for any purpose requiring a right to limit.
Authorized agents. You may use an authorized agent to submit a request; we may ask for proof of authorization and may ask you to verify your identity directly.
7.4 If you're in another US state with a privacy law
Residents of Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Oregon, Montana, and other states with comprehensive privacy laws have rights to access, correct, delete, and obtain a portable copy of their personal data, and to opt out of targeted advertising and profiling.
Because we serve personalized ads, the targeted advertising opt-out applies to us. Use the same free controls described in Section 7.3 — the in-app toggle, a Global Privacy Control signal, or an email to privacy@playvale.games.
If we deny a request, we will explain why and tell you how to appeal. If we deny your appeal, we will tell you how to contact your state attorney general.
7.5 Deleting your data
If you never created an account, we hold your device's profile (Section 2.1), and the online games you played. Erase them in the app under Menu → Delete this device's data. If you no longer have the device, email privacy@playvale.games with your Playvale ID and we'll delete them.
If you have a Playvale account, you can delete it in the app under Menu → Account → Delete account, on the web at playvale.games/delete-account, or by emailing privacy@playvale.games. Deletion removes your email address, password, profile, match history, preferences, credits, signed-in devices, push tokens, and chat messages, signs out every device, and removes you from other players' friends lists. In other players' match histories you then appear as "Deleted player". Routine backups are purged within 30 days.
Deleting your account doesn't cancel a Premium subscription. Cancel it in Google Play or the App Store first. We keep the purchase record for the tax period in Section 6, with nothing left on it that links it to you.
Deleting your account does not delete local save data on your device; uninstalling the app does that.
8. Security
We protect data with encryption in transit (TLS), encryption at rest where our providers support it, access controls, and the simplest protection of all: not collecting things we don't need. The data we never hold can't be breached.
We're a small studio and we won't pretend to have enterprise security. If we discover a breach affecting your personal data, we'll notify affected users and the relevant authorities as required by law, and we'll tell you what actually happened rather than issuing a non-statement.
9. Children
Our games are made for adults. They are classic card and solitaire games — Solitaire, Bridge, Cribbage, and similar — designed for and marketed to an adult audience. They are not directed to children, they are not designed to appeal to children, and we do not market them to children.
The Games are intended for users 13 years of age and older, and our Terms of Service require it. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, where local law sets a higher age for consent to data processing, the minimum age is 16 unless local law provides otherwise.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under those ages, and we do not knowingly serve personalized advertising to them. We have configured our Ad Provider to indicate that our Games are not directed to children.
Age ranges from the app store. Where the law requires it — in Texas, for example — the app store tells the app which age range an account is in. We use the answer only to enforce our age limit and to protect younger players:
- a player the store says is under 13 can't use the app, and nothing of theirs is sent to us or to Google;
- a player the store says is 13 to 17, or whose age the store hasn't yet verified, gets only non-personalized ads, requested with Google's protections for users under the age of consent.
The answer stays in the app's memory while it runs. We never store it, send it to our servers, or share it with anyone.
If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete it promptly. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with information, contact us at privacy@playvale.games and we will remove it.
California minors. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16 years of age.
10. International transfers
We're based in the United States, and our providers may process data in the US and elsewhere. If you play from outside the US, your information will be transferred to the US, which may not offer the same legal protections as your home country.
For transfers of EEA/UK personal data, we rely on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, and our infrastructure provider participates in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and require our providers to maintain appropriate safeguards. You can request details at privacy@playvale.games.
11. Changes to this policy
If we make a material change — collecting something new, adding a recipient, or changing why we use your data — we will:
- update the "last updated" date;
- post the new version on this page before the change takes effect, with a note at the top that says what changed; and
- where the law requires consent for the change, ask for it rather than assuming it.
We won't make a material change quietly. If you would like a copy of an earlier version so you can see what changed, email privacy@playvale.games and we will send it to you.
12. Contact
Privacy questions and requests: privacy@playvale.games
That's the only address you need. We're a small studio and email reaches a real person faster than anything else would.
We're a small team, so a real person reads these. We aim to answer within 3 business days, and always within the deadlines the law sets.