Privacy

• Embershard is run by me, Mark Brady, an individual in London, UK. I decide what is kept and why.
• I keep what your account and the game need: your email address, your password (scrambled so nobody can read it), your chat and letters, and the IP address each came from.
• No adverts, no analytics, no tracking. Nothing about you is sold.
• A few companies help run the game: the server, the network, email and error reports. Each gets only what its job needs.
• You can delete your account yourself, from your account page, unless it is banned.

Write to privacy@embershard.com about anything on this page, including a request or a complaint, and to safety@embershard.com for reports, appeals and safety complaints. Both reach me, so nothing sent to the other is lost.

The rest of this page is the detail the law asks for.

An email address and a password are all you have to give, and without them there is no account. Everything else comes from playing.

• Your account: your email address and password, your time zone (so times show in yours) and when you confirmed your address, so you can sign in, get the links you ask for and keep the account yours. Kept until you delete the account, except your time zone, which goes 30 days later, and the date you confirmed your address, which stays. If the address is never confirmed, the whole account goes after 7 days.
• Each browser you sign in on: its IP address, what browser it says it is and when it was last used, to keep your account safe and spot misuse. Kept until you sign out, or 30 days after its last use.
• Your characters: their names, levels, what they carry and wear, and what they have done. That is the game. The record of each fight and task is kept for 7 days.
• Chat and letters: what you wrote, to whom, when, and the IP address it was sent from. Kept to deliver it, and as evidence if somebody reports it, then deleted after 365 days, or a letter as soon as the player who got it throws it away. A report keeps its own copy. I read public chat, but a letter only when it is reported, with the others between the same two players in the two weeks either side of it, or when a report keeps a copy of it. Each time I open them is written into the report.
• Moderation: who you have muted and who has muted you; whether you are banned; any message of yours I took down; reports you made and reports about you (you are never told who made them); what was decided; and anything passed to the police or the National Crime Agency. Some of this comes from other players. Kept so the game stays safe for everybody, under the rules; how long a report is kept is under If something is reported.
• Notifications, only if you turn them on: an address at your browser's push service, and the keys to encrypt messages to it. Your account page turns them off again.

Behind the scenes

• Errors: when something breaks, an error report with your account and character numbers, the page address and your browser type, so it can be fixed. It never holds your email address, IP address or what keeps you signed in. The server keeps the latest errors too, about 5 MB of them, with email addresses taken out. A background job that failed for good keeps what it was given, which can be an email address, for 30 days.
• Server logs: the IP address, browser and page of each request, kept until newer requests overwrite them as the logs fill, with no fixed time limit, and never backed up.
• Too many requests: to turn floods away, the game counts recent requests per account (per IP address when nobody is signed in, and always for signing in, signing up and password resets) and recent emails to each email address. A count runs for a day at most and is cleared from storage within two weeks.

Why, in the law's words

• Running the game you signed up for, notifications included (contract).
• Keeping it safe beyond what the law requires, fixing it and backing it up (legitimate interests).
• Doing what the law requires (legal obligation), including the Online Safety Act's duties to take down illegal content, to keep content harmful to children away from them, to let players report and complain, and to report child sexual abuse to the National Crime Agency (sections 10, 12, 20, 21 and 66).

Nothing relies on your consent.

• Anybody, signed in or not: each character's name, levels and experience, what it wears, its kills, pets, feats and their points, Ledger count, contracts finished, deliveries filled, deaths and duels, on its profile and the leaderboards, and whether its account is banned. A banned account's name is hidden wherever the game shows it, its profile shows only that it is banned, and it leaves the leaderboards.
• Signed-in players: what you say in chat, with your character's name and where you are; the game's news about your character in chat, such as a rare drop, a first boss kill, a death to a boss, a duel, a treasure trail's find or a tier of feats completed; and who is in the same place as you.
• Only the player you wrote to: your letters.

No other player ever sees your email address, your IP address or your time zone.

These companies use your data only to do their job for Embershard, under contracts that make them protect it:

• Hetzner, a German company, runs the server in Germany. Everything above is stored there.
• Cloudflare (US) carries every request to the server, decrypting it on the way, so it sees your IP address and everything you send and load. It passes on mail to both my addresses. It also stores the nightly backups for 30 days each, encrypted since 29 September 2026 with a key only I hold.
• Proton (Switzerland) holds my mailbox, on servers in Switzerland, Germany or Norway, where that mail arrives and my replies are kept. An email to me stays as long as a report about the same thing would.
• Resend (US) sends the emails you ask for, such as confirmation links and password resets, so it has your email address and each email, and keeps a record of each for 30 days.
• Honeybadger (a US company, storing data in Frankfurt, Germany) receives the error reports, and keeps each for 15 days after the error last happened.
• GitHub (US) is where I track bugs: an error's title and a link to its report, nothing about you.

If you turn notifications on, your browser's push service delivers them: Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft, chosen by your browser rather than by me. It sees when one is sent but cannot read it.

Hetzner's server, Honeybadger's storage and Proton's servers are in Germany, Switzerland or Norway, which UK law treats as protecting data as well as the UK does. Where a company is in the US, the transfer is covered by the UK's data bridge with the US or by the UK's approved transfer contract. Write to privacy@embershard.com for a copy of the one that applies.

Beyond these, I hand data over only:

• where the law requires it, to the police, the National Crime Agency, a court or a regulator; or
• to help the police or the National Crime Agency prevent or detect crime, or protect somebody from harm.

• An open report: kept until it is decided.
• A decided one: 90 days after the decision if it was dismissed, and 365 days after it if it was acted on.
• One behind a ban: for as long as the ban stands, and 365 days from the day it is lifted.
• One passed to the police or the National Crime Agency: at least a year from the day it was passed on.

Every report also keeps a copy of the reported player's email address and sign-ins, and of their chat and letters with anybody from two weeks before what was reported up to the report. For a letter, the same is kept for the player who received it. The copy is deleted when the report is decided, unless the account is banned or the report is passed to the police or the National Crime Agency; then it is kept as long as the report.

There is no cookie banner, because nothing is used for adverts, analytics or tracking, and no scripts are loaded from anybody else. Everything kept on your device is there so the game works:

• session_id keeps you signed in on this browser. It is removed when you sign out, and stops working after 30 days unused.
• _embershard_session protects forms from forgery and carries one-off messages between pages. It goes when you close the browser.
• fight_log, queue_repeat, zone_tab, character_view, more_view, map_extent, hide_locked, leave_fine and theme remember choices you made on screen: an open fight log, a repeat count, the tab, view or map you last chose, whether locked recipes are hidden, whether breaking down everything leaves fine copies, and whether you read light or dark. Each is set only when you make that choice, and kept for a year.
• theme_device records whether your device is set to light or dark, so that the game installed as an app can match it. Your browser writes it on every page, and it is kept for a year.
• Your browser's own storage keeps the last chat line you read, so the Chat tab can count new ones (your account page turns this off), and which account turned notifications on in this browser. Until the tab is closed, it keeps text typed into a filter box. When the game reloads a page itself, it keeps when you last touched it, until the page has loaded.
• A small background script your browser keeps to show notifications, installed when you open your account page in a browser that can show them. It does nothing unless notifications are on.
• Cloudflare may set a security cookie to tell people from bots.

Clearing any of these in your browser signs you out and makes the game forget your choices. Nothing else changes.

Write to privacy@embershard.com to ask:

• for a copy of what I hold about you, or a copy another service can read;
• to correct it (you can change your email address yourself, on your account page);
• to delete it. Unless the account is banned, you can do this yourself under Leaving on your account page, which says what stays and why;
• to limit how it is used while something is sorted out.

A banned account cannot reach its account page, so ask by email instead.

I answer within a month, or tell you within that month why it needs longer. If I need to check a request is yours, I reply to the address on the account.

When you leave, your characters lose their names, levels and everything they carry, and your password is erased. Your email address is erased too, and the IP addresses on your messages and your time zone are deleted 30 days later. Copies kept with a report are not erased. What you said in chat, letters you sent, things you sold and duels you fought stay, as a departed player.

Your right to object. You can object to what I keep for keeping the game safe, fixing it or backing it up, and I will stop unless there is a strong reason not to, such as the evidence behind a ban. This does not apply to what the law makes me keep.

If you are unhappy with how your data is handled, write to privacy@embershard.com. I reply within 30 days to say I have your complaint, then look into it and tell you what I did. You can also complain to the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (now the Information Commission), at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

You need to be 13 or over to play. If you are under 18, this page is the same for you: there are no adverts, nothing about you is sold, notifications are off until you turn them on, and nothing about you is public beyond the list under What other players see.

If you think somebody under 13 has an account, write to safety@embershard.com. If I find out they are under 13, I delete the account.