Privacy policy

Who is responsible

Fiuno GmbH, Sägetstrasse 39, 8303 Bassersdorf, Switzerland (see the imprint) is responsible for the processing of personal data in VibeGames. We comply with the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

What we process and why

• Your account: e-mail address, nickname, password (stored only as a salted hash) and when your account became an adult's. You give your birth month and year when you register; we do not store them, only what follows from them: for players aged 16 or 17, the day the account becomes an adult's (the first day of the month after the 18th birthday), deleted on that day. If you turn on two-step sign-in: the secret key your authenticator app uses and your unused recovery codes, deleted when you turn it off. For child accounts: username, nickname, the age limit and settings the parent chose, and the link to the parent's account. We need this to run your account, show games suitable for your age, protect players under 18, sign you in and send you the e-mails to confirm your address or reset your password.
• Using VibeGames: the games you installed and when you last opened them, the day you last used VibeGames, game saves you store in the cloud, messages between players, your friends (who added whom, and when), your current friend code (stored only as a hash) and friend requests (who asked whom, in which game, and whether it was declined), your ratings and comments, reports and our moderation decisions, feedback you send to a game's publisher, and the push subscriptions of devices on which you allowed notifications.
• Camera: if you scan a friend code in the app, it uses your device's camera once you allow it, and only while the scanner is open. The images are read only on your device to find the code; they are not sent to us or anyone else, and not stored.
• Technical data: a cookie that keeps you signed in (necessary for the service, not used for tracking) and your IP address, which we use briefly to protect the service against abuse, for example to limit sign-in attempts.
• Publishers: the publisher profile (whether they publish as a company or as a private person, the company's name or the person's first and last name, country, website, privacy policy and terms as links or as texts written on VibeGames, with the earlier versions of such texts), which is shown publicly in the store, and the transfer codes they create to hand a game over (stored only as a hash).

What games and publishers see

A game learns only your nickname and a player id that is different for every game. It never sees your e-mail address or your account, and it runs in a sandbox that cannot send data to the internet. Publishers see anonymous statistics of their games, never who you are: how often a game is installed and uninstalled, how many players play it per day and for how long, in which countries, age groups (adults, players aged 16 or 17, or children by the age limit their parent set), on which kinds of devices and versions, and which errors occur, as daily totals (see usage statistics). Groups of fewer than five players are shown only together. A publisher who takes a game over sees the same. Your ratings and comments are public in the store, together with your nickname. Until you are 18, publishers do not see your nickname on leaderboards and in feedback, and only other players under 18 find you in games and see you on leaderboards; adults you are friends with can choose you as a player in games you both have (see Friends below).

Friends: you add a friend with their friend code, or they add you with yours: a code you show as a QR code or send as a link. Anyone who has your code while it is valid (7 days, or until 20 friends used it) can add you, so share it only with people you know; making a new code ends the old one. Your friends see your nickname and, in games you both have installed, can choose you as a player and send you messages, also when you turned off being found by name in that game. Games and publishers never receive your friend list: a game learns only the player you choose, as with a player found by name. Players of every age can be friends; the parent of a player under 16 sees their friends and can remove them. You can remove a friend at any time.

Friend requests: in a game, a player you have exchanged messages with can send you a friend request, and you can send them one; you accept or decline it in VibeGames, and the game does not learn your answer. Nobody can send a request to a player under 18. An unanswered request ends after 14 days. We keep a declined request for 30 days, so that the same player cannot ask again during that time; they are not told that you declined.

Feedback: when you send feedback on a game, its publisher receives your message, your nickname (not for players under 18) and the version of the game you play. Unless you switch it off in the feedback dialog, which shows every value before you send it, they also receive a description of your device: system and browser with their versions, type of device and model where your browser tells it, screen size, number of processor cores and memory, language, whether you were online and, when you send it from the running game, the last error messages of the game (without e-mail addresses, links and long numbers). It contains no identifier of your device or account. The publisher uses it to fix problems and improve the game; their privacy policy applies to it. Publishers cannot answer you through VibeGames, so please do not include your contact details.

Advertising and usage statistics

What we currently do not do: VibeGames shows no advertising, sets no tracking cookies and uses no external analytics or advertising services such as Google Analytics, neither in the app nor on this website. We pass nothing about how you use VibeGames to such services and build no profile of you. Fonts and scripts come from our own servers.

Usage statistics, anonymous and on our own servers: to improve VibeGames, find and fix errors and understand how it is used, we count what happens and keep only daily totals. For example: how many players were active, how often each game was installed, started and played and for how long, which errors occurred in the app, in games and on our servers, how quickly our servers answered, which kinds of devices, browsers and languages were used (such as “Android phone, Chrome, German”), and how often each page of this website was visited and from which other websites visitors came. For each game we also count, once a day when you play it, the country of your device's time zone (not of your address), your age group, the kind of device and the version you play, and how often events the game declares happen (such as “level completed”); its publisher sees these totals for their game.

The app keeps the counts in your browser's storage and sends them every few minutes. They are sent while you are signed in, but neither your account nor your player ids, your device or your IP address are stored with them: our servers add them to the daily totals, which cannot be traced back to you. Error messages are stored without e-mail addresses, links and numbers. To count the active players and to find accounts that are no longer used (see the terms of use), we note with your account the day you last used VibeGames. We keep the daily totals for up to two years.

You can turn the usage statistics off for a device in the app under Account → Usage statistics. The app then sends no counts from that device and deletes those it has not sent yet. Counts our servers make anyway, for example of new accounts, installed games or server errors, contain no personal data either.

For offline play, the app keeps your games, saves, a copy of your profile (without password), your friend list and your current friend code in your browser's storage on your device.

If we introduce paid features, advertising or an external analytics service later, we update this policy beforehand and tell you in the app or by e-mail: which data that involves, which providers (for example for payments, advertising or analytics) receive it, and why. We take the measures the law requires for it, for example a contract with the provider about how it may use the data. Where the law requires it, we ask for your consent first, and you can withdraw it at any time.

Service providers

• Microsoft Azure hosts VibeGames in a data centre in Western Europe and sends our e-mails (Azure Communication Services, data stored in Europe). Microsoft may process data in other countries, including the USA, under the Swiss-US and EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
• Push services of your browser (for example Google, Mozilla or Apple) deliver notifications if you allow them. A notification is encrypted and contains only the game's name and the sender's nickname.

We do not sell personal data or pass it on for advertising.

How long we keep data

We keep your data as long as your account exists. Uninstalling a game deletes its saves and messages. You can delete your account in the app under Account → Delete account: your profile, games, saves, messages, friends, ratings, friend requests and push subscriptions are deleted right away, together with your children's accounts. Removing a friend ends the friendship for both of you. We keep only what the law requires and reports about the account (with the name and text copied into them), as long as we need them to handle abuse. Feedback you sent to publishers stays with them, without your nickname, until they delete it. If you publish games, they are retired unless you handed them over: the rest of your publisher profile is deleted, but your publisher name and country stay with the retired games as long as players have them, so they still see who made them. The anonymous usage statistics are kept as daily totals for up to two years (see Advertising and usage statistics).

Your rights

You can correct your nickname and delete your account in the app yourself. For questions about your data, access to it, a copy of it, other corrections, or to object to its processing, write to privacy@vibegames.ch. You can also report a concern to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or, in the EU, lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. We publish changes to this policy on this page and announce important ones in the app or by e-mail. See also the terms of use.