Privacy Policy

GameVault is a personal game-library service for collecting games from different platforms, tracking progress, and sharing the lists you choose to make public. This policy explains what data GameVault handles and why.

GameVault is run by Jarne Dehaes, a private individual in the European Union, who decides how and why your data is used: the “controller” under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The address to write to is under Changes and contact.

GameVault does not sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising.

Depending on how you use GameVault, we may process:

• Account data: email address, display name, profile image, verification status, and identifiers used to keep your WorkOS account connected to your GameVault profile.
• Google Sign-In data: your basic Google profile and email address when you choose Google. GameVault does not request access to Gmail, Drive, contacts, calendars, or your Google password.
• Library data: games, platform sources, playtime, achievements, progress statuses, ratings, wishlist entries, lists, rankings, notes, and the reviews and screenshots you write or add. While your profile is visible to everyone, a game's page counts you among the players who have it and in which progress state, without naming anyone, once at least five players do. A game you hid isn't counted, and with your profile set to fewer people, none of yours are.
• Linked platform accounts: for each gaming platform you link, its account identifier, name and avatar, how the account was verified as yours, and the results of its syncs. The short code you put in a platform profile to verify it expires within 30 minutes. If a platform signs you in and gives GameVault access tokens, they are stored encrypted and deleted when you disconnect the platform.
• Public activity: profile details, public lists, list notes, likes, screenshot albums, published reviews and screenshot posts, and your comments and replies on screenshot posts, that you intentionally make visible to other users. A published review shows your username (never your name), with your rating, progress and playtime for that game, and how many players found it helpful (never who); a screenshot post shows your username too. We keep which reviews you marked helpful with your account, so you can take a mark back. The screenshots you bookmark are kept with your account too, and only you see them; their players aren't told. Screenshots are re-encoded in your browser before upload, which removes their camera and location metadata. Screenshots you upload but don't post are deleted after a day. When you report a review, a screenshot post, a comment, or a player's bio or About me, we keep your report (its reason and any note you add) with your account for moderation; its author isn't told who reported it.
• Leaderboards: if you have a verified platform account, the public leaderboards show your username (never your name), your place, and what your verified accounts report: achievements unlocked and how rare they are, mastered games, hours played, and the game each board names (never a hidden one). Anyone can see them, signed in or not. You can leave them at any time in Settings → Privacy; you leave every board at once and nothing is deleted.
• Your profile: your profile page shows your username (never your name), the month you joined, and the parts you choose to put on it: your favourite games and characters, your Library's totals, finished and mastered games, trophies, the rarest achievements your verified accounts report, the game you're playing, your reviews and public lists (never a hidden game). We store the layout, the title, the bio, your About me, the links to your accounts elsewhere (your handle on each), the figures and the look you choose (a colour, a character from GameVault's cast, art from one of your games) with your account. You choose who can see the page in Settings → Privacy: everyone, signed-in players, your friends or only you.
• Follows: the players you follow and who follow you, and since when. Whoever can see your profile sees how many there are and who they are; a friend is someone you follow who follows you back. You can unfollow anyone, and remove a follower, at any time.
• Games you follow: the games you follow for your Feed, and since when. Only you see them; you can unfollow a game at any time.
• Milestones: when you start playing, finish or master a game, as you mark it or a sync brings it, kept for the Feed of the players who follow you and your profile's Activity widget, if you add it. Your friends see them unless you choose your followers or nobody in Settings → Privacy, and never more players than your profile shows to. Undoing a mark removes its milestone.
• Milestone likes: the milestones you like, and when. Their player sees how many like them and is told who liked them last.
• Dismissed suggestions: the players and games you told your Feed not to suggest again, and when. Only you see them; you can take one back from its message straight away.
• Hidden milestones: the players whose milestones you hid from your Feed, and since when. Only you see them; the player isn't told. You can show them again at any time.
• Blocks: the players you block, and since when. Only you see them; the player you block isn't told. You can unblock anyone at any time.
• Event votes: the games you vote for in community events such as the Vault Awards. Other users only ever see each game's total, once voting has closed and at least three players have voted, never who voted for what. If you delete your account, your votes on ballots still open go with it. A vote on a ballot that has closed stays, so a finished result doesn't change: it's a total counted once, with nothing tying it to you.
• Notifications: what GameVault tells you in its inbox (a sync's result, your games' release dates, a new follower, community votes, support's replies) and when you saw each, kept for 90 days, and which kinds you turned off in Settings and when. A new follower is named, as is the player who last liked, commented on or posted screenshots; helpful marks on reviews and likes on lists are only ever counts, never who.
• Game requests: when you ask for a game the catalog lacks (Missing a game? in Browse), we keep what you sent (its name, description, details, store links, notes, and the cover and banner you chose, made smaller in your browser first) and how a moderator decided it. GameVault's moderators read it with your username. If the game is added, its name, details and images become part of the catalog that everyone sees, and stay there if you later delete your account; your request itself goes with your account. Images you choose but don't send are deleted after a day.
• Support: when you ask for help in Help and support, we keep your case: its topic and subject, your messages and our replies, and what you chose to send with it about your browser (the page you came from, the browser, your window's size, GameVault's version and your time zone) and, when you ask from where a problem happened, what it's about (a review, your profile's text, a game or a platform's sync); each can be left out. To answer it, the people in GameVault's support read your case with your account's details (your username, email address, when you joined, your linked platforms and how they last synced, how many games are in your Library and wishlist, and your other cases); each time one of them opens it is recorded, and that record is kept for a year. Their notes on a case stay with support: they aren't shown to you in the case or to anyone else, and you get them with the rest of what support keeps about you when you ask for a copy (below). Screenshots you add to a case, or support adds to a reply, are made smaller in your browser first, which also removes a photo's location and the camera's details; only you and support can see them. If support stops your account from writing to it for a while, we keep when that ends and, for support alone, why. Once a case is solved, you can tell us whether it solved your problem, with words if you like; we keep your answer with the case, and support uses it to see how it's doing. While you have a case open, support can see that you have it open and when you're typing a reply, but not what you type.
• Technical data: security signals, request information, and error diagnostics needed to operate, protect, and repair the service.

• Authenticate you and keep your account secure.
• Build and maintain your personal library and progress history.
• Import data from services you deliberately connect.
• Display profiles, lists and the leaderboards according to the visibility you choose.
• Tell you, inside GameVault, what happened to your games, syncs and community while you were away.
• Answer the questions you ask in Help and support.
• Prevent abuse, diagnose failures, and improve GameVault.
• Send required account messages such as verification and reset emails.

The GDPR asks us to name the reason the law allows for each use:

• To provide the service you signed up for (performance of a contract): your account and sign-in, your Library, wishlist, lists, reviews and screenshots, syncing the platforms you link, your profile, follows and blocks shown as you choose, the leaderboards unless you leave them, your notifications, and answering your support cases.
• Our legitimate interests in keeping GameVault safe and working: security signals, rate limits and error diagnostics, moderating what players report, support's record of who opened a case, and blocks that stop abuse. You can object to these (below).
• Legal obligations: answering your privacy requests and what the law requires us to disclose or keep.

GameVault uses service providers to run the product, including WorkOS for authentication, hosting, database, image storage (Cloudflare R2) and encrypted backup providers for the application and error-monitoring services. They process data only to provide their services to GameVault and under their own security and privacy terms.

GameVault's database is on a server in Germany, and the screenshots you add are stored in the European Union with Cloudflare. Some of these providers are based in the United States, so your data may be processed there; those transfers rely on the safeguards the GDPR allows, such as the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Some pages show pictures and videos that your browser loads directly from other services: a game's screenshots and art from IGDB and, for some games, Steam; its trailers' stills from YouTube; achievement and trophy icons from the store they belong to (Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, GOG, RetroAchievements, Epic or Ubisoft); and on the News page pictures from the news sites it links to, from Steam and from YouTube. A trailer plays in YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode, and only once you open it. These services see your IP address, as they would on any website, but not which GameVault page you were on.

If you link a gaming platform, you either sign in with it on the platform's own page (GameVault never sees your password) or put a short code in your public profile there, which GameVault reads back. Ubisoft works differently: GameVault finds your Ubisoft account through a PlayStation, Xbox or Steam account you've already linked. To sync, we read your games, playtime and achievements from the platform, using what it makes available, and exchange only the information required for that. Third-party stores, platforms, and websites remain governed by their own policies. We may also disclose information when required by law or needed to protect users and the service.

GameVault uses essential, encrypted cookies to maintain your WorkOS session and short-lived security cookies during sign-in, email verification, and social-login flows. These cookies are required for the service to work.

To make your Library and wishlist fast, GameVault keeps a copy of them, and of your state for each game, in your browser’s own storage while you are signed in, separately for each account. Your account on GameVault’s servers stays the record; the copy is brought up to date from it when you open those pages, and the copy itself is never uploaded (to check it, the browser sends back only the version markers GameVault gave it). It is deleted when you sign out, and when the sign-in pages open in this browser (if another tab still has it open, once that tab closes).

The browser also keeps a few settings and small records for GameVault: cookies with your display choices (such as views and cover sizes), your time zone and a few technical markers, sent with your requests so pages open the way you left them; and, in its local storage, your recent searches, your sound settings, which trophies, mastered games and releases GameVault has already shown you, and what you found and scored in its small games. Signing out doesn’t remove these; clearing this site’s data in your browser does. The Roulette’s own picks are kept there too, but they’re deleted with the copy above. While a tab stays open, it also remembers the email you typed on one sign-in page for the next, which setup steps you skipped on Home, the support case you were writing (until you send it or sign out), changes to a review you left without saving (until you go back to it or sign out), and the animated wall on the sign-in pages.

GameVault does not currently use advertising cookies.

You control which games, lists and reviews are public, who can see your profile and what it shows, and whether the leaderboards show you, and can edit or remove your own library information and reviews in the product. You can disconnect a linked platform at any time and choose whether to keep or remove what it brought; disconnecting deletes its stored tokens.

We keep account and library data while your account is active and for only as long as reasonably needed to operate the service, resolve disputes, or meet legal obligations. Support cases are deleted with your account, or two years after they close; their screenshots 90 days after the case closes, and one you added but never sent after a day.

You can download a copy of your account's data, and delete your account, yourself in Settings, Account. What support keeps about you in its own tools isn't in that download: its notes, reminders and tags on your cases, why it stopped your account from writing to it, and its record of what it did with your cases and what you posted. Ask for it in Help and support and we send it with our answer, with other players' names left out. Deleting your account removes your data and your sign-in together, at once, and it can't be undone. A vote on an event's closed ballot stays in that ballot's total, with nothing tying it to you. Copies in our backups aren't changed: our encrypted database backups age out within about two weeks, and a copy of the affected tables made before maintenance work within 30 days. We use them only to restore the service, or to test that we can. Support's record of what it did is kept for up to a year, and your name is taken out of it after the deletion.

Under the GDPR you have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or deleted, to have its use restricted, to receive it in a portable form (the download above), and to object to what we do on the basis of our legitimate interests. Ask in Help and support, or by contacting us below; we answer within a month. You can also complain to the data protection authority of the EU country where you live or work, or where you think the problem happened.

GameVault uses encrypted HTTPS connections, server-side credential handling, short-lived access tokens, restricted database access, and monitoring to protect data. No online service can guarantee absolute security, so please use a unique password and report suspicious account activity promptly.

GameVault is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. Contact us if you believe a child has created an account so we can review and remove it.

We may update this policy as GameVault changes. The date at the top will be updated when revisions are published. Material changes will be communicated in the product when appropriate.

Privacy questions or data requests can be sent to jarne.dehaes19@gmail.com. You can also review the GameVault Terms of Service.