RPS ChessPrivacy Policy
RPS Chess is an independently developed online game. This policy explains what information we collect when you use it, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have. We have written it to describe what the Service actually does — not a generic template.
The short version: we collect the account details you give us, the game data needed to run matches, leaderboards and clubs, and technical logs. We do not collect your precise location (GPS), your contacts, your photos, your camera, or your microphone in the mobile app. We do not use third-party analytics SDKs, though the advertising described in section 7 is served by Google. We never sell your personal information.
1. Information you give us
Account information
You can use RPS Chess without an account, but an account is required for online play, clubs, friends and saving your progress. When you create one you provide:
- Sign up with email: your email address and a password. We never see or store your password in readable form — it is hashed by our authentication provider.
- Sign in with Google: if you choose this option, Google shares your name, email address, profile picture and Google account identifier with us. We do not receive your Google password.
Profile information
- A username, which is shown publicly to other players.
- Your avatar and avatar background, chosen from artwork built into the app.
- A country, which we infer automatically from your browser or device language setting (for example, a device set to en-GB indicates the United Kingdom). We do not use GPS or your IP address to determine this, and you can change it.
Content you create
- Club messages. If you join a club and post in its chat, the text you write is stored and visible to members of that club.
- Feedback. If you send feedback, we receive the star rating, the game mode you selected, any comments you write, and — only if you choose to type one in — an email address.
- Piece artwork. If you draw, or on the website upload a picture for, a playing piece in RPS.IO, that artwork is stored with your account and shown to opponents in online games. Only the drawing tools are available in the mobile app — the app cannot read a picture from your device.
2. Information created when you play
To operate matches, ratings and progression, we store:
- Games you play, including your opponent's identifier, the moves, the result and timestamps.
- Your statistics: rating, games played, wins, losses and draws.
- Presence information — for example a "last seen" timestamp — used so your opponent can tell whether you are still connected during a live game.
- Your friend connections, club memberships, puzzle attempts and scores, achievements, and the chess sets and skins you own or have equipped.
3. Information collected automatically
Like any online service, our hosting and backend providers automatically record technical information when you connect, including your IP address, device type and operating system, browser or app version, request timestamps, and error or diagnostic logs. We use this to keep the Service running, secure it, diagnose faults and prevent abuse and cheating. These logs are generated by our infrastructure providers rather than by tracking code in the game itself.
Local storage
The app stores a small amount of data on your own device — your login session token and preferences such as theme and settings — so you stay signed in and the game looks the way you left it. This stays on your device and is cleared when you sign out or uninstall.
4. What we do not collect
Some of this is worth stating plainly, because many games do collect it:
| Category | Collected? |
|---|---|
| Precise location (GPS) | No |
| Contacts, calendar, SMS or call logs | No |
| Photos, camera, or files on your device | No — not accessed by the mobile app, which offers drawing tools only. The website's piece editor can use a picture you choose to upload — see section 1 |
| Microphone | No — not accessed by the mobile app |
| Financial or payment information | No — RPS Chess v1 has no purchases |
| Health and fitness data | No |
| Your activity in other apps or websites | We collect none ourselves. Google's advertising cookies — described in section 7 — are what can make an ad reflect visits to other sites, and you can opt out there. |
| Third-party analytics SDKs | No — we include none. The advertising described in section 7 is served by Google's ad network, which does set advertising cookies when it is enabled. |
5. How we use your information
- To create and secure your account and sign you in.
- To run games — matching you with opponents, applying your moves, recording results and updating ratings.
- To provide social features: friends, clubs, club chat and leaderboards.
- To save your progress, achievements, puzzles and customisation.
- To display advertising in the mobile app and on the website (see section 7).
- To keep the Service safe and fair — detecting abuse, cheating and technical problems.
- To respond to your feedback, questions and support requests.
- To comply with legal obligations.
6. Legal bases (European Economic Area, UK and Switzerland)
Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases:
- Performance of a contract — creating your account and providing the game, since you cannot play online without it.
- Legitimate interests — securing the Service, preventing cheating and abuse, and diagnosing faults. We balance these against your rights.
- Consent — personalised advertising and non-essential cookies or local storage. In the app this is collected by Google's consent form. On the website it is collected by Google's consent message before any advertising cookie is set, and no advertising cookie is set while adverts are not being served (see section 7). You can withdraw consent at any time.
- Legal obligation — where we must retain or disclose information to comply with the law.
7. Advertising
The mobile app displays advertising supplied by Google AdMob, a service of Google LLC. To serve ads, Google may collect and process your device's advertising identifier, along with device information, approximate (non-precise) location derived from your IP address, and data about your interactions with ads. Google acts as an independent controller for this processing; its handling of that data is governed by Google's own privacy policy.
You can control personalised advertising:
- Android: open Settings → Privacy → Ads to delete or reset your advertising ID, or to opt out of personalisation.
- Google-wide: manage your preferences at adssettings.google.com.
- iOS: if ad tracking is enabled in a future version, you will be asked for permission via Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt, and you may decline.
Advertising on the website
In your browser at rpschess.io, advertising is supplied by Google AdSense, also a service of Google LLC. AdSense uses cookies and similar technologies to select the ads shown and to measure them.
Google requires publishers to make the following disclosures, so we reproduce them rather than paraphrase:
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
- You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings, or opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising by visiting aboutads.info.
No advertising cookie is set on the website today. Adverts are not being served there yet — the site is going through its advertising review, and the advertising code on the page is only the loader, with no ad unit configured. An ad unit is what would set these cookies.
Where the law requires it, you are asked for consent before any advertising cookie is set — by Google's consent message, a Google-certified consent management platform — and you can decline. Declining does not restrict the game in any way: you may still see ads, but they will not be personalised.
On the website the ads appear in two places: inside the left-hand sidebar, and in a single column on the right-hand side of the menu screens. The right-hand column is removed automatically while a game is in progress. The mobile app never loads these website ads — it uses AdMob, described above.
8. Who we share information with
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers for their own independent marketing. We share it only with the service providers that make RPS Chess work, and only as needed:
| Provider | What it does |
|---|---|
| Supabase, Inc. | Authentication, database, file storage and serverless functions — this is where your account and game data are stored. |
| Google LLC | Google Sign-In (if you use it), AdMob advertising in the mobile app, AdSense advertising on the website, and web font and animated-emoji delivery. |
| Vercel Inc. | Hosting and content delivery for the website and app assets. |
| DiceBear | Draws the default player avatars. The avatar image is requested from DiceBear's public API, and the seed we send is your username — that is what makes the same avatar come back every time for the same account. |
| FlagsAPI | Serves the small country-flag images shown beside players on leaderboards. Only the two-letter country code is sent, nothing else. |
Those last two requests are made directly from the app or your browser, so the provider sees the requesting IP address. They carry no email address, no password and no account identifier other than the username used as the avatar seed. Both are free, no-account services and we have no agreement with either of them, so we ask for no more than the minimum they need to draw the image.
Information is also visible to other users by design: your username, avatar, country and rating appear on leaderboards, in clubs and during games, and anything you post in club chat is visible to that club's members. Please do not share anything private in these areas.
We may also disclose information if required by law, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, safety and security of our users or the public. If the Service is ever transferred to another owner, user data may be transferred as part of that transaction, and we will notify you beforehand.
9. International transfers
Our providers are based in the United States, so your information may be stored and processed outside your country, including outside the EEA or UK. Where that happens, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or an applicable adequacy decision.
10. How long we keep information
- Account and profile data: kept while your account is open, and deleted when you delete your account (see section 12).
- Game and rating history: kept while your account is open, since it forms part of your record and other players' match history.
- Technical and security logs: kept for a limited period, typically no more than 90 days, then deleted or aggregated.
- Feedback: kept until it has been reviewed and actioned.
Some things outlive your account because they belong to other people too. Club messages you posted are deleted with your account. However, game records survive — a finished match is part of your opponent's history as well as yours — with your identity removed from them. Clubs you created are not deleted either, since other members still use them; the club simply has no owner afterwards.
11. How we protect your information
We use Transport Layer Security (TLS) for all connections, hashed passwords, database access controls and per-user access rules that restrict who can read or change a record. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security — but we limit what we collect in the first place, which is the most effective protection there is.
12. Your choices and rights
You can review and change your username, avatar, country and other profile details directly in the app at any time.
Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to:
- Access a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Correct information that is inaccurate.
- Delete your account and associated personal information.
- Port your information to another service in a machine-readable format.
- Object to or restrict certain processing, including processing based on legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent.
- Complain to your local data protection authority.
To exercise any of these, email rpschesshelp@gmail.com. We will respond within 30 days and may ask you to verify that you control the account before we act.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account and personal information from inside the game: open Settings from the menu, tap Account, then choose Delete account. There is no waiting period — your account and data are removed immediately.
If you no longer have the app installed, or cannot sign in, you can request deletion from our website instead. See rpschess.io/delete-account.html for the full instructions on what is deleted and how to make a request.
California residents (CCPA/CPRA)
We do not sell your personal information. We do not knowingly share it for cross-context behavioural advertising beyond the advertising described in section 7. California residents have the rights listed above, including the right to know, delete, correct and opt out, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them. Email us to make a request.
13. Children
RPS Chess is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age of digital consent in your country), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Club chat and other social features are designed for a general audience aged 13 and over. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has created an account, email rpschesshelp@gmail.com and we will delete the account and its data promptly.
14. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the game changes. We will revise the "Last updated" date above, and for material changes we will provide notice in the app or on the website before they take effect. Continuing to use RPS Chess after an update means you accept the revised policy.
15. Contact us
Questions, concerns or requests about this policy or your information:
Email: rpschesshelp@gmail.com
We aim to respond to every privacy enquiry within 30 days.
16. Credits and open-source notices
RPS Chess is built on open-source software and artwork, some of which we are required to credit:
- Default avatars — drawn with DiceBear (MIT licence). The Big Smile style used for player avatars is a remix of Custom Avatar by Ashley Seo, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The Bottts style used for RPS.IO bot opponents is a remix of Bottts by Pablo Stanley, free for personal and commercial use.
- Country flags — served by FlagsAPI. The flat and shiny flag artwork is by GoSquared, used under the MIT licence.