Privacy Policy

The short version

We run a community wiki. We need to store the account you sign in with and the stuff you post. We use a few standard tools to keep the site up (hosting, a database, an email sender, an error tracker, an analytics service). We show ads through a third-party advertising partner to help cover running costs, and if you are in Europe or California you can control whether those ads are personalised (see Advertising and your choices below). We will delete your account and personal data if you ask us to.

The longer version below explains the details.

What we collect

There are three kinds of information that end up on our servers:

Account data

If you sign up with email and a password, we store the email address and a bcrypt hash of the password. If you sign in with Google or Discord, we receive your name, email, profile image, and the provider's account ID. We do not receive your Google or Discord password.

Things you post

Wiki edits, forum posts, chat messages, images you upload, comments, reactions, and anything similar. This content is tied to your account and, by design, visible to other visitors. Revisions of wiki articles are kept indefinitely so edits can be reviewed or rolled back.

Usage data

Standard server logs: IP address, user agent string, the URL you asked for, a timestamp, and an HTTP status code. Our analytics tool records roughly the same thing plus the referrer. This kind of data is normal for any web server and is used to keep the site running and to figure out which pages are popular.

Why we use it

• To run the site: logging you in, showing you what you posted, rendering the wiki.
• To keep the site stable: catching errors, throttling abuse, blocking spam and scraping bots.
• To tell you things that matter: password resets, replies to your posts, account-security emails.
• To figure out which articles are worth keeping current, based on traffic numbers.
• To handle moderation: if an account is breaking the rules, we look at what they posted and when.

We do not build our own marketing profiles. We do, however, work with a third-party advertising partner that displays ads on the site; depending on the consent choice you make, those ads and the cookies behind them may be personalised. See Advertising and your choices below for the details and how to opt out.

Who we share it with

The site runs on third-party infrastructure. To keep it working, data inevitably passes through these services:

• Vercel hosts the app and stores uploaded images.
• Neon hosts the Postgres database where accounts and content live.
• Google and Discord are optional sign-in providers. We only see them if you choose to sign in with one.
• Resend delivers transactional emails (password resets, notifications).
• Google Analytics (GA4) records aggregate page views and referrers. We never pass your email or username to it.
• Sentry captures JavaScript errors so we can fix them. Stack traces and URLs are collected. Account IDs may be attached to error reports but personal content is not.
• Twitch and the game publishers' public APIs are queried to show stream counts and game metadata. They do not receive information about you.
• Publift, our advertising partner, and the ad networks it works with may receive cookie identifiers, approximate location, and device and usage data in order to serve and measure the ads on the site. In Europe and California this happens only according to the consent choice you make (see Advertising and your choices below).

Aside from the advertising partner described above, we do not sell your personal data to brokers or anyone else. Under California law, sharing advertising cookies and identifiers with our ad partner can itself count as a "sale" or "sharing" of data; you can opt out of personalised advertising at any time using the control in the Advertising section below. If a court order or a valid legal request lands in the inbox, we will cooperate to the extent the law requires and, where possible, give the affected user a heads-up first.

Cookies and analytics

We set a small number of cookies:

• A session cookie that keeps you logged in (required if you have an account).
• A preferences cookie that remembers things like your theme choice.
• Google Analytics cookies (_ga, _ga_*) that count page views.
• Advertising cookies and identifiers set by our ad partner and the networks it works with, used to show and measure ads. In Europe and California these are only set according to the consent choice you make, which you can change at any time in the Advertising section below.

You can block any of these in your browser. Blocking the session cookie will log you out. Blocking analytics cookies is harmless and we'd rather you do that than not read the site.

Advertising and your choices

To help cover the cost of running the site, we show ads supplied through a third-party advertising partner, Publift, and the ad networks it works with. Serving and measuring those ads involves cookies and identifiers as described above. We never share your name, email, or the content of your account with advertisers.

If you are in Europe (GDPR) or California (CCPA), a consent prompt lets you choose whether ads are personalised. You can change that choice at any time using the control below.

California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA")

Under CCPA, California residents have the right to declare their preferences on the sale of data for advertising and marketing purposes. If you wish to change your preferences, use the control below to launch our preference portal:

We use a third party to provide monetisation technologies for our site. You can review their privacy and cookie policy at publift.com/privacy-policy.

Security

The site runs on HTTPS only. Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes, never plaintext. Database backups are handled by Neon and encrypted at rest. We use rate limiting and a spam honeypot on account creation and the contact form.

That said, no web service is immune to breaches. If we ever have one that involves your personal data, we will email the affected accounts as soon as we understand what happened and post a notice on the site.

Your rights

You can, on request:

• Get a copy of what we have on your account.
• Correct anything that is wrong (you can usually just edit it in your settings).
• Delete your account and the personal data tied to it. Public contributions may stay on the site but will be disassociated from your identity.
• Object to specific processing, or ask us to restrict it.

The easiest way to exercise these is to sign in and use the account settings page. If something you need is not there, email thegameswiki.com@gmail.com. We aim to respond within a few days and resolve requests within thirty.

Children

The site is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has an account, email us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If something material changes, we will update the date at the top of this page and, for significant changes, send a notice to registered users by email. Small editorial fixes (wording, typos, adding a new third-party service that is already covered by an existing category) happen without notice.

Contact

Privacy questions, deletion requests, and anything else about this policy:

thegameswiki.com@gmail.com