Wars Privacy Policy

Version of 16 October 2026.

Wars is a street strategy game: you walk up to a real building, your phone confirms you are there, and the castle becomes yours. The game needs your location — but only while you capture, and no other player ever sees where you are.

In short

• No name, email or phone number. Your account is anonymous; the game gives your realm its name and arms.
• Your location reaches the server only during a capture — while you hold a castle. The rest of the time it stays on your phone.
• Other players see your realm's name, its arms and your castles. They do not see where you are, your routes, or the exact time of your captures: a change of owner appears on the map after a random delay of 5–20 minutes.
• Coordinates do not pile up. A capture's latest location points are erased as soon as the capture ends; they are kept longer — up to 30 days, encrypted — only when a capture looks like GPS spoofing.
• No ads, no advertising identifiers, no third-party analytics, no chat.
• The game is for adults, 18+.

1. Who is responsible for your data

Wars is operated by SERGEI GORIUGIN IE, Armenia. For any question about this policy or your data, write to wars-privacy@xoyk.dev.

2. What we collect and why

2.1 Account

The first time you play, the app creates an anonymous account. We do not ask for your name, email, phone number or date of birth.

The server keeps:

• a random account identifier;
• the realm name the game gave you (for example, "Copper Raven") and your arms, assembled from ready-made parts;
• your first castle — the "capital" (more in section 3), the date the account was created, and game state such as the pause between captures.

Why: so the game knows which castles are yours.

2.2 Device

Each time it connects, the app reports:

• the platform (iOS or Android);
• the system version and phone model (for example, iPhone15,2);
• the game's build number;
• an installation identifier — a hash of a random number the app creates on the phone at first launch. It is not a serial number or an advertising identifier: it says nothing about the phone or its owner.

The server remembers when the device first and last connected.

Why: to check that the build is compatible with the server, to limit how often one device may send requests, and to stop one person from running many accounts to cheat.

2.3 Location — only during a capture

The app reads your location only while it is open on screen, never in the background. You see yourself on your own map; your position is not sent to the server for that.

When you start capturing a castle, the app sends the server its latest few GPS points about every 2 seconds. Each point holds:

• latitude and longitude;
• accuracy in metres;
• the time by the phone's clock;
• the system's marks on where the point came from: whether an app made it up ("mock location"), whether it came from an external GPS receiver (iOS) or from a simulator.

What happens to them:

• During a capture the server keeps at most the 10 latest points, encrypted. When the capture ends — taken, cancelled, or cut off (after a couple of minutes of silence) — these points are erased.
• If a capture looks like GPS spoofing, its points are kept as evidence for 30 days — also encrypted — and then deleted.
• From the points the server computes a summary without coordinates — distance to the castle, accuracy, intervals between points — and keeps it with the record of the attempt for 30 days.

Why: to check that you really stand at the castle, and to catch GPS spoofing.

A point marked as a mock location does not count towards a capture. If the phone allows only approximate location, capturing is unavailable: it needs precise location.

2.4 Captures and titles

The server keeps a private journal of every successful capture: which castle, taken from which realm by which realm, and how long the capture took.

• The exact time of a capture is kept for 30 days. After that only the day and the part of the day in Yerevan time remain: night (00–06), morning (06–12), day (12–18) or evening (18–24).
• The journal itself is kept for as long as the game world exists: it is how cheating is investigated.

Baronies, counties and their founders are kept to the day.

Why: the rules of the game, fair play, the history of the world.

2.5 Network address (IP)

Every server the app connects to sees your IP address.

• Our database does not store IP addresses. To limit request rates, the server turns the address into a one-way key. The secret that key is built from is deleted after two days, and after that the address cannot be recovered.

• In the game servers' logs:

  • Google Cloud Run's request log records the IP address, time, requested path and response code, and keeps them for 30 days in Frankfurt (EU);
  • the game server's own log records no IP, no coordinates and no castles — only the account identifier, when commands came and how they ended.
• Supabase (sign-in and delivery of game events) keeps its own service logs with IP addresses, for about 7 days (according to Supabase, for the Pro plan).

Why: protection against overload and abuse, finding bugs.

2.6 What stays only on your phone

• Steps. With your "Motion & Fitness" permission the app reads the step counter and whether you are walking or standing — for the finds that drop as you walk. This is computed on the phone and not sent to the server; no track is kept.

• Sign-in and the installation identifier:

  • on iPhone, in the Keychain: sign-in survives reinstalling the app and restoring from a backup; the installation identifier survives only a reinstall on the same phone;
  • on Android, in the phone's encrypted storage; excluded from backups, so uninstalling the app or moving to a new phone means a new account.
• A snapshot of the map, to view it offline. It does not go into the phone's backups (iCloud or a computer).
• Single-player. In the build without a server, your castles, your first castle and the times of your captures are kept on this phone only and are left out of its backups (iCloud or a computer).

• Diagnostic report. In settings you can prepare a report for the developers. In the online game it contains:

  • the app's version, the phone's model and the system version;
  • the day the report was prepared — no hour;
  • how many castles you hold and whether you have a first castle — without their numbers;
  • whether the app is connected to the city;
  • GPS accuracy in whole metres;
  • whether location access is granted and whether the location is mocked;
  • the app's recent technical events in order — their kind, response codes, durations and distances, without castles and without times.

  It has no coordinates, no castles of yours, no capital and no capture times. In the single-player build the report describes that build's save — castle numbers, the first castle and capture times — which is on your phone only anyway. It stays on your phone until you share it yourself — and then only with whoever you send it to.

2.7 What we do not collect

• your name, email, phone number or date of birth;
• contacts, photos or files from your phone;
• background location or a history of your movements;
• advertising identifiers (IDFA, Android Advertising ID);
• data for advertising or third-party analytics — the app contains no such SDKs;
• messages: the game has no chat and no free text from players (the comment on the residents' page — section 2.8).

2.8 Residents: asking for a house to be taken out of the game

The game sends people to homes, and residents have the right to say no. On a separate page, with no account, anyone — a player or not — can ask for a house to be taken out of the game. You do not have to prove that you live there. The operator takes the house out: it belongs to nobody and cannot be captured.

The page sends the game server only what you typed into it:

• the house's number from the game's map, or, if the address was not found, the address and a description of the house in your own words;
• a comment, if you wrote one; the page asks you not to put anything about yourself in it;
• an e-mail address for the answer, if you gave one — it is optional;
• the page's language.

Alongside these the game server keeps only the request's number (which lets you cancel it), its status and the day — no hour. We store no name, no IP address, no coordinates and no device data with the request. So that the page cannot be flooded, the server counts requests by a one-way key built from the network address, as in section 2.5. But Google Cloud Run's request log records the IP address and the time of this request, like any other, and keeps them for 30 days in Frankfurt (section 2.5).

The page and this policy are served by Cloudflare Pages at wars.xoyk.dev. As the host and content delivery network, Cloudflare sees the IP address of everyone who opens the page and processes it in its own logs, under its own privacy policy; a request reaches the Cloudflare data centre nearest to you, which may be outside the EU. We add no analytics to the page and export no visit logs: the operator's Cloudflare dashboard shows a summary without addresses — how many requests, and from which countries — and an address only for a request Cloudflare's protection stopped as an attack. The page sets no cookies. Until a request is sent, it keeps a draft — the address, the chosen house, the comment and the description, never the e-mail address — in your browser, and erases it as soon as the request is accepted.

Why: so that players stop coming to your house. The e-mail address is used only to answer this request.

How long: an open request — until the operator answers it; a done, rejected or cancelled one — 90 days after it closed, then it is deleted (section 6). A house taken out stays out until you ask for it back.

3. What other players see

They see:

• your realm's name and arms;
• your castles, baronies and count titles;
• the day a castle was captured and a barony founded;
• how much longer a just-captured castle is protected;
• recent events in the world — who took which castle and who founded which barony; the feed keeps them for 7 days;
• who first founded a barony or first became count — the game remembers this for good.

They do not see:

• where you are — the game has no live player positions at all;
• your routes and walks;
• the exact time of your captures;
• your account, device or IP.

The delay. You see a castle you captured as yours at once. Everyone else, including the previous owner, sees it after a random 5–20 minutes. The castle's protection counts from that moment, not from the capture. So the map cannot tell anyone that you are standing at that building right now.

Your first castle. It is also your realm's capital. Nothing in the game tells others that it is the capital or that you live nearby. But a realm's first capture appears in the events feed like any other — so anyone following the feed can see which building a realm started from.

4. What we see

The operator has access to the game's database and the servers' logs. That is everything in section 2 — except the GPS points: they are encrypted with the game server's key, which is kept apart from the database, in Google Secret Manager. Neither a copy of the database, nor a backup, nor the provider's support can read them. The operator opens them only to investigate suspected GPS spoofing.

We do not sell your data or pass it to anyone other than the services the game runs on (section 5).

5. Where the data is kept

The apps on your phone do not send crash reports anywhere themselves. If you have allowed your phone to share analytics with developers, Apple or Google may pass crash reports to the operator under their own rules. The map and the fonts are built into the app: viewing the map contacts no one.

6. How long data is kept

Backups. The database is backed up once a day, and each backup is kept for 7 days. So anything deleted or coarsened in the database lives on in backups for up to 7 more days — the exact time of a capture, for example, for up to 37–38 days. GPS points reach a backup only if a capture was in progress at that moment — and they are encrypted there too.

7. Protection against GPS spoofing

The game is fair only as long as nobody can capture without leaving home. So the server assesses every attempt:

• the system's mock-location marks;
• whether speed and accuracy are plausible;
• how the phone's clock behaves.

A point marked as a mock location is not counted, automatically. If an attempt looks suspicious, the server may mark the account for review. A penalty — closing captures or the account — is decided by a person after a review, not by an automatic system.

8. Deletion and your rights

Deleting your account. There is no delete button in the app yet; there will be. Until then, open the app's settings, copy your account code and send it to wars-privacy@xoyk.dev. We do not delete an account by its realm name alone: everyone can see the name, while the code is shown only in your own settings. We will delete the account within 30 days. After deletion:

• your castles become unowned;
• your realm — its name and arms — disappears from the game, from the chronicle and the events history, from titles and from the list of first founders;
• the records of your devices are deleted;
• the capture journal stays — no longer linked to you — for anti-cheat (section 2.4);
• deleted data lives on in backups for up to 7 more days.

Uninstalling the app does not delete your account on the server.

Your rights. You may:

• ask what data we hold about you and get a copy;
• have it corrected;
• have it deleted;
• object to its processing.

Write to wars-privacy@xoyk.dev.

9. Age: 18+

Wars is a game for adults, 18 and over. We do not ask your age in the app and rely on the store's age rating. If you are under 18, please do not play. If we learn that someone under 18 is playing, we will delete their account as described in section 8.

10. Test builds

Builds before store release are installed through TestFlight (Apple), Google Play closed testing, or directly onto the phone. Test invitations, and any crash reports you choose to send through TestFlight or Google Play, are handled by Apple and Google under their own rules. Your email from the invitation is visible to the operator in the store console and is not linked to your game account in any way.

11. Changes

If we start collecting new data or keeping it longer, we will update this policy and its version date before the change takes effect — for example, before turning on app attestation (Apple App Attest, Google Play Integrity) or notifications.

12. Contact

SERGEI GORIUGIN IE — wars-privacy@xoyk.dev.