Who we are

Foundation Three is made by Phillip Warewinter, who is the controller of the information described here (UK GDPR). Contact: foundationthree@warewinter.com.

The short version: the game is built to know as little about you as it can. To play the alpha you sign in once with Google or an email link, so we can give your PC a key. We use your email to sign you in and, as a salted hash, to check the invited list and find your account. It is never in ratings, bug reports or feedback, we do not ask for your real name, and we do not sell or share what we hold with advertisers.

Signing in to the alpha

When you first start the alpha, the game asks you to sign in with Google or an email link. Google's Identity Platform handles the sign-in for us and holds your email address on our behalf.

We then make a key for your PC. Your game creates its own secret on your PC and never sends it. We sign the matching public part, which proves your PC may play. The key lasts 30 days, then the game asks you to sign in again.

Google holds your email address for the sign-in. Our key issuer keeps only a salted hash of your account, the time the key was issued and the times it was issued in the last 30 days, which the reissue limit uses, when it expires, whether your key is a free place or an invited one, and a record that the key is active or withdrawn, never your email. We keep a salted hash of your email, to check the invited list and to find your account when you ask us for help. We use them to give out the free alpha places, to stop one copy of the game being shared, and to withdraw a key if it is misused. Your key is not linked to your pilot id, your rating or your match records.

When you download game files after signing in, our key service checks your key and gives your PC a short-lived link to each file. The key service's request logs, kept by Google Cloud, hold your IP address and the request for 30 days. We have not turned on download logging for the file store, and we keep no download history of our own.

We keep this for as long as your key is active, and delete it when the alpha ends. You can ask us to delete it sooner.

When you play

Your pilot key and rating

The first time you play, the game makes a random key on your PC and keeps it in a file called pilot.json. Your pilot id is a one-way hash of that key. It is not your name, your Steam name or your account. Game servers use the id to tell pilots apart and to keep your rating, rank and division.

For each ranked or rated match we record the pilot id, the match result, the team, kills, deaths and the time, so that ratings can be recalculated if the rules change. We do not record your name, your address, your Steam id or your hardware with it. Once the shared rating service is running, we will keep these records for 12 months after the match.

Your connection

To connect to a game server your computer sends it network packets, so the server and the services that start it (the server list and fleet manager) see your IP address while you are connected and use it to deliver the game and to limit abuse. The fleet manager, which finds you a server, turns your address into a short one-way hash (a fixed code that someone holding a list of addresses could still check against). It keeps the hash in memory while you wait in the queue, and keeps it with each server you start, in a private file, for the latest 2,000 server starts. It is used for the daily limit on server starts. We do not put your address in the rating records, bug reports or feedback. Our hosting provider keeps its own standard request logs for a short period.

Your callsign

If you choose a callsign, other players in your match see it. Do not use your real name if you do not want it seen.

Bug reports

Pressing F5 opens a bug report. Nothing is sent until you press Send. A report carries what you typed, a screenshot of your game at that moment, the game build, the time, the map and ship, the server address you were on, your graphics card, driver, processor, memory, operating system and screen size, and the end of the game log. Before sending, the game removes the account folder from file paths and any IP addresses in the log. It does not send your pilot name. Please do not type personal details into the report, and note that a screenshot shows whatever was on screen in the game, including other pilots' callsigns.

Reports are stored in a private storage bucket and database that only the developer can open. They also hold a short one-way tag of the network address the report came from, used only to spot spam. The tag cannot be turned back into an address and changes whenever the service restarts. We delete reports after 180 days. We use them to find and fix problems.

Match feedback

After some matches the game may ask for a rating from 1 to 5 and an optional comment. You can turn this off for good in Settings or by choosing "Never ask again". Feedback carries the rating, your comment, the build, map, ship and the match result, and nothing that identifies you: no pilot id, no name and no address. Because of that we cannot find your feedback again on request, so please do not put personal details in the comment. Feedback is deleted after 180 days.

This website

We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics. It does not use cookies or follow you across sites, and we see page counts and general information such as country and browser, not who you are. The site has no advertising. Signing in for the alpha happens in the game and through Google or an email link.

Other services

Google, which provides the sign-in, handles your email address under its own privacy policy as well as ours.

Discord, Patreon and Steam run their own accounts and have their own privacy policies; what you give them is handled under those. If the game is played through Steam, Steam provides the store, the overlay and your Steam account details to Valve, not to us, and we do not store your Steam id or Steam name in ratings, bug reports or feedback.

Why we may use it

We use pilot ids and ratings to run matches and matchmaking, which is part of providing the game you asked to play. We use bug reports, feedback and the visit counts to fix and improve the game, under our legitimate interest in doing so. We do not use any of it to make decisions about you beyond matchmaking and keeping matches fair, and we may flag server-side behaviour for review by a person.

Your rights and how to use them

You can ask us to show you, correct or delete what we hold about you, and object to how we use it. To delete your rating records, email us and we will help you find your pilot id, then remove the records for that id. Because the id is derived from your key, we can only act on a pilot id you give us. For a bug report, tell us roughly when you sent it and which build you were running. Deleting your pilot.json does not delete records we already hold, but it means you start again with a new id.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). We would like the chance to put it right first.

Where it is kept, and changes

Sign-in is handled by Google Identity Platform (US), which may process your email address and sign-in details in the United States and other countries. Our access records are hashed and stored in London, with hashed backups kept in the EU, and our own servers, including the key issuer and the game servers, are in Europe. If this page changes in a way that affects what we collect, we will update the date above and say so in the devlog.