This policy explains how SeeStudents, LLC, doing business as SOFT-WHERE (“we”, “us”), handles personal information on SOFT-WHERE Games (the “Service”). It is part of our Terms of Use. We are based in Minot, North Dakota, United States, and the Service is run from the United States.
1. What we collect
When you create and use an account
- Account details: username, display name, email address, password, and date of birth from the age screen. Your password is handled by our sign-in system (a Keycloak server we run at auth.soft-where.com) or stored only as a salted one-way hash. We never store it in readable form. We also record which version of the Terms you accepted, and when.
- Your character: body, colors, outfit and equipped items.
- Play activity: games you play and visit (by day), scores and leaderboard entries, game saves, puzzle plays, and multiplayer room participation, including your character's position in a shared 3D world while a round is running.
- What you make: games and every saved version of them, scripts, worlds, uploaded models, images and sounds, store items and decals, game passes and in-game products, and groups and their pages.
- Chat: messages you send in multiplayer rooms. If our filter changes a message (for example, masking a word), we keep the original too, so moderators can review it.
- Economy: your Gold and Silver balances and a record of every change (purchases, sales, trades, exchange swaps, group payouts, bonuses), plus trades and inventory.
- Purchases: when you buy Gold, Stripe collects your payment details. We receive and keep the purchase record (pack, amount, status, and Stripe's reference). We send Stripe your player ID and a purchase ID so the Gold reaches the right account. We do not receive or store card numbers.
- Safety records: reports you make or that are made about your content, and moderation actions taken (removals, suspensions, bans and their reasons).
When you connect an AI assistant
If you connect an AI assistant (such as Claude) to your account, you sign in through our sign-in system and we receive a token identifying your account (account ID, username and email). We record what the assistant does under your account, the same way we record what you do yourself. Information our tools return to the assistant (for example, your games, character, items and wallet balance) is shared with the company that runs the assistant, under its own privacy policy.
Automatically
- Technical data: like any website, our hosting provider receives your IP address, browser and device type, and the pages and files requested. This is used for security, debugging and abuse prevention.
- Cookies and local storage: see section 6.
From others
Other players may report you or mention you in chat. Stripe tells us whether a payment succeeded. Puzzle publishers (such as Minot's Bugle) embed our puzzles on their sites, and plays there are recorded the same way as plays on our site.
2. How we use it
- To run the Service: your account, saves, games, multiplayer, the store, trades, groups and leaderboards.
- To process purchases and keep the Gold and Silver economy accurate and secure.
- To keep players safe: the age screen, text filters, upload review, reports, moderation, detecting cheating and fraud, and enforcing our Terms and Community Rules.
- To show creators how their games and items are doing (plays, visits, sales), using totals rather than lists of who played.
- To fix bugs, protect the Service, and improve it.
- To contact you about your account, purchases, safety issues or changes to our policies. We don't send marketing email unless you ask for it.
- To comply with the law and respond to lawful requests.
3. What other players can see
Your username, display name, character, public profile page, published games, items you sell, groups you belong to and leaderboard scores are public, and can be seen by anyone, including people who aren't signed in. Chat messages are seen by the other players in the room. Your email address, date of birth, balances and purchase history are not public.
4. Ads
Some pages (never the middle of a game) show banner ads from TheAd Vantage, an ad network run by our own company. When an ad loads, your browser sends TheAd Vantage the ad size and placement, your player ID if you're signed in, and basic device information (screen size, color depth, time zone, language, platform, and whether cookies are enabled). Your browser also sends its IP address. This is used to serve the ad, count impressions and clicks, and detect fraud. Ad requests don't carry our cookies. We don't use your activity on our site or other sites to target ads to you, and we don't share your personal information with advertisers.
5. Who we share it with
We don't sell your personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share it only:
- With service providers who run parts of the Service for us: Vercel (website hosting and file storage for uploads), Neon (database), Amazon Web Services (our sign-in server), Stripe (payments), and TheAd Vantage (ads, as described above). They may use it only to provide their services to us.
- With an AI assistant you connect, as described above, because you asked us to.
- With other players, as described in “What other players can see”.
- For safety and the law: to comply with legal process, to protect the rights, property or safety of players, the public or us, and to report suspected child exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children or law enforcement as required by law.
- In a business transfer, such as a merger or sale, where this policy would continue to apply.
6. Cookies and local storage
- Sign-in cookies keep you signed in and protect forms from forgery. They are required for accounts to work.
- Age-screen cookie (
swg_age_block): if the age screen is answered with an age under 13, we set this cookie for 30 days so the screen can't simply be retried with a different date. It contains no personal information. - Local storage in your browser holds the character you design before signing up, guest game saves, game settings (such as graphics quality), puzzle progress, and a random visitor ID used to count guest puzzle plays.
We don't use third-party analytics or advertising cookies. You can clear cookies and local storage in your browser at any time, but signed-in features need the sign-in cookie.
7. How long we keep it
- Account information, creations, saves and economy records: while your account is open.
- Room chat messages (including the original text of any message the filter changed): 30 days, then deleted automatically. Messages attached to a report are kept with the report until it is resolved.
- When you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymize your personal information within 30 days, except as explained below.
- Purchase and economy records may be kept as long as needed for accounting, tax, fraud prevention and legal obligations. Records of serious safety violations and bans may be kept to prevent banned users from returning.
- Content that other players already own copies of (for example, store items they bought) may stay with them.
- Backups are overwritten on a rolling schedule.
8. Children
The Service is for people 13 and older, and we use a neutral age screen when accounts are created. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If someone answers the age screen with an age under 13, no account is created and their date of birth is not stored. If an existing account turns out to belong to a child under 13, we lock it and delete its personal information. Parents who believe their child under 13 has an account should email travissmith@soft-where.com. Players aged 13 to 17 need a parent's or guardian's permission to use the Service, and parents may contact us to review or delete their teen's information.
9. Your choices and rights
- You can change your display name and character on your account page, and unpublish your games and take your items off sale.
- You can ask us to access, correct, download or delete your personal information, or to close your account, by emailing travissmith@soft-where.com from the address on your account. We may need to verify your identity, and we'll respond within 45 days.
- Depending on where you live, state privacy laws may give you additional rights, such as the right to appeal a decision about your request. We honor those rights as the law requires and won't treat you differently for using them. To appeal a decision, reply to our response with “Appeal” in the subject line.
10. Security
We use encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords, access controls on staff tools, and a sandbox that keeps game scripts from reaching your device or the network. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you as the law requires. Please use a strong, unique password.
11. Changes
We'll update this policy when our practices change and change the effective date above. If the changes are material, we'll ask you to review them the next time you sign in.
12. Contact
SeeStudents, LLC (d/b/a SOFT-WHERE), Minot, North Dakota. Privacy questions and requests: travissmith@soft-where.com.